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 IRL is no more. As Randy Bernard promised last summer the Indy Racing League moniker has been euthanized and replaced with the name IndyCar. After becoming CEO of the IRL last March, Bernard soon discovered that the IRL brand carried many more negative than positive connotations for the sport’s fan base. He decided it had to go, and this week made the formal announcement.

Bernard also confirmed that IndyCar’s new 2012 engine formula has been reduced from 2.4 to 2.2 litres for a turbo V6. “We felt it necessary to reduce displacement to a maximum of 2.2 litres to be in line with our smaller, lighter and more efficient direction,” said Brian Barnhart (below), IndyCar’s president of competition and operations.

In addition IndyCar revealed that it is opening a new entertainment and media office in Santa Monica, California, in partnership with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Sarah Nettinga will manage the new west coast office. Nettinga joins IndyCar from NASCAR, where she helped produce three NASCAR-based Hollywood movies and six NASCAR-related TV series. Prior to her time in stock cars she worked for various front-rank TV production companies. Nettinga becomes IndyCar’s senior vice-president of media and entertainment.

A separate announcement came from Edmonton in Alberta, western Canada, confirming that the IndyCar race at Edmonton’s City Centre Airport has been successfully revived and will be run this year on July 24.

The Edmonton race is promoted by Octane Motorsport Events, a subsidiary of Octane Racing Group, promoters of the Canadian Grand Prix and the NASCAR Nationwide Race at le Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montréal. The city of Edmonton has signed a three-year agreement with Octane to organise and promote the IndyCar race.

Paul Tracy has previously said that the revival of the Edmonton race was essential to making his sponsorship package for this year come together. Tracy, 40, has been racing Indycars for 20 years and the Toronto native is the series’ biggest draw in Canada, so we hope to hear more good news from him over the coming weeks. Under Randy Bernard’s direction, IndyCar seems to be on a genuine upswing.

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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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The opening rounds of qualifying for this year’s 93rd Indianapolis 500 take place this weekend, with the first 11 starting positions determined on Saturday and the next 11 on Sunday. Practice for the 500 started on Tuesday for rookies and experienced drivers who haven’t competed in any IRL races so far this year. The rest of the field was scheduled to start practicing yesterday (Wednesday) but steady rain for most of the day resulted in a washout.

Fastest in practice so far therefore is Paul Tracy, who has raced at Indianapolis only once in the past 14 years. A CART/Champ Car stalwart, Tracy ran the Indy 500 in 2002 and appeared to have won the race when he passed Hélio Castroneves with two laps to go as the yellow light came on. But Castroneves was awarded the victory.

Since Champ Car’s failure at the start of last year the 40-year-old Tracy has been without a regular ride, but he’s been entered at Indianapolis by KV (Kalkhoven-Vasser) Racing on a one-off basis in a car sponsored by Geico Insurance. On Tuesday Tracy showed he’s gathered little if any rust as he jumped into the KV/Geico Dallara-Honda and quickly got up to speed.

By the end of the day Tracy was clearly the quickest driver, turning a fast lap in 40.3462sec (223.089mph). Fastest of the rookie drivers was Dutchman Robert Doornbos (above), who lapped his Newman/Haas/Lanigan entry at 221.735mph.

“The car felt good and I felt great,” said Tracy. “It was no problem. All I was hearing all week from the press here in Indianapolis was how long do you think it’ll take you to get up to speed? Well, I was up to speed in five laps and then we got with the programme.

“We had a high-mileage motor in the car, race-level downforce and we had heavy, race day gearbox oil,” added Tracy. “We didn’t have the good wheel bearings or any of the little go-fast stuff in the car. It was a race set-up and we’ve got a lot of speed left. If it rains [today] like they’re predicting and nobody gets to run, then we’ve got a leg up on everybody.

“The team has done a lot of work and all the good stuff is going on the car for Friday. We’ll see. I don’t know if we can make the front row, but I think we can qualify in the top 11 on the first day.”

Tracy is the cat among the pigeons at Indianapolis this year. He has raced Indycars since 1992 and is the most successful active North American open-wheel racer with 30 wins to his credit. But with Champ Car’s failure and Jerry Forsythe’s withdrawal from racing, Tracy found himself without a ride in 2008. He ran the final Champ Car race at Long Beach last year in one of Forsythe’s cars and also raced at Edmonton in July, where he finished fourth in his only IRL start of the year. Dario Franchitti would love to see his former team-mate and old friend in action in all of this year’s races.

