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photo: Chris Jones

The IndyCar Series and Firestone Indy Lights were on the streets of Long Beach this previous weekend.  The Long Beach race was not the most eventful one, being that there is not much passing room on the course.  The streets of Long Beach are very narrow yet very quick.  This was evident with the on track incidents that took place over the course of the weekend.

Will Power took the pole on Saturday after being pushed into a third Penske car after Helio Castroneves was aquitted of charges of tax evasion.  Roger Penske was more than prepared for Helio’s aquittal having brought the #12 car to Long Beach.  Verizon Wireless who wasn’t a main sponsor for Penske Racing stepped up to sponsor Will Power for the Grand Prix of Long Beach.  Will, along with the rest of his crew already had firesuits that were stitched with the Verizon branding.  This was definitely a plan B that Roger Penske had thought completely through.  The only mistake that Power’s crew (Penske’s ALMS crew) seemed to have made was forgetting to reattach a wire under the sidepod for the radio.  Power ran without a radio the whole race and was able to place second.

We had no radio and no telemetry, so I was doing it off the steering wheel and off the pit board.  I’m very happy; second is very good. I feel happy for all the guys. They put a lot of effort in. I really want to thank Roger Penske and Tim Cindric for bringing this car here for me. They’ve given me a fantastic ride and I can’t thank them enough.”

Danica Patrick turned the weekend around after starting from P22 Sunday due to an on track incident during the IndyCar qualifying session.  She finished 4th right behind teammate Tony Kanaan.

It was a much better result, obviously, for us and I’m real proud of how we all kept our heads down and made a result out of it instead of getting down.  The Motorola guys did a great job and got me out quickly.”

The talk of the weekend however had to be Helio Castroneves.  Helio was aquitted Friday and arrived in Long Beach early Saturday morning.  He was very happy to be there and almost broke down in the press conference that was held by Penske racing that day.  After going into the wall attenuator first on Saturday, there was a possibility that Helio might have had a concussion and might not be cleared to drive on Sunday.  Helio was cleared Sunday morning and started 8th He finished 7th.

Team 3G had to be happy with their performance.  Stanton Barrett started 21st and stayed out of trouble the whole race to finish P17.  This is Team 3G’s first year in the IndyCar Series and Stanton Barrett’s 2nd IndyCar Series race start.  His first time ever in an IndyCar was at the Homestead Miami Speedway test this previous February and his first time on a road course was in late March at Palm Beach International Raceway where his team elected to have a private test instead of testing with the rest of the series at Barber Motorsports Park. 

Next Sunday the IndyCar Series is off to Kansas Speedway for the Road Runner Turbo Indy 300.  You can watch the qualifying show Saturday at 6 p.m. ET and the race Sunday at 4 p.m. ET on VERSUS and VERSUS HD

After utilizing the media center at Homestead Miami Speedway for 3 days.  I finally took time to notice what a great well built facility it is.  I overhead members of HMS stating that the facility cost roughly $8 million to build.  It is definitely money well spent since everyone from the media, to the drivers, and PR reps seemed to be pretty comfortable.  The final testing sessions proved to be productive ones for Ryan Briscoe and Team Penske.  They were the first and only team to break the 212 mph mark.  At the backend of the field is Stanton Barrett once again.  You have to keep in mind that Team 3G with Stanton in the cockpit had only turned 150 laps in an IndyCar on an oval prior to tonights testing. Team 3G managed to raise there best lap from 201 mph on Monday night to 206 mph tonight.  This is a pretty drastic improvement despite the fact that they remained the slowest overall.  After spoke with team owner Steve Sudler and he was pleased with improvement and is confident that Team 3G will continue to pick up the pace into the 2009 season.  I managed to speak with Ryan Hunter-Reay and he is currently trying to work on a putting something together with HVM.  He spent yesterday evening watching the test session from HVM’s pit box.  Hopefully the two can bring some sort of sponsorship deal together.