Will Power led a Penske clean sweep at the Infineon Raceway (Sears Point) road course on Sunday. The IndyCar Series title hopeful qualified on pole and led all the way, save for pitstops, to score his fifth win of the year ahead of team-mates Hélio Castroneves and Ryan Briscoe. Power’s victory allowed him to close to within 26 points of championship leader Dario Franchitti.

It was the first top three sweep for Team Penske since 1994 when Al Unser Jr, Emerson Fittipaldi and Paul Tracy scored no fewer than four 1-2-3 finishes for Roger Penske’s CART team. Meanwhile Brad Keselowski won again for Penske’s NASCAR team at the half-mile Bristol bullring on Saturday night. Roger himself was on the scoring stand in Tennessee, and after flying west to California did the same at Sears Point.

‘The Captain’ is one of America’s leading entrepreneurs as well as one of its top team owners, and he was delighted to see his NASCAR and Indycar teams perform so well. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had this kind of run on the Indycar side,” said Roger. “And then for Brad and Kurt [Busch] to run so well and Brad picking up that win it’s an awesome time and a credit to all our people, whether it’s the Indycar or NASCAR side. What a run here, I just can’t believe it. There’s a lot of competition [in IndyCar] and I think we had a good set-up this weekend, just a little bit better than Ganassi.

“But we’ve got a lot of work to do. We want to win this championship. We’ve been ahead and fell behind and now maybe we’re making a surge. But Dario and [Scott] Dixon are outstanding and when you get on the [Sprint] Cup side, man, it’s a whole other story.”

Four races remain in the IndyCar championship – two street or road races and two ovals. Franchitti has 475 points to Power’s 449, while Dario’s Ganassi team-mate Dixon is third and another 49 points behind Power. Franchitti and Dixon qualified fourth and fifth at Sears Point and finished in the same places, unable to offer a challenge to Penske’s cars.

Giorgio Pantano, the 2008 GP2 champion, stepped into the injured Justin Wilson’s Dreyer & Reinbold car and drove an excellent race to finish sixth. Pantano did so without the benefit of testing and was able to shoulder out Sébastien Bourdais in one of Dale Coyne’s cars, but was penalised for diving inside the Frenchman to steal sixth place on a late-race restart. Pantano was unaware of IndyCar’s strict restart rules, which don’t allow such aggressive manoeuvres, and the disappointed Italian then found himself moved back to the tail of the unlapped finishers.

IndyCar races again this weekend at a new street circuit in Baltimore, followed by a visit to Japan Motegi’s road course and two oval races in October at Kentucky and Las Vegas. It will be interesting to see if Power can run down Franchitti to win his first IndyCar title and stop the Scot from taking his third championship in a row.

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The IndyCar Series has confirmed that it is delaying the introduction of its much-discussed aero kits for the new Dallara Indycar until 2013. The organisation made the decision after team owners told IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard that they couldn’t afford to develop their own aero kits.

Indy 500 winner Dan Wheldon and Bryan Herta Motorsports began testing the 2012 Dallara Indycar a couple of weeks ago. Fifteen days of testing are scheduled through to the end of the September, but the new car will make its debut as a spec car with everyone running the same aerodynamic configuration.

“No one is more disappointed than I am that we’re not going to do [the aero kits],” said Bernard (below). “But we need to look at the long-term future of the sport and it’s important that we listen to the team owners on this one. We don’t want to see our car counts go from 26 and 27 down to 16 because of an aero kit. The manufacturers and team owners have told us it’s very expensive.”

IndyCar hopes that the addition of two new engine suppliers – Ilmor/Chevrolet and Judd/Lotus – to compete against Honda as well as the improved performance of the new car will attract much-needed fan and media interest in the flagging series.

“The simulations we’ve seen on road and street courses are that lap times will be three seconds quicker, up to 15mph faster,” said Bernard. “I think [the new car and engines] are all great stories that we need to get out, that this car is going to be fast and that the aero kit is going to be a great addition. But we don’t want to [introduce the aero kit] until it’s right. It will happen in 2013, I promise.”

Bernard expects that the new car will break Arie Luyendyk’s long-standing track record of 236.986mph set at Indianapolis in 1996. “We’ve made no secrets that speed is going to be important in this car,” he said. “We want to see it break the record at some point. Fans love to see track records. They want to see something that has never been done before. We’re about relevance, innovation and speed – three of our biggest brand attributes. It’s important for us to go back to that.”

Will Phillips, IndyCar’s vice-president of technology, said initial testing of the Dallara had gone well. “We proved that some of the base functions of the car – oil and water systems, clutch, interface with the gearbox, the brakes and all of that – went really well. It was a shakedown – we didn’t try to set a lap time. We only ran one set of tyres, for example. It was [about] proving the systems work.”

