Opinion: A Quantum Leap Back Towards Legitimacy

Those of you lamenting the recent unqualified ride-buyer trend in the IZOD IndyCar Series, take note.

IndyCar's TEAM program - which allocates about $1.3 million to full-time teams in lieu of purse money in 16 of the series' 17 events - has been restructured to accommodate 22, instead of the previous 24, teams.

Those sitting on the sidelines? The second cars of Conquest Racing - which saw five pay drivers take the reins this year - and Dale Coyne Racing, who employed the relentlessly mocked and embarrassingly slow Milka Duno.

With that single step, IndyCar drew a hard line in the ground between who deserves to be there and who doesn't.

Granted, the reality is slightly more complex than that for Conquest. They started the season with Mario Romancini and added Bertrand Baguette in a second car after missing the series' first two events. As the season went on, Romancini yielded to other drivers with more money, and Baguette became the team's lead driver, the two cars' numbers - 34 for the lead car, 36 for Baguette - swapped in reflection. But in the end, the 34 (now Baguette's team), the more deserving team, got paid, and the 36 didn't.

Of course, it seems like a slap in the face to longtime owners Dale Coyne and Eric Bachelart, ex-CART drivers and Champ Car owners. And in a way, it is. These guys have their own side of the story - neither are big-time owners with multi-million dollar sponsorship contracts like Chip Ganassi or Michael Andretti. Neither can afford to employ too many drivers that don't bring at least some money with them.

But, at the same time, they chose to bring on drivers who were clearly miles off the pace. Duno drew the ire of competitors for her consistently slow times, as she has since joining the series. Meanwhile, Bachelart brought on the previously unknown Francesco Dracone, who wasn't much faster in his brief audition with the team, and followed him with Tomas Scheckter and Roger Yasukawa.

Understanding that drivers like this weren't going to cut it if IndyCar ever wants to approach NASCAR again in legitimacy, Randy Bernard and Brian Barnhart had to act quickly. They started by putting Duno on probation over the summer and threatened not to renew her license for 2011; she's not likely to be back. Now the TEAM parameters have been adjusted to penalize the two owners most guilty of hiring unqualified talent last season.

Don't think the rest of the sport isn't taking notice.

While Jimmy Vasser is attempting to retain all three drivers from last year's horror show at KV Racing Technology, he's also talked enthusiastically about putting Paul Tracy, the 2003 CART champion, into a full-time ride after two years of limited schedules. Panther Racing is looking at J.R. Hildebrand, the 2009 Firestone Indy Lights champion, for their lone seat. Chip Ganassi appears poised to start a two-car satellite team out of ex-drag racer Don Prudhomme's shop with young American standouts Graham Rahal and Charlie Kimball.

And perhaps best of all, after a dismal 2010 that saw the team suffer through poor runs with Hideki Mutoh and only employ Rahal for five races - a long way to fall from their seventh place performance in 2009 - Newman/Haas Racing is testing 2010 Lights runner-up James Hinchcliffe and longtime Champ Car stalwart Oriol Servia at Sebring International Raceway in mid-December with the intent of bringing both to the series in 2011.

There's not a single driver on that list that doesn't have the confidence and respect of the majority of the IndyCar paddock. Most have taken victories in IndyCar, Champ Car, or Indy Lights. The only one who hasn't, Kimball, had four runner-up finishes in Lights this year.

That's a huge jump forward from Duno, Dracone, and Mutoh, and an even bigger jump forward from past backmarkers like Marty Roth, Kosuke Matsuura, and Enrique Bernoldi.

It also puts potential sponsors in a bit more of a pressing position. It's still a free market, under which they can shift money to whomever they please. But in order to tap into IndyCar's highly populated markets, desirable fan demographic, and recent positive momentum, and to make sure that the team they work with gets paid at the end of the season, they have to hire a driver with the chops to put on a good show and not stink up the back of the grid.

And, like it was in the sport's heyday, the only ones lamenting will be the ones who aren't fast enough to make the cut.

Opinion: Is There Shame in Being a "Ride Buyer"?

