Category Archives: IndyCar Series

IZOD IndyCar Series driver Graham Rahal is featured in an advertisement on the video board above ABC's Times Square Studio in New York. Look for it during the televised New Year's Eve festivities.

The video featuring the Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing driver began running Dec. 7. What it looks like

Dan Wheldon hasn't passed up many opportunities during the off-season to hone his road racing skills through karting competition. This week, he's competing on the half-mile Sprint track during Daytona KartWeek By Cometic Gasket.

Wheldon, who drives for Panther Racing and lives in St. Petersburg, Fla., loves racing karts whenever he gets the opportunity in his schedule.

"Any kart race that I can do, I will try to do and when you've got one going on at Daytona, that's certainly one that you want to compete in," Wheldon said. "It's like all of these kart races, it's very competitive.

"It's very nice to spend Christmas with my wife and my son, but she knows that if I sit at home too long that I will probably drive her mad. You don't get the time to do this as much as you would like. Anytime that you do get time, you definitely want to utilize it."

Wheldon has been behind the wheel at Daytona before turning laps in both IZOD IndyCar Series testing as well as competing in the Rolex 24 At Daytona.

He has a strong passion for karting and believes it's a great developmental series for anybody interested in racing.

"I think it is the only way that people start nowadays," Wheldon said. "Whether it's on a road course in a go-kart or whether they race on some dirt, I think karting is the stepping stone to any form of motorsport. It's very competitive in America. I think America is a great place to start a karting career.

"From what I've seen, there's huge competition but there's also a very nice atmosphere. I think that it's a great environment for children to grow up in but also where they can learn the fundamentals of racing and learn how to respect people and share great family time."

If you're hanging around the house this week and trying not to be under foot or aren't swamped at work, check out the Pit Race Off game on hotwheels.com that features the IZOD IndyCar Series.

It's chic (new college campus word I'm informed for cool) for a novice gamer such as me. Using the arrow keys to navigate the road course or oval track you selected, you must periodically pull into the pits to refuel and change tires as quickly as possible.

You're racing against the clock, with the best times posted on the leaderboard. My name won't be found in lights after several attempts. 

Enjoy the game compliments of Hot Wheels -- an official sponsor of the IZOD IndyCar Series -- and Apple Jacks cereal. CLICK HERE for a quick link to the game.

It's been quite a year for Helio Castroneves - being acquitted of federal tax evasion charges, winning his third Indianapolis 500 and on Dec. 28 welcoming his first child into the world.

Castroneves' girlfriend, Adriana Henao, gave birth to Mikaella in Atlanta. The vitals: 7 pounds, 3 ounces and 19 inches long. Mom and child are doing well; Dad was last seen lighting up the sky with his smile.

"Like we do at Team Penske, we are trying to make sure we are well prepared for the big race," Castroneves said last week in preparation for the baby. "We have been working on her room and getting everything ready -- basically just making sure we are set to go when we get the green flag."

"It has been a crazy year but this is the best ending we could hope for in 2009."

Alex Tagliani spent this week in Indianapolis working out of the recently completed FAZZT Race Team shop.

"It is absolutely amazing to see what our team has accomplished in less than one month," Tagliani said of the 25,000-square-foot facility. "You would think we have been here for years as everything is in its place and working and the guys already have our first race car almost completed. It is really huge what has been done in such a short amount of time." 

The team is preparing for their first on-track test Jan. 6-7 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

"I got the opportunity to sit down with my engineer, Allen McDonald, and talk about how we are going to approach the test and our car set-up," Tagliani said. "I think we are all planning on being competitive right from the start and that takes a lot of work by everyone to make sure we are all on the same page."

Junior Seau smelled the ethanol, got his hands dirty and lifted a few tires during his weekend with the No. 9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing crew for Scott Dixon during the Infineon Raceway race weekend in August.

What he learned and experienced will be shown on "Sports Jobs with Junior Seau" on VERSUS. The first airing of the pit crew episode is 10 p.m. (EST) Dec. 23. Check local listings for multiple other air dates and times.

Think you can handle the pressure of a pit stop? Click on the link HERE to try your hand.

Kansas Speedway has added a weekend ticket package to the April 30-May 1 Road Runner Turbo Indy 300 to its offerings. Those tickets are available now.

The speedway will continue to offer fans a season ticket option, which will include four races over two weekends and access to the new Track Pass, which will allow season ticket holders access to the infield to take part in driver introductions and Sprint FanWalk prior to each Sunday race.

Check out the deals at www.kansasspeedway.com.