Phillips is convinced that the new Dallara will be considerably safer than the current car. “The incident that poor Justin [Wilson] had at Mid-Ohio [when he broke a bone in his back] we would not expect to happen with the new car. We can’t guarantee it, but the fact that [the driver] will be sitting on safety foam and have three inches of foam behind his back should prevent that sort of injury. The Xylon panels that are on either side of the car are more extensive. All those features should make the car safer.”

Thus begins IndyCar’s slow but steady attempt to recreate itself.

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Ryan Hunter-Reay scored a first-class win in Sunday’s Long Beach Grand Prix Indycar race. He chased hard after early leader Will Power and got ahead when the Australian’s gearbox jammed momentarily in first. Power recovered to finish third behind Hunter-Reay and Justin Wilson, and therefore retains his championship lead over Penske team-mate Helio Castroneves. Hunter-Reay’s win moves him up to third in the points ahead of Wilson.

Hunter-Reay becomes the first American driver to win an Indycar race in 21 months since he last won at Watkins Glen in July 2008 driving for Bobby Rahal’s team. He is also the first American to win at Long Beach since team boss Michael Andretti achieved the feat in 2002.

“Long Beach means so much to me,” said Hunter-Reay. “This is where I had my first race in Formula Atlantic and in CART. This race has so much history and I’ve lived here the past six years in Dana Point just down the street. I love it here. It’s like my home race.”

Hunter-Reay’s win was fortuitous because his sponsorship package with Andretti Autosports extends only until Texas in June. Clothing firm Izod sponsors his car and is also the IRL series sponsor. Ryan and Andretti hope this latest victory will persuade Izod to extend its support until the end of the season.

“I’m just so appreciative of what Michael’s done for me,” said Hunter-Reay. “He’s put a lot of faith in me and this programme. It started as a small programme and I feel like we’re just beginning to work with the team. The chemistry is building and it’s so much fun. I wake up early every day because I’m just so excited to get to the race track and get to work.

“What Izod is doing for this series is huge. You probably won’t see the results for another few months or maybe even a year. But what they’re doing for the series and what they’ve done for me is great. They have absolute faith in me.”

Andretti said he’s working hard to extend Hunter-Reay’s sponsorship deal. “I couldn’t be more excited for Ryan,” he said. “He’s worked his butt off and he’s fit right into our team. He works really well with our other three drivers. They’re all getting along well and pushing each other hard, and you’re seeing the results on the track.

“I’m just hoping we can get the support we need to get Ryan through the rest of this year. We can’t let his car stop running and I can assure you we’re working hard to [stop that from] happening. If Ryan keeps doing what he’s doing he’s making it a lot easier for us. We’ll have to see what comes out of this after the dust settles. All I can say is I hope that sooner or later we’ll be able to announce a full season for him.”

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This year’s Rolex 24 hours at Daytona produced a similar result to last year with a Brumos Porsche winning from one of Chip Ganassi’s two cars, but without 2009’s drama when Juan Pablo Montoya battled fiercely with David Donohue. The closing hours of this year’s race were disappointingly flat as the lead car driven by Terry Borcheller/Joao Barbosa/Mike Rockenfeller/Ryan Dalziel maintained a comfortable half-lap cushion over its only remaining challenger, Ganassi’s Riley-BMW driven by Scott Pruett/Memo Rojas/Justin Wilson/Max Papis. Wilson had to pit unexpectedly during the final hour when he felt a violent bang from beneath the car, enabling the Brumos Porsche to win by 52 seconds.

It was a classic long-distance victory in that the winning car was the only Daytona Prototype to run the race essentially trouble-free, although the drivers did have to struggle with a sticking throttle and clutch failure. Faultless driving and pitwork were key to their success.

“I didn’t expect that we would be there at the end,” said Rockenfeller. “We were struggling with the handling most of the weekend but the team did a really good job to fix the car. We were pretty much changing everything on the set-up before the race. We didn’t know what to expect, but the car as perfect.”

Added Dalziel: “All four of us went into this race with a major unknown. We were pretty lost in practice but I knew if we could be reliable we’d be there at the end, and after the first couple of hours it was obvious we were fast. We never went off track or had any mechanical problems and I think this is a huge achievement for a new team.”

The winning Riley-Porsche was built and prepared at the Brumos team’s race shop in North Carolina under Mike Colluci’s direction, but the car was entered under the Action Express Racing moniker. The tough economic times compelled Brumos to lay off a number of employees at its dealerships last year, resulting in a decision to run just one rather than two Grand-Am cars in 2010. In turn the race team took the opportunity to build a different car powered by a Cayenne-based V8 built in California by the Lozano Brothers.