This past weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Graham Rahal made the announcement that we had all been waiting for - that he has secured the funding to compete in the next two IZOD IndyCar Series seasons. Service Central, which hooked up with Rahal for races with Sarah Fisher Racing and Newman/Haas Racing this year, will write the checks for Rahal.

The problem is, Rahal and Service Central haven't signed with a team yet.

Add Rahal to the category of "ride buyers" - professional racecar drivers who bring their own sponsorship dollars to race teams in a poor economy, and are thus installed in the otherwise blank racecars. It's a problem that has plagued much of racing over the past few years; from NASCAR, where Kevin Conway's Extenze sponsorship has landed him multiple rides, to Formula One, where many of the smaller teams take on drivers with personal services contracts.

Worst in the major forms of motorsport is IndyCar, which has seen fewer and fewer fully funded rides over the past few years.

Ride buying is certainly a way of life in racing, and always has been. Any driver with a little bit of talent and a stable paycheck behind him will land himself in a vehicle before the end of the season, if only for one race. The act of buying a ride itself isn't the problem.

The problem in IndyCar is that more and more of the ride buyers are unproven foreign drivers that the fans can't identify (nevermind identify with), and they tear up equipment that is unfamiliar to them. Meanwhile, American drivers that have earned the right to compete in their home country's biggest event, the Indianapolis 500, are stuck on the sidelines because American-based sponsors are wary of committing to them or the race teams.

That isn't to say that some of these ride buyers are undeserving. In fact, a lot of the drivers who have paid their own way into the series have had some solid performances. It's tough for them to take victories with the little teams that usually hire them, but they find ways to assert that they are deserving pilots.

Some of the drivers who have bought rides in one way or another this year include Ryan Hunter-Reay (7th in points and a win at Long Beach for Izod), Danica Patrick (10th and two runner-up finishes for GoDaddy), Justin Wilson (11th, a pole, and two second place runs for Z-Line Designs), Simona de Silvestro (19th in points with some strong road course runs despite the oldest tub in the series for Stargate Worlds), and Bertrand Baguette (22nd despite missing two races, and showing consistent improvement for a slew of Belgian companies). It's hard to make the argument in any of these cases that the drivers didn't deserve to be there, even if only two of those listed above are Americans.

As for other deserving "ride buyers," consider Paul Tracy, the 2003 Champ Car champion and one of the best open-wheel drivers in recent history; Ana Beatriz, a talented Firestone Indy Lights graduate with two wins in that series; Sebastian Saavedra, another Lights grad who has won in every series in which he's ever competed; and now Rahal, who won in his IndyCar debut in 2008 and finished seventh in points in 2009.

No, the problem is not being a ride buyer in this economy. There is no shame in attracting sponsorship to yourself by turning yourself into a solid pitchman, especially when it keeps the talent listed above on the race track. Truth is, once things turn back up and more sponsors come to IndyCar (when/if that happens), these drivers won't need to be hunting for their own money, because they'll all be hired.

The problem is that some of the other ride buyers haven't done much to deserve the seats they hold.

So much has been written about Milka Duno already that it's not worth wasting more space on her, especially when the consensus is that her license will not be renewed for 2011. But consider the incredibly slow mid-season runs of Francesco Dracone with Conquest Racing. Look at the way that all three KV Racing Technology drivers tore up equipment this season. One could even attempt to make a case for Tomas Scheckter based on a handful of mediocre finishes this year.

Meanwhile, North American talents like J.R. Hildebrand, Ed Carpenter, Jonathan Summerton, Rahal, and Tracy, as well as former Champ Car stalwarts like Bruno Junqueira and Oriol Servia, sat on the sidelines for much (if not all) of the season.

It's when these drivers get bumped out of rides that the problems begin to fester. IndyCar is a predominantly American series. Its fans would much rather see hometown heroes like those above race to win than unproven foreign ride buyers tear up equipment. And while everybody understands this, nobody is able to make a case to the sponsors to make this change, because the sponsors are often based elsewhere in the world and have their own markets to look out for.

The term for the concept is tribalism - each side would much prefer to watch the drivers that it identifies with. But as many fans of the sport may exist, there are no fan-sponsored race teams that have a proven track record or consistent money flow. The sponsors win.

