Nine down eight to go – that's as near halfway as we can get. The IZOD IndyCar Series has enjoyed an exciting season overall, and Randy Bernard's decision to initiate the Mario Andretti Road Course Championship and the A.J. Foyt Oval Course Championship divisions has added an extra element of surprise. The fact that one driver is unlikely to scoop both awards this year highlights the diversity of requirements in this series.

While we would normally prepare these sorts of features on a team-by-team basis, we like to make the drivers take responsibility for their actions, so that's what we've done here, presenting their cases in the order of their current championship standings together with the highs and lows of their seasons so far. Oriol Servia is a switched-on expert who kindly agreed to add his verdict – but, of course, we'd really like to have included him in this as a driver. Certain team owners out there need to wise up…

-David Malsher

Watching races from the couch is not easy. It makes me wonder how come I haven't won more races! It looks so obvious sitting on the bench! So, from that perspective allow my frustrated desire to get in a car to express bold judgments on my respected colleagues.

-Oriol Servia

Anyway, here goes:

WILL POWER

The man to beat whenever a track involves right as well as left turns, he's learning on ovals, too, and only miscue and misfortune prevented him from fighting for victory at Indianapolis and Texas, respectively.

BEST: Watkins Glen victory where he had to drive hard enough in the turns to make up for the fact that he was saving fuel, but also without killing the tires. Throw in the fact that he twice had to pass his teammate, and it may be the best of his seven wins in Indy cars.

WORST: Kansas – bad restarts and overshot his pits, putting him a lap down.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: Many years of preparing for an opportunity like this one and he will not let it slip. People only counted him on road courses but I bet on him for the overall championship. He is very, very good and accumulating good results is only making him more confident. I thought he was the only one out there with real speed to challenge Dario at Indy and it was very impressive. With this Power-Dave Faustino [race engineer] package, I don't see any team having the opportunity to put a crack in their plans to go after the title.

DARIO FRANCHITTI

The reigning champion is doing a fine job defending his title, and though one win from nine races looks below par, a) it was the biggest victory in motorsport, and b) he's usually not at fault when things go amiss – the Iowa gearbox failure is one striking example.

BEST: The outside pass and comprehensive demolition job on the opposition at Indy was Franchitti at his finest.

WORST: The mistake in qualifying at St. Pete that necessitated his great comeback drive on race day. He should have been able to fight with Power and Justin Wilson up front.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: Since the unification, I believe that many past accomplished drivers have had a wake-up call but cannot find the fire to succeed again. I think that Dario's trip to NASCAR land reopened the appetite of the talented Scot and the rest of the field is feeling it. Solid and magical when he needs to be, he will be the biggest threat to Power for the championship.

SCOTT DIXON

Again, one win in nine races, but it was a decisive one (Kansas). Notable errors at St. Pete and Watkins Glen on race day have been partly caused by the Ganassi cars not being quick enough in qualifying on road and street courses, leaving their drivers with too much to do come the race.

BEST: Either the victory in Kansas or the defeat of two of the three Penskes at Barber.

WORST: St. Pete – smashing his wing on Mario Moraes' car and then crashing on his own toward the end of the race.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: When Scott “knows” that he is going to win, nothing stops him. For me his biggest strength through his career has been how ice-cold he can be in the car during high-pressure situations. If he wants to challenge Will and Dario for the championship, he needs to “know” again that he is going for it. He never disappoints. Expect an impressive second half of the season from him. He will be challenging for the Championship once more.

RYAN BRISCOE

Still fast and getting better at making the best of a situation if he can't win. Problem is, high-profile shunts – while leading at Sao Paulo and when destined for second place at Indy – show there's still too much tension in his driving.

BEST: The win at Texas was well executed and badly needed but his pole position at Kansas was out of this world.

WORST: Hitting the tire wall in Brazil while under pressure from Ryan Hunter-Reay.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: Ryan needs to regain his cool…easy to say from home. Top teams come with their pressures. He has shown many times how hungry and talented he is so he should be able to regain control of his season soon. I expect him to be challenging for victories at every event until the last race.

HELIO CASTRONEVES

The Brazilian star is rising to the challenge of Power's full-time place at Penske, and while Castroneves' win at Barber owed much to Tim Cindric's smart strategy, he turned in excellent drives at Kansas and Iowa and was very close to Power in Watkins Glen qualifying.

BEST: That pole lap at Indy – or, come the race, avoiding Ana Beatriz's spinning car. The onboard footage is heart-stopping.

WORST: Losing ground so badly at Texas as to be anywhere near Mario Moraes.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: Helio is very, very good but we already knew that. He is showing his maturity while not panicking in front of the Power dominance. He is doing what he has to – keeping focus and staying close in case Will has a hiccup on the way. However, that may not happen: Helio may need to dig deeper over the winter if he wants to challenge Will in the future.

RYAN HUNTER-REAY

It's hard to call this man a revelation, but his well-documented interaction with Tony Kanaan appears to have been one of the cornerstones for Andretti Autosport's revival. It's only right that he's the man benefiting most from it.

BEST: The top-class win at Long Beach or the patience he showed remonstrating with Milka Duno at Watkins Glen.

WORST: It's nit-picking, but the clumsy pit stop at Iowa which probably cost him a podium.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: Ryan has worked really hard for this opportunity and he is capitalizing on it. I always knew he was fast but this year he is showing the consistency and solid race craft of a champion. Last winter, I worked really hard to get that seat, I couldn't come up with the money but at least I am glad it went to somebody who deserves it and makes the most of it.

TONY KANAAN

There hasn't been a more popular win this year than Kanaan's at Iowa. Not only was it the result of a great drive through the field, it had been a crying shame to see this man out of Victory Lane for the previous 24 months of racing. Now he appears as rejuvenated as this team.

BEST: Iowa race – in particular, for not being daunted by poor grid position and just going for it.

WORST: His attempts to qualify for Indy. The Brickyard owes him big in 2011.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: TK has gone through some changes and it is showing. After athletes have had a good level of success it usually is quite difficult to change the way they do things. In the last couple of years Tony didn't get the results we all expected from him. Somehow he has found a way to change how to approach racing again and, by going back to the basics, has reinvented himself. When I went to help him last year, I found a driver with the bravery to look himself face to face in the mirror. Now he is starting to enjoy the fruits of it. We will have TK running at the front for many years.

JUSTIN WILSON

Justin's switch from Dale Coyne to Dreyer & Reinbold Racing was vindicated in the opening four rounds of the season, where he nailed two runner-up finishes. D&R's setup appears to favor street circuits rather than pure road courses. Justin himself is a megastar on both.

BEST: St. Pete, where he kept Power on his toes all the way to the checkers while beating the other two Penskes.

WORST: Lap 1 accident at Iowa. Since he started racing in the U.S. back in 2004, this may have been the first time he was at fault in a two-car wreck and even then it was because of poor downforce levels.

ORIOL'S VERDICT:  Do you know that typical crazy dog that will bite you and not let go of your jeans? This is what Justin does to your rear tire! That is why, in '08, myself and Will Power nicknamed Justin “The Wild Dog”. Justin has many qualities but I believe his best is his ability to run close to the car in front of him and deal with the inevitable loss of downforce. Believe me, he is the last guy you want in your mirrors! He will get strong results again in the non-ovals but he needs to show the paddock that he can do it on the ovals, too. I know he can.DAN WHELDON

Take his runner-up finish at Indy out of the equation, and Dan's best results this year have been on a street course and a road course. Given his previous record, that's a shock, but the simple fact is that he races far better than he qualifies, so when the strategy all goes right, he looks decent.

BEST: Mixing it with the Penske and Ganassi cars on the opening day of practice at Watkins Glen.

WORST: Crossing the white line at the bottom of the track during his super-quick qualifying laps at Kansas. He got sent to the back of the grid and then spooked himself trying to charge forward in the race, resulting in a lame 15th-place finish.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: Dan needs to shine again like he did in his first years with the IRL. The field is more competitive than when he was at Andretti Green and Ganassi and now he has no teammates and probably less means, so he needs to give more of himself than ever before. One-car operations will always be handicapped compared to bigger teams, but I believe he should be a contender more often than he is. Hats off for Indy, though: once more he showed how playing it smart can take you to the front even without being in the fastest car. In my opinion he needs to make it happen again before the end of the season.

MARCO ANDRETTI

Enigmatic as ever. Some days he leads the Andretti Autosport charge as at Barber (qualifying and race), Indy (qualifying), Iowa (first part of the race), and Watkins Glen (qualifying). And other days you get the impression he's brutalizing his car with no sense of the big picture.

BEST: The opening laps of a damp St. Petersburg where he made everyone else look like they were stroking.

WORST: From the moment he lost the lead at Iowa.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: Marco has the fire, talent, desire – and more commitment than people think. Somehow he needs to gain consistency. It's like he's an advanced student who burned some early stages during his learning process and now lacks some of the lessons that provide mind structure that allow him to see the full picture of a race weekend. Put him in an underdog position and he will show his best, but he needs to find a way to do it every weekend.

DANICA PATRICK

Unlike her three teammates, Danica hasn't taken advantage of Andretti Autosport's upswing. She defeated all her teammates to take a well deserved runner-up finish at Texas, but her road and street course form, which started glimmering last year, has been extinguished once more.

BEST: Dueling for the lead with Ryan Briscoe at Texas with a weaker car.

WORST: Any road/street course qualifying session post-Sao Paulo.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: I am a true Danica fan – me and another 200 million people…A talented and hot lady! So what is it she's missing this year? I want to see her go back to the mindset of when I met her racing in the Atlantic Series. She was ready to fight all challenges that would stand in her way and was not taking anything for granted. To get the best out of you often takes searching deeper than one may imagine. It is only up to Danica to find setups that work for her. The competition is harder than ever before in her career, but if she can find her rooted DNA of a racer, she can shine again, even on road courses.

RAPHAEL MATOS

Like Marco Andretti, Raphael Matos is an enigma in that he can be strong one race, anonymous the next. But unlike Marco, Rafa has the excuse of having three fewer teammates at Dragon De Ferran. If only team co-owner Gil was in a second full-time car…

BEST: Fast all weekend at Watkins Glen and had to really use his brain and restraint to get that fourth-place finish.

WORST: Nowhere in qualifying at Long Beach, a track where he started third last year.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: Zanardi, Montoya, Bourdais, Mansell, Castroneves…every Indy car rookie who shone straight away had a top teammate to learn from. It is not just speed, it's knowing what to ask from the car, engineers, mechanics, timings… Rafa is in his second year, we all want and expect more from him. With the right setup and teammate, I have no doubt he would be at the front but opportunities are not always perfectly tailored. From midseason on, he needs to make things happen. At Watkins Glen, he showed a lot of maturity and talent when he was able to maintain his fourth position while on black Firestones and everybody around him was on reds.

VITOR MEIRA

Who expected Meira to score his best result on a street course? It was great that it came in his comeback race from his back injury and occurred on home soil in Brazil. But other than good drives at Kansas and Iowa, A.J. Foyt Racing appears to be struggling, and there's little he can do about it.

BEST: Winning the duel with compatriot Matos for the final step on the podium in Sao Paulo.

WORST: Only qualifying 30th at Indy, a place where he normally shines.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: Vitor is a truly dedicated professional and his results show that year after year. It doesn't matter if it is oval or road coarse, if there is an opportunity to shine, he will use it. I believe the team is at a crucial point where, with a bit more funding, they could be challenging the top six very often. Driving for a such big family team must have some challenges and Vitor seems to be able to handle that better than anybody else.