“PT is 40 now but in his mind he’s 21,” said Franchitti. “He’s got a hell of a lot of enthusiasm and confidence, and he’s worth the price of admission.

“Paul was very, very loyal and really stuck by everybody in Champ Car,” added Dario. “Sadly, that’s been to his detriment because he was [left] sitting there with nothing. Paul deserves to have a competitive ride and it’s great that he’s at Indy this year. I hope it works out so he can race in the IndyCar series on a regular basis.”

It will be interesting to see where Tracy qualifies this weekend and even more intriguing to see if he can steal some thunder from the IRL regulars in the 500 on May 24.

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The past year has been very frustrating for Paul Tracy. After Jerry Forsythe decided last winter to pull his team out of the reunified IndyCar series Tracy raced only a handful of times in a variety of cars from a Champ Car at Long Beach to a NASCAR truck in Texas. With Tony George’s help Paul’s only IRL race of the year came at Edmonton in July. The car was prepared by Derrick Walker and despite zero testing Tracy showed his stuff by coming through from near the back of the grid to finish a rousing fourth. Yet Tracy has encountered little or no interest in anyone hiring him in the IRL, Grand-Am or ALMS series.

“There’s nothing out there,” Paul remarked. “There are options if you want to drive for nothing. But I race for a living ¬– to get paid. I’ve spoken with Mark Raffauf at the Grand-Am and I’ve also talked with Jim France who suggested a few teams for me to talk to. But none of them have a budget for a driver. In fact, they want you to pay your way to get to the races as well. There aren’t any options if you want to get paid to drive.”

Tracy’s spirits were revived recently by talks with Jimmy Vasser and Kevin Kalkhoven about joining KV Racing for a full season of Indy Car racing if sufficient sponsorship can be found. “We’re trying to work together to drum up money for me,” Tracy commented. “Kevin seems to like the fact that he can walk into a board room and my name means something while there’s no recognition of most other drivers he mentions.”

Tracy had some personal sponsorship last year from Monster, an energy drink company, and hopes to convince them to become at least a partial sponsor of his car for the new season. “We’re talking to Monster and a couple of other companies, too,” Tracy said. “We’ve got a proposal on Monster’s desk and a meeting scheduled in a couple of weeks. So we’ll see what happens. If we can get something together, I’ll go racing. If not, I’ll stay home.

“I’m just working-out, getting ready like I’m going racing. I go to the gym every day and I’m working the phone, but right now, it’s like wading through molasses. There’s some interest from Canada and we’re working on that. We’re looking under all the rocks we can find.”

Tracy tested one of the SpeedCar series stock cars last fall and hoped to compete in the winter series but the Arabian-backed series has run into financial problems as well. “It didn’t happen,” Paul chuckled. “The price of oil plummeted and suddenly there was no money. When I went and tested they were saying they were going to have twenty-five cars but they only had thirteen cars on the grid for the first race in December. With the oil price so low, they’re in a cash crunch as well.”

So Tracy is hoping to return to Indy car racing with KV Racing. He celebrated his fortieth birthday in December but remains a ferocious competitor. Anyone who watched his opening laps at Milwaukee in the last two or three Champ Car races at the old one-mile oval knows that PT is still as aggressive as they come. He’s an exciting driver, an outspoken personality, and one of very few of today’s Indy car drivers who enjoys any kind of name recognition across the United States or Canada.

The IRL badly needs Tracy in its field, not only for the sake of the series as a whole but for its two Canadian races in particular in Toronto and Edmonton. There’s no other Canadian talent on the horizon and the fact is Tracy’s presence or absence could make or break both of those races. On the face of it you would think it’s a no-brainer for KV Racing and the IRL to put together a package to ensure Tracy a competitive ride this year. Let’s see what happens.

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Against his will, Paul Tracy is sitting on the sidelines this year, a victim of the fall-out from the reunification of Champ Car and IRL. When reunification finally came late last winter, Champ Car co-owner Jerry Forsythe’s antipathy towards Tony George was such that he decided he would not run his team in the IRL series. As a result, Tracy’s five-year contract to drive for Forsythe meant nothing and the 38-year old Canadian found himself without a ride and with no options in the IRL.

