Several years ago CART's Rules and Technical Committee outlawed the use of tire warmers to keep costs in check. We make a case of why it actually costs the teams more to not have tire warmers, than to have them, and why CART's Rules and Technical Committee should revisit this issue. F1 has allowed the use of tire warmers for many years.
Warm tires mean a driver's out-lap after a pit stop can be nearly as fast as any other race lap.
However, that is not the primary reason to allow tire warmers. That only needs to happen to a team once and they could pay for their tire warmers many times over. A Champ Car has a lot of HP, much more than a Winston Cup or IRL car. The chance of losing a car by pressing the throttle a bit too hard on cold tires is very real. We watched Oriol Servia lose control of his car at Fontana a few weeks ago on the warm-up lap trying to spin his rear tires to get heat in them.