Built around a Riley chassis similar to last year’s winner and powered by a conventional Porsche engine, the new combination was turned out in off-white with a German flag down the middle. Colucci and Brumos also brought in veteran NASCAR crew chief and technical man Gary Nelson to help run the car.

Finishing third, four laps down, was the NPN Racing Riley-BMW driven by Scott Tucker/Ryan Hunter-Reay/Lucas Luhr/Richard Westbrook. Fourth, another 16 laps down, was Tracy Krohn’s Lola-Ford driven by Krohn/Nic Jonson/Ricardo Zonta/Colin Braun.

Among those out of luck were Ganassi’s second Riley-BMW driven by Montoya/Dario Franchitti/Scott Dixon/Jamie McMurray (above), which led more than 140 laps before blowing an engine. The Riley-Porsche of last year’s winner, Brumos Racing, blew its flat-six motor after 20 hours while defending Grand-Am champions Alex Gurney/Jon Fogarty and Daytona team-mates Jimmie Johnson (below)/Jimmy Vasser ran into a variety of problems, finally succumbing to a broken oil pump. Also out of luck were Wayne Taylor’s SunTrust Dallara-Ford and Mike Shank’s pair of Riley-Fords. This trio swept the top three places in qualifying but ran into various troubles in the race and finished fifth, sixth and seventh.

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After the usual two weekends of qualifying the 93rd Indianapolis 500 takes place on Sunday. This year’s race looks like being another Penske versus Ganassi battle, but with everyone aboard roughly similar Dallara-Hondas there’s sure to be a long line of cars in the hunt. And, of course, almost anything can happen in a 500-mile oval race with an inevitable multiplicity of full-course yellows.

Team Penske has three cars in this year’s 500, with Hélio Castroneves and Ryan Briscoe starting first and second and Will Power on the outside of row three. Penske’s cars are very strong and the team is chasing its 15th win at Indy to compliment its 15th pole earned by Castroneves.

The Brazilian is in his 10th year with Penske and is looking for his third 500 victory. He scored back-to-back wins in 2001-02, and Hélio is highly motivated following his acquittal on federal tax charges. Team-mate Briscoe is in his second year with Penske’s Indycar team and this will be his fourth 500. The 27-year-old Australian has won on ovals and has the experience and equipment to chase victory.

Countryman Power makes his second start at Indy and his first with Penske. At this stage, having been hired to fill Castroneves’s seat while the latter was occupied with his tax case, Power will not race again in this year’s IRL after the 500. So the taciturn but talented Power will be eager to do well on Sunday.

Chip Ganassi’s team is as strong as ever with the 2007 and ’08 Indy winners, Dario Franchitti and Scott Dixon, starting from third and fifth on the grid, while 2007 Indy Lights champion Alex Lloyd starts from row four in a third Ganassi satellite car run by Sam Schmidt Motorsports.

Franchitti and Dixon were slightly off the pace in qualifying but are sure to be in the thick of it on race day. Both have the experience, speed and are race-savvy, while team manager Mike Hull and team owner Ganassi are equally as good as Roger Penske and his racing chief Tim Cindric at playing the strategic games required as the race and yellow flags unfold. So Castroneves, Briscoe, Franchitti and Dixon are equal favourites to win this year’s 500, with Power on slightly longer odds.

The IRL’s third big team is Andretti-Green Racing, winner of the 500 with Franchitti in 2007 and Dan Wheldon in ’05. But the four-car AGR team has looked second best at Indy this year, with team leader Tony Kanaan struggling for speed in his car and resorting to a back-up in qualifying. Still, Kanaan starts from the outside of row two and is a racer who’s entirely capable of stealing his first Indy win.

The odds are longer on AGR’s three other drivers – Marco Andretti, Danica Patrick and Hideki Mutoh, who will start the race respectively from eighth, 10th and 16th. Young Andretti came close to winning in 2006 but has been less impressive over the past 18 months, struggling in the midfield on most road circuits and in street races. Marco is at his best on ovals, Indianapolis in particular, and needs a solid result. Patrick is also at her best on the big speedway and will be trying hard for a good result in what many believe will be her last 500 before switching to NASCAR next year.

Newman/Haas/Lanigan’s Graham Rahal is most likely to cause the biggest upset of the day. The mature Rahal, 19, has done an excellent job in his second year at Indy to qualify fourth, splitting Franchitti and Dixon. I’ve known Graham since he was a kid, so I’m prejudiced, but I believe he’s the most talented, disciplined and most complete of today’s young American open-wheel racers. With any luck he’ll show all those strengths on Sunday.

New NHL team-mate Robert Doornbos had a rough initiation, crashing twice after looking good through the opening days of practice. He recovered well to record the fastest qualifying run on the second weekend and starts 23rd.

