2009-10-20

Newman-Wachs to Indycar?


Big news coming from Marshall Pruett regarding the future of Newman-Wachs Racing and one of their young american stars, the 2009 Atlantic Series Champion, John Edwards.

In Marshall's latest piece on SpeedTV.com, he more or less puts it out there that NWR will be headed to either the Indycar Series or GP2 in 2010, and his plans include watching John Edwards drive which ever car he enters.

This will most likely deal the final blow to the Atlantic series but will be a huge help for the Indycar Series. The Atlantic series will lose one of it's marquee teams and will add to the troubles that series is seeing right now while the Indycar Series could see the addition of a talented, accomplished, young American in a car no one had thought would be on the entry list in 2010.

Of course, all this depends on Eddie Wachs ability to find the funding, most likely from the Nuclear Energy sector, but in the article, he seems pretty sure he will pull it off, and Mr. Pruett also goes on to add to the article that it isn't beyond Wachs to pull money out of his own pockets to help fund the project.

Before we go any further, for those who don't follow American Open-Wheel talent, or the Atlantics series, this is not the John Edwards that ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 and 2008 (and subsequently was found to have cheated on his wife with some party worker).

No, this John Edwards was racing in the Atlantic series at 16 years old for Forsythe Championship Racing. He was racing in FIA sanctioned racing series in Europe at 14 years old. He has won the Star Mazda Championship in 2008, and followed it up by winning the Atlantic Championship in 2009. He is American. He is young. He is more of what the IRL needs.

Of course all this means nothing in the grand scheme of things. Until the 18 year old Edwards straps into a Dallara and does some testing we won't know if he can handle the higher horsepower cars or if he can adapt to the ovals like many before him have. But if he manages to pull it all together, and NWR latches on (at first, to learn) with a good and experienced ICS team, then we can expect big things from the young American.

And the addition of NWR to the IRL, even if at first they are partnered with an existing team would lead to the creation of a strong Indycar Series team down the road.

There's not much bad you can say about this news coming from Mr. Pruett and Mr. Wachs. Hopefully it comes through. The number of Americans in the IRL are dropping and he would help counter that, especially talented Americans.

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