The Champ Car World Series will return to Europe later this year for the first time in four years, starting on the 2nd of September at a track in Holland followed by a second event in Belgium one week later. The events are being promoted by Dutchman Bart Rietbergen, and were confirmed by Champ Car President Steve Johnson on Tuesday. "It took a while to finalize," said Johnson, "but it was important to us all to persist. We have about five times the number of European drivers as we do US drivers in our series, and so we have a great number of fans in Europe.”

The races will be held at Assen and Zolder with both sites requiring some level of modifications to allow the ultra-low and fast Champ cars to compete safely. There had been worries that the Zolder site required too much work, but modification work is already in place to bring it up to scratch by September.

There are several other locations in the US that will also be hosting Champ Car races for the first time. These include street events in Las Vegas streets, Zhuhai, St Jovite and Phoenix, bringing the Champ Car calendar to a total of 17 races. Due to the influx of European drivers in the series, there's a push to host even more races in the normally Formula-One centric continent. It’s rumored that another two countries, Greece and France, may join the Champ Car bandwagon in 2008.