Who else might figure in the 93rd 500? Paul Tracy is an obvious choice. He will make his second Indy start in 14 years from 13th, in the middle of the field. Paul finished an unhappy second to Castroneves in 2002 and is trying to salvage his career with Kevin Kalkhoven and Jimmy Vasser’s KV Racing team.

Other dark horses include Brits Justin Wilson and Dan Wheldon, who will start 15th and 18th, and Brazilian Mario Moraes, who makes his second Indy start aboard a KV Racing entry from the inside of row three. Neither Wilson nor Wheldon are with first-class teams, but the unheralded Moraes looked good in practice and qualifying and may surprise on race day.

Also worth watching are fastest rookie qualifier Raphael Matos, who starts from the outside of row four, and Champ Car veteran Oriol Servia, who qualified Bobby Rahal’s car after minimal practice. He starts from row nine.

The only practice session this week is Friday’s ‘Carburetion Day’ followed by an Indy Lights race and pitstop competition. The 200-lap, 500-mile race takes the green flag on Sunday at 1pm EST.

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Hélio Castroneves and team-mate Ryan Briscoe traded the top spot back and forth during the six hours of Pole Day qualifying at Indianapolis last Saturday. On a windy afternoon nobody could challenge the Penske pair, with Castroneves eventually edging his team-mate by half a second over the four qualifying laps. Hélio averaged 224.864mph to Ryan’s 224.083mph.

Briscoe was faster than Castroneves on their first qualifying runs early in the afternoon, but both went quicker later in the day after withdrawing their original cars and speeds. This is Castroneves’s third Indy 500 pole and the 15th time that one of Roger Penske’s cars will lead the field away at the Brickyard.

“The car was too comfortable on our first run,” said Castroneves. “We worked together and made the cars a little more on the edge, a little quicker. It’s a lot of fun when you push the limit and everybody works together to do it. This is a team effort and this team is the best.”

Added Briscoe: “The cars were so good straight off the truck and that gives us a lot of confidence to really trim out the cars for qualifying. It’s been exciting and it’s such a great feeling knowing we’re going into the Indy 500 with very strong cars.”

Castroneves was acquitted on federal tax evasion charges last month and is delighted to once again be a free man able to pursue his chosen profession. “I feel at home here at Indianapolis,” he said. “I just have to thank everybody for the warm welcome I’ve received. It’s like a big family. Racing is my life – it’s what I love and I have to thank all the fans. It means a lot.”

The biggest challenge to Penske came from Chip Ganassi’s cars. Dario Franchitti completed the front row with a run at 224.010mph while last year’s winner Scott Dixon was fifth fastest, just 0.1sec slower than Franchitti over the four laps.

“It would have been nice to be on pole,” said Dario. “But we’ve won from third on the grid before, so hopefully it’s a good omen. Honestly, that was most of the speed the car had in it today. We got hit by a couple of gusts of wind which cost us, but we just didn’t have the speed to match the Penske cars. Those were definitely the craziest qualifying laps I’ve driven here. With the wind and everything, we were hanging it out today.”

Graham Rahal qualified an impressive fourth, splitting the Ganassi pair for Newman/Haas/Lanigan. Rahal had to scrub his original qualifying run because the team wanted to run a slightly different configuration for the race, and he was without a spare car after team-mate Robert Doornbos crashed two – one on Friday and the second on Saturday morning. As a result Doornbos will have to qualify next weekend.

“The car was really nice,” said Rahal. “It had maybe a bit too much understeer. But we got through our run safely, which is what we needed to do. It says a lot for the work this team has done and how much we’ve improved the car over the last year.”

IRL points leader Tony Kanaan was the fastest of Andretti-Green’s four cars. Kanaan qualified sixth and will start the 500 on the outside of row two. Team-mates Marco Andretti and Danica Patrick will start from the third and fourth rows respectively. Also among the first-day qualifiers was Will Power, who put Penske’s third car on the outside of row three.

Fastest in Sunday’s qualifying was rookie Raphael Matos, who lapped his Luczo-Dragon entry owned by Roger Penske’s son Jay at 223.429mph. Matos starts the 500 from 12th on the grid. Paul Tracy was second fastest on Sunday at 223.111mph and will start the race from 13th. Tracy made a couple of qualifying runs on Saturday but was bumped from the top 11. He made two more runs on Sunday before he was satisfied.

Justin Wilson was fourth fastest on Sunday at 222.849mph, qualifying behind Vítor Meira. After making the field on Saturday, Wilson was disqualified for being underweight. Justin re-qualified in good order on Sunday and will start from 14th place in the middle of row five. Also among Sunday’s second-day qualifiers was 2005 Indy winner Dan Wheldon, who crashed on Saturday. Wheldon came back to qualify at 222.777mph and will start from the outside of row six.

The final 11 places in the 33-car field will be determined next weekend, and the race takes place the following Sunday on May 24.