ALEX TAGLIANI

FAZZT's lows have been what you might expect from a rookie team, even with a swift Indy car veteran driving and equally proven talents in the staff, but the highs have exceeded expectations, especially for a one-car entry. Now Alex needs results. Toronto would be a good place to start…

BEST: Qualifying on the front row on the team's debut in Brazil, or beating a Ganassi car to fifth on the grid at Indy.

WORST: Over-ambitious maneuver at Long Beach which resulted in bent suspension and a DNF.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: Tag is doing what any other driver with some years in the paddock would dream of. He has been able to put a team together, hand-picking the best guys he has worked with through his career. He has hired many names that are in my top 10 list and, once more, it shows that good brains can often overpower bigger budgets. I give him a 10 out of 10, not only for putting a great operation together but, more than anything, for being able to focus on the driving as he has. We all know how good Tag is, but we also know how intense and probably over-controlling he can be. What he is doing is not easy and yet he has been able to embarrass top teams and drivers in MANY races in FAZZT's first year of running. Bravo, Alex! Keep your hands on the wheel and let Rob Edwards handle all team operations during the season and you will be a frontrunner at all times.MARIO MORAES

The usual story for the young Brazilian: everyone knows he's fast, everyone knows he's brave…but everyone expects him to stick his car in the wall at some point over a race weekend. For a third-year driver, there are too many days where he drives like a rookie.

BEST: Handled the pressure from Castroneves at Long Beach and drove beautifully to fifth at Watkins Glen.

WORST: Complete loss of perspective at lap 1, Turn 1 in Sao Paulo.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: Mario has shown signs of maturity that should give him true hope of having a professional career in racing. He is still very young but I think that after two and a half years at the top level, he needs to get better results and consistency. KV has shown a lot of confidence in him and that should be enough to fuel his focus.

E.J. VISO

For a third-year driver, there are too many days when he drives like a rookie. Sounds familiar, huh? Viso has made himself more prominent by moving from HVM to KV Racing, and he usually holds his own despite two fast teammates, but some of his incidents make you cringe.

BEST: An aggressive yet mature drive to third place in Iowa, which emulated a similarly smart performance in Texas.

WORST: Smacking the wall in Kansas cost him a possible top-five finish.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: He is a loved guy by the fans for all the right reasons – colorful, funny, talented and shorter than me! He showed his speed from his first year in the series. It is time to meditate a little and show on track the smarts he has off track. I believe he just needs one race to go his way for him to regain control of his season, but sometimes things just won't turn your way on their own. He needs to make it happen – and he can.

ALEX LLOYD

Better to be out there racing every race, rather than an anonymous occasional driver for Ganassi. Lloyd has turned in some excellent performances for Dale Coyne this year, without Bill Pappas as engineer and without any feedback from his teammate.

BEST: The obvious one is fourth place at Indy, but perhaps more impressive was being on the pace all night at Texas.

WORST: Dubious behavior when faster cars were trying to lap him at Long Beach.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: Tough to judge his position: a rookie but not, at Dale Coyne Racing but a different DCR than last year and with no teammate. I have been there. I would say that just managing to get noticed on more than one occasion is probably as good as it can get. If he keeps digging, things will come.

HIDEKI MUTOH

Hideki will always be judged against the man he replaced at Newman/Haas, Graham Rahal. And, frankly, he doesn't stack up on road and street courses. He was robbed of a top-six finish at Kansas by a wayward backmarker, but this team deserves better than a top finish of 12th.

BEST: Qualifying ninth for the Indy 500, beating many highly touted drivers and teams.

WORST: With the notable exception of Long Beach (where he out-qualified Franchitti!) Mutoh is just a grid-filler away from the ovals.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: I was impressed with Hideki when last year I helped AGR in a couple of events. He showed me speed and smarts but this year without teammates he seems to be lost. Now he will have Graham to work with and I suspect that not only the team will find what direction to go, but also Hideki himself will raise his performance for the occasion. I expect some good showings if he finds his mojo before the end of the year.

MARIO ROMANCINI

He's turning in the performances one would expect of a driver who was good but not outstanding in Indy Lights and who only shone on ovals. Having said that, his drive at St. Petersburg in tricky wet-to-dry conditions was good.

BEST: Excellent final qualifying run on Bump Day at Indy was followed up with a superb 13th-place finish – best of the rookies.

WORST: Where was he at Barber, Long Beach and Watkins Glen?

ORIOL'S VERDICT: Miles, miles, miles: He needs them to gain consistency. I would have expected him to shine more on the non-oval races, but two rookies together is not the ideal configuration for a team to move forward.

SIMONA DE SILVESTRO

De Silvestro's pace should have put her much farther up in the championship than 20th, but she's been involved in several incidents – not all of her own making – that have kept her from fulfilling her undoubted promise. That's exacerbated the underfunded HVM team's struggles.

BEST: Tempting to say leading her first ever IndyCar race or winning Rookie of the Year at Indy, but let's go for starting in the top 15 at all road and street course events.

WORST: Throwing away good race day finishes at Barber and Watkins Glen.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: I can only express how impressed I have been with her speed and race craft – very impressive for a rookie. She is driving for a team that last year struggled and she is making them look good. Not an easy achievement for a rookie and a lady. Hats off. The competition won't make it easy for her, but she deserves a podium before the end of the season.MIKE CONWAY

How do we judge a guy who's out of action until at least mid-August? It's sad because he could have learned a lot from Dreyer & Reinbold teammate Justin Wilson and might have been a contender for podiums over the next four races.

BEST: Starting from the front row at Barber.

WORST: His pass around the outside of Matos at St. Petersburg wasn't overambitious, but closing the door so aggressively caused contact that pitched him into the wall.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: Mike showed impressive speed on more than one occasion last year. I think having a teammate like Justin was a bit of a wake-up call. There is nothing better than a top driver to work with. Through my career I have witnessed many drivers coming back stronger from a big crash and his one at Indy this year was a BIG one. He will only be better on his return. The pain he goes through during recovery will only fuel his desire to become a better driver. We could see some great performances when he gets back in the cockpit.

TAKUMA SATO

This talented ex-F1 driver is in a fast car yet in the championship lies behind a guy who missed the last three races. Of the carnage that KV Racing has suffered this year, Sato has played a major part. While we expected that on ovals, his gaffes on street courses have been less forgivable.

BEST: Reaching the Fast Six at both Barber and Watkins Glen and coming to grips with Kansas and Iowa so quickly.

WORST: Binning it at Sao Paulo, St. Pete and chucking third place away at Iowa.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: I have met “Taku” a few times and have been impressed every time. Not only knowledgeable and professional, but extremely sharp. I have been waiting for some sort of a superb surprise performance but it seems to be not coming easy. I thought he had a great, solid showing at Watkins Glen but it looks like he lost the grasp of it toward the end of the race. I know for a fact that the team has great cars: Mid-Ohio should be a targeted effort for him.

MILKA DUNO

Duno has continued to show she's not good enough to be in the IZOD IndyCar Series. Period.

BEST: Qualifying 17th at Texas – but that's more of a damning indictment of the current breed of Indy cars.

WORST: Ah, the agony of choice. Being 6.5sec slower than the next slowest car – and 11 seconds off pole – in qualifying at Watkins Glen. Scary, isn't it?

ORIOL'S VERDICT: Milka has shown her qualities – perseverance, media management and fund-finding. In my opinion, she should capitalize on them and become a team/car owner. Change the helmet for the owner hat and put a good program together with a good driver of her sponsor's liking!

BERTRAND BAGUETTE

It's a pity this talented Belgian missed the opening two rounds of the season. Everyone's expecting him to shine on road and street courses but, oddly, it's been the ovals where he's out-qualified teammate Romancini. Now's the time for Baguette to prove he can do it everywhere.

BEST: Getting into the field at Indy on the first day in only his second attempt at an oval race.

WORST: To be honest, he hasn't done anything worthy of condemnation.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: It's never as easy as rookies will assume from the outside. It takes a while before a rookie can really shine in the IndyCar Series and Bertrand is finding that out first hand. His past credentials speak highly of him and I am sure that, given the time, he will figure out how to get the best out of his car. He is working with a great engineer and I would think that before the end of the season we will see sparks of brilliance.

THE BEST OF THE PART TIMERS

Graham Rahal did an excellent job at St. Petersburg for Sarah Fisher Racing, at Indy for Rahal Letterman and at Iowa for Dreyer & Reinbold – and now we assume he can do the same in the six races he has with Newman/Haas Racing. Tomas Scheckter, too, shouldn't be without a seat: his performance in Texas proved that, and hopefully he'll do a similarly good job in Toronto. John Andretti shone at Kansas, Paul Tracy still has a lot to give this series, both on and off the track, Townsend Bell is one of the most underrated drivers when it comes to getting around the Brickyard fast and Adam Carroll has the talent to be a star of the future, as everyone at Andretti Autosport now knows.

ORIOL'S VERDICT: Graham disappointed me with his lack of speed when he ran for Sarah Fisher but, at the same time, he really impressed me at Indy! I believe we will find a stronger-than-ever Graham in these next races with Newman/Haas. He has always been very mature for his age and this year of bouncing around has probably made him dig deep inside and will come out with his best shots. The team is really hungry, too, so I wouldn't be surprised at all to find them at the top of the podium real soon.

Tomas is always fun to watch. He sometimes makes me wonder if he knows that races are longer than just 10 laps – but I must admit that this year he has shown more maturity than ever and has been able to get the best of his chances. John Andretti didn't seem to shine as much as I expected in Indy but we know how special and picky that race is…

Last time I saw Paul Tracy cycling this much was in 2003 when he won the Champ Car title –  that says enough about his actual commitment. If he sticks to basics and listens to Jimmy Vasser, he could find himself on the podium at Toronto or Edmonton.

Townsend seems to be approaching racing like a surgeon: Comes on time and prepared for his once a year appointment and doesn't disappoint with his performance. He has put himself in a position where he can choose how and when he wants to make an appearance, and who can blame him?!

Carroll showed up in Watkins Glen and probably realized that things on this side of the Atlantic are a bit more difficult than what it looks like from Europe. He showed speed and made no mistakes, even when flirting with P.T.'s real estate!

THE REMAINDER OF THE SEASON

More of the same from the Big Five drivers, but with Andretti Autosport's aces frequently mixing it with them, Justin Wilson nailing D&R's first win in over a decade, and Paul Tracy and Alex Tagliani shining on home soil in Toronto and Edmonton.

ORIOL'S PREDICTION:  Power, Power and Power. I see many strong attacks at his throne from many drivers, but I think Will can handle them with more dominant performances.

In preparing the Will Power cover feature for the August issue of RACER magazine, we needed some background information on why Roger Penske chose the man from Toowoomba, Australia, to sub for Helio Castroneves in 2009 and how it became possible to promote him to a full-time Team Penske ride in 2010. The Captain's answers were enlightening.

 

RACER: Derrick Walker had recommended Will Power to you, but did you already have your eye on him?

ROGER PENSKE: The first time he registered with me was intrigue when I read his name while he was racing for Walker. I know that Derrick Walker knows how to pick drivers, so I watched Will race for Derrick, but never really had any conversations about him. But when he went to KV Racing [following the Champ Car/IndyCar merger], I was obviously more able to see his skill set and at that point I had some communication with Derrick.

