Brooks Associates Racing, which didn’t compete in racing in 2009 after winning the 2008 Atlantic Championship with driver Markus Niemela, announced Tuesday plans to compete in the Indy Lights series in 2010.
According to a press release on the team’s Web site:
BAR is thrilled to announce its plans for the 2010 racing season. Testing will begin shortly of potential drivers for the team’s entry into Indy Lights. Interested drivers should contact the team to schedule their tests.
Throughout the process of developing new IndyCar chassis and engine rules for the 2012 season, IndyCar Chief Operating Officer Brian Barnhart has been a staunch advocate of the series continuing to run a single (Dallara) chassis.
This is despite the fact that the only reason IndyCar is currently a single-chassis series is because Panoz lost all of its customers due to its inferiority to the Dallara.
Now, Barnhart may finally be coming around to the idea that multiple chassis manufacturers may not be a bad thing. In an interview with Racin’ Today (a Web site I was previously unfamiliar with), Barnhardt said the series is looking at both options:
RacinToday: Will the series stick with current chassis-builder Dallara as the exclusive supplier or try to add some competition?
Barnhart: “We’re looking a little bit of both. We’re not opposed to opening things up, as one business model would show it. And we’re also not opposed to staying with an exclusive supplier on the chassis side. We’re just going to try to measure both those out right now before making a decision on which way to go, on which would be the best financial way to go.’’
Barnhart added that he expects a field of 22-26 cars in 2010. “But it’s really looking like there’s some potential for some new teams and some existing teams to add cars.”
Updated to reflect the change in plans for Newman-Wachs Racing.
Click here to download an Excel workbook of IndyCar team and driver combinations for the 2010 season. I will update the file as announcements are made from now until the beginning of the 2010 season.
If you move your mouse over the link, WordPress gives you a 404 error, but if you click the link the file is there.
In a appearance on the Speed Freaks radio show Sunday, John Edwards said a sponsor for 2010 pulled out and his Atlantic Championship team, Newman-Wachs Racing, is now unlikely to make the jump to IndyCar. “That whole deal looks like it may have fallen apart.” He said it is looking “more and more” like the team will instead jump to Indy Lights next year.
You can listen to the interview here.
Here’s the latest update from The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
The Wisconsin State Fair Park Board unanimously agreed Friday to work with local businessmen Frank and Dominic Giuffre on a three-year contract to promote races at the Milwaukee Mile.
The new group is tentatively called the Historic Milwaukee Mile Operating Group LLC.
Once again, there is no mention in the story of working out a deal with IndyCar to get a race back on the schedule. The previous promoter, the now-defunct Wisconsin Motorsports LLC, owes IndyCar more than $1 million from the 2009 race. Because of this, the Milwaukee Mile is not on the 2010 IndyCar schedule and its traditional date one week after the Indy 500 was given to Texas Motor Speedway.
IndyCar has put out a new fact sheet, which states that among the series’ principles is to, and I quote, “preserve and nurture the heritage of oval track racing.”
“Wait a minute,” you say. “IndyCar no longer races at Milwaukee, Richmond, Nashville, Michigan, Fontana and Phoenix.”
As I’ve pointed out many times on this blog, of those events, the only one IndyCar choose to leave is Nashville. Nashville is one-line concrete track that has hardly any grandstands and those it has weren’t close to being filled when IndyCar raced there.
As for the other venues:
Unfortunately, things are only looking worse for the future of IndyCar oval racing. Recent actions at Kansas and Chicagoland lead me to believe that those two ISC tracks will dump IndyCar at the conclusion of their current contracts.
While I have been critical of IndyCar’s oval package, I still would like to see ovals comprise about half of the series’ schedule, and am worried that the series’ oval races will soon be represented by the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and a couple of token SMI tracks.
IndyCar isn’t running a race at a motorcycle track in Alabama, another possibly on a Brazilian street course or exploring a race in China because the powers-that-be there hate ovals. They are doing so because the owners and promoters of oval races hate IndyCar and want it to fail. The more successful an IndyCar event at an oval track is, the more of a threat it is to the Nascar race(s) at that track, and therefore to Nascar itself.