Through the spring Paul has been looking for a proper IndyCar seat, but none are available. Indianapolis Motor Speedway and IRL chief Tony George talked to Tracy about running four IRL road races in a third Vision Racing entry. George owns the Vision team but in the end he offered Tracy only a one-race deal for Edmonton with no testing. It’s unlikely Paul will take George up on his offer. Meanwhile, Tracy has had plenty of conversations with NASCAR team owners and will make his debut in NASCAR’s Craftsman Truck series at his home track in Las Vegas on September 20th driving a Toyota truck for 2007 championship-winning team owner Tom Germain.

“I really want to stay in Indy car racing,” Tracy remarked. “But there isn’t anything out there. Nobody has any money to spend and nobody has a serious program to offer. It’s very disappointing. I’m talking to people in NASCAR and sports car racing. There’s lots of interest out there but in IndyCar everyone is desperate for sponsorship. Nobody’s willing to pay any serious money. They just ask how much sponsorship I have and, like I say, nobody’s offered any kind of serious program.”

If there’s a good part to all this it’s that for the first time in his career Tracy has the time to fly to England to enjoy this weekend at Goodwood as one of Lord March’s guests. It’s his first trip to Goodwood and Tracy will drive a couple of Penske Indy cars and a replica of Graham Hill’s 1966 Indy 500-winning Lola T90. “I’m really looking forward to it,” Paul said. “I’ve heard so much about it over the years and everyone involved in organising the trip has been so nice. So far, it’s been very refreshing.”

Tracy is a natural showman, in and out of the car. He only knows how to drive flat-out and with his competitive juices still flowing at full force amid a dull year he will be delighted to be back at the wheel of a racing car. I expect Paul will be one of the stars of the show.

If you’re at Goodwood, be sure to get his autograph. And ask him almost anything you like. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, Paul speaks his mind freely, without an ounce of political correctness and with a grin and jab or two of humour, too. He should be in his element at Goodwood.

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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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It was sad to talk last week with each of Derrick Walker (above), Paul Tracy (below) and Carl Haas. All three had tales of woe to tell about how the fallout from Champ Car’s demise has affected them. Walker’s team finds itself without the sponsorship to be able to race in this year’s unified IRL series, Tracy is out of a ride and has no idea what or even if he will race this year, and Haas admits to losing a pile of money on his investment in Panoz DP01 parts and equipment.

As everyone knows, Walker has lost his sponsor and driver Will Power to the renamed KV Racing Technology team and is going to court to attempt to get some restitution from Craig Gore. Walker has not laid-off any employees and will run three Atlantic cars this year but he’s looking at diversifying into the A1GP series or sports car racing or any other sensible form of motor sport that will pay the bills.

Meanwhile, Paul Tracy awaits word from Jerry Forsythe about how Tracy might buy his way out of his multi-year contract or find some other resolution to his dilemma. At the moment Tracy is a pedestrian, without a ride in the IRL. He’s assuming, but doesn’t know if he’ll race at Long Beach. “I feel like I’m standing on the platform and the train’s driving off,” Tracy remarked. “I feel like the guy who got a new suit for the big date and I’m primed and ready for the prom, and she didn’t show up.”

And then there’s Carl Haas (above), a proud man who, with his partner Paul Newman, built one of America’s most accomplished and respected race teams. Over half a century Haas has made his living entirely from racing, selling cars, parts and service to all kinds of formulas and categories. Haas admitted last week that he has lost more than two millions dollars on his investment in Champ Car’s failed Panoz spec-car project. Like Walker, Haas has remained loyal to his people and he has not laid-off any employees.

The good news is that Cristiano da Matta (above) enjoyed a very good first run in a race car last week since his near-fatal accident at Elkhart Lake in the summer of 2006. Da Matta tested one of Bob Stallings’ Gainsco Riley-Pontiac Grand-Am cars at the new 2.5-mile Eagles Canyon road circuit in Texas and after two days and around 140 laps Cristiano was bubbling with enthusiasm. Da Matta will make his return to racing at Laguna Seca in May, driving a second Stallings’ Grand-Am car beside series champions Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty. Da Matta will share his car with old friend and former team-mate Jimmy Vasser.

“It will be a good way to get back,” da Matta remarked. “I won’t be able to fight for the championship this year, but just to get back to it and next year be serious about the job of going for the championship, it’s very exciting. And to do it with Jimmy who is not only a very good driver but also a very good friend of mine – and he’s also very fired-up about it – it’s like a dream.”

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