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Dario Franchitti is happy to be back running at the front of IndyCar racing after a year in the wilderness in NASCAR. The Scotsman confirmed that he’s going to be a top IRL championship contender this year by scoring a decisive win in the streets of Long Beach last Sunday. Franchitti started from the outside of the front row but made a poor getaway before working his way to second behind early leader Will Power. A keen pitstop call by Franchitti’s team during the race’s first full-course yellow enabled Dario to get out of the pits ahead of Power who drove a faultless race without a radio to finish second ahead of Tony Kanaan.

“I made a terrible start and Justin (Wilson) and (Raphael) Matos passed me,” Franchitti reported. “But I knew the car was quick and I got past both of those guys and we were running second to Will. The tyres were performing well and the car felt really good. The guys pitted me early and we got track position on Will and during that second stint we were saving fuel.”

Dario made the point that fuel-saving means you have to simply drive the wheels off the car. “People think when you’re saving fuel you’re driving slowly, but you’re not because you’re actually braking later and trying to carry more speed through the corner to make up for your lack of speed on the straight. That’s difficult, but after the last stop I was pulling away from them. I was still saving fuel but the car was great and it allowed me to drive exactly as I wanted to.”

Franchitti last raced in the streets of Long Beach in 2002 during the CART days and he was delighted to score his first win in the California street race. “It’s great to win here in Long Beach,” Dario grinned. “To win here back in the unified IndyCar series and with a great crowd who were really enthusiastic is great. I think the competition level has gone up. Everybody can see how strong it is all the way through the field.”
Franchitti drove for Team Green during his CART days before moving to the IRL with Andretti-Green Racing in 2003. He won the IRL championship and Indy 500 with AGR in 2007, before trying NACAR last season with Chip Ganassi’s team. “I needed to do something else,” Dario said. “I’d been doing this for a long time and I needed to try something else.”

The experiment turned sour however and Ganassi asked Dario if he wanted to come back to Indy Car racing with his team. “Both Chip and I went through some pretty tough times last year,” Franchitti remarked. “I went over to NASCAR with him and he couldn’t find a sponsor. It was very tough because both of us had been used to having success.

“I didn’t expect it to be as bad as it was but that year away showed me what I was missing. Chip had an awful lot to work on in NASCAR last year and I lost my drive and a lot of people lost their jobs. So it was a tough year and it’s great to be able to come back to the IndyCar series and win here with Chip.”

After two of fourteen rounds Franchitti leads the IRL championship with 84 points followed by Power on 69, St. Petersbrg winner Ryan Briscoe on 67 and Kanaan in fourth place with 65 points.

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After a year with Newman/Haas/Lanigan, Justin Wilson will drive for Dale Coyne’s longtime spear-carrying team in this year’s IRL Indy car series. Lack of sponsorship meant Wilson lost his ride with Newman/Haas/Lanigan at the end of last season. Justin has been searching for work all winter and Dale Coyne has decided to throw the 30-year old Brit a lifeline. Wilson will test one of Coyne’s Dallara-Hondas during this week’s two-day IRL ‘Spring Training’ at the Homestead-Miami Speedway and hopes to sign a contract with Coyne either today or tomorrow before the test begins.

“We’re working towards moving forward but we haven’t signed a contract yet,” Justin said on Sunday. “It’s not official, but hopefully we can finalise things before the test. But we’re going out there with the idea of moving forward together. I’m looking forward to it.

“It’s not reliant on sponsorship,” Wilson added. “Dale’s working on some things and if they happened it would allow us to do even more.”

Coyne (above) recently hired Bill Pappas (below) to be his chief engineer. Pappas has a wealth of Indy car experience with a variety of teams including Jim Hall, Derrick Walker, Chip Ganassi’s teams and Panther Racing. Pappas spent last season in NASCAR with Michael Waltrip’s team but has decided to return to Indy car racing with Coyne’s small team.

“I like what Dale is doing with the team and I’m really impressed with Bill Pappas,” Wilson commented. “Bill is what you need to get organised in this series and make the most of it. Dale is committed to it and to going out there and proving what he, Bill and I are capable of doing.”

Bruno Junqueira (below with Coyne) – also an ex-Newman/Haas driver – drove for Coyne’s little team last year and Junqueira probably will continue with the team although the Brazilian has not yet reached an agreement with Coyne.

“Bruno is obviously one of Dale’s options and I would like that,” Justin said. “I think it’s likely Bruno will be there – he’s a good guy and good driver. Dale wants two good drivers and I think myself and Bruno would work well together.”

