INDIANAPOLIS (Ticker) -- The 2003 CART season will start and end in the United States, it was announced Sunday when the series schedule was released.

The 20-race slate will start February 23 with a new temporary street circuit in St. Petersburg, Florida and end November 2 at the exciting two-mile California Speedway oval.

Races tentatively scheduled for April 27 in Europe and May 18 in Chicago are to be determined with venues to be announced at a later date.

The schedule reflects the types of courses that drivers must cope with to win the Vanderbilt Cup. It features short ovals, superspeedways, permanent road courses and temporary street circuits.

Schedule makers have made things easier on teams by spacing the events evenly to avoid runs of three and four weeks in a row that were set for this year.

The traditional races can be found at The Milwaukee Mile, Cleveland's Burke Lakefront Airport, Elkhart Lake in Wisconsin and Portland, Oregon. Canada maintained the usual races In Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.

Outside of North America, the series travels to Corby, England, twice to Mexico at Fundidora Park and the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City, and Surfers Paradise in Australia.