Fontana signals time for Lights to go out.

Racing for the final time on the type of high-banked big track that has showcased the series at its best, the Dayton Indy Lights Championship will come to an end after 16 years of competition on Sunday with a 50-lap sprint race at California Speedway.

The series finale is scheduled to start at 10:15 a.m. and will set the stage for the featured Marlboro 500 CART Champcar finale later in the afternoon.

CART, which purchased the series in 1998, announced the decision to disband Indy Lights in early September, bringing to an end a successful championship that produced a record number of CART Champcar drivers in its capacity as the sanctioning body's "Official Development Series" since 1986.

Among the notable graduates of the Indy Lights Championship are eight drivers who will be racing in Sunday's Marlboro 500, a third of the expected starting field. The list includes Paul Tracy (1990 champion), Adrian Fernandez (1992 champion), Bryan Herta (1993 champion), Tony Kanaan (1997 champion), Cristiano da Matta (1998 champion), Oriol Servia (1999 champion), Scott Dixon (2000 champion) and this year's Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves (1997 Lights runner-up).

Other notable Indy Lights graduates include CART Champcar race winners Andre Ribeiro (1994 Lights Rookie of the Year), who is now retired, and the late Greg Moore (1995 champion).

Although the Indy Lights championship is ending, the list of active series graduates racing in CART Champcar competition is still expected to grow next season. California native Townsend Bell wrapped up the 2001 title one race ago and has already made two CART Champcar race starts in September's pair of oval track events in Europe.

Driving a Visteon Toyota Reynard for Patrick Racing, Bell finished both the German and English events, and scored his first CART championship point with a twelfth place finish in his second start in Great Britain. He is highly likely to join the Patrick team full-time for next season's FedEx Championship Series.

As the 16th and final Lights titleist, Bell was the dominating driver this season. He has won five of the year's eleven races and, like 2000 champ Dixon, can end up claiming victories in half of the year's races if he wins at Fontana. Last year, Bell battled with Dixon right down to the chequered flag in the California finale, finishing second in both the race and the overall championship.

Bell's victories this season were earned at Long Beach, the Milwaukee Mile, Toronto, Mid-Ohio and one race ago at Laguna Seca Raceway, where he was the first driver since da Matta in 1998 to wrap up an Indy Lights title before the end of the season. All but Bell's Long Beach win, where he charged from sixth on the grid for his first victory of the season, have been dominating, flag-to-flag performances in which he has led every lap from the pole.

He also has second-place finishes in the season-opening race at Mexico and in round ten at Road Atlanta last month. In addition to race wins, Bell also leads the series in poles (with seven), laps led (341), laps completed (553 of 565) and fastest race laps (five). His current point total of 171 points is a full 36 points ahead of his nearest competition.

Bell has also been the dominant driver in the new Simple Green Clean-Up Award programme, a $2500 'rollover' bonus paid to any driver that wins a race from the pole, leads the most laps and sets the fastest race lap. Bell has turned the trick three times this season - at the Milwaukee, Toronto and Mid-Ohio races - and has earned a total of $20,000 in Simple Green bonuses.

For this weekend's season-ending race, the current Simple Green bonus pool of $10,000 - as the award has not been claimed in the last three races - will go to the overall race winner in addition to the standard $25,000 first place prize. With $35,000 guaranteed to the race winner, Bell's record series winner's purse of $37,500 earned at Milwaukee could be beaten if the winning driver collects some of the other potential bonuses available such as the WorldCom Fast Pace Award ($1000) or the Racing For Kids Driver Performance Award (also $1000).

First year drivers Damien Faulkner (Dorricott Racing) and Dan Wheldon (PacWest Lights) were Bell's strongest challengers for the championship, and will continue to battle for Rookie of the Year and overall series runner-up honours at Fontana. Each driver has a pair of wins, with Faulkner scoring at Texas and Portland and Wheldon earning back-to-back victories at Gateway and Road Atlanta. Faulkner has the slight edge in the points race with 135, two points ahead of Wheldon, but any tie-breakers will favour the PacWest Lights driver as long as Faulkner doesn't finish second on Sunday.

Faulkner and Wheldon are also the main contenders for the $10,000 Bosch Platinum+4 Speedway Challenge that is paid to the driver earning the most points in the year's oval track events. Faulkner has 54 points, Wheldon 51, while Mario Dominguez, the Englishman's team-mate is third with 44.

Dominguez is fourth in the overall championship with 110 points, but has no chance to crack the top three in the final standings. His focus will be on winning his first race of a season that has seen him earn a trio of second-place finishes at Milwaukee, Toronto and Gateway. He also won the pole at Long Beach and Kansas.

Derek Higgins, an Irish countryman of Faulkner's, won the season-opening race at Mexico and is the only driver to lead the championship other than Bell. He earned four podium finishes early in the season but distant showings in three mid-season races dropped him from title contention. He is fifth in the championship with 101 points, and will be looking to book-end his season with a second victory.

The United States currently leads the Dayton Indy Lights Nation's Cup standings by just four points over Ireland, 171 - 167. Bell has earned all of the points for the US this season, but will be joined by fellow Americans Cory Witherill and Dorricott Racing's third driver Jon Fogarty, although Fogarty will compete only if he is granted medical clearance following a cervical vertebra injury earlier this season.