IndyCar Season Review: E.J. Viso

2010 may not have been the breakout season that E.J. Viso hoped for, but he certainly moved up a rung or two on the IZOD IndyCar Series ladder.

After spending two years with the underfunded HVM Racing, including a horrid 2009 sidetracked by seven consecutive DNFs to start the year, Viso moved to KV Racing Technology, widely accepted as one of the best ex-Champ Car teams in IndyCar. Joining ex-Formula 1 pilot Takuma Sato and the returning Mario Moraes, Viso looked to have a strong 2010.

In reality, it was anything but, as accidents and bad luck kept the Venezuelan driver 17th in points despite a handful of shining performances.

The first instance of bad luck came at St. Petersburg, where Viso briefly led due to clever pit strategy. Unfortunately, transmission issues knocked him three laps down and he finished a disappointing 17th. Either way, Viso carried the team's banner through the first few road course races of the season with his consistency and lack of DNFs, a far cry from his 2009 struggles.

When the series began its oval slate, Viso's luck briefly changed, as wrecks at Kansas and Indianapolis marked his first two of the year. But he rebounded with a respectable 11th place at Texas, before scoring his best career IndyCar finish at Iowa, coming home third.

The next five races were a mixed bag; decent finishes at Watkins Glen and Edmonton were juxtaposed against crashes in Glen practice and during the race at Mid-Ohio. Combined with the frequent accidents of his teammates, Viso and KVRT were hanging on a thread by the end of the season, which saw Viso finish no better than 15th in any of the final six races.

When the smoke cleared (in the case of KVRT, quite literally), Viso had his best career points position (17th) and had scored 262 points, improving on his 2009 total by 14. However, he was still 24 off his 2008 total, which remains his career best. After a year together, though, Viso and KVRT, who will likely pair up again next year, should be able to ascend the standings further in 2011.

Silly Season Roundup: November 18, 2010

A muddy IZOD IndyCar Series silly season picture for 2011 has begun to clear up, as big names begin to sign contracts, or at least line them up, with major teams.

Since the future appears bright, with Chevrolet and Lotus joining the fray in 2012, it's easy to forget that IndyCar has another season of spec racing ahead of it, and plenty of driver contracts to be signed along the way. But just this week, we saw the confirmation of two drivers returning to their teams from 2010, and another setting up a ride with an old friend for 2011.

Justin Wilson announced his return to the No. 22 Dreyer & Reinbold Racing Dallara-Honda for 2011 last Thursday, turning down offers from a handful of other teams. He'll continue a relationship that yielded an 11th-place points finish in 2010 and shone on the road and street courses all year.

Meanwhile, E.J. Viso confirmed to Yahoo! Sports Argentina that he will remain in IndyCar next season, likely returning to KV Racing Technology as the team's relationship with Lotus expands. Previously, team owner Jimmy Vasser had suggested to SpeedTV.com that the team's driver lineup would remain the same in 2011 as in 2010, although this year was a hellish season for the team that saw a plethora of wrecks.

For those who like to speculate, the article also mentioned Takuma Sato as a KVRT driver, but not Mario Moraes. Lotus has also confirmed full-time sponsorship commitment of only two cars for next year.

Meanwhile, Tony Kanaan and Gil de Ferran are a few steps closer to working together next season. Kanaan recently spent time in a de Ferran Dragon Racing car, with the intent on critiquing the team's engineering progress thus far. But de Ferran's previous driver, Raphael Matos, just finished the second of a two-year deal, and the ever-popular Kanaan is heading to Brazil, his and de Ferran's home country, to seek out sponsors. The 2003 Indianapolis 500 winner is adamant that he will employ the 2004 IndyCar champion next season.

Opinion: KV Finally Turning a Corner?

Helio Castroneves' blocking penalty was obviously the big story of this Sunday's Honda Indy Edmonton. Everybody has their own opinion on what happened - whether it was a block or not - and it's sure to remain one of the biggest stories kicking around the IndyCar blogosphere until we race at Mid-Ohio in two weeks.

But looking a little further up the official results than Castroneves' penalty-affected 10th place finish, one can see a pretty solid day for KV Racing Technology - finishes of sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth for the four cars of Paul Tracy, Takuma Sato, E.J. Viso, and Mario Moraes.

This comes in stark contrast to the previous ten races on the schedule, which had seen 20 crashes in 30 combined starts for Sato, Viso, and Moraes. The "KV" in KVRT may as well have stood for "Krash Victims," the way that 2010 had been going.

