No one from the IRL is going to hire a short tracker, that dream died when Tony George sold out the real racers to get back his buddies Penske and Ganassi and those guys hire foreign road racers no one has heard of or cares about and the NASCAR people USE to hire USACer's before they changed the cars because the belief (true in IMHO) was that USAC drivers had car control, USACers win championships and races in NASCAR while the IRL drivers fail to impress. This Gold Crown car is a dead horse, NO ONE watched them as a sideshow to NASCAR races, people would FLOOD out of the grandstands the minute whatever NASCAR deal was done because they didn't care about them. Same with IRL events. The vast majority of USAC fans do not like the car so there goes your fanbase and the fan they want to attract, IRL or NASCAR fans, are not going to watch it even if it's a free ticket. The best bet for the return of champ cars like we know it is to somehow get a Thunder type deal going again on TV, most of the ESPN races had a share over 1 (some, like Winchester races had almost a 2 share, on a weeknight)which is a hell of a lot better than the IRL's .02 ratings.