Rio CART race switched from oval to road-course.

CART officials confirmed on Monday that next year's Rio 200 will not be the 2001 season curtain-raiser on February 11th as originally planned nor will it take place on the current 1.8-mile quad oval that has been home to the race for the past four years.

Instead the race will now be the second round of the mammoth 22-race season on March 25th and of more significance, the race will be moved to the adjacent Nelson Piquet International Raceway road course.

This will be the first time that the Champ Cars will have run on the 3.12-mile, twelve turn circuit that played host to ten Brazilian Formula One Grand Prix between 1979 and 1989. The circuit lies in the same complex as the oval and the two courses utilise the same main stretch although what was once the start line is now the central point of the back straight.

After falling into disuse in the early 1990's, Brazilian Motorsport heroes Emerson Fittipaldi and Nelson Piquet put their names to the re-development program that included the building of the oval course and the resurfacing and modifying of the road course. The oval track was named after 1989 CART Champion Fittipaldi and although relations between the two drivers and the circuit developers has been less than harmonious, the races have continued to prove very popular with the fans and drivers.

There are currently nine Brazilian drivers on the Champ Car grid and with Formula 3000 exponents Max Wilson and Bruno Junquiera tipped to join the field next year Brazil will undoubtedly remain the best supported nation on the grid. Sao Paolo native Gil De Ferran is also in line to score his first CART title and with a Brazilian carrying the number One plate next year, the race will certainly be a big hit.

The Jacarapagua circuit, as it was originally christened, was built on a reclaimed swamp and the track was either unbearably hot or infested with bugs during its Formula One days. Conditions and facilities are now much improved and despite the track surface still being very bumpy, as magnified by the World Grand Prix Bike Championship last weekend, the track will be one of the safest road courses that CART visit all year in addition to being one of the longest.

It is unclear whether or not the Rio 200 tag will be retained and the length of the race is yet to be confirmed. The race will now follow the season opening round in Mexico on March 11th, another road course event before the Fed-Ex Series moves on to the first North American round at Long Beach. Next year will mark the first time since 1995 that the CART Series will not open on an oval and the Rio switch cuts the number of oval races on the calendar to nine.

The move from oval to road course is surprising, as the drivers and teams by and large, liked the track. There was a small worry over safety at the sharp fourth turn after Mark Blundell's horrific shunt in 1996 but those worries have been eased with the use of deformable barriers at certain areas of the track that absorb impact in the event of a crash. Drivers have universally praised the barriers and Rio was unique in being one of the only tracks to use them.

Of the current Champ Car grid, Roberto Moreno and Mauricio Gugelmin both have experience of the Formula One track and Gugelmin was fourth at the track for March in the last F1 race in 1989. The circuit has been slightly modified since, mainly to incorporate the oval, but the course is largely unchanged and both drivers will be hoping to roll back the years and use their experience to gain a crucial advantage.

One sticking point of the date is that late March in Brazil is a very hot time of year and during the F1 days, local fire crews were called on to hose the crowd down as temperatures soared to the mid-forties.