2009 and 2010 have been like night and day for the team owned by former Champ Car owner Kevin Kalkhoven and 1996 CART champion Jimmy Vasser. For one, 2009 featured a one-car effort for Moraes, a limited-schedule entry for Tracy, and an Indy 500 entry for Townsend Bell. Moraes began to hit his stride at the end of the year with some solid top five finishes, Tracy was generally competitive, and Bell's one start yielded a fourth place finish in the season's biggest race.

This year, the team found the money to expand to three full-time cars. Viso brought his PDVSA sponsorship to the team, Sato came with some Honda support, and James Rossiter was set to run a third car with sponsorship from Marisco Liqueur. Add to this the support of Lotus Cars - stemming from their partnership with engine builder Cosworth, which is partially owned by Kalkhoven - and strong finishes at the end of 2009, and the team looked like a contender.

But Rossiter's funding fell through, leading the team to bring Moraes back in at the last minute with zero time spent testing. When the team went to Brazil for the season-opening Sao Paulo Indy 300, Moraes made a catastrophic and stupid error in the first turn, failing to slow down for an accident ahead and ending up on top of Marco Andretti's car. Sato was knocked out in the wreck ahead.

So it's gone for KV all year. Moraes sits 14th in points with five DNFs, Viso 16th with two, and Sato 21st with six. The only two races before Edmonton in which all three KV cars finished were at Barber and Watkins Glen. The entire team has shown big-finish potential when they've kept the cars off the wall, but with an average of two accidents per race weekend for three cars, that's been hit or miss, so to speak.

Tracy has, despite missing the Indy 500 this year, been the team's most consistent driver in his two appearances. He finished 13th in Toronto but led laps, and of course led the team with his sixth place run at Edmonton.

Unless the momentum from Edmonton can be sustained over the final six races of the year, however, look for changes at KV next season. If I'm Jimmy Vasser, I'm honestly considering clearing house. The team's three drivers have plenty of potential, but potential means little when the team has to be suffering financially from all the torn up equipment. And the drivers' sponsors, as supportive as they have been thus far, can't be willing to finance this much longer.

Perhaps one of the issues is the relative inexperience of the drivers. Sato's eight years in Formula 1 do not necessarily translate to the slower, lower-revving IndyCar. Viso and Moraes both entered the series in 2008. Tracy, on the other hand, has been racing American open-wheel cars since the early 1990s, and to this day remains a threat to win every time he takes to the track.

Another issue stems from the team's relatively quick expansion from one car to three. Yes, the trio worked well at Indianapolis last year, but that was only for one race. Even with experienced drivers in the cars, the team likely would have had some of these same struggles, if not necessarily as high of a crash count.

What would make the most sense, sponsorship dollars willing, would be to keep one of the team's driver prospects for next year, put a veteran like Tracy in a second car, and leave it at that. This would allow the veteran to help show the young driver how to be consistent in an IndyCar, while also greatly easing the burden on the team. Keep in mind that its best years in CART came when they ran two cars, usually featuring a young driver paired with a veteran, and its first, decently successful, year in IndyCar was the same way.

But in a sport where money now comes at a premium, it's not always possible to build the ideal team. Vasser and his crew will have to find a way to work through the team's struggles and turn lessons learned and momentum built at the end of this year into success next year and beyond.

IndyCar Race Review: Iowa Corn Indy 250

Tony Kanaan ended a 34-race winless drought and Michael Andretti won his second race of the season after a winless 2009 as the IZOD IndyCar Series finished its first oval segment of the 2010 season with today's Iowa Corn Indy 250.

It was the 15th career open-wheel win for Kanaan, his first since Richmond in 2008, and the first time that the Brazilian did not suffer a race-ending accident in an Iowa event. He led 62 laps, holding the point for the first time since Chicago last year.

It also marked the second race win at Iowa for Andretti Autosport, and their first since the inaugural event in 2007 with Dario Franchitti. However, neither Franchitti nor the other Andretti cars had quite the same amount of success as Kanaan; Franchitti's transmission gave out late in the race, dropping him to 18th, while the other three Andretti cars of Ryan Hunter-Reay (8th), Danica Patrick (10th), and Marco Andretti (15th) fell off the lead lap.