We have people come up to us all the time, saying, “You should look at this guy,” but Derrick was very high on Will. And when we had the [tax trial] situation arise with Helio, we had to have someone who understood the situation completely, yet also, if Helio was in trouble – we didn't want that to be the case but if he was – then we had our game plan for going forward.

So we talked with Will and told him that he would run the first race in St. Petersburg and that we were also going to see about Long Beach. If the trial ended in time, then we'd put Helio back in the No. 3 car. The caveat was that we'd guarantee Will a ride at the Indy 500. “So at the worse case,” we told him, “you'll get one race with us at the start of the year and also a race at Indy.” And he said, “Look, I want to be with your team, I think it's a great opportunity, and I'll give it 120 percent.”

It's a similar situation to when Mario Andretti was running for us in Indy cars, but full time for Lotus in Formula 1. I had to find a driver who might only have a partial season. I talked to Pancho Carter and he wanted a full season, but Rick Mears said, ‘I'll drive for you if it's one race, two races, whatever.' Well, of course, the rest is history.
Will was someone Derrick Walker had recommended, we'd all seen how fast he was, and so Tim [Cindric, Penske Racing president] and I sat down and decided yes, he'd be our choice going forward. And I think it's been a win-win.

So you went to Long Beach planning to run three cars?

No, I was planning to run two, but I had an extra crew and car there, so as soon as we knew Helio was on the plane from Miami, we pulled out that No. 12 car on Friday night, put Will in it the next day and he stuck it on pole! So it shows how adaptable he is and he knows his way around that track. He had won at Long Beach a year earlier, so it was the perfect place for him to execute.

When did Verizon decide to go with the plan to be on a third car full-time this year?

Well obviously Verizon is one of the finest companies in the world today and their presence and brand fitted so well with Team Penske, so I went to Lowell McAdam, Verizon's president and CEO. We had run Alltel on the No. 12 NASCAR, and when the acquisition by Verizon happened, they were doing away with the Alltel brand. But at that same time, we weren't allowed to run Verizon on our car [because the NASCAR Cup Series is sponsored by Sprint], so we ran a car in Penske colors that looked similar to the Verizon colors that Justin Allgaier ran in Nationwide.

Anyway, letting Will run more races with us last year in the Penske Truck Rental colors meant we'd know exactly what we were getting with him, and the race he won at Edmonton I thought was a world-class win. At that point, I became completely committed that we wanted to run him in 2010.

So it became a very open discussion with Verizon about running a third full-time car. Because Verizon are such good partners and had run with him at Indy last year, they looked at him as a potential member of the Verizon team, so Lowell McAdam said, “Let's take a portion of our sponsorship that we would have run in NASCAR – it was a two-year contract with one year left – and let's go to IndyCar with Will and have a multi-year deal." That's how it all came together. It was commercially good for Verizon and for us, and now we've got a real hot prospect on our hands.

Traditionally, Penske doesn't just look for raw speed in a potential driver. What are the other qualities you look for?

“I'd say there are four or five attributes we look for in a driver,” says Penske. “First, he has to know how to win. There are a lot of drivers who are fast, but can they win? Do they know how to keep a car under them? I think Will went through a period when…Well, you saw down in Surfers Paradise in 2008, he was lightning fast for KV, but Ryan won the race for us because Will got into the wall. But Will had won three races in Champ Car already, and we felt we could put him in an environment where he wasn't under so much pressure to prove every lap how fast he is. So being able to win is key.

“Number two, he has to understand the car and communicate with the engineers, and there's no question that Will has that attribute. In my opinion, that's one of the reasons he's so good. Third, is he in physically good shape? Is he committed enough to keep his daily routine and be self-disciplined? Fourth, is he a team player? That's important because this is one team – not three. And fifth: he must be able to communicate and interface commercially with our sponsors, because without sponsors, we don't have the revenue to run a race team.”
 

Do you think [Power's race engineer] Dave Faustino has helped to extract even more potential from Will in 2010?

I think Will has found a spot in the team that is very comfortable. We have a lot of transparency: it's not one engineer who's better than another. It's an engineering group and they have access to each other's information. So if Ron Ruzewski [Castroneves' engineer] has what he wants, Eric Cowden [Ryan Briscoe's engineer] has what he wants, so can Dave Faustino.

I think one of the pluses with Dave is that he had run Will before and again Derrick Walker became a pivotal player. He said to me that Dave was a very good guy, I asked Will about it and so he asked Dave if he'd be interested. Walker was a fabulous guy for our team and had delivered so much for us since back in the 1970s, so to have him come in and give us some pointers is welcome. You know, you've got to be on the ground; no one sends you this in the mail. You've got to have relationships, and you've got to listen to people.

Did you bring Will in expecting him to be a championship contender right off the bat?

We hope we don't have anyone on the team that isn't a championship contender. We knew he was fast, and he's been our lead dog in the road races, although Helio won at Barber and Ryan has had some good runs. On the ovals, Will still has some learning to do. Of course, Indy is more like four fast corners of a road race than a high-speed oval. That's why some people have come to Indy and been successful even without much experience – people like Jimmy Clark, Dan Gurney, Jack Brabham, Jackie Stewart, Juan Pablo Montoya. They can run the track because they're used to running high-speed fast corners.

But in answer to your question, we feel all our guys are capable of winning the championship. I don't think Will has a thing to prove to us. He's delivered to date. All he wants to get is more and more experience and racing, and he's only going to get better.

To receive the August issue of RACER, including an interview with Will Power, click here.

If you want to learn how to race an Indy car on an oval, you could do a lot worse than listen to Rick Mears, Johnny Rutherford and Jimmy Vasser – which is why we chose them for an oval-racing 101 in the June issue of RACER. How does Rick advise Will Power, who's still way short of oval miles compared to his principal rivals and teammates? What does Jimmy tell Takuma Sato who's just completed his first oval race (very impressively!)? And what words of wisdom can “Lone Star J.R.” pass on to any of the novices in both Indy Lights and the IZOD IndyCar Series?

It was an enlightening and absorbing experience for the interviewer, to say the least, but while we had the experts' attention, it seemed smart to look ahead to the 2010 Indy 500 because in terms of learning, adapting, lapping and engineering, Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a separate entity altogether. The 1.5-mile ovals on IndyCar's 2010 schedule are very much car-dependent, while the Brickyard, with its huge speeds and minimal banking, is a place where a driver can and will make a difference. Current championship leader Power describes Indy as “the last of the men's ovals now that Milwaukee's gone,” and both he and Dreyer & Reinbold Racing's Justin Wilson have likened the Indy turns to hyper-speed road course corners.

Says Wilson: “The turns are pretty flat and you don't get that bowl effect that can mask a car's handling problems at Iowa and Kentucky. At Indy, you're taking the corners in a slight four-wheel drift and it's a lot of fun. That sensation you get when you've gone in hard and on the perfect line, and the turn releases you out onto the straights, is just great. When the timing data backs up what you felt, that's a very cool feeling.”

It takes a while to get into that zone, though, especially for a driver who's about to embark on just his third 500.

“The first few times through Turn 1 each year are daunting,” Wilson admits. “Your turn-in point is critical because if you're too early or too late, you know the accident's going to hurt. You're trying not to focus on the wall or the grandstand, but it's hard not to because the track looks like it's disappearing to your left!”

Rutherford, who has three Indy 500 wins to his name, sympathizes. “Yeah, Turn 1 hides from you because of all the grandstands. I've always said that's why we spend so much time at Indy practicing before qualifying. It's so drivers can blunt their nerve-endings!”

As one of the IZOD IndyCar Series' driver coaches, as well as the pace car driver, Rutherford observes the rookies are not going to be able to carry much of the knowledge they acquired at Kansas to the Brickyard.

“Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a whole different ballgame,” he states. “They're going to go faster than they've ever gone, and they have to develop a real sense of timing in relation to that speed. It's pretty daunting to go there and have a turn approaching you at 230mph. With this current formula, if the car is right and you're on fresh tires, you may crack the throttle just a little but you're almost taking the turns flat-out. Some guys pick up on it quick, others take a little time. It's a strange sensation to have lateral-g on you – and for that long – while you're going that fast.”

Mears, the four-time Indy 500 winner who is driver coach for Indy Lights as well as an advisor for Team Penske's drivers, observes: “Will [Power] came to Penske last year from a team that was new to these cars, so 2009 was like starting over for him. His first oval in a Penske was the Indy 500. There, we got into the subtleties, teaching him to find the feeling you get from the rear of the car before something happens. On road courses, you do what you do after it happens, catching the car – reflex driving. Ovals – speedways in particular – are all about ‘feel' driving and anticipation, so you need to read the signals that the car's about to do something, not wait until it does because, by then, it's too late.”

The tutoring worked, no question about it. As Power recalls, “At Indy last year, I took my time coming up to speed, building my confidence, and I qualified on the third row. And then during the race, too, I built up to speed gradually, and we were running second to Helio, about two seconds behind him and it was only the last pit stop that dropped us to fifth.”

Vasser, who has thrown himself into the tutoring of KV Racing's IndyCar Series rookie Takuma Sato, concurs with Mears' view that a driver needs to develop a feel and an ability to analyze. “If you send the driver out and you ask him what it's doing and he says, ‘Nothing', then you know he's not at the limit of the car yet. You want to be able to feel the right rear, and if it starts to move a little bit, you want to be thinking about it. If it starts to understeer, that's a more secure feeling. So I need to get to the point where the guys are going into a turn and their brains are turning over, analyzing what the right front is doing, what the right rear is doing, where's the grip limit. And if it's always perfect no matter how fast you're going, then it's a perfectly balanced racecar – which doesn't exist!

“There's always some movement somewhere,” Vasser continues, “and there's a mental graph that should be developing, so you can plot how that movement pertains to new tires versus old, or full tanks versus near empty. Do you want to make the car better on the last 10 laps of each run, on older tires, or do you want to maximize the advantage of fresh tires but you're on a heavy fuel load?”It's easy to see why Mears was one of Vasser's heroes. They both preach analysis of the car while driving at 220mph. “There's a big difference between what I'm telling them for Indy, and what I'm telling them for the high-banked ovals,” states Rick. “The flatness of Indy means there's a lot more work with the engineer in trying to find the optimum setup. It's not so much of a pattern-driven track. When the short line is the quick way around the track, you don't have as much leeway to tune the car and change the balance or where you put it, as you do at Indy. Around there, you lift, maybe angle the car so you back the corner up, and roll in easier so you can get on the throttle sooner in order to lengthen your straightaway, that kind of thing.”

If lapping Indy is different from any other circuit, then racing it is something else again. Says Rutherford: “Handling in traffic is something you just have to learn through practice and in the races. One of the most critical times in the Indy 500 is the start, when everyone is bunched together and you've really got to be focused and heads-up and be alert to anything that might cause you problems.”

But once you're out of the 33-car pack, getting the handling tuned for dealing with traffic becomes the priority. Rutherford observes: “Most drivers brought up as road racers like to have the car understeer on an oval, because it helps them feel like they've got more control of it, but the quick way around Indianapolis is to have it neutral. Sometimes, drivers can't do that: They've got to have that feeling that it's pushing going into the corner, but the problem that they encounter then is that's all they've got. You can't combat it. These current cars don't have the power to neutralize understeer with the throttle, so you have to take a certain trajectory through the corner and if a backmarker interrupts that, you have to back right off to accommodate him. On the other hand, if you've got your car neutral, you can take it up a foot or down a foot and it will still behave faithfully.”