Special to indycar.com

Before the 2009 IZOD IndyCar Series campaign, KV Racing Technology co-owner Jimmy Vasser pushed hard to bring Mario Moraes into the team. Vasser saw potential in the 19 year old from Brazil, but he had to work to convince co-owner Kevin Kalkhoven and managing director Mark Johnson that the youth route was the path to take.

After an uneven first half, Moraes came on strong in the second part of the season - top-seven finishes in five of the final eight starts, including the final four races of the season. The highlight was a third place at Chicagoland Speedway.

Vasser frequently compares Moraes to his former teammate, Juan Pablo Montoya, despite the fact that Moraes graduated to the IZOD IndyCar Series at a younger age and with much less overall experience than Montoya. Because of that, Vasser sees almost unlimited potential for Moraes, and he has tried to help him add some savvy to his speed.

Click it: Moraes reviews his 2009 season

"He's got a lot of natural speed and he's pretty laid back out of the car but he's very aggressive in the car - he's not afraid, and he's fast," Vasser observed. "I don't want to try and slow a guy down or curtail some of that aggression. For me, it's a matter of how to I keep that in him and at least advise him how to be more cognizant of others on the track. You don't want to give spaces up.

"It's not about teaching the guy how to drive. It's teaching him how to go about the race or the race weekend and dealing with the politics and your competitors. So, from about midseason on, I got a little bit more involved just trying to help him deal with the league, especially Brian Barnhart and Al Unser Jr. He had maybe an aloof attitude towards (series officials). Sometimes it's more political - where there's smoke there's fire. Let's try to calm down a little bit but keep our speed. But I haven't really told him how to drive; he knows how to do that."

Perhaps it's not a coincidence that Moraes began to finish races more regularly after his father died in early August after a long cancer battle. After missing the race at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, Moraes finished fourth on his return to the series at Infineon Raceway. He added the podium finish at Chicagoland Speedway before wrapping up the season by finishing fifth at Twin Ring Motegi and seventh at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

"The results are there, but there's not much more speed," Vasser said. "Kentucky was a track where the speed was there but the result wasn't. Some of it was not his fault, some of it was. Just a lot of little things are starting to come together and like everybody knows, if you keep putting yourself in position to do well, the results will come.

"Right now the team has really got a spring in its step and all it really takes is a result, let alone a series of results, to get some momentum. I feel that building here around Mario at KV Racing. A lot of little things are starting to come together and like everybody knows, if you keep putting yourself in position to do well, the results will come."

For his part, Moraes is keen to take on board whatever advice Vasser - or any current driver in the series - is willing to share.

"Me and Jimmy, we are very good friends outside the track and inside as well," Moraes noted. "I try to learn the most that I can with him. Every day I spend with him I try to talk about the race and talk about the cars, talk about the tracks. I try to learn from the other drivers as well - Tony Kanaan is a very good friend of mine."

"I was like a kid on Christmas morning."

The Twitter world was, well, atwitter during the inaugural Winter Indy Tweetup over the weekend in Indianapolis. And with good reason as the congregation was surprised during a visit to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway with a tour of the not-open-to-the-public basement of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame Museum.  

The tweets quickly followed in rapid-fire succession:

"It's mind-boggling the inventory down here."

"Unreal. Absolutely incredible down here."

"It's a big surprise for the group with a tour of the Speedway's museum's off-limits-to-the-public basement."

No photographs were requested, which prompted a tweet, "What happens in the basement stays in the basement."

But the group, which also was afforded the opportunity to purchase deep-discounted racing memorabilia at an IMS warehouse sale and received bags full of Indy Racing League and IZOD IndyCar Series gift items, didn't stop talking about the once-in-a-lifetime tour as it reassembled for some indoor karting and meeting new Sam Schmidt Motorsports driver (and fellow tweeter) Pippa Mann.

The two-day event followed similar gatherings at Infineon Raceway, Chicagoland Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway this year for IZOD IndyCar Series fans. The series and many of its participants (drivers, broadcasters, teams) have embraced Twitter as another way of staying connected with fans, and cultivating new ones, via social networking platforms.

Already, a May Indy Tweetup has been suggested. Maybe that group won't get a tour of the museum basement, but it likely will enjoy the fellowship while expanding the IZOD IndyCar Series social network.

Follow the IZOD IndyCar Series and Firestone Indy Lights on Twitter at http://twitter.com/indycarnation.

Graham Rahal, who finished seventh in the championship standings in his second year competing in the IZOD IndyCar Series, reviews his season in a narrative for indycar.com.