Helio Castroneves held the lead with as few as a dozen laps to go, but Kanaan positioned himself perfectly for the victory, conserving 11 of his 24 allotted overtake assists for the final 11 laps. Castroneves had nine assists remaining, but they were not enough; with each assist lasting about halfway around the 7/8 mile track, Kanaan could run with extra horsepower for about the entire final segment of the race.

Castroneves had encountered issues with Kanaan earlier in the race, coming very close to his countryman on pit road early in the race. Castroneves was stuck between Kanaan and Scott Dixon racing out of the pits, overcorrected to avoid Kanaan's left rear and careened into Dixon, giving both cars a little air. Kanaan also had a pit incident with Hunter-Reay as the American pulled into his pit.

E.J. Viso finished third, salvaging one solid finish for KV Racing Technology. Mario Moraes became a victim of Justin Wilson's turn three spin at the beginning of the event, eliminating one of the three KV cars before anybody could even get into a rhythm. Takuma Sato, in the lead Lotus-sponsored KV car, had a fantastic run going before trailing Alex Lloyd too closely into the turns on lap 177, losing the air off his car, and sliding up into the wall.

Iowa also featured support races that went all the way down the Road to Indy ladder. In Firestone Indy Lights, former Andretti driver Sebastien Saavedra held off his replacement, Martin Plowman, for the victory. Conor Daly led all 100 laps of the Star Mazda race for his fourth consecutive victory in that series, and Sage Karam (also driving for Andretti) won his third US Formula 2000 event of the season.

Morning After: Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg

A collection of thoughts sparked by yesterday's Sao Paulo Indy 300 in Brazil:

GOOD TO SEE... Alex Tagliani finish sixth after getting torpedoed in Brazil. His young FAZZT Race Team has come together quite nicely in only two races, and may establish themselves as a top-10 team, week in and week out, by the end of the year.

DISAPPOINTED NOT TO SEE... E.J. Viso make it to the finish without having problems. Viso's car was strong in the late stages of the race, and gearbox failure ruined what should have been a great battle to the end between him and Will Power.

BIGGEST SURPRISE... Nobody who finished in the top five in Brazil, besides Power, had a solid points day in St. Pete. Nobody who finished well in St. Petersburg had a great day in Sao Paulo, either. So a driver a full year removed from his last full season of competition takes a 44-point lead into the third race of the season - almost enough of a cushion to take a race off.

LEAST SHOCKING... Mario Moraes having another rough day. He held up a lot of the field while he was lapped, and by the time he finally got out of the way, Dan Wheldon's broken right rear suspension caused the Brit to launch into Moraes' car.

LEADING THE PACK... Power now has a win in major American open-wheel racing in each of the last four seasons. He's the first IRL driver to win the first two races of the season since Sam Hornish Jr. in 2001. (The last time any major American open-wheeler pulled off the feat was in 2006, when Sebastien Bourdais did it in Champ Car.)

BRINGING UP THE REAR... Moraes, Alex Lloyd, Milka Duno, and Takuma Sato have failed to finish both races thus far this year. Sato's solid run was compromised when his team told him to refrain from pitting for five laps while he had front wing issues. Duno spun before the race even started.

NEXT YEAR'S RACE... will hopefully be a lot drier, and won't need to be postponed until Monday.

IndyCar Race Preview: Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg

The IZOD IndyCar Series runs its first stateside race of the season this Sunday on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida. The Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg will be run as an IndyCar event for the sixth time. Ryan Briscoe won the event last year.

Briscoe has been fast in two out of three practice sessions, posting the third-quickest time in sessions 1 and 3. The biggest story of the young season, however, continues to be his Team Penske teammate, Will Power. Power, coming off a win in Brazil two weeks ago, has paced the field in all three practice sessions, and will clearly be fast in the upcoming race. In the second session, his best lap was an astounding seven tenths of a second faster than the next car. Power almost seems like a lock to take home the checkered flag this weekend, based on both practice speeds and momentum carried over from two weeks ago.

Over the three practices, nine cars besides Power's have turned laps good enough to put them in the top five in at least one session. None, however, have been up there in all three sessions, or nearly as consistent as Power. The Chip Ganassi Racing teams, as well as Penske's other cars, have also been fast most of the time. Other than Penske, only Ganassi has had a car in the top five in all three sessions, but neither individual car has been fast in all three.

A surprise towards the top of the charts in the third session was E.J. Viso, whose lap of 1:02.3615 was good enough for second place in the session, about a quarter of a second behind Power. Viso was sixth in the second session as well, a marked improvement from his first session pace, where he was a second and a half off the pace. Viso's best career IndyCar finish came at St. Petersburg in 2008, when he placed fourth.