By the time you're passing backmarkers in the Indy 500, the actual driving of the racecar should be coming naturally, freeing you up to coolly analyze everything that's going on around you. Mears, for example, believes there is a tendency for drivers to become over-reliant on their spotters.

“Your spotter is just a back-up,” he states firmly. “As a driver, you should already know what's going on. If you're aware, then you can make moves that you wouldn't be able to if you waited on someone to tell you. I never had a spotter – and you should see the look on these kids' faces when I tell them that. Well, I think they should be able to do without a spotter if they're doing everything else the way they should be.”

Vasser concurs. “Mario [Moraes] was bloody quick last year at Indy, but what happened? An accident at the first corner. We at KV say Marco [Andretti] took him out – Marco had no business on the outside of that turn, on Mario's right rear. He's still a kid himself, and I'm sure his grandpa and his dad told him that on the first lap of a 500-mile race, you don't go to the outside of a guy that you've recently claimed to be a danger!

“But the other side of it is that Mario didn't have his eye on that mirror to know that Marco was there. So he wasn't visualizing and anticipating the way someone like Paul Tracy will. Paul may be KV's best bet for the 500 just from his huge experience alone. Experience on an oval is immensely important. You don't see a lot of rookies run up front straight away at Indy.”

But if there's one saying that should ring in the ears of all 33 drivers – rookies and veterans alike – who take the green at Indy on Sunday May 30, it should be the advice that Rutherford passes on to all young racers. “If you only think you can, don't!”

Bruno Junqueira, Oriol Servia and Paul Tracy are race-winning Indy car talents who (surprise, surprise) - haven't a clue what – or even, if – they are going to be racing next year. RACER editor David Malsher believes this is a crazy situation.

First of all a history lesson from the fairly recent past. It starts at Champ Car's Spring Training, Laguna Seca, March 2007. It was the third official test session with the new Panoz DP01-Cosworth, and the first day at Monterey saw Sebastien Bourdais, Paul Tracy and Justin Wilson occupying the top three slots on the time sheets. Consequently, I remarked to one of the senior figures in pitlane – let's call him Mr. X to spare his embarrassment – that the new car may be faster than the old Lola, but it was still the same names at the top.

“That's just their teams' experience showing through,” replied Mr. X. “You journalists have new storylines now. This season, Champ Car is going to be all about the best of America – Graham Rahal – and the best of Europe – Neel Jani – taking on Bourdais, the champion.”

The logic of omitting Wilson, Will Power and Tracy from his list of contenders seemed non-existent to me. Maybe I was too kind, but a month later, I resisted reminding Mr. X of his comment when Power and Tracy wrapped up the front row for the opening round of the season in Las Vegas. It was difficult to restrain myself, however, when I noted Jani, Rahal and Bourdais had lined up ninth, 10^th, and 16^th on this, a new circuit for everyone.

That summer, Tracy scored a wild win in Cleveland, but his season as a whole went south as Forsythe Racing got its setup for the Panoz upside down and back to front. (So much for the “team's experience,” huh?) Oriol Servia, who had subbed for Paul while he recovered from his spinal injury incurred at Long Beach, became Tracy's teammate and, when the car was at its worst, Oriol proved better at hauling it up the grid. P.T. came to the fore when the cars worked and was usually the slightly stronger racer – though also the one more likely to get involved in incidents. But they both did well in severely trying circumstances, while watching drivers of lesser talent having a far easier time of it.

Yet toward the end of the season, Mr. X, commenting on Forsythe's problems, laid the blame at the feet of the drivers. “Paul and Oriol – their days have past,” he said. “Forget them: this is a young man's sport now.” Now, I like Mr. X, despite his misguided beliefs, but I'm afraid this time I did laugh in his face. In the course of my derisive retort, I said, ‘If you think experience is so unimportant, how do you explain Bruno's performances?'

This was reference to Bruno Junqueira, who had lost his ride at Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing at the end of 2006, and had joined Dale Coyne Racing. The Brazilian, three times championship runner-up, had therefore gone from the most successful team to one of the least successful. However, he and the team gelled and together they got a handle on the new Panoz (a damn sight quicker than Forsythe) and, as one of the feel-good stories of the season, eventually took three consecutive podium finishes.

The last of these came in Surfers Paradise, but owed something to good fortune, for two cars ahead of him had elevated him from fifth to third. And they were the cars of Servia and Tracy. Although Oriol had lost his ride at Forsythe (team owner Gerry Forsythe needed David Martinez in the No. 7 car for the Australian and Mexican rounds), he was drafted into KV Racing to replace Tristan Gommendy whose money hadn't turned up. Servia was fastest in Friday qualifying at this most daunting of street tracks, guaranteeing himself a front-row slot and, until clipping a wall, seemed destined for a podium finish.

So too did Tracy. With chief engineer Tom Brown now on board, the Forsythe cars had been radically adjusted, and P.T. was back to his confident best. He was second fastest on Saturday (behind, inevitably, Power) and on Sunday he would have finished third but ran out of fuel on the final lap. Things went better for both drivers at the final round, two weeks later, as Servia and Tracy finished third and fourth respectively.  Their days were past? Yeah, right.

OK, first part of history lesson over. Why did I start there? Because 2007 was the last time Tracy had a fairly complete season in open-wheel racing. I use “fairly” with some emphasis, because he did miss two races. Last year, sadly, he missed all but one IndyCar Series race having never found a full-time ride in the now unified U.S. open-wheel world. By contrast, Servia and Junqueira were employed throughout 2008, remaining at KV Racing and Dale Coyne Racing respectively.  But now they, too, have gone a season of not much action.

Most ill-served was Junqueira, who did a stunning job for Conquest Racing to qualify for the Indy 500 with so little preparation, gave up his start to appease the race sponsors on teammate Alex Tagliani's car, and has not reappeared in an IndyCar.

Servia did a great job in the one-off Rahal Letterman Racing entry at Indy, and after a slowish start with Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing at Mid-Ohio, and a frustrating mechanical issue at Infineon during practice, came on ever stronger, culminating in his fourth-place finish at Motegi. As Graham Rahal commented in his latest column here on RACER.com, Servia made a huge difference to the N/H/L team. Yet now the Catalan has been replaced for the final race.

Tracy had six races this year – five with KV, one with A.J. Foyt Racing. His efforts are well chronicled on this site [click here], but just to remind you, only the Penske/Ganassi quintet beat him in Edmonton, and his drive at Toronto should have resulted in at least a podium, maybe even a win. There are perhaps four other drivers in the IndyCar Series capable of P.T.'s drive that day – and not all four of them would have even tried. So now, in two seasons of open-wheel racing, Paul's had eight races. We're talking here of a former champion, one of the legendary talents of the U.S. open-wheel scene over the last two decades.Servia, Junqueira and Tracy should not be substitutes. For one thing, it's unfair to drop any driver into a car at the last minute and expect him to perform at 100 percent of his ability. (Tracy found that out at Watkins Glen, Servia at Mid-Ohio.) Secondly, all three bring so much more to a team than just an ability to safely gather points. There is speed, knowledge, experience – and the familiarity of names that actually strike a chord with the public.

Given that our trio comprises a Brazilian, a Canadian and a Spaniard (sorry, a Catalonian), some might argue that U.S. drivers should take priority. (It's something I don't agree with, personally – the best drivers available should be in the cars, and I only get angry when talented U.S. drivers lose out to rich European mediocrity.) However,  Junqueira, Servia and particularly Tracy have all raced in the U.S. for long enough that they're virtually adopted as home boys, and their abilities and achievements count for far more than their passports.

I'm convinced that 99 percent of sponsors agree with me. Sure, they'd love to be sponsoring an American, but the priority is to have their name associated with winners and therefore on TV as often as possible. Penske and Ganassi employ drivers from New Zealand, Australia, Britain and Brazil because they were the best available: it's no coincidence that these teams have the most firmly established sponsorship deals in the IndyCar paddock.

Nor should the drivers' ages matter. Junqueira is 32, Servia is 35 and Tracy is 40. But so what? Jimmy Vasser was 40 when he last ran a full season in 2005…and, as teammate to 2002 CART champ Cristiano da Matta, he outqualified him more often than not.

If, as Vasser has said, Mario Moraes could be the next Juan Montoya (no doubt, the kid's very quick, and increasing in much needed patience) then we've seen enough comparisons between M.M. and P.T. to suggest that Tracy could be the new Vasser! Not quite as swift on one flying lap, but still a great racer. And what P.T. lacks in engineering nous compared to a Vasser or Servia, he more than compensates for with his near- peerless ability to create overtaking opportunities where others see none, and a phenomenal ability to find grip when others can't.

Junqueira is not as incisive a racer on a street course as Tracy, but he can coax a tremendous amount of speed from an ill-handling car on a natural road course, and has a real technical feel for then improving the car. This serves him equally well on the ovals, and it's a shame he never got to work again with Bill Pappas. Bruno would doubtless have boosted Dale Coyne Racing's progress this year, and sped Justin Wilson up the learning curve in establishing what he needs from a good oval car.

And Servia? Well, he combines elements of both Tracy and Junqueira. He can be hard as nails in a wheel-to-wheel situation, but his degree in engineering means he also can give his team real guidance with great feedback. He's also probably the best of these three at keeping his team's morale high whenever they encounter difficulties.

Alex Tagliani, whose non-employment last caused me to sound off in a column like this, appears to have landed on his feet for the first time since 2000, and his FAZZT race team should have its first test in December. But now here are three more open-wheel veterans who still have much more to give. And look at how many single-car teams could use their skills: KV, Dale Coyne, Panther, Vision, Luczo Dragon…

I've tried to steer clear of their personalities in this column, because their driving skills alone should be enough to attract the teams. But for the sake of the IndyCar Series, I believe Tracy, Servia and Junqueira have much to offer outside the cockpit too. Their presence could help to get the general public to care about this beleaguered branch of U.S. motorsport once more, and attract TV viewers and spectators who (rightly or wrongly) know little and care less about a Conway or a Doornbos.

It will take a little money to get this trio in cars for next year, but it will also take common sense. Team owners must recognize that, for what they bring to a team, a sponsor, a race promoter and the IndyCar Series, Tracy, Servia and Junqueira are absolute bargains.

Even Mr. X agrees, these days.

David Malsher is the Editor of RACER magazine.

Around lunch-time on April 18 last year, I got a call from my good friend and colleague David Phillips. He had just finished watching the opening practice session for the 2008 Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, which, as you'll recall, was the finale of the Champ Car World Series. Office work precluded my attending that day, so I'd asked Phillips if he could give me regular updates.

He had stood watching from the curved left-hander that leads to the hairpin at the end of the lap. From there, you can also see the 90-degree right at the end of the back straight. It's one of those places that shows you who's on it and who's tentative, who's overdriving and who's flowing, and how well setup the car is.

With decades of motorsport journalism to his name, DP hadn't needed to go back to the pits to check the live timing. He flipped open his phone and called. “I'd say I'm 99 percent certain Wilson and Tag are top,” he said.

I'd been watching the live timing, so I knew he was right. “Spot-on, old man!” I replied. “Have to say, it's great to see Tag put Walker Racing up there.”

“Oh yeah!” said Phillips, with something approaching a nervous giggle. “But you wouldn't be surprised if you'd been standing where I was. Through this sequence, Tag was just flying. I would go so far as to say it was actually breathtaking.”

