COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) The president of Championship Auto Racing Teams said Thursday night that the fan base for the series remains strong.

Chris Pook told about 1,000 fans attending a question-and-answer session billed as a CART Town Meeting that attendance for the series surpassed the 1 million mark in Toronto during last month's race, the eighth of the series.

He said the rival Indy Racing League has drawn about 700,000 people for the same number of races. The Indianapolis 500, auto racing's largest event for single-day attendance, accounts for more than half that total.

CART has raced twice more since the Toronto event, and the series says it has drawn 1.33 million people this season for 10 races. The IRL does not release attendance figures.

"We drew a quarter of a million people at Monterrey (Mexico) and Long Beach and had record crowds at Motegi in Japan," Pook said. "But we've had to battle a perception" that fan interest is declining, "and it's very hard to deal with perceptions."

Attendance was down at ovals in Milwaukee and Chicago and the Laguna Seca road course. Pook said that was a cause for concern.

"When you're running ovals and drawing small crowds, it's a downer," he said. "We have to work our way through this issue to see how we can make it work. But we have to do some other things before we get back to these issues."

The number of cars competing in recent CART events has been 18, compared with 22 for last year, because some teams have experienced financial problems. Pook said he anticipated next year's races would be larger, based on responses he has received for the 2003 season.

"We've gotten 25 letters of intent from teams for next year, with more possible," he said.

Pook said one of those teams is based in Europe, and three teams want to move up from CART's Formula Atlantic series.

CART announced earlier that it lost $3.2 million in the second quarter of this year and that an immediate financial turnaround was unlikely. Pook said a restructuring plan was being put together and would be presented to the organization's board of directors Aug. 27.

"We're going to be undergoing very, very strict discipline. Part of the reason CART got into some trouble was that it allowed two manufacturers to throw their checkbooks around," he said, referring to Toyota and Honda, who will withdraw their engines from CART next season.

The series will keep its current turbocharged engine formula for at least two more years, with Cosworth as the supplier, and has adopted a $1.5 million financial aid package beginning next season for all teams.

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