Cairo, NY—Frank Otte or one of his fellow bankruptcy court gavelbangers may allow OWRS' so-called amigos to walk away from the series they "rescued" virtually un-penalized.

Kevin Kalkhoven and Gerald Forsythe may be allowed to merge their remaining assets with those of the inheritor of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, facilitating the so-called reunification of American open-wheel racing.

Robin Miller will continue adding to and commenting about a growing list of dupees who were misled and/or stiffed by the Champ Car Company. Gordon Kirby, as well, may continue chomping on the hand that once threw those meaty bones over his erstwhile backyard fence.

Daily applications of Reality Smelling Salts will cause even the staunchest, most blindly forgiving Champ Car fans to continue their metamorphosis into merely somewhat interested bystanders.

Cyberforum gangbangers will grow more disillusioned, disgruntled, and dissatisfied. Ultimately, as individuals, they will walk away en masse from whatever counterfeit product may be run by one or more of the stakeholders of either existing open-wheel series.

Champ Car websites, forums, and blogs will die off or shift their focuses to other motor sport genre. In case you're wondering, this renegade scribe is preparing to rant about any number of non-racing topics from search engine optimization to road rage to inexpensive Italian wine.

How could Judge Otte or anyone else have believed that a business plan relying on three-day festivals of speed, rev-limited spec engines, and push-to-pass could ever succeed in a market that had always craved the cars, the stars, and multi-disciplinary racing venues?

How did Gerald Forsythe, who had just lost the only major benefactor he ever had (Players Cigarettes was forced by Canadian anti-tobacco law to quit advertising on racecars), convince Kevin Kalkhoven that there would be sponsors enough for all three of the new series owners' teams plus the dozen or more other cars that were promised as a minimum field?

How could Paul Gentilozzi, a long-time racing participant and sponsor-seeker, not have known that the Champ Car World Series might as well have been the Paris-to-Dakar Rally because it was built on sand and not bedrock.

How could the sophisticated aficionados of our beloved speed sport have allowed themselves to believe that OWRS would succeed in post split open-wheel racing when the corporate CART had failed so miserably?

Larsen E. Whipsnade, a character in a couple of W.C. Fields films, was the owner of a shady carnival engaged in a constant struggle to keep a step ahead of the law. Grandpa Whipsnade's final instructional words to Larsen E are tailor-made for Champ Car fans in this uncertain moment:

"You can't cheat an honest man. Never give a sucker an even break. Smarten up chump."

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