As for the Firestone Indy Lights cars, Martin Plowman paced the field in the Friday's practice session in preparation for tomorrow's race. He was followed in that session by James Hinchcliffe, who was about .12 seconds off the pace. On Saturday, however, they swapped spots at the front of the field, with Hinchcliffe holding a .16 second advantage over Plowman. Look for the two, widely viewed as the top contenders for this year's Indy Lights title, to battle for the win this weekend.

IndyCar Season Preview: KV Racing Technology

KV Racing Technology appears ready to establish itself as one of the "big three" in the IZOD IndyCar Series in 2010, fielding three full-time cars for Takuma Sato, E.J. Viso, and Mario Moraes.

They were the top former Champ Car team in 2008, bringing over Oriol Servia and Will Power to IndyCar and winning the final Champ Car race with Power at Long Beach. While most transitioning Champ Car drivers were declared rookies in IndyCar, Servia's consistent performance led the series to declare him a veteran about halfway through the season. Last year, Moraes took over the team's lead car, and ended the year with four consecutive finishes of seventh or better as he began to establish himself as a legitimate contender.

This year, team owner Jimmy Vasser took the money from longtime Honda Formula 1 driver Sato and Venezuelan oil-backed Viso, and put them in cars that were already fast. The results were two cars that were often near the top of the charts in testing, with Sato challenging some of the top teams in the series in his first IndyCar experience.

Moraes did not test for the team, as James Rossiter was briefly in the seat, but when his funding fell through, Moraes was brought back for the duration. Vasser's tutelage last year helped calm the young driver, who often raced like a dart without feathers and actually wrecked Viso after the checkered flag fell in Toronto last year. Viso, for his part, was no star either, failing to finish each of the first seven races for some reason or another and finishing last in the standings of full-time competitors. He, too, should benefit from the 1996 CART champion's expertise. Given the quality of the equipment that will be furnished for them, they should each contend for their maiden wins in 2010.

Sato, Japan's most successful F1 driver of all time, should contend for victories on the road courses as well. His lack of oval experience and total lack of a ride last year, however, will be the two things that may keep him from the upper echelon of the standings. He will have four races to score a lot of points before the series' first oval stretch, but his only pseudo-oval experience came at Indianapolis in F1; to his credit, he scored his only career F1 podium at the track.

As for a potential fourth car, Rossiter is working to sort out sponsorship issues to return to the team. Paul Tracy will run Indianapolis and likely the Canadian races for the team in a similar program to the one he had with the team last year.

KV has the lineup and the equipment to win races this year, and to fail to do so will be nothing short of a disappointment. It may be too much to ask to put all three drivers in the top half of points, but given the team's driver development record as of late, it isn't out of the question.

Moraes Returns to KVRT

Mario Moraes will return to KV Racing Technology for the 2010 IZOD IndyCar Series season after securing a last-minute deal.

The Brazilian-born Moraes drove for the team last season, finishing 14th in points in 16 starts, and visited with the team during preseason testing last month.

Last season was a bit of a struggle for the young driver. He qualified for last year's Indianapolis 500 on the first day of time trials, only to fall out of the race in a first-lap wreck. He also missed Mid-Ohio due to the death of his father.

After returning to the circuit, however, Moraes finished no worse than seventh, with three top five runs and a best finish of third at Chicagoland. This late season push suggested that Moraes would retain his ride for the 2010 season.

However, Japanese Formula 1 veteran Takuma Sato took over the No. 5 Dallara-Honda that Moraes ran last season, and with E.J. Viso and James Rossiter in the team's other cars during testing, it appeared that Moraes and his backing from Votorantim (a Brazilian industrial conglomerate owned by his grandfather) and Azul Tequila would not return for 2010.

In the past 24 hours, Rossiter's deal to pilot the No. 32 Dallara-Honda fell through, allowing Moraes to return to the team.

Per a news release posted on KVRT's Facebook page, the car will be sponsored by Banco Panamericano, at least for the Brazil race.

IndyCar Season Preview: HVM Racing

HVM Racing entered last year looking to improve on its 2008 results with Venezuelan driver E.J. Viso. Despite reportedly receiving some of the worst equipment of the transitioning Champ Car teams, they still managed to score one top five and seven top-10s.