Coyne’s operation will be the fifth team Wilson has driven for in what will be his sixth year racing in America in either Champ Car or the IRL. Coyne’s team may be a backfield outfit, but Junquiera has shown it’s possible to get some reasonable results with it. Justin deserves better but the rocky world of Indy car racing has dealt him a difficult hand. Maybe the underdog role will play to Wilson’s strengths as both a test driver and racer.

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Plenty of drivers are on the market this winter looking for work in a cash-strapped environment. One of the most notable is 30-year old Brit Justin Wilson who has proved his worth in America over the past five years. Wilson was a frontrunner in the dying years of Champ Car, regularly winning races and finishing third in the ‘05 Champ Car series and second to four-time champion Sebastien Bourdais in ‘06 and ‘07. Justin did these things despite a series of internal upheavals in the RuSport team, which was sold by team founder Carl Russo at the end of ‘06 to Paul Gentilozzi and Dan Petit.

After challenging Bourdais for the ‘06 and ‘07 Champ Car titles Wilson was hired last winter by Newman/Haas/Lanigan. The tall, gentlemanly Brit seemed to have found the right home at last and sure enough he helped lead the team through a tough first year in the IRL with a lack of parts, testing and resources. Still, the team was competitive in most road or street races with Graham Rahal scoring an excellent win at St. Petersburg near the start of the season and Wilson driving a relentless race to beat Helio Castroneves at Belle Isle in Detroit near the end of the season.

But because of Indy car racing’s poor position in the US media market in these difficult times Carl Haas has been unable to sell any sponsors on backing his team. As a result Haas had to let Wilson go at the end of last season. Many people believed Justin was a natural to fill Castroneves’s seat at Team Penske but with that job going to Will Power there’s a chance that Wilson will be without a competitive ride this year.

“Right now, there are lots of things cooking, but nothing’s too hot,” Justin remarked this week. “All of these things are in the early stages. There’s nothing very advanced. Every team’s in the same boat. There’s a number of them that would love to run me but they’re all looking for money. It’s quite frustrating.

“I’ve just got my head down working away on things. I’m trying to make sure I don’t leave any stone unturned and cover every angle. Obviously, the goal is to be back in IndyCar and I want to be in a team so I can go and win races. I feel I’m capable of winning the championship but you have to have the full package to do that. It’s so competitive that you can’t turn up with a weak car with a strong driver or a strong car with a weak driver. So I’m just working away at it and trying to stay fit and healthy.”

Justin went to the Rolex 24 hour test earlier this month to see if there were any prospects of a drive in the Grand-Am series. “I talked to a few people there but it’s the same situation,” he commented. “Everyone’s looking for money. It’s quite interesting what’s happened. The Grand-Am paddock has shrunk a little bit, but it’s the most stable of the three series I’ve been looking at. It’s the most cost-effective of the three series and I guess that’s why it’s the most stable right now. IndyCar has shrunk a little bit, but there are still things happening, but with the ALMS it’s hard to get in touch with anyone right now. The ALMS field has shrunk considerably and there’s a lot of uncertainty there.”

Wilson does not plan to go to Daytona next week as a spectator for the Rolex 24. “I’m probably not going to go to Daytona unless I have a drive, which doesn’t look likely,” he added. “There’s nothing more frustrating than being at a racetrack watching when you want to be in the car.”

Justin is an excellent driver. He’s a fluid stylist who’s very sharp technically and a natural team leader. He’s also a true racer and it will be sad for both Wilson and the sport if he’s left on the sidelines this year or compelled to drive for a second or even third-rate team. Here’s hoping some good luck shines its light on Justin. Nobody is more deserving.

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This has been a very tough year for Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing. After winning four consecutive Champ Car titles with Sébastien Bourdais, America’s second most successful open-wheel team has struggled this season, like all the former Champ Car teams, in making the eleventh-hour switch to the IRL. Minimal testing, a serious shortage of parts, more crashes than expected, and a punishing schedule of 14 races in 16 weeks over the last three-and-a-half months meant all the ‘transition’ teams have been playing an unrelenting game of catch-up. And indeed, all the crewmen on these former Champ Car teams are exhausted, hollow-cheeked and desperately in need of a week off.

Newman/Haas/Lanigan also had to cope with the murderous death early in the month of May at Indianapolis of Davey Evans, its most experienced man who had worked for Carl Haas for almost 40 years. Since then, both of the team’s cars have carried a small cockpit-side salute with the words, ‘In loving memory of Davey Evans’.

At the St Petersburg street race in April Graham Rahal drove superbly to score an excellent win for Newman/Haas/Lanigan, soundly beating Team Penske’s Hélio Castroneves in the final sprint to the finish. But the team struggled at Indianapolis and on most other oval tracks where engineering is king. Ovals still predominate on the IRL calendar and the top IRL teams – Penske, Ganassi and Andretti-Green, all former CART champions who defected to the IRL in 2003 – have spent many millions of dollars, much of it funded by Honda and Toyota, on wind tunnel testing and friction reduction work, as well as taking advantage of the IRL rulebook to build an endless range of suspension systems designed to suit individual tracks and aerodynamic characteristics. For these reasons, the IRL’s top three teams are in a class of their own on oval tracks.