That conversation came back to me last week as I watched Alex Tagliani lead the Honda Indy Toronto race, apparently with ease. It was such a convincing performance that a mere podium finish would have been a slight anti-climax. He looked like he was heading for the win. And though it had taken Dario Franchitti's pit problem to put the No. 34 Conquest Racing machine from runner-up position into the lead, Alex had actually preserved his soft red tires in the first stint better than Dario. The Ganassi car had gone six seconds up at one stage, but had overheated its tires and then got reeled in. Franchitti had to dive into the pits nine laps earlier than Tagliani.

However (there's always a “however” in a story about Alex), with the wave of a yellow flag – or rather, the rule regarding pitlane closure at the start of a yellow-flag period – Tagliani and Conquest Racing's dream result expired at the second pitstop. Sure, that rule screws everyone at some point in a season, and I'm aware that it is just the luck of the draw. But Alex has only done five races this year, and that rule cost him and the Conquest team a third place in Long Beach and a win in Toronto! Both team and driver deserve better, and it was amazing that Tag and Conquest owner Eric Bachelart remained dignified after another race in which Lady Luck had kicked them between the legs.

Luck has favored Tagliani just once this year, when Conquest was able to withdraw Bruno Junqueira from the Indy 500 to ensure Alex could start. But it was only a miscalculation/bad gamble – call it what you will – by the team that had created the situation where its full-time driver could be bumped from the grid. He should have started 25th on merit: not 33rd through good fortune. It was good that, in typical fashion, he maximized his opportunity by eventually claiming Indy 500 Rookie of the Year.

In terms of results, that remains the bright spot in Conquest's 2009 season; the rest have been a case of woulda, coulda, shoulda. Owing to the team's severely constricted budget, Tagliani has been on a consistently fractured learning curve with the IndyCar Series' Dallara-Honda package. He was shipped in as Conquest's rescuer in the middle of race weekend at Detroit last August, when former F1 driver Enrique Bernoldi's wrist injury turned him from merely lackluster to downright slow. With Bernoldi's teammate Jaime Camara rarely looking comfortable away from the ovals, Conquest team-owner Eric Bachelart was at his wits' end: how could he and his race engineers know if they were making progress when they had no quality feedback and no real pace?

Tagliani fulfilled both requirements, as he usually does. Robin Miller and myself high-fived when, following Alex's first practice session and debrief with the team, Bachelart remarked to us, “We learned more about this car in the last half hour than we have all season.” You see, the problem of proven talents being overlooked in favor of wealthy mediocrity is often at its most acute in U.S. open-wheel racing, and writers regularly feel obliged to point this out. Sadly, though the pen may be mightier than the sword, it ain't no match for a bulging wallet, so Tagliani's late employment by Conquest was seen as something of a victory for our cause.

With limited time to get the car how he wanted it and with no prior knowledge of the track, Tagliani sensibly played the caution card in qualifying, but he made great progress on raceday, and only a long pitstop to rectify a gearbox problem prevented a top-eight finish. And he still set fifth fastest race lap. At Chicagoland, the team was always going to struggle without the latest and greatest parts for ovals, but then came the non-championship race at Surfers Paradise where Alex qualified seventh and finished fourth.

Over the winter though, there was little money coming into the team's bank account, and though Conquest tested for two days at Homestead with Camara, the Brazilian was on his way to retirement from racing. At St Petersburg, then, Tagliani was like a cork ready to erupt from a champagne bottle that had been shaken for five months, and he qualified seventh, ahead of IndyCar champion Scott Dixon. Sadly, his race was compromised by the first corner shunt. At Long Beach he started ninth and should have finished third, but a badly timed full-course yellow/pit closure punished those who had made the best fuel mileage. Since then, there has been Indy, Texas (a nothing race for all those who aren't in Penske, Ganassi or Andretti Green cars) and most recently Toronto.

Even before the Toronto race, I was considering writing this column, and it had been triggered by Gil de Ferran's observations in his midseason review. The Brazilian Indy car great wrote: “We must stress how hard it is to be a part-timer from both the team and driver standpoint. Your game improves the more you practice, so just to get thrown in the deep end is tough: you are always a step behind everyone else at the start of a weekend… So I think Alex is doing well; I'm not sure many other guys could have stepped into that sort of situation and done a better job. He's very experienced and still hungry and, of course, talented.”

Right. But for some reason, Tagliani is always struggling to get a ride before the season starts. Other than lack of money, there is no excuse for this. Let's answer any potential questions.

Age? Not an issue. He's just a few months older than championship leader Franchitti, he's probably as fit as he's ever been, as brave as he's ever been, yet now has almost a decade of U.S. open-wheel experience. At 36, Alex has at least 5 good years of open-wheel racing left in him.

Speed? Not an issue. If we accept that the two Ganassi cars, the two (occasionally three) Penske cars and Tony Kanaan have been the kingpins of the IndyCar Series for the last few years and the ones you aren't surprised to see occupy the first three rows of the grid, it's worth noting that Tagliani has claimed major scalps at each of the last four street courses he's raced on. At Surfers, it was Kanaan; at St. Pete, it was Scott Dixon; at Long Beach, it was Kanaan and Briscoe; at Toronto, it was Dixon, Castroneves, Briscoe and Kanaan! It does beg the question as to what he might achieve with one of those top teams – or even what Conquest might achieve if they competed in every round…

Racecraft? Excellent. He's one of the best at tire management and fuel-saving, because he knows how to think while he's driving. Consequently, his overtaking maneuvers almost always yield results: if it's feasible, it happens, if it's not, he won't try it. (That overambitious effort on Tomas Scheckter in Toronto was a rare lapse, born of frustration at losing the lead, and then being forced down an escape road by the squabble between Moraes and Viso).

Attitude? What a team dreams of – massively intense and hard-working. Bachelart has united Tagliani with a race engineer (Brandon Fry) who shows a great deal of respect to his driver, yet also helps guide him, steers him away from technical cul-de-sacs, and knows what Alex needs from a car to give his best. Consequently, Tag trusts Brandon's judgment, too. Alex's power to recall a lap is excellent and on race weekends, it's not unusual for he and Fry to exchange setup ideas via text message from their hotel rooms, deep into the night, as their wives lie sleeping beside them. Their work together, and Tag's unusually deep engineering knowledge, have helped speed up the team's data acquisition on the Dallara-Honda package. And that applies over race weekends, too. I actually can't think of a team who so consistently makes such strong progress from Friday to Saturday to Sunday.

Public relations? Alex is good with fans, although finding him not in the transporter discussing setups and tire behavior can be tricky. Still, I've seen him interrupt his meals in the team awning in the paddock in order to walk over and sign autographs, and if he has to hurry away to team/series appointments rather than pose for pictures with fans, he apologizes to those who he has to rebut.

Media relations? Very good. Alex's power of recall can turn a journalist's quest for a post-race soundbite into a 15-minute analysis. But hey, better too much to work with than not enough. And what he says is always original and entertaining.

Sponsor relations? He knows how to get them and knows how to keep them. I defy anyone with a million bucks to spend on a racecar driver not to be reaching for the checkbook once he or she has listened to Tagliani talk about his job with such fervent passion. The only active driver I've encountered with the same ability to hook a listener with a description of his sport is NHRA Funny Car legend John Force.

This isn't supposed to be a hard-luck story (though on read-back, I realize that sentiment has seeped through frequently). It's more a “Wise up!” message to all the IndyCar Series teams who are suffering slumps in form and wondering why they keep being upstaged by a part-time team with severely limited resources.

Roger Penske has an embarrassment of in-cockpit riches at his disposal at the moment, Chip Ganassi is probably pretty content with his drivers currently holding first and second in the IndyCar Series points table, and we know Dale Coyne is delighted with Justin Wilson (why wouldn't he be?). But look beyond that and you find multi-car teams in downward spirals and single-car teams that have reached a plateau and would hugely benefit from not only Tagliani's speed, but also his many other qualities.

To my mind, these underperforming ICS teams have a choice. They can either continue making internal changes that are merely swapping like with like (which, over time, looks increasingly like rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic), and then spend 2010 wondering why they're flatlining.

Or they can employ Alex Tagliani.

By David Malsher

The SunTrust Indy Challenge at Richmond wasn’t a race – it was a high-speed parade, and I honestly don’t think I’ve been more embarrassed for this branch of the sport than last Saturday night.

NASCAR has its critics, myself among them, for making every nuance, every driver’s barely adequate performance and every passing maneuver into a matter of great import – “and X has passed Y for 28th place and cut him off on the exit of the turn, maybe as payback from the last race where they were dueling over a place in the top 15 and they touched fenders,” yadda, yadda, yadda… But hell, at least there is overtaking, at least the drivers are having a go, at least the spectators and TV viewers have something to watch 95 percent of the time.

The most exciting part of Richmond’s latest IndyCar race was news of the pregnant Emma Davies-Dixon – Scott’s wife – and her contractions, which recurred after Target Chip Ganassi Racing’s final pit stop. I’m glad to see someone was excited by the race, but it has to be said, she did have skin in the game – and I bet the contractions stopped after that pit stop. From then on, she knew that her husband, barring a mechanical failure in his Dallara-Honda, was home and dry.

There may be some reading this who think I’m exaggerating to describe Richmond’s event as the worst oval race I have ever seen. But yes, it was even worse than Champ Cars at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. What those dormant events had, that Richmond lacked, was lapping maneuvers. Even as I type this, I can’t quite believe I’m referring to a situation where some of the bravest and most talented racecar drivers on the planet are unwilling to lap backmarkers. In the closing laps at Richmond, Dixon didn’t want to go off-line to lap Ed Carpenter’s Vision Racing entry…And he didn’t need to because his teammate Dario Franchitti wouldn’t have dared to try a pass on him as one of the Ganassi cars would have ended up on the marbles and therefore, very likely, eaten concrete. On a day when both Penske cars had crashed out, the Ganassi boys needed to take full advantage.

I really hoped that, given fuel windows of around 100 laps, anyone who stopped with 60 laps to go might cut loose in their final stint, run full rich on the gas, and carve through the field. Not a chance. With shortfills and a one-groove race track, no one was going to take a chance. Even yellow flag periods, with the fields packed together for restarts made no difference. Within two laps, once everyone’s tires were up to temperature, the order had calcified.

I’m not lashing out at the series on the strength of one race. It has to be said, this has been coming for a while. Kansas was dull, the Indy 500 was poor by its own standards and Texas was a drone, save for Marco Andretti. Sure, Iowa was fun, thanks largely to Tomas Scheckter and Dan Wheldon, and a nice bit of wheel-to-wheel running between Briscoe and Franchitti for the lead, but I’m afraid that’s not a good hit rate. I’m worried that the less than committed fan who happened to tune in to Versus for Richmond will choose to give the ABC-broadcast events from Watkins Glen and Toronto a miss. “Ovals are the tracks where it’s most easy to pass, right? And the next two races are a road course and a street course? Hmmm, okay, I’m off to do something more interesting, like picking fleas off the dog.”

For next month’s issue of RACER magazine, Robin Miller, Jeff Olson and myself have canvassed the opinions of some of the most significant voices in the IndyCar Series about where they want it to be in two to three years’ time. Each of our interviewees, naturally, veers toward the areas that most affect them. Team owners talk about marketing and costs, component suppliers talk about technical regulations and costs, while drivers – and ex-drivers – speak of the need to improve the quality of the racing.

