"As of today, our position hasn't changed regarding 2003," said Les Unger, national motorsports manager for Toyota Motorsports. "We're still planning on a single spec 3.5-liter engine. CART's new rule is something we'll look at, but it all depends on what happens during the next 30-60 days to see what it really means."

Since 1997, the IRL's second year of operation, there have been two different engine formulas in open wheel racing among five manufacturers.

After running turbocharged Fords in '96, Tony George's all-oval series adopted a normally-aspirated motor with General Motors and Nissan as manufacturers.

CART has campaigned the turbocharged engine since its inception in 1979 and currently has participation from Honda, Ford and Toyota.

But George controls the Indianapolis 500, the biggest race in the world and the reason Toyota joined Indy-car racing. Because of the split, Toyota has never competed at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and it announced last spring it would compete in the IRL and Indy beginning in 2003.

CART owners Chip Ganassi (with Juan Montoya) and Roger Penske (with Helio Castroneves) have captured the last two Indy 500s using IRL equipment. Several more CART teams are planning to go to next May because their sponsors want to be involved with the best-attended and most-watched open-wheel show on this planet.

"The Indy 500 is something our teams want to compete in," said John Lopes, CART's vice president of racing operations who spent the past three seasons as general manager of the IRL's TeamXtreme. "They want to run the FedEx Championship and Indianapolis and they'd like to do it with less cost."

If CART's new engine format for 2003 is in line with the IRL's, all CART teams could participate at Indianapolis like they did prior to the split and not have to spend an extra $2-3 million buying or leasing IRL equipment.

"There were some aspects of what Tony proposed that were very sensible and the normally-aspirated engine formula was one of them," said Rahal, who spent the summer of 1999 trying to negotiate some kind of unification with George, along with fellow CART owners Barry Green and Derrick Walker.

"This provides a basis for the best teams (in the IRL) to compete against our best teams and that's good for open wheel fans. They're the winners in this."

Of course the losers could be CART. Besides powering the past five CART champions, Honda also spends millions of dollars in the promotion and marketing of CART on television, newspapers, magazines and the sponsoring of races.

Honda provides engines for nine drivers, as does Ford and Toyota.

When CART missed its deadline (last March) for 2003 engine rules, both Honda and Ford said they couldn't produce a new engine before 2004 -- if, in fact, they were even interested.

"The team owners were under pressure from Toyota and Ford, who were sending out negative vibes about their participation beyond 2002," said Honda's Clarke. "Maybe the car owners couldn't see anybody else being around in 2003 (except Toyota).

"We'll access the situation but it clearly doesn't meet our needs from a timing standpoint, particularly in 2003 when we'll be out. We couldn't produce an engine in that time frame."

While there were no parameters given on the new engine (Walker and Lopes will try to deliver proposed specs within 30-60 days), there was also no guarantee that Toyota would be willing to continue in CART.

"Remember Toyota's press release said it had to make business and marketing sense to stay in CART and Toyota has no interest in being the only engine in CART," said one CART owner who requested anonymity. "And if the CART specs aren't exactly like the IRL's it ain't happening because Toyota said it was only building one engine. Period."

Heitzler admitted he had nothing in writing from any of the trio.

"I'm concerned who is going to support the product and in what fashion it's going to be," he said. "But I think the best thing is that CART has got to create it's own environment where it knows what it's doing and where it's going."

Added Lopes: "We made a decision and if these manufacturers are interested they've got the depth and personnel to turn this thing around in time. We believe there's a place for multi-manufacturers."