But road and street circuits are a different matter and young Rahal and Newman/Haas/Lanigan team leader Justin Wilson have been able to show race-winning speed in the few races run on these kind of tracks this summer. At the Belle Isle park circuit in Detroit last Sunday Justin drove an excellent race, chasing and attacking leader Castroneves, who had to block mercilessly to keep Wilson from passing. To Castroneves’ disgust, he was told by race control to pull over and allow Wilson to take the lead. Thereafter the tall Brit drove away to an unchallenged win from Castroneves (below, being chased down by Wilson in Detroit), Tony Kanaan, Oriol Servia and championship leader Scott Dixon.

So Newman/Haas/Lanigan has won twice this year and with two races to go is the only ‘transition’ team to win any races. The final IRL points race of the year takes place next weekend on the 1.5-mile Chicagoland oval where the championship battle between Dixon and Castroneves will be resolved. Most IRL teams will also travel to Australia at the end of October for a non-championship race at Surfers Paradise.

“It’ll be back to reality next weekend,” Justin remarked at the airport on Monday morning. “We’ll be lucky to qualify better than 15th. But I’m looking forward to Surfers. That’s another one where we should be able to run up front.

“But the most important thing is I feel really good about adding my name to the list of great drivers who’ve won races for this team. That makes me very proud.”

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The opening weekend of qualifying for this year’s 92nd Indianapolis 500 takes place this weekend. Favourites for the pole must be Scott Dixon and Dan Wheldon who have been the men to beat on oval tracks so far this year in Chip Ganassi’s pair of Dallara-Hondas. Other pole contenders include 2001 and ‘02 race winner Helio Castroneves and new team-mate Ryan Briscoe with Team Penske, and Tony Kanaan, Marco Andretti (above) and Danica Patrick (below) at Andretti-Green Racing.

Thanks to the unification of IndyCar racing thirty-four drivers are entered at Indianapolis this year and the field is a little stronger than in recent years. On the other hand, the previous two winners Dario Franchitti and Sam Hornish are missing from the field as they have moved their careers, for better or worse, to NASCAR. The only previous winners entered this year are Wheldon, Castroneves and Buddies Rice and Lazier.

Five Brits are entered – 2005 winner Wheldon, Darren Manning, Justin Wilson, Jay Howard and Alex Lloyd. Wilson, Howard and Lloyd are rookies, although Wilson has some oval experience from his four years in Champ Car and is the number one driver of course, at Newman/Haas/Lanigan, replacing Sebastien Bourdais in the team’s McDonald’s car.

This has been a tough week for Newman/Haas/Lanigan because the team’s most experienced and respected man Davey Evans was brutally murdered in an Indianapolis bar last Saturday night. Evans, 63, had worked for Carl Haas’s race team for forty years, going back to the original Can-Am and Formula 5000 series. Born in Sudbury-on-Thames, Evans started his working life in 1959 as a teen-aged engineering apprentice with HWM Motors. He moved on to Maranello Concessionaires before finding work at Lola Cars and then becoming a key man in America in Haas’s Can-Am and Formula 5000 teams before the creation in 1983 of the Newman/Haas CART team.

For many years Davey worked at Lola during the winters building Haas’s cars. Evans was an old-school artisan who could construct almost anything. He was not only Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing’s most experienced crewman, but also probably the longest-serving man in the contemporary IndyCar garage area.

“I have a tough time accepting it and I’m sure everyone else feels the same way,” Mario Andretti commented. “It’s such a waste of a wonderful life. For some meaningless human being to take another life that meant so much is a total travesty. There are very few people that I’ve known in my life who you could say, ‘I don’t think this guy had an enemy in the world.’ All the years that I’ve known and worked with him, whether it was with Carl’s Can-Am team or through Formula 5000 to all the years with Newman/Haas, Davey was always there with a smile, always kind. What can you say? He was a friend for life.”

Two memorial services were held in Indianapolis this week for Evans as many who knew him paid their respects to one of the sport’s most-liked men, fated to lose his life in deeply tragic circumstances.

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Last week, following Graham Rahal’s (above) inspired victory in his first IRL race in the streets of St Petersburg, team owner Carl Haas (below) was in the best spirits he’s been in for months. Like all the former Champ Car teams, Newman/Haas/Lanigan has been up to its elbows in a serious thrash over the past two months re-building old Dallara-Hondas or building new cars from parts. So it was particularly sweet for Champ Car’s most successful team to win in St Pete with its talented, teen-aged driver.

