The first 2011 Silly Season driver/team thread

[I am evil Homer]

Sad that Jakes - of all the potentail young brits - is the one getting that drive. There are far, far better drivers in the UK who would do an immense job. The problem is many see the only route right now is to do Asia GP series, GP2 etc to get to F1.

[Mr. Mister]

Any talk of a driver for AFS? I'd obviously prefer Wheldon, as I imagine most would, but I do wonder if AFS would reunite with Raphael Matos, considering he has some money for the season if I recall correctly.

AFS have confirmed Matos for St. Pete. Lucky speculation there.

[MDS]

Looking at the scoreboard at the moment I count 23 full time entries and that number could easily reach 26 if Hinch's deal comes together, Coyne fields two cars (With four or more drivers) Dragon racing makes a comeback and AFS strings together a full year. There could be as many as 30 cars at Texas with 28 or more at Baltimore.


Team Penske
3 Helio Castroneves Shell (Indy and several other races)/AAA of SoCal (Long Beach and Texas) Guidepoint
6 Ryan Brisco Izod/Guidepoint
12 Will Power – Verizon Wireless

Panther Racing
4 J.R Hildebrand National Guard (R)

KV Lotus Racing
5 Takuma Sato Lotus/Panasonic/Formula Dream
8 E.J. Viso Lotus/PDVSA/Venezuela tourism
15?/11?/32? Tony Kannan ?/Lotus/Itaipava

Andretti Autosport
7 Danica Patrick Go Daddy
26 Marco Andretti Venom Energy Drink
27 Mike Conway Go Daddy (First three races then who knows)
28 Ryan Hunter Reay DHL/Sundrop

Target Chip Ganassi
9 Scott Dixon – Target
10 Dario Franchitti – Target
38 Graham Rahal – Service Central brands
83 Charlie Kimball- Novo Nordisk (R)

AJFE
14 Vitor Meria ABC Construction

Dale Coyne
18 Sebasten Bourdais?/Milka Duno?/
19 ? John Jakes?

Dreyer and Reinbold Racing
22 Justin Wilson Z-Line designs
24 Ana Beatrix

Conquest Racing
34 Sebastien Saavedra

Sam Schmidt/FAZZT
77 Alex Tagliani B&W Speakers/Hot Wheels of Canada

HVM Racing
78 Simona De Silvestro Entergy/Nuclear power

Newman Haas Racing
02 Oriol Servia TBA
06 James Hinchcliff (R) TBD (At least Indy, Edmonton and Toronto, hopefully full season)

Part time efforts

Sarah Fisher Raciing
67 Ed Carpenter Dollar General (St. Petersburg, Indy, Milwaukee, Texas, Iowa, Mid-Ohio, NHIS, Baltimore, Kentucky, Las Vegas)

AFS Racing
26 Rafa Matos (St Pete and hoping to string together a full season)

Dragon Racing
2 Paul Tracy (trying to rise from the ashes)

Sam Schmidt Motorsports
99 Townsend Bell (Indy)
99 Wade Cunningham Texas, Kentucky and Las Vegas

Indy One offs
Rahal Letterman Racing
17 Jay Howard?

Andretti Autosport/Richard Petty Motorsport
43 John Andretti Window World

DR&R (Teams sources have said their will be four cars at Indy but no word on who)
42
44

Highcroft Racing
?? Simon Pagenaud (Indy and Vegas)

Bryan Herta Autosport
27

SH Racing
Tomas Sheckter Redline Energy Drink


Free Agents
Alex Lloyd
Dan Wheldon
J.K. Vernay
Martin “Plowy” Plowman
Jonathan Summerton
Katherine Legge

[EagleEye]

Team Penske
3 Helio Castroneves Shell (Indy and several other races)/AAA of SoCal (Long Beach and Texas) Guidepoint
6 Ryan Brisco Izod/Guidepoint
12 Will Power – Verizon Wireless

Panther Racing
4 J.R Hildebrand National Guard (R)

