Lotus Engines to Indy?

Rumors are swirling that Lotus Group is looking to join the Indycar Series in 2010 as a way to promote the Lotus brand. James Rossiter is supposedly being backed by Lotus in 2010 at KVRT as a Team Lotus USA/KVRT car. James tested at Barber with KVRT and ran around the middle of the pack.

However, this story keeps evolving. Today Autocar is reporting that Lotus has confirmed they will be returning to Indycar racing at the season opening event in Sao Paolo on March 14th.

"Although full details are yet to be confirmed, it is expected a Lotus-branded team will run two cars in the championship under the Team Lotus USA banner. They will be Dallara built and Honda powered."

Now, that right there is a bit of a surprise. We had expected James Rossiter to run at KVRT with Lotus backing, but if the Lotus branded team is to be 2 cars, I'm not sure exactly what that means. Will KVRT be running four cars full time with two cars as KVRT and two cars as Team Lotus USA? Maybe there will be two KVRT/Team Lotus USA cars (Sato and Rossiter) with E.J. Viso competing as KVRT? Or will Team Lotus end up being a completely different entity altogether.

Either way, this is a pretty big development if an additional car comes out of the Lotus deal.

But the bigger development here is that Lotus Group just announced a partnership with Kevin Kalkhoven-owned Cosworth to develop engines for Lotus' road cars as well as all Lotus motorsport projects. Now, this would explain why Lotus Group would approach KVRT to help them run their program.

Considering Lotus Group wants to get involved, and they just recently signed a deal with Cosworth to develop both road and racing engines for them, is it that far fetched to believe that Lotus is looking to make a bid to join Honda in 2012 in the Indycar Series?

"Currently Honda supplies the 3.5-litre V8 powerplants in Indycar, but Lotus is said to be considering a bid to takeover the supply when Honda's contract ends in 2011."

This Team Lotus USA and Lotus Group's involvement in the Izod Indycar Series sounds like it is about to pick up. Watching the developments surrounding Lotus Group will be fun to watch heading into the not-so-distant future.

Honda might have someone to play with after all.

Here Come The Announcements

With the Barber test starting tomorrow, driver announcements are in abundance when it comes to the 2010 Izod Indycar Season.

Let's see what has happened recently. KVRT announced that they signed Takuma Sato to drive one of their Dallara's in 2010. Today, KVRT announced one of the worst kept secrets in the IRL, that they would be running E.J. Viso in 2010 with PDVSA, Herbalife, CANTV and SBA Airlines supporting him.

Today, NHL Racing (and Honda) confirmed that Hideki Mutoh would be running for NHL Racing in 2010 with Formula Dream/Panasonic on the car.

On the Dale Coyne front, I've got some ideas in my head. Milka Duno is getting fitted for a seat for the test at Barber in one of Dale's Dallara's. Try to follow my logic here. Of course, this is all hearsay and hope on my part.

Dale Coyne Racing #19 Boy Scouts America Car will be run by J.R. Hildebrand.
Dale Coyne Racing #18 will be run by Milka Duno on all ovals and a couple of road courses while Jonathan Summerton will fill in on the road courses Milka doesn't run.

How does that sounds? We know J.R. has tested at Coyne, and we know that Jonathan Summerton says he will probably be going to Barber this week to test. Anyone like the sounds of that? Sure, part time for Jonathan wouldn't be as great as full time, but it would be better then no Jonathan!

Alright, back to facts.

Conquest has yet to announce that they signed Mario Romancini for 2010 out of Firestone Indy Lights. He will drive along side another Brazilian who is familiar with the team from 2008, Jaime Camara. Neither of the two drivers have been announced, but Mario should be for the full season, while I'm not sure about Jaime.

As far as I'm concerned, this is two more cars then I previously thought we'd see in 2010 on the grid.

As I was typing, I realized that the entry list for the Barber test this week was posted.