But on the evidence of this year’s oval races, that isn’t something that can wait for two to three years. Dixon’s comments, recorded just before the Richmond race, seem even more appropriate now. Here’s a sample: “The critical part is the racing. It had always been fantastic, but recently we’ve lost it. For me, that’s the key point. People are in the stands to watch a race, and right now we aren’t giving it to them.”

After the race, Franchitti echoed the sentiments of his teammate – and live on TV, God bless him. Okay, that won’t win him friends at the Indy Racing League, but it had to be said. And it needs to be said repeatedly until something is done about it. Dario added: “It’s not like we’re just cruising around, but nobody can get close enough to make passes. We need to look at that and fix it.”

“The only person that got close to me was my teammate,” Dixon observed. “To be honest, I don’t think he was going to pass me even if I went half a second or a second slower.”

Now bear in mind these are two of the four guys most likely to benefit from this state of affairs. Sure, half the time Penske has the edge, but generally, the worst that a Ganassi driver can expect to finish on an oval is fourth. Any further down, and it’s because of a screw-up in the pits, a crash or a bright day for one of the Andretti Green Racing drivers.

But winning easily is not why Dixon and Franchitti or 90 percent of the IndyCar drivers do what they do. They’re racers who don’t want to have their natural talents boxed in by highly restrictive track conditions. They want to show their flair, show why they’re the best at what they do and show why this is such a demanding branch of the sport.

Many advocates of spec racing will point out that not only does commonality of chassis, engine and tire help reduce costs (as long as the providers of the components don’t abuse their monopoly by overcharging for their parts and service), but it also turns the emphasis of the racing back to the drivers.

Well, that’s only true if you allow the drivers to race. What we saw at Richmond had no significance whatsoever, and proved nothing in terms of driver skill. I hope Dixon doesn’t take it badly when I say that after his final pit stop, you could have parachuted any one of 15 of his rivals into that No. 9 Ganassi car and it would still have won. Most of his pursuers were cruising to save fuel, and they were unable to pass because there was only one line on the track. When drivers as brave on ovals as Wheldon, Scheckter and Andretti can’t show off their talents, there is something desperately wrong.

So what are the answers? For 2009, it’s hard to see there can be any on the technical front. But there are procedural changes that can alleviate some of the problems and can be put into effect straight away.

Firstly, pit allocation should be random – names and numbers drawn out of a hat. There’s no way that a car/driver’s performances thus far this year should be allowed to snowball into getting a favorable pit slot for the next event. That’s like setting the grid in the order of finishing position from the previous race. (Except as we’ve all seen, having a prime pitbox is more important than pole position.) The championship table is for rewarding accumulated good performances. Each race is supposed to be a do-over, an event in itself.

Secondly, stipulate that each driver must make at least one pit stop under green-flag conditions. Or if we wanted to be truly radical, keep pits closed throughout full-course cautions – though that does raise the specter of cars running out of gas on-track.

Thirdly, if tire marbles are the problem, the track needs to be cleaned at quarter, half and three-quarter race distance, or whenever a full-course yellow falls roughly within those boundaries.

For 2010, Firestone must change the construction of its tires to a harder compound that doesn’t send balls of rubber spraying off the ideal racing line and onto the potential second or third grooves. It’s wrong that one company should take all the rap for what’s wrong with the current breed of Indy car, but there’s no question that soft rubber equals marbles equals one-groove racetracks.

Honda must be pushed into being far braver with its power boost. The recent announcement that a 200rpm rise in the rev-limit has produced a temporary five horsepower boost left me unsure whether to laugh or cry. It’s hard to make a 50hp boost without a turbocharger, but 5hp isn’t enough, and everyone knows it. What's the maximum that can be extracted out of their V8 as a push-to-pass extra? Someone in Honda must know.

Dallara, before it sets to work on the new breed of Indy car for (probably) 2012, has to modify the current car. The underwings need to have proper venturis, and the overall area of the front and rear wings needs to be heavily reduced, so that they are simply balance trimming tabs. For those worried that increasing ground effects would increase corner speeds on ovals, the harder tires should help offset that. Increased corner speeds on road courses could be prevented by stipulating a minimum ride height and stiff springs that don’t allow the car to be sucked down to the track. And street courses are generally bumpy enough that the ride-height has to be raised beyond the venturis’ effective range.

And then bring on the new engines for 2011 with 800hp turbos (minimum), please.

The IndyCar Series cannot afford to wait if it is trying to entice additional fans and sponsors. Hell, races like we've seen at most of the ovals this year could even drive away the loyalists. A series cannot be sold on one driver alone, and even if Danica Patrick had won at Richmond, that wouldn't have made it a good race.

The time for action – short-, medium- and long-term – is now. Major decisions need to be forced through now. As Dixon, the reigning champion, told RACER: “Not long ago, we had side-by-side racing at places like Richmond and Texas and Kansas and Chicago. It’s what made the IRL. Now we have single-file races in which the winner is decided by fuel strategy or a fast pit stop or an untimely crash. That’s not conducive to drawing new fans to the sport.

“All of us are racers at heart. It’s cool when you’re winning, but the show is the key. The show determines whether more people watch, which determines whether more sponsors come on board and whether more people are exposed to our sport. We need to be putting on a show, but right now we’re not.”

Another season, another career twist, another new team – it's just a year in the life of Ryan Hunter-Reay. RACER editor David Malsher wonders (for the umpteenth time) why a driver of such obvious star potential is so rarely given a chance to establish himself in U.S. open-wheel racing.

I used to worry about Ryan Hunter-Reay. I worried that years of being smacked around by Lady Luck and certain prominent – albeit temporary – figures in his career would eventually have a detrimental effect on his personality. One day his professional attitude would surely drop during a live TV interview and he’d vent his frustrations. Given what he’s sucked up over the last five years, if he spat it back out in bitter fashion, most would sympathize.

Never happened. Never gonna happen. Professional attitude doesn’t begin to describe it. During the Month of May, as the Vision Racing crew searched in vain for a remedy for his wayward No. 21 car (overlooking the obvious “box of matches and can of gas” answer), Hunter-Reay was stoical. No, he didn’t have an explanation, because if he did, he’d have done something about it and helped his engineer find the answer. No, the car wasn’t as off the pace as it had been in Kansas, but it was a damn sight scarier, given the necessity for low downforce at The Brickyard during qualifying. But yes, he was desperately unhappy. Not only was there his personal pride at stake, there was also the sheer disappointment: after his second place at St. Petersburg in the IndyCar Series’ opening round, this was a major comedown.

Trying to tame the second Vision car pitched Hunter-Reay into a high-speed spin that had fortunately resulted in relatively light contact with the wall in the first week of practice, but the repaired car was no better. Teammate Ed Carpenter, who’s no sucker on ovals, had tried the No. 21 car and agreed that there was something fundamentally wrong with it, despite it having a near-identical setup to his own No. 20 car. Ryan appreciated the endorsement of his own views, but it got him no nearer a solution.

And yet on the second weekend, during Versus’ generally excellent coverage of the Month of May, Jack Arute carried out an interview with Hunter-Reay, and his line of questions and comments clearly implied that he, Arute, reckoned the problem was in the driver’s head, presumably legacy of his first-week accident.

It was a moment to cringe. “OK, this is it,” I thought as I watched the broadcast, “this is where Ryan cracks and shoves the microphone somewhere the sun doesn’t shine.” But though clearly taken aback, Ryan retained his dignity while firmly correcting his questioner. A few hours later, RH-R was still annoyed by the incident. A month on, he simply dismisses the moment. “I think Jack made a mistake just because he was on the spot, and trying to wrap things up with a soundbite,” he says now.

Anyone who had wondered if there was a kernel of truth in what Arute had observed was surely put right if they watched the final weekend of qualifying/Bump Day. No way can a spooked driver take a car by the scruff of the neck in the manner that Hunter-Reay did when it was all on the line at Indy, and bump it miraculously into the field.

Ultimately, however, he posted the race’s second retirement with a crash and spin into the pit lane, yet dogged persistence through the races at Milwaukee Mile and at Texas Motor Speedway have somehow kept Hunter-Reay in the Top 10 in the ICS point standings after six rounds. However, Vision has now reverted to its preseason plan of contracting to a one-car outfit (for Carpenter), so there’s another change for Hunter-Reay this weekend as he switches to A.J. Foyt Racing.

But Vision team owner Tony George’s original intention for ’09 was to have been a one-car team. So why suddenly expand – just nine days before the start of the season, remember – when it involved brushing cobwebs off tubs and taking chassis out of mothballs? Given IZOD’s commitment to Hunter-Reay and the series, leaving the company’s poster-child on the sidelines was unthinkable, yes. It was a brave commitment by George to commit to sign Hunter-Reay when IZOD’s business to business deals aren’t expected to yield for another three to four months, yes.

But one wonders if George’s decision was unnecessarily brave. It came 36 hours after Ryan had tested for HVM Racing, a team where he had flourished back in 2004. Had he stayed on there, it would have meant working with – or at least, near – engineer Michael Cannon again (Cannon currently engineers EJ Viso). That seemed like a good match, and one that would have kept IZOD just as happy. No one makes a little go a long way like HVM owner Keith Wiggins and, however skeletal that team is currently, I’m not alone in believing Hunter-Reay’s results in a second HVM car would have been better than in a second Vision machine. My point is, had George left Ryan there, he could still have scooped him up for 2010, as per his stated intention.

Instead he went to Vision, a team insufficiently prepared to run two cars, and the results – St Pete apart – showed that all too graphically. So Hunter-Reay is in the middle of yet another disrupted season, but he at least heads to A.J. Foyt Racing with a spring in his step. Had he been coming from the No. 20 Vision car, you might have described it as a sideways move. After his season so far, however, you’ve got to assume that the only way is up. Given Foyt Racing’s situation post-Vitor Meira shunt, the feeling of relief will be mutual.

“A.J. and Larry Foyt had spoken with me in the past,” says Hunter-Reay, when we speak just before he flies to Iowa for IndyCar's seventh round, “but we had never quite got our acts together. Then in Texas, Tony went to them and said, ‘Look, rather than play musical chairs with your drivers, how about this: I’ll keep this driver still on contract, he’ll still be mine, but you can use him to the end of the year.’

“That made me happy. Tony’s a straight shooter, you know? He tells you how it is, and he’s a good guy. He could have told me, ‘Hey, your stuff’s on the doorstep, I’ll see you later.’ But instead he went ahead and did what he thought was right, and lived up to his contract – which is a lot more than some people do.”

Interesting comment, that. Yes, people have moved the goalposts on Ryan’s behalf – and to his detriment – in years gone by, and that’s contributed to the absurd statistic that he’s never spent two complete seasons with the same team. But he’s quick to point out that the state of flux that has dominated his Champ Car/IndyCar career has largely been down to sheer misfortune. “A lot of it’s been timing,” he says. “I mean, we had a really good situation going with Rahal Letterman Racing. From when I joined mid-2007 to the end of ’08, we really had momentum building. It was a great program. And right up until November last year, we thought that was going to continue. But then fuel prices went down, ethanol was hurting pretty bad, and circumstances what they were, the sponsor disappeared. Suddenly I was back to square one.

“If there’s one thing that has constantly…haunted… my career , I suppose, it’s been sponsor funding falling through. And I’m talking team sponsors. But I guess that’s the case for drivers throughout U.S. open-wheel, unless you’re with Penske or Ganassi.”