KV Lotus Racing
5 Takuma Sato Lotus/Panasonic/Formula Dream
8 E.J. Viso Lotus/PDVSA/Venezuela tourism
11Tony Kannan ?/Lotus/Itaipava

Andretti Autosport
7 Danica Patrick Go Daddy
26 Marco Andretti Venom Energy Drink
27 Mike Conway Go Daddy (First three races then who knows)
28 Ryan Hunter Reay DHL/Sundrop

Target Chip Ganassi
9 Scott Dixon – Target
10 Dario Franchitti – Target
38 Graham Rahal – Service Central brands
83 Charlie Kimball- Novo Nordisk (R)

AJFE
14 Vitor Meria ABC Construction

Dale Coyne
18 Sebasten Bourdais?/Milka Duno?/
19 TBD

Dreyer and Reinbold Racing
22 Justin Wilson Z-Line designs
24 Ana Beatrix

Conquest Racing
34 Sebastien Saavedra

Sam Schmidt/FAZZT
77 Alex Tagliani B&W Speakers/Hot Wheels of Canada

HVM Racing
78 Simona De Silvestro Entergy/Nuclear power

Newman Haas Racing
02 Oriol Servia TBA
06 James Hinchcliff (R) TBD (At least Indy, Edmonton and Toronto, hopefully full season)

Part time efforts

Sarah Fisher Raciing
67 Ed Carpenter Dollar General (St. Petersburg, Indy, Milwaukee, Texas, Iowa, Mid-Ohio, NHIS, Baltimore, Kentucky, Las Vegas)

AFS Racing
TBD Rafa Matos (St Pete and hoping to string together a full season)

Dragon Racing
2 Paul Tracy (trying to rise from the ashes)

Sam Schmidt Motorsports
99 Townsend Bell (Indy)
99 Wade Cunningham Texas, Kentucky and Las Vegas

Indy One offs
Rahal Letterman Racing
17 Jay Howard?

Andretti Autosport/Richard Petty Motorsport
43 John Andretti Window World

DR&R (Teams sources have said their will be four cars at Indy but no word on who)
42
44

Highcroft Racing
?? Simon Pagenaud (Indy and Vegas)

Bryan Herta Autosport "Team Zed"
TBD -

Cough, read your email, cough

Free Agents
Alex Lloyd
J.K. Vernay
Martin “Plowy” Plowman
Jonathan Summerton
Katherine Legge

[Dr. Krogshöj]

AFS have confirmed Matos for St. Pete. Lucky speculation there.

It would have been quite an embarrassment for the "Road to Indy" if the guy who won nearly every significant American open-wheel feeder series was left out in the cold, wouldn't it?

[MDS]

Cough, read your email, cough

What email? Haven't gotten anything here or on any of my public accounts from you or anyone else racing related.

[EagleEye]

What email? Haven't gotten anything here or on any of my public accounts from you or anyone else racing related.

I sent you a tip, several in fact.

Team "Zed" is Herta. They have a driver signed. Indy only for now, maybe some other races and another important function. But I could not really say here until now...he was on your free agent list, missing from my corrected list....

[MDS]

I pretty much figured Zed was Herta but it's not really a secret. Herta's publicly said he wants to Indy and five or six other races this year at Indy last year. Didn't know they had a driver signed, but that makes sense. Good for them.

[Scotty G.]

It would have been quite an embarrassment for the "Road to Indy" if the guy who won nearly every significant American open-wheel feeder series was left out in the cold, wouldn't it?

Not as embarrassing as having Wheldon, Kanaan, Tracy and Rice left out in the cold.

Matos got 2 years with a full-time team to show what he had. He didn't show much.

I'd much rather see Alex Lloyd get another shot than Matos. Lloyd only got 1 full year and that was with Coyne's lousy outfit with Milka Duno as his teammate. And Lloyd got a top 5 at Indy. All Matos has done at Indy in his 2 starts is tear up a lot of equipment.

[jwhite9185]

I sent you a tip, several in fact.

Team "Zed" is Herta. They have a driver signed. Indy only for now, maybe some other races and another important function. But I could not really say here until now...he was on your free agent list, missing from my corrected list....

So Wheldon then