Last year, however, everything that could have gone wrong for HVM did. Viso failed to finish his first seven races, and even though he only had one DNF after that, the damage was done; Viso brought up the rear of all full-time IZOD IndyCar Series drivers last year. He scored 38 fewer points in 2009 than he did in 2008, and only have one top-10 placing, a seventh at Watkins Glen.

Adding Robert Doornbos to a second car for the last five races didn't help the team, which was already suffering. The former HVM driver in Champ Car failed to finish better than 10th in his five events with the team. Worse, his supposed deal to run for the team in 2010 fell through, and he will not be in Brazil.

Instead, HVM rescued Swiss talent Simona de Silvestro from the dying Atlantic Championship. She won four races in the series last year and finished third in the title hunt, having led the points for most of the year. She has already been hailed as the series' biggest female competition to Danica Patrick for her developmental series success. Like Viso, who brought PDVSA checks and the No. 13 to HVM, de Silvestro brings her Atlantic sponsor, Stargate Worlds, and her Atlantic number, No. 78, to the team.

The first year will likely be an uphill battle, however, as de Silvestro still has not been cleared to run on ovals (owing to her lack of oval experience), and HVM remains one of the series' backmarkers. As talented as de Silvestro has proven herself in Atlantics, she can only be as good as the equipment she is given.

If the team adds a second car later on for Firestone Indy Lights driver Junior Strous, as is hoped, the team may struggle even more, perhaps running beyond its capacity. The advantage to potentially moving up Strous, however, is the return of major sponsor Shell to the sport. Shell used to back some of the best drivers in open-wheel racing as a CART sponsor, but ended its program in the early 2000s to focus on NASCAR. The addition of a major partner may be the push HVM needs to run towards the front of the pack.

HVM Racing has two of the most talented young drivers in all of IndyCar right now, and a plan in place to move up the standings in 2010 and beyond. The only question is if that plan will eventually come to fruition. As long as the checks keep coming, and the drivers keep progressing, the team has an excellent chance at moving up in the next few years. In the meantime, however, patience is a virtue.

De Silvestro Set For 2010

Confirmed via the Twitter accounts of both driver and team, Swiss driver Simona de Silvestro will contest the entire 2010 IZOD IndyCar Series schedule for HVM Racing. She will drive the No. 78 Team Stargate Worlds Dallara-Honda.

De Silvestro, 21, has spent the past three years in the Atlantic Championship, with a best finish of third last year. In 34 career Atlantic starts, she has five wins, four of them coming last year with US RaceTronics (operating under the Stargate Worlds banner). She was in the championship hunt for most of last season, before a retirement on the first lap of the season finale knocked her from contention. Her performance helped her earn a handful of IndyCar tests this offseason, in which she performed respectably.

HVM ran one car for E.J. Viso for most of last season before taking on Robert Doornbos just over halfway in. Viso failed to finish his first seven races, while the best finish Doornbos could muster in five events for the team was 10th place. This came in stark contrast to Doornbos' 2007 season with the team in Champ Car, where he finished third in the championship and won rookie of the year for the team, then known as Minardi Team USA.

Doornbos was originally to run for HVM again in 2010, but funding did not come through. Doornbos' uniform in 2009 carried patches for energy drink maker Red Bull and financial institution ING, although the car itself did not. Red Bull gave Doornbos three starts in Formula 1 in 2006 and ING, like Doornbos, is Dutch. It appears, however, that a difficult season marred by feuding with onetime teammate Graham Rahal and poor performance on ovals ended those sponsorships.

Stargate Worlds is an online role-playing video game that is part of the Stargate science fiction franchise. Still in production, it will be the second Stargate video game to be released. 2010 will be the second season of open-wheel sponsorship for Stargate Worlds and developer Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment.

Barber Test Session 2 Results (February 24, 2010)

In the afternoon IZOD IndyCar Series test session at Barber Motorsports Park, slightly warmer temperatures and more track experience allowed five more drivers to break the 1 minute, 11 second mark.

Ryan Briscoe paced the second session, with a top time of 01:10.50, 21 hundredths of a second faster than Helio Castroneves. Justin Wilson, Will Power (fastest in the morning session), Scott Dixon, and E.J. Viso also topped 1 minute, 11 seconds. Power had been the only driver to do so in the first session, with a lap of 01:10.97.

Takuma Sato again paced all rookies with a lap of 01:11.11 that put him seventh fastest in the field.

Click here for the full results of the second session.