One thing we have to hope for is that, given the support he has from IZOD, and the faith that Tony George clearly has with him, that Hunter-Reay is able to go to Foyt’s team and drive with confidence. If I had a criticism of RH-R in the past, it was that out-of-cockpit considerations would sometimes intrude in his gameplan in a given race. For example, if he was driving for a cash-strapped team or had been in a run of bad results – irrespective of whether they were his fault or not – he’d settle for a definite fifth place, rather than go hard for a fourth. I guess that’s only human, and probably shows wisdom, but sometimes I was left wondering what he might have achieved if he’d felt uninhibited.

Last year laid my doubts to rest, for at Rahal Letterman Racing, he cut loose. The most obvious demonstration of this was his pass on Darren Manning for the win at Watkins Glen last year: it was opportunistic and incisive. His drive to third at Surfers Paradise was no less impressive. And his overtaking maneuvers on ovals last year were clinical and well judged. Hunter-Reay concurs that he does give of his best in the circumstances RLR presented to him.

“You’re always trying to surround yourself with people who believe in the direction they’re headed, who believe in you as a driver, who you can believe in at pit stop time, and so on. It’s a chemistry deal. And yes, that definitely reflects in the on-track performance of a driver. If you’re going out there worrying about stuff falling off your car or you don’t believe in who you’re driving for, you’re not going to get that extra three or four tenths out of the car each lap. Last year at RLR, I was in a great environment of complete and total support: there was no “take it easy out there” message. It was: “Hey, go get ’em!” And that’s why we had the performances we did. We were on a roll…

“It’s an interesting point, actually. Had St Pete this year not been my first race with Vision where I needed to gather a lot of points, I’d definitely have stuffed it down the inside of Briscoe [the winner]. To get into second, I stuck my nose down the inside of Justin (Wilson) and being the guy he is, he played it clean, thought I was committed to the bottom lane and left a gap and I took advantage.”

A man like A.J. Foyt is really going to appreciate that kind of feistiness, and so it’s important for Hunter-Reay to get back into that maximum attack mode starting this weekend in Iowa. Neither team nor driver can seriously be expecting victories this year, so there’s no harm in just going for every chance and opportunity that’s north of 50/50.

“Yeah, absolutely. I’m going to drive to the standards that he’s expecting,” says Ryan. “We’re not anticipating lighting the world on fire right away, but we’ll go out and work on it and punch above our weight and see what comes of it. I’m going there hoping to bring them continuity and a solution at the same time.

“My goal is to have a solid and consistent end to the season, while having some breakout performances. That’s my whole M.O. at the moment. Take it to the next level, and be able to show up some places and put that ABC Supply car in the top five.”

Then, come the end of the season, Ryan will be on the move again, back to Vision when, one hopes, the team will be ready to run two cars at a competitive level. It’s no less than he deserves.

He’s 28, American, smart, good-looking, and he’s a race-winner whenever he’s in the right team. In other words, he's a sponsor’s dream and potentially the IndyCar Series' biggest (male) draw. You could consider him the 21st century Peter Revson.

That’s the theory. To put it into practice will require a team that is prepared to reciprocate Ryan's dedication and match his talent.

David Malsher

But is that dream about to end? RACER Editor David Malsher examines the curious case of Will Power, for whom the 93rd running of the Indy 500 may be his last in a Penske Indy car.


I’m of the firm belief that there’s very little that Will Power can’t do in a racecar. Outside the cockpit, he doesn’t show the effervescent emotion of a Helio Castroneves or the easygoing geniality of a Rick Mears. But Roger Penske has employed all sorts of different personalities in his Indy car team, down the years; all he asks is that when they’re in the cockpit, they deliver. Power does this, while also being one of those rare top-line racers whose ego is completely under control; he doesn’t need to be subversive. He turns up, he does his job, he goes home and avoids politics.

So when Penske needed a substitute for Castroneves while the Brazilian was fighting the law, he didn’t grab Power in an act of desperation. Given the status of his team, The Captain could have taken any driver who wasn’t under contract – and had the firepower, if not the lack of ethics, to entice even those who had already signed for a rival team.

But Penske chose Power, because he’d been impressed with what he’d seen while trackside in 2008, as Power frequently transcended the limitations of a first-year IndyCar team. That and the fact that Will also came highly recommended by one of The Captain’s former employees, Derrick Walker. In 2006, Walker’s team had taken the lad from Toowoomba, Australia to sixth in the Champ Car points standings and Rookie of the Year title, and the following year, the Power/Walker combo had been (eventual champion) Sebastien Bourdais’ most consistent challenger in terms of outright pace.

This year, Will did make a silly error during a pit stop in St. Petersburg, which cost him a definite podium, and possibly a win. But in Long Beach, he was the star of the three-driver Penske Racing lineup. On the Saturday, the returning Castroneves stole the publicity, Ryan Briscoe fouled up his qualifying run which put him on the back foot, while Power simply went out in a zero-mileage car and took pole position. Had he not been out of radio contact with his team, and also devoid of data on his dash, Power would have stopped running full lean fuel mixture, and he’s convinced he would have reversed the result that saw him beaten to the win by Chip Ganassi Racing’s Dario Franchitti. Given Will’s often brutal honesty about his performances, it would be foolish to not believe him.

So there shouldn’t be any doubts clouding the future for Power. He’s undoubtedly one of the most talented open-wheel racecar drivers in North America. He’s undoubtedly with one of the two best open-wheel racing teams in North America. And undoubtedly he was chosen by that team for the right reasons.

And yet in two weeks’ time, he may be out of a ride. For now, the 93rd running of the Indy 500 will be Power’s last race for Penske, because Castroneves is back, Briscoe is under contract and Roger has only secured funding for two full-time IndyCar Series entries. Castroneves and Briscoe are both race winners who (despite having never done so) should be capable of winning titles for Penske. Power is now a third wheel.

Yet Penske’s decision cannot be described as brutal: far from it. He legitimately could have dumped Power mid-weekend at Long Beach, but instead gave car No. 3 back to Castroneves mid-weekend and wheeled out a third car, No. 12, and a third crew for Will. Not only that, Penske also told Power that the third Penske Dallara was his for Indy 500. Such a magnanimous gesture wasn’t entirely altruistic: it was positive PR for Penske Racing to be seen to be making a generous gesture of thanks, the No. 12’s Verizon Wireless livery must have made a new (to IndyCar) sponsor very happy, and of course having a third talented driver in a third car increased by 50 percent Penske Racing’s chances of winning a race.

But you can also be sure that there was genuine gratitude there, too, and Power is grateful in return. As he has repeatedly stressed to those who have expressed pity for his plight, he knew going into the deal that he’d only be driving No. 3 for the whole season if the Castroneves court case ended the Brazilian’s career. He had jumped at the chance because even one or two races with Penske are a golden opportunity. After missing the Kansas race, he stands by that viewpoint.

“As I walked in the gates at Kansas and there were Indy cars going around, it was a strange feeling, yeah,” he agrees, when we speak after Pole Day at Indy, in which Power nailed a spot on the outside of the third row. “I mean, it’s the first time in eight years that I’ve sat out a race, so I was a bit… sad at first, feeling a bit sorry for myself. But looking at the bigger picture, I’m racing the Indy 500 with Penske! I’m grateful to get that and Long Beach. They didn’t have to do that, and I appreciate the effort they made to get in a sponsor and run a third car for me.”

So what everyone’s dying to know now is Power’s situation as of the Monday after Indy. “For now, I’ve just got the 500,” he confirms. “If Roger wants to retain me for the whole season, that’s up to him. I get the impression that if I do a good job that he may run me in some select races further on, but I don’t know.”

But will you become a free agent, available to drive for anyone, I ask. “I don’t know many teams who want a driver who doesn’t bring money,” he chuckles, before dismissing the rumors about being farmed out to Luczo Dragon. “Nah, that hasn’t been discussed at all; not with me, at least.”

Okay, I admit it was a facetious question. On the Thursday before the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach – some 24 hours before he knew of Helio’s return – we had chatted about his new circumstances and it became clear that he’d regard anything non-Penske as a step down. “There’s no comparison with any other team I’ve been with,” he told me. “Penske is how I imagine a good Formula 1 team must be like. Honestly, I never want to leave. Why would I?”

I did wonder, though, if the sudden change in his circumstances the next day might have changed his views since that conversation. Mario Andretti he’s not, but Power I’ve always found to be a good interview. He thinks very carefully about a question, so while there might be a long pause before the answer arrives, when it does, it’s worth hearing. So when I ask him, free agent or not, whether he’d be prepared to sit out this season if it meant a guaranteed full season in a Penske IndyCar in 2010, it surprises me that he answers in a heartbeat.

“I would most definitely do that – oh yeah! If there was a chance to have a full IndyCar race seat with Penske next year, I’d happily do Grand-Am for them or even just sit around this year! Man, I just want that opportunity, because I know I can win the championship.”

Given the relatively even distribution of points between the main title contenders thus far in 2009, Power would still be in the running for this season’s championship, despite him missing the Kansas race, if he were given a third Penske. If Verizon were to step up its sponsorship for a third car, however, it would have to be enough to pay for extra staff to be brought in.

“A lot of my crew are from the Grand-Am team,” says Power, “and Roger’s not going to compromise one important part of his operation to come up with what would look like a bonus car, an extra car, for another part of his operation, y’know? I don’t think there is the manpower to go to three Indy cars right now. I think there could be selected races where the Grand-Am guys might be available, but again, that’s a question for Roger or Tim [Cindric, team president]. I can’t answer it.

Select races, eh? OK then, here’s two. Given that the Milwaukee race is just a week after Indy (and there’s no clashing Grand-Am race), it would be a real pity if that No. 12 car was lying dormant. The relatively flat Wisconsin one-miler is one of the most demanding ovals in the world, and was the setting for Power’s first ever oval race in the 2006 Champ Car World Series, yet he qualified an amazing fifth. Last year, driving for KV Racing, he started fourth. It won’t have escaped Penske or Cindric’s attention that Power thus started ahead of both Penske cars. Hmm…

And then there’s Toronto. Again, no Grand-Am race that weekend. Power won the last race there, in Champ Car, in convincing fashion. In treacherously wet and greasy conditions, he made many of his peers look heavy-handed at best, inept at worst. And remember, Castroneves has no recent experience of that track, and Briscoe has none at all.

“To be honest, we haven’t really talked about anything beyond Indy 500," replies Power diplomatically, when I suggest those two obvious venues at which he should run. "They just want me to do a good job there, keep my focus, and after that I guess we’ll sit down and talk about what possibilities there are for me then.”

THE INDY 500

As a Brickyard sophomore, Power’s found preparations for this year’s Indy 500 night-and-day different from last year. But it’s not just track experience, but working with Penske Racing that has made the difference. An incident-free run-up to Pole Day saw him take ninth on the grid. Given that Castroneves and Briscoe had annexed first and second, you might expect Power to have been disappointed. In fact, his mature attitude is that of a veteran.

“The team told me the day before qualifying that they just wanted me to lock myself into the Top 11, so if I do one run and it’s good enough, and I haven’t really got a shot at being on the front row, then it’s not worth going out and risking anything. That’s exactly what happened: I was in line there at the end of the day, but Tim pulled me out because if you look at the overall picture, it doesn’t matter if you start fifth or ninth or tenth. It’s such a long race.