The 2009 season was both an up and down one for both myself and the McDonald's Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing crew.

We started with two extreme highs in St. Petersburg and then shortly after in Kansas by getting poles in both places, but what we quickly learned was starting up front was the easy part. It seemed as though through only the first few races that we knew our luck would challenge us through the entire season, which became oh so true.

In St. Pete, we got hit from behind at the very start. Perhaps this was slightly my fault as I was very careful due to the fact it was my first pole in my IndyCar Series career and I didn't want to screw it up. Well, when Tony Kanaan hit me, I quickly realized maybe I was too cautious. We struggled for the remainder of that day, but again our luck would strike us in Long Beach. We ran a fantastic race, staying out of trouble, running fast laps, saving fuel, and found ourselves in second place with only 20 or so laps to go. Well what happens then -- a freak incident where I got waived out of the pits too early and pulled the fuel tank with me.

This is something that our team hasn't seen in years, and hopefully will never see again. But as mentioned before, you can see luck would challenge us all along.

I don't need to bore you with race-by-race stats, but everyone knows that NHLR had lots of ups and lots of downs this year. I am, and was, very proud of my guys for all their effort this season, and especially over the 2008-09 inter when we made most of our strides.

During the off-season, the team hired Martin Pare as my race engineer. He came from Andretti Green Racing and he had a wealth of experience in this series. I think we can give him credit for a lot of the gains we made, but as a team we did a great job adapting to the new rules package, and updating our cars to reach the maximum performance for our experience level. Few people realize this but our team did not enter into a single test this season. We ran off a more limited budget and I think when people take that into consideration, what we accomplished is even more impressive.

We came to every race weekend flying blind in some sort of manor, and after a lot of hard work we always seemed to do alright. I think when you do look at the stats we qualified outside the top 10 only once - in Texas, and then our worst qualifying sessions other than that were when we were rained out in Iowa and Kentucky. That shows the strength of this team, and the efficiency in which we worked this season. Especially considering it was only our second one in this series.

As the season went on and slowly came to a close, I think everyone could clearly see that the McDonald's car was always the best of class. And when I say best of class I'm speaking about non-Ganassi and Penske teams. We really had a lot of strong runs, and if I had limited my mistakes at both Mid-Ohio and Indy and if the driveshaft wouldn't have broken at Sonoma, we probably would have finished fifth if not better in the championship.

I think for the entire team to at least say we ended on an upswing gives us a lot of high hopes and strong feelings toward the 2010 season. We remain very positive that with the crew, engineers, and ownership surrounding the NHLR group, that we as a team should expect a very strong and competitive championship fight in 2010.

We have shown the speed and pace during qualifying and gradually made our race cars better. And now that we will have another off-season to test and prepare, we ought to be a contender on every race weekend. We did a great job closing the gap of five years to the Ganassi and Penske boys, and I think as the years roll on we are a team that can provide them with some major headaches.

HVM Racing and Team Stargate Worlds wrapped up a successful test Dec. 9 with Simona de Silvestro behind the wheel. The 21-year-old Swiss driver completed 147 laps over two days at Sebring (Fla.) International Raceway.

"She was very impressive," team owner Keith Wiggins said. "From the first laps, she showed she was capable of driving the car fast and she progressed rapidly. She was fast, consistent and gave good driver feedback. In fact, by the second half of the first day, we were so comfortable that we began working on development of our 2010 program using her feedback.

"By day two, I think everyone forgot she wasn't a seasoned professional. Everyone enjoyed working with her."

De Silvestro finished third in the 2009 Atlantic Championship, winning four races for Team Stargate Worlds.

"It was a dream come true to step into the cockpit of the Stargate: Resistance IndyCar," de Silvestro said. "I got comfortable right away and soon came up to speed, and overall thought the test was excellent."

HVM will return Robert Doornbos to the No. 33 HVM Racing car in 2010 and is exploring options for its second car. Team Stargate Worlds' test with HVM Racing coincided with the launch of the Stargate: ResistanceWeb site http://stargateresistance.com/, which was displayed on the car.

Stargate: Resistance is an online third-person shooter game being developed based on the popular Stargate sci-fi television franchise. Team Stargate Worlds principals Shane Seneviratne and Imran Safiulla were pleased with the test as well: "These were two very important days for us and our commercial partners. We want to thank Keith and the entire HVM organization for making us feel right at home. Simona got comfortable in the car over the last few days and it has been very exciting to get a glimpse of what may lie ahead. We would like to thank the IndyCar Series for making this test possible."