Tony George, Kevin Kalkhoven and Gerry Forsythe officially agreed Friday to bury the hatchet instead of each other.

The long-awaited unification of open-wheel racing got the signatures of the three principals and the stamp of approval from drivers, mechanics and owners on both sides of this costly 12-year war. A press conference will be held at Homestead, Fla. during next week’s IRL open test, probably on Wednesday.

Champ Car ceased operation at mid-afternoon and a press release was issued as George was flying back from Chicago where he visited Forsythe, who has owned Champ Car with Kalkhoven since 2004.

Kalkhoven had reportedly signed off early Friday morning on the agreement to put open-wheel under the Indy Racing League umbrella.

“I’m happy for open-wheel racing, its fans, sponsors and teams,” said George late Friday afternoon. “Everyone has wanted this for a long time and they deserve it. I had about 100 emails when I landed, so obviously a lot of people are excited.

“There’s no reason for anybody to gloat or to feel down because, in the end, we’ve all come together.”

Tony Kanaan, who competed in CART from 1998-2001 before moving to the IRL with Andretti Green Racing, has long been an advocate of one series.

“It’s great, I’m very excited to race against some old friends and get everything back together,” said the 2004 IRL champion. “To get some of their good teams and venues is all good.

”Now the people who claim they only watch IRL or Champ Car have no more excuses not to watch us because we’re are one. It’s not gonna fix all the problems but at least it’s back together.”

After the Champ Car teams were told earlier in the week to stop working on their Panoz cars because they would be receiving Dallara chassis to get ready for 2008, the negotiations seemed to bog down when, in fact, it was more a fact of attorneys on both sides trying to sort out the myriad of details.

”It’s been tough, but now the real work starts,” said George, who is expected to add Long Beach, Edmonton and Australia to the ’08 schedule, although Long Beach will likely have only the former Champ Car teams competing since Motegi, Japan is also being run.

It’s believed Newman/Haas/Lanigan (Graham Rahal and Justin Wilson), PKV Racing (Oriol Servia). Walker Racing (Will Power) and Conquest Racing (Franck Berera) are definites to join the IRL, with PKV and Conquest expected to field two cars.

Minardi Team USA, Forsythe, RocketSports, Dale Coyne and Pacific Coast Motorsports remain question marks.

None of the Champ Car teams will be ready for the oval-track test next Wednesday-Thursday and will have to scramble to make Sebring on March 3-6. But the IRL will give the Champ Car teams their own oval track testing next month prior to the March 29th opener.

Because Long Beach is operated by Kalkhoven and Forsythe, a skeleton crew of a half-dozen Champ Car employees will be retained through the annual street race fest. The remaining CC staff received four weeks severance pay plus an additional week for every year of service since 2004.