CART used to embarrass Nascar at Michigan with sell-out crowds and dazzling races that put Nascar’s taxi-cab parades to shame. So, ISC bought the track (along with Fontana and Nazareth) from Roger Penske, stopped promoting the CART races, then used the resulting decline in attendance to justify not extending its contract with CART. (IndyCar then replaced CART at the track for a few un-promoted races so ISC could pretend it wasn’t given open-wheel racing the middle finger.)
Some of my fellow bloggers rant and rave that IndyCar is committing suicide by leaving ovals for road courses and street circuits. And maybe they’re right (although I truly believe the old diverse CART model still works.)
But what do they suggest IndyCar do? Run a five-race schedule? Go back to a Mickey Mouse track (pun intended) like Walt Disney World Speedway? Tell ISC they’ll run at their tracks for free and lose millions of dollars promoting the race themselves?
It’s time for the oval zealots to get serious and join the rest of us in reality. As long as Nascar is the behemoth it is and as long as ISC is financially-solvent, an all-oval or primarily-oval IndyCar series just isn’t feasible.
…you can watch it on IndyCar’s YouTube channel.
Updated to reflect change in plans for Newman-Wachs Racing.
Click here to download an Excel workbook of IndyCar team and driver combinations for the 2010 season. I will update the file as announcements are made from now until the beginning of the 2010 season.
Edit: If you move your mouse over the link, WordPress gives you a 404 error, but if you click the link the file is there.
Two months ago I wrote a column calling out The Indy Idea for a column on its blog calling out IndyCar play-by-play man Mike King for his defense of the 2010 IndyCar schedule. (Note: The column resulted in a record number of comments for this blog.)
I recently found The Indy Idea’s response. It’s nice to see he/she has a sense of humor and I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree for the most part.
However, after reading his rebuttal, I feel to need to further clarify some of my comments. First, blog author Roggespierre writes:
I respectfully request that Wicker Bill examine Mike King’s public statements of seven or eight years ago. Compare them with his statements today. Then, explain where I got it wrong.
Wicker Bill commits a factual error that is fully confirmed by the record. I did not suggest that King challenged Pistone because “IndyCar told him to.” I also do not believe this to be true.
He/she does not state what these past comments are or provide a link to them. He/she also does not state what factual error I made. I think if you are going accuse someone of making a factual error, you should specifically state what that error is. Given that his quote from my column that proceeded this accusation is a statement of opinion, it is difficult to see where he is going with it.
In any event, the point I (apparently unsuccessfully) was making is: Why does The Indy Idea think King would say the road and street events were more successful than the oval events if it isn’t true, as Roggespierre claims?
Perhaps the comments Roggespierre alludes to shed some light on this, but, again, I can’t pass judgment without seeing them.
The idea that IndyCar is trying to sabotage its oval races in order to run more road and street course is way too conspiratorial for my tastes (in addition to not reflecting reality). If Roggespierre wants to know some of the real reasons oval races are falling off the IndyCar schedule, he/she should try reading this column of mine.
Edit: Let me just add that IndyCar has put out a new fact sheet, which states that among the series’ principles is to, and I quote, “preserve and nurture the heritage of oval track racing.” Huh. They must be saying that because they want to distract us while they eliminate all of the ovals from the schedule, right?
Last, Roggespierre points out I made a factual error by saying Hulman & Co. owns half of Chicagoland Speedway. The International Speedway Corp. (Nascar’s track arm) bought out Hulman & Co.’s interest in Chicagoland Speedway in 2007. I regret the error, but it does not change my overarching argument in the column.
Edit: To see confirmation of this rumor in print, click here.
The Indianapolis Star’s Curt Cavin hinted on Thursday’s edition of his Trackside radio show that we may see Hideki Mutoh in a third car at Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing in 2010. Apparently, he’ll have more in tomorrow’s addition of the Star.
Cavin added that Mutoh is expected to retain his Formula Dream sponsorship from Honda and use it to buy the seat. Ryan Hunter-Reay is expected to replace Mutoh at Michael Andretti’s team.
Where this leaves Gil de Ferran’s possible new team, which had been rumored to get the Formula Dream backing, is unclear.
