FA: Delivery day approaching.

There will be plenty of overtime on the Swift Engineering hours sheet in the build-up to next Wednesday's delivery date for the latest generation Champ Car Atlantic Series chassis.

No less than 40 of the new Swift 016.a chassis have been ordered after the series announced a major revamp during the summer of 2005, leaving the constructors with a massive task.

While most teams will simply have their new cars shipped to their racing shops, several Atlantic squads will travel to the Swift Engineering plant in California to claim their new rides in person.

And while most of the energy is dedicated to the shipment and delivery of the 40 new-generation race cars next Wednesday, Swift officials are planning an event to celebrate the hard work and dedication that it's taken to create the new breed of Atlantics over the last eight months.

Located in San Clemente, California, Swift will host a special gathering at its facility on Wednesday afternoon to honour the birth of the new car Local dignitaries will join Swift and Champ Car Atlantic series representatives at the event as Swift completes the enormous task of designing, manufacturing and delivering 40 cars, following through on its promise from last July when the formula for the new Atlantic was first announced.

"This is an important moment for Swift Engineering," said Chuck Sprague, President of Swift, "because to our knowledge, delivering 40 race chassis at one time has not been done before. Therefore, we feel our delivery day of March 8th is worth recognising, and that's why in addition to those Atlantic teams who will be picking up their Swift chassis that day, we've also invited the Mayor of San Clemente and other local officials and special guests for this special event."

Several key speakers will address the gathering and a number of specially-designed race cars created by Swift Engineering, the designer of 174 race-winning Atlantic cars since 1987, will also be on display.

"So many people have worked tirelessly on this project over the last several months and we're all very excited to be able to join Swift in celebrating the delivery of the new Atlantic cars," said Vicki O'Connor, Managing Director of the Champ Car Atlantic Championship, who will be on hand for the March 8th event at Swift.

After taking delivery of their new machines, Atlantic teams will have about two weeks to assemble and prepare their cars before the first official series test session of the new season, March 21st-22nd at the California Speedway road course.