Attendance sniping continues.

In their respective bids to gain the upper hand in the American Open Wheel battle both CART and the IRL have been at it again this week with CART CEO Chris Pook hyping the fact that less than 40,000 turned out to the historic Milwaukee Mile in response to the pitiful early-season IRL attendance figures.

In a thinly veiled attack on what were, in all honesty, very poor attendance figures in the first four rounds of the Indy Racing League season, CART CEO Chris Pook claimed last weekend that the Miller Lite 250 would be the highest attended US Open Wheel race outside Indianapolis this year. However that statistic is set to change at this weekend's Boomtown 500 at the Texas Motor Speedway where a crowd of around 70,000 is expected for the sixth round of the 2002 IRL season.

Pook claimed that last weekend's crowd of approximately 35,000 fans that attended a CART event at The Milwaukee Mile was the largest crowd - outside of the Indianapolis 500 - to see an open-wheel oval race in the United States.

Texas Motor Speedway officials corrected the claim, citing an estimated 75,000+ fans that will attend Saturday night's Boomtown 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. With race week ticket sales still ongoing, the Texas Motor Speedway's Boomtown 500 will boast the largest crowd to watch an open-wheel oval race outside of the Indianapolis 500.

"...We're expecting a great crowd here at Milwaukee this weekend of something above 30,000," said Pook in an interview with Speed Channel's Derek Daly, which appeared on the network's web site. "Outside the Indianapolis 500, this will be the biggest attended oval event in the United States this year, and we're pretty excited about that."

Looking between the lines and leaving the Indy 500 aside, the IRL started its year with races in four former CART markets; Miami, Phoenix, Fontana and Nazareth, and failed to match the most recent CART attendance figures for each one. At Fontana the crowd was estimated at an almost-embarrassing 15,000 for the inaugural Yamaha 400.

However TMS is a very strong IRL market (not so with CART!!!) and combined with expected near sell-outs at Kentucky, Kansas, Chicagoland and even Nashville, Pook's claim seems a little ambitious to say the least.

However with more than half the 2002 IRL calendar also expected to draw crowds nowhere near capacity and CART currently stumbling from one US oval disappointment to another, neither series has a particularly massive US oval fan base to brag about.

Texas Motor Speedway hosts two Indy Racing League events, both traditionally drawing more than 70,000 fans. As a result, Texas Motor Speedway has become known as "The Second Home to the Indy Racing League."

"We are proud of the support the fans have given the IRL here at Texas," said speedway general manager Eddie Gossage. "Chris Pook is universally respected and has long been someone that I have looked up to. I assume he was either mis-quoted or misspoke. I also know he's a great promoter and perhaps was simply hyping his event.

"We consistently draw around 70,000-75,000 fans in one night and are ahead of last year's ticket numbers. IRL races in Chicago and Kansas also played in front of approximately 70,000 fans on race day last year. In all those cases, it is almost double the reported three-day attendance of 36,820 for the CART race this past weekend in Milwaukee."