[Racer Duck]

TONY GEORGE: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for being here. This is a very exciting day. To be here with Kevin, representing his partners in Champ Car, to publicly address all of you and confirm that, in fact, we are going to unify the sport of open-wheel racing in North America for the 2008 season.

This is all about looking forward. At the risk of taking a glance back, it was just last fall on the anniversary of my grandfather's death that I was thinking to myself that it really had been 30 years since the sport of open-wheel racing had been truly unified. There were periods of years over the last 30 years where we worked more closely together and better together. But by and large, there were periods of years where we weren't so good at that.

Last month when the calendar turned over to 2008, I was wondering to myself, 'Is it possible this could ever happen?' Lo and behold, I got a call that just made me feel really warm. I felt like this was perhaps going to be the best year of my 48 to have a chance to do something that's very important to me and very close to me, and that is to help bring about the unification of open-wheel racing.

read the complete transcript of the Tony George, Kevin Kalkhoven Unification Press Conference here.