Long Beach race is April 20

The Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach will run as scheduled on April 20 as part of a merger outlined Wednesday between the two major U.S. open-wheel motor racing series.

The Long Beach event has been part of the Champ Car World Series, which is being absorbed into the Indy Racing League under an agreement reached last week.

The two rival racing series are reuniting after a 12-year split that left both with flagging attendance and sponsorship as NASCAR stock-car racing soared in popularity.

IRL founder Tony George and Champ Car principal Kevin Kalkhoven told a news conference at Homestead-Miami (Fla.) Speedway that they expected to add at least three Champ Car races to the IRL’s 16-race schedule this year: in Long Beach; Edmonton, Canada; and Surfers Paradise, Australia.

But the Long Beach race -- a 1.97-mile, 11-turn race on a temporary street course in the city -- will have only Champ Car drivers one last time this April. That’s because the IRL is committed to a race the same weekend in Motegi, Japan.

However, Champ Car drivers competing in Long Beach will be awarded points toward the newly combined IRL series championship. The IRL’s season opener is March 29 at Homestead-Miami.

“I can think of no better circuit at which to celebrate Champ Car while at the same time signaling the beginning of a new era in open-wheel racing than the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach,” Kalkhoven said.

Long Beach also will be on the IRL’s 2009 schedule. But whether the IRL adds other Champ Car venues -- or new race tracks entirely -- isn’t yet known, the executives said.

The IRL will draft its 2009 schedule “with a cleaner sheet of paper” but “what’s going to be key is not to disenfranchise anybody so all the best opportunities remain out there for us,” George said.

George and Kalkhoven mostly pushed aside questions about the two sides’ long split, emphasizing that it won’t be easy for the sport to restore the popularity it once enjoyed with drivers such as Mario Andretti and A.J. Foyt.

“I’ve said many times that in itself, unification isn’t some sort of magic bullet to be able to get us forward,” Kalkhoven said. “It’s going to take an awful lot of hard work.”

In the mid-1990s, the sport had a single series called Championship Auto Racing Teams, or CART. But George, whose family owns the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway, was concerned that the series was moving too far away from oval tracks toward curvy road courses and temporary street circuits.

So he formed the IRL, forcing teams, tracks and sponsors to choose sides. The civil war also divided loyalties among fans.

CART later went into bankruptcy and was bought by Kalkhoven and his partners, who renamed it Champ Car. In recent years they nearly abandoned oval tracks in favor of road courses.

But both series suffered with lagging attendance, TV ratings and sponsorship money, especially in the face of NASCAR’s surge.

George, when asked how long it might take for the merger to reverse those slides, replied: “Hopefully it’s visible and measurable immediately. Chances are it won’t be. It’s going to take some time.”

Kalkhoven, meanwhile, declined to say whether the long split had been worth it.

“It’s not really a time at this moment to be looking back. We’re really looking forward.”

He also said there was no single factor that made the reunion possible.

Rather, it was both sides realizing that the divided sport “just wasn’t going anywhere,” he said.

“If we were to have an opportunity to develop it for the future, we should take the opportunity.”

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james.pelt@latimes.com