There are 21 cars on the entry list with 3 TBA's (1 from KVRT, Conquest, and HVM each). If you want my opinion, we should assume James Rossiter will be in the KVRT TBA (#32), Mario Romancini in Conquest's machine (#34) and Simona de Silvestro in HVM's only entry (#78). Sarah Fisher and Jay Howard will be sharing the #67 SFR entry.

Absent from the list of entries is Dale Coyne's proposed two cars. I'm not sure if that means they won't attend the test, or if Dale just didn't file the paperwork in time.

I know some teams were considering not attending the tests due to the low ambient and track temperatures predicted at Barber. Supposedly they will be lucky if they hit the 50's in Alabama, which is just about where the Firestone rubber needs to be to function as planned.

So right now, if you assume that each of the cars that attend the Barber test race full or part seasons (SFR is planning two part time efforts), we should see somewhere between 20 to 26 cars at various tracks outside of Indy. You take the 21 cars at Barber, add in two Dale Coyne cars, 1 Conquest, and hopefully one more HVM, and you've got yourself a pretty good lineup.

Oh, and don't forget that Graham Rahal will most likely end up racing somewhere in 2010 in a Dallara.

Tomas Scheckter has some money kickin' around, and Mario Moraes still might have some money kickin' around.

It doesn't look as bad as some are predicting now does it?

EDIT: It was pointed out in a few places that Dan Wheldon and Panther Racing were left off the Barber test entry list. Not sure if they will be attending or not, but please do not start fear mongering that they will not be participating in 2010!

What A Miserable Week It's Been

In a year where it's been pretty constant between between good news, bad news, and any news, this past week has seen none of the above. The Indycars put on a good show this past Sunday in Toronto, and that was after a nice race at Watkins Glen a week earlier. That's two good non-ovals in a row. Hell, if that isn't momentum for the series, I don't know what is. Just the fact that neither of these two races were ovals and provided more passing then most of the ovals so far this season says alot, and it is something good for the series to run with right now.

There were plenty of feel good stories dating back to Watkins Glen including Justin Wilson and Dale Coyne (finally) winning, the slight hiccup of the Penske/Ganassi domination, PT getting into a car for 3 races in a row, Will Power getting back into a car at Toronto and Edmonton, and add another Canadian in Tags for the Toronto and Edmonton. Fans were happy to see these things happen. I was so happy to see Dale Coyne get his first 'W', I haven't been so excited for a long time watching an IC race. Then you follow that up seeing a nice field in Toronto with strong showings from the Canadian boys, and just an overall excellent race with a little controversy involving PT (who would had thought?), and you've got two good weeks of Indycar racing heading into the second half of the season.

Of course, there were still some negatives like Milwaukee and the lack of passing that could or could not be fixed right now, how do we know? Throw in diminishing Indy Lights car counts and you've got yourself some news.

Basically, the point I'm trying to make is that it hasn't been all rosy the last couple of weeks, but atleast there has been news about the league and things to talk about. It seems like the IRL PR department took their summer vacation this week as all we really have of newsworthiness is Brian Barnhart talking about the radical new cars on Indycar.com. That wasn't even really that big a deal because he hardly even talked about it.

Come on, give us something to talk about. Give us a hint about the schedule so we have something to overtalk about. Or do an episode of 'Up to Speed' with E.J. Viso or Mario Moraes and get some dirt on them for the demolition derby they had after the Toronto race, get that mini-feud heated up a bit. Imagine Mario Moraes calling Viso a snake or Viso calling Moraes a... umm... he already called him a "Monkey with a bag full of money", so think of something else he could call him. Hell, put out a sex tape with the AGR drivers, it should get some news, and don't worry, they won't see eachother often after this season so it won't be too awkward.

Point is this, the IRL had a boatload of momentum with these last two races on ABC which had decent ratings (in comparison with the rest of the season) and this week, they are laying dormant and doing nothing to maintain that momentum. They have to do something to stay in the minds of the fans. Take a look at the blog roll, even us bloggers are having difficulty finding things to talk about. This silence from the league isn't going to help grow the league back to where it should be, it's only going to hurt.

I guess somethings might never change though.