“Yeah, I’d love to have gone for another run, because the track had got 1mph quicker and that would have moved me up quite a few spots. I’m a competitor, and that’s what I like to do, you know? But looking at the bigger picture, it really doesn’t matter. It might have been interesting to have tried to get a Penske 1-2-3, and tied up the front row, but because you have to withdraw each run, you can get caught out and not make the top 11 at all…”

“Anyway, one thing I’ve learned – and man, I’ve already learned a lot with Penske already! – is what a good car feels like on an oval. My run in the morning I think were the easiest four laps I’ve ever done on an oval,” he laughs. “They were as solid as you like, very easily done. I came back in and I thought, ‘Damn! I should have trimmed it out even more.’ That’s why I would have been happy to go for that second run, because I knew I could go quicker with both the track conditions and the trim levels.

“But I know from talking to people like [Penske driver coach] Rick Mears and also from my own experience, that that’s exactly when it can all go wrong. When it comes so easy that you think there must be a lot more to find, you can get too confident, you over-reach yourself and suddenly you’re chewing on the wall. I had said that to Mike Conway – 'Be careful. This track eventually catches everyone.’

“I went up to visit him in hospital last night, and I tried to cheer him up. I pointed out that I can’t think of one person in the field this year who hasn’t hit the wall – and that’s just at Indy! It’s a very, very weird place like that.”

You’d think that Indy 500 being the biggest race in the world, and Penske having such a great track record there – 14 wins, 14 pole positions – that Power might feel the pressure to win. The “logic” might go along the lines of the fact that he’s not a rookie any more, he’s in a Penske, therefore he’s an automatically a victory contender.” If he has felt that pressure, Will’s good at concealing it.

“The way that Roger and Tim run the show is that your first year at Penske is like your rookie year, basically,” he observes. “You’re just going into it to qualify in the Top 11 and run a solid race. Apparently it was the same for Briscoe when he joined: one run in qualifying, and then bring the car home in one piece on race day. The last thing you want to do is end up in the wall. The best thing you can do is be consistent all day, don’t make a mistake on the track or in the pitlane, and if you’ve got a chance to win at the end of the race, obviously you’ve got to go for it. But otherwise, you want to finish strongly and make no mistakes.”

OK then, what about the pressure from within? Does he feel like he’s driving for his career?

“Hmmm… Yeah I do sort of, but not to impress other teams. I’m driving for my career at Penske. You know, if I was here to impress other teams, it would be a different story: I’d be out there trying to lead every lap and win. But I want my career to be at Penske, and Roger doesn’t like seeing his cars in the wall! So I’m going to try and do a solid job and race smart. Listen to what they say, and listen to people like Rick.”

Ah yes, Rick Mears. When ex-Indy car ace Bryan Herta did a Racer2Racer interview with Rick Mears for RACER magazine at Long Beach, I took the chance to ask Rick about his thoughts on Power. “Oh, he’s super-quick, isn’t he?” he replied, “a very special talent.” Will is equally enamored of his mentor, as the four-time Indy 500 winner and three-time IndyCar champion passes on his race smarts and sage advice.

“Rick is on the radio all the time, and he’s there in the debrief, guiding me constantly,” says Power. “He’s very, very knowledgeable, but also just so good to talk to. There was one point in the first day of running here at Indy and I was getting more confident. We started trimming the car out, and I was saying that we should go the next step. And Rick said, ‘Hold on, be careful, because the car was really moving around on that last run.’ That kind of kept me in check. He’s there to remind me not to just drive fast but to make sure that the car is going its quickest, that its balance is right. He’s very, very good to work with.”

The same goes for the whole team, he says. “There’s a complete data exchange between Helio, Ryan and myself. It’s an open book: that’s how Penske works. No secrets. It’s such a great environment. Everyone knows in this team that if you do a good job, you’ve got a great future. In most teams in open-wheel racing, you can be doing really well and still lose your job at the end of the year – you never know when your last day will be, and I’m talking there not just about drivers, but the mechanics and engineers. At Penske, you’re kept up to date all the time, and between everyone on the team there’s such a positive atmosphere, it’s a real happy place to be. I suppose to put it another way, there’s no uncertainty at Penske.”

I think he may have missed the supreme irony in that last comment. The only uncertainty in Penske Racing’s IndyCar squad surrounds Will Power and his future there. He has done a great job so far, and he’s in the ideal environment to have his shattering pace on street/road courses molded into oval racing excellence. As part of the Penske environment, he’s even becoming sponsor-savvy. At one point during our conversation, the phone connection died. He called back immediately: “Sorry mate. This bloody phone drops calls. It’s obviously not a Verizon, is it? We’d never have dropped a call if it had been Verizon…”

Look for Justin Wilson, Alex Tagliani and Ryan Hunter-Reay to take the fight to the big guns at this weekend's Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, says David Malsher.



To paraphrase Bruce Springsteen, spring is here and the time is right for racing in the street. Yup: It’s Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach time again. North America’s most famous street race is also North America’s second biggest open-wheel race, so if you’re in SoCal make sure you’re there.

Here at RACER we couldn’t be more excited. For one thing the race is almost on our doorstep; according to Google Maps, our office is located precisely 25.2 miles away from the Aquarium around which this 35-year-old course circulates. Secondly, this is the first time since 2001 that the race has featured all of the top open-wheel talent in this continent. (Remember, last year’s edition was the final hurrah of Champ Car, so the likes of Justin Wilson, Will Power and Paul Tracy were here, while the IndyCar Series stars were racing in Motegi.)

But the third reason to be revved up is that IndyCar’s opening round, at St. Petersburg, promises a season of surprising victory contenders, at least on circuits that involve right turns. The ovals, almost by definition, will feature close racing, but with the exception of Milwaukee, these are a near closed shop to anyone outside of Chip Ganassi Racing, Team Penske and Andretti Green Racing. The best chances for anyone outside of the Big Three come on street courses and, to a lesser extent, road courses.

The likely Small Three at Long Beach made themselves apparent at St. Pete. Yes, a Penske won, but it was only a bad restart by the leader that gave Ryan Briscoe the perfect chance to slip through. That leader? The Dale Coyne Racing car of Justin Wilson. The lanky Brit qualified second and led 52 laps.

Wilson is as fast a driver as you’ll find in the IndyCar Series, and he took pole at Long Beach last year for Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing, though sadly the car broke near the start. The evidence for a repeat pole-winning performance this weekend is strong.

As for the race… Well, Wilson’s race engineer, Bill Pappas, is not only great at his job (as previous series champs Juan Montoya and Gil de Ferran will attest), his employment by DCR is also symbolic of a renewed sense of purpose from team owner Dale Coyne. Dale has been criticized in years past for having hired guns on wheel guns – his drivers would complain about losing hard-earned track position during pit stops. Well, if St. Pete is anything to go by, that’s no longer an issue. At their final stop, the DCR crew was so slick, it leapfrogged Wilson ahead of Briscoe and back into the lead.

One of the other big surprises at St. Pete was Ryan Hunter-Reay’s performance for Vision Racing. That’s not to knock the team, but the last time a Vision-owned car went that quickly on a road/street course, it was courtesy of the Paul Tracy-piloted, Walker Racing-run machine at Edmonton last year. As for Hunter-Reay himself, yes, we know he’s talented, but his build-up to the season was less than ideal, as he got just 50 laps of testing (with HVM Racing). Less than 10 days before St. Pete, this American-born, IZOD-backed driver of proven talent and race-winning pedigree landed the ride at Tony George’s team.

Starting 14th didn’t look promising, but by Sunday, Ryan and Neil Fife – who came with RH-R from Rahal Letterman Racing – were getting their act together and he inexorably rose up the lap charts. The driver was swift, smart and aggressive, the team ran a canny strategy, and when Wilson bobbled, Hunter-Reay was able to convert a podium finish – already something of a miracle, given the background circumstances – into a runner-up position.

Given that Vision hasn’t raced at Long Beach before and therefore has no baseline car setup, it’s tough to envisage a similar result this weekend. But on the plus side, Ryan himself is fired up and he’s also become a more ballsy racer over the past couple of years. He’s also very good at defense – he doesn’t get distracted by what’s going on in his mirrors, and will rigidly hold his racing line, leaving it to the attacker to find a way past.

The other people who truly punched above their weight in St. Pete, and can be expected to fly at TGPLB, are Alex Tagliani and Conquest Racing. Look behind their unfortunate result (10th, one lap down) and you’ll see another story of overachievement. Like Hunter-Reay, Alex was only confirmed at the last minute. Unlike Hunter-Reay, Tag didn’t do any testing at all in the off-season, and Conquest could only afford to do the Homestead test (with Jaime Camara). Also, given that Tagliani had been a Champ Car driver, he hadn’t raced at St. Petersburg since 2003. Oh, and he had only made three starts in a Dallara-Honda, finishing a fighting fourth in the last of these, at the non-championship Surfers Paradise race.

And yet Tag and Conquest race engineer Brandon Fry, as in Surfers, worked miracles and qualified seventh in St Pete. That meant the Rexall Edmonton Indy-sponsored car outqualified Ganassi’s reigning champion, Scott Dixon as well as three of the four Andretti Green machines. On raceday, Graham Rahal’s spinning car obliged Tagliani to take to the infield where he rode over the wing of the polesitter, and rejoined in 10th. Later on, an assault from behind by Vitor Meira’s A.J. Foyt Racing machine punctured the Conquest’s car’s left-rear and the consequent pit stop put him a lap down. But that didn’t prevent him from recording the second fastest lap of the race…

So at Long Beach, look to the Tagliani/Conquest combo to claim yet more prestigious scalps. Alex qualified on the front-row for Walker Racing here last year and kept lights-to-flag leader Will Power under pressure for 80 percent of the race. If you can get out to the Esses at the back of the circuit, you’ll also see what makes him so damn quick around here: he appears fearless. Given that Eric Bachelart’s squad is living race to race at the moment, despite having shrunk from a two-car to one-car operation in the off-season, a win is no less than the team or driver deserves. The fact that it’s a real possibility says everything about the quality of team and driver, and that's why RACER.com will carry Alex's diary this weekend and is delighted to sign him up as a columnist for 2009.

It would be dumb to expect these three underdogs to have it their own way: let’s face it, there’s no weak spot in the Ganassi or Penske driver lineup, and Tony Kanaan (presently the only one of AGR’s drivers who shines on street courses) showed in St. Pete that he’s still an ace. And out of deference to Graham Rahal’s own strong views on the subject – check out his column on this site – (click here for story), I’ll say he is an expected contender for victory, rather than an out of left field one. His point is that, given the Newman/Haas/Lanigan team’s quality and off-season progress, he should be regarded as one of the favorites.

The IndyCar Series has quite a collection of marks in its deficit column – excessive driver rotation, not enough marketing, low TV ratings, cars that need another 150hp at least, and a dreadful points system are the first things that spring to my mind. But the series’ heartbeat – the racing – is getting stronger, and that, combined with the increased prominence of Graham Rahal and Ryan Hunter-Reay, should aid recovery.

But its other attraction is the increasing number of potential victors at any given race. We want to see the open-wheel branch of U.S. motorsport recapture the imagination of the American public by producing great performances from unpredictable sources. We want to head to events knowing there are a dozen possible winners that weekend. We want to see races where a team with one-fifth of the budget of Penske can still take on Captain Roger’s armada.

This weekend’s Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach should be another of those. With Justin Wilson, Alex Tagliani and Ryan Hunter-Reay and their respective teams in the form they’re in, we may have the first IndyCar top-three since Motegi in 2003 that’s lacking a representative from Ganassi, Penske and AGR. But hang on – have I just ruined the surprise?

David Malsher is the Editor of RACER magazine