European races 'possible' for 07 schedule.

Champ Car World Series president Steve Johnson has admitted he is hopeful that European races will be added to the 2007 schedule 'in the next few weeks'.

Champ Car unveiled a 15 race schedule yesterday [Thursday] which included four new events in Las Vegas, Phoenix, Mont Tremblant and Zhuhai - marking the first time that a major American series will have competed on Chinese soil.

However the calendar also features a lengthy gap between the events in Denver on 19 August and Surfers Paradise on 21 October and Johnson said negotiations were ongoing about bringing Champ Cars back to Europe during September.

"We're in negotiations right now," he said. "I think that's not a surprise. We're not ready to announce anything but we're getting very close, and we would like to bring Champ Car back to Europe and September would be a good month to do that since it's open for us and we have got a couple of dates highlighted there. So I'd just say stay tuned, I would expect closure on that as soon as hopefully a week to two weeks. I might be a little aggressive on that but that's our plan right now.

"I think the possibility is getting better by the day, and we're encouraged but until we have contracts signed and we have inspected the race tracks, we're not going to announce anything because I -- we have got, unfortunately, in the past we have been pulling races off of the schedule and I don't want us to do that. I want to be able to announce things and keep them on our schedule."