2008 Champ Car season

2008 Champ Car season
Champ Car World Series
Season
Races	14
Start date	April 20
End date	November 9
Awards
← 2007 2009 (ICS) →

The 2008 Champ Car World Series season would have been the 5th season of the Champ Car World Series and 30th season of the series dating back to the 1979 formation of Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART). It was scheduled to begin on April 20, 2008, and end on November 9. The season was canceled on February 21, 2008, because of the buyout of Champ Car by the rival IndyCar Series, resulting in the reunification of American open-wheel racing.^[1]

As the IndyCar Series was already scheduled for a race in Japan the same weekend, the 2008 Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, which also could not be moved, was run as originally planned, with teams that had been part of Champ Car in 2007 participating in Long Beach using the same Champ Car rules and vehicles as the previous season but still receiving IndyCar rankings points. The race was treated as a farewell to the Champ Car World Series, and won by Will Power. The following year, the event fully became part of the IndyCar schedule.

The Rexall Grand Prix of Edmonton and the Gold Coast Indy 300 in Australia were also retained and added to the IndyCar Series schedule.^[1] The schedule originally included what would have been the first Monterey Grand Prix since 2004 and the planned debut of the Champ Car Grand Prix of Spain.

Later on, Toronto (2009), Houston (2013), Road America (2016), Portland (2018), and Laguna Seca (2019) would also be revived by the unified series.