“Graham did a tremendous job and Justin (Wilson) (below) was very quick,” Haas said. “Justin had a real chance to win the thing, but he caught-out by the yellows and the pit strategy. It’s too bad because he was very quick.

“It was great for the team because everyone has really worked their tails off,” Haas added. “But there’s a lot to do. We’ve got two more cars to build before Indy next month and it’s going to be tough on the ovals. The top guys have got five or six years of running on us. It’s good to know we can run strong with these cars on a street circuit, but the ovals are completely different. We don’t have any data or information to work from.”

Haas said everyone in his team is delighted to be part of the IRL’s unified Indycar series. “It’s been very, very difficult for the teams from Champ Car to make the change in such a short period of time,” Haas acknowledged. “But people are really loving the fact that it’s just one series and we’re all racing together again. I think it’s going to be a lot better for Indycar racing. There was so much confusion. Nobody knew who was what and the whole thing lost all its identity. This unification had to happen and it’s going to be a good thing for the sport.”

But Haas has his reservations about next weekend’s Long Beach GP where the former Champ Car teams will give their Panoz-Cosworths one last hurrah while the IRL regulars are racing at Motegi in Japan. “I hope Long Beach works out,” Haas remarked. “It’s a terrible way to have to do it and I’m not sure how the people – the fans – are going to feel about it.”

We were assured last week that twenty cars will be on the grid at Long Beach, including former winner Jimmy Vasser. But four-time Long Beach winner Paul Tracy apparently will not be in the field as he struggles to resolve his contract dispute with Jerry Forsythe.

“As far as I know, I’m not driving,” Tracy said. “I’ve told the team that I’m more than happy to do Long Beach, but they don’t want to acknowledge there’s a termination clause in the contract. Nobody has told me anything.”

As Carl Haas says, it will be interesting to see how the fans react to Champ Car’s swansong in the streets of Long Beach next weekend.

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The first unified Indycar race of the 21st century took place last Saturday night before a modest crowd at the Homestead-Miami Speedway. There were many good things to see, including a fierce battle at the front and watching Marco Andretti drive such a strong race on a track where he has fared poorly in the past. In the end, Scott Dixon (below) showed that he and Chip Ganassi’s team will once again be serious championship contenders by taking pole and coming through to win the race with a near-perfect performance after Tony Kanaan ran out of luck in the closing laps. It was also clear that the IRL continues to be all about its three big teams – Ganassi, Andretti-Green and Penske, who entirely dominated the evening.

The tough task facing the former Champ Car teams was made equally clear. French rookie Franck Perera (below) was the fastest of this group, qualifying 15th on his debut with Eric Bachelart’s Conquest team, while Oriol Servia was the best finisher in 12th place, five laps down. Perera finished 14th, six laps down, while Justin Wilson was 15th and seven laps back in his first race with Newman/Haas/Lanigan.

These guys are expected to be in better shape on the St Petersburg street circuit this weekend, but let’s not forget that the top IRL teams have spent years and many millions of dollars in the wind tunnel and elsewhere developing, testing, understanding and dialling in these cars. With limited resources, minimal testing and a brief switch back to their Panoz DP01s for Long Beach before the long month of May in Indianapolis followed by 12 races in 15 weeks, the ex-Champ Car teams face a long and challenging season.

So after all the anticipation and white heat surrounding the unification of Indycar racing we are faced with the realisation that nothing much has changed. Ganassi, Andretti-Green and Penske are clearly on top of a spec-car series with little emotional appeal that is filled with largely faceless drivers. There are few names, no superstars, and the only notable blip the series might enjoy is if Marco Andretti were to win a string of races and challenge for the championship. And, of course, the former Champ Car teams face an embarrassing struggle, which is not likely to improve their hopes of selling any serious sponsorship, nor encourage long-suffering Champ Car fans to turn out to support them.

And what about Paul Tracy (below)? It’s ridiculous that he’s not in the field. He’s the biggest draw by far, the only guy with a real persona and a predilection to speak his mind. He may be near the end of his career on street circuits and some road courses, but like any driver he’ll continue to cut the mustard on ovals well into his forties. Let’s not forget some of Paul’s ferocious recent performances at Milwaukee in Champ Car’s final years at the venerable track, when he showed everyone what it’s all about with some superbly aggressive outside passes.

As Tracy says, he would love to go back to Indianapolis with a properly competitive car and team to attempt to avenge his loss there in 2003. With the right car, Tracy would bring some flavour and excitement to the Indy 500 that it hasn’t enjoyed in many years. But right now he’s sidelined as his lawyers try to find a way to buy Tracy out of his contract with Jerry Forsythe, who has decided not to run his team in the unified IRL series. In the meantime, the 39-year-old Canadian is a pedestrian.

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