IndyCar is in a position of weakness at this point, because limiting these foreign ride buyers to, say, only the ones with race victories in major foreign open-wheel series would be A) discriminatory, and B) severely limiting money flow into the series. Right now, money is as valuable as it's ever been to the sport.

Until the American economy strengthens more and a greater base of American companies view IndyCar as a marketing tool, the problem is going to continue. In the meantime, we're just going to have to put up with ride buyers, worthy or not, because until the series can keep afloat on its own with fully-sponsored cars the way that NASCAR can, we really need the money.

IndyCar Race Preview: Kentucky Indy 300

Perhaps once a year, a race appears on the IZOD IndyCar Series schedule that produces - or at least gives the hope of - interesting and unexpected results.

For years, Surfers Paradise was that race, producing a different winner every year for over a decade. Two years ago, it was St. Petersburg, where Graham Rahal won in his IndyCar debut. Last year, we almost had two: Watkins Glen, where Justin Wilson gave Dale Coyne Racing its first win in 25 years of racing, and Kentucky, where underdog Ed Carpenter nearly stole his first career victory, only to be thwarted at the line by Ryan Briscoe.

This year, Carpenter's driving like he's got unfinished business at the track.

Now a part-time driver employed by a collaboration between Vision and Panther Racing, Carpenter shocked the world with a qualifying average speed of nearly 218 miles per hour, and will start on the pole for Saturday's Kentucky Indy 300. He beat even series points leader (and sudden oval wunderkind) Will Power to the top spot. Carpenter's teammate, Dan Wheldon, will roll off directly behind in third.

If that wasn't crazy enough, Conquest Racing's new de facto lead driver, Bertrand Baguette, qualified in sixth place, with teammate Tomas Scheckter in 10th. They both outpaced last week's winner, Dario Franchitti, who will start 11th. Baguette even beat Team Penske drivers Helio Castroneves (eighth) and Ryan Briscoe (ninth) in the session.

If that wasn't out of left field enough for you, Milka Duno legitimately outqualified two other cars - those of Rahal and Tony Kanaan, respectively. Kanaan was an unfathomable seven miles per hour off the pace, reminiscent of his struggles at Indianapolis earlier this year. Rahal was only five miles per hour off in a Sarah Fisher Racing car that has struggled for much of the season with Jay Howard behind the wheel.

Ryan Hunter-Reay will start shotgun on the field after crashing in qualifying and being unable to produce a time.

Paul Tracy, making his first oval start in half a decade, will start 23rd for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, the slowest of the cars that maintained a pace reasonably close to that of the leader. He was the last driver to break 214 miles per hour in qualifying.

IndyCar Race Preview: Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma

Will Power may have already clinched the Mario Andretti Trophy as the best road course driver in the IZOD IndyCar Series this year, but he'll have plenty of unfinished business when he takes to the Infineon Raceway for this weekend's Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma.

Power's season ended here prematurely last year when a freak accident with Nelson Philippe landed him on the sidelines with two fractured vertebrae in his back. By now, most IndyCar fans know the story: originally a temp replacement at Team Penske while Helio Castroneves' legal issues were sorted out, owner Roger Penske found the money to run Power in a handful of other events last year, and his performance was stellar until the Sonoma incident.

Regardless, Penske took a chance on the Australian full-time this year, shutting down his sports car operation to make room, and Power rewarded the veteran owner by winning his first two races back this season. He has taken four of the eight road course races run thus far this year, and he hasn't finished any worse than fourth running on the twisties.

But just because he has the road course championship in hand, and a solid 41-point advantage in the overall standings, doesn't mean that a Power victory lap at Sonoma is a certainty. It's especially not the case when his top rival in all categories, 2009 series champion Dario Franchitti, led every lap to win from the pole here last year.

Franchitti got the best of Power during Friday practice, as the series' top two drivers were 1-2 atop the speed charts. 16 drivers posted laps within a second of Franchitti's best, a 78.297-second circuit. Alex Tagliani, Franchitti teammate Scott Dixon, and Justin Wilson completed the top five in that session.

J.R. Hildebrand, in 13th with a lap of 79.039 seconds, was the top rookie in the session. Wilson's teammate at Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, and a California native who calls Infineon his home track, Hildebrand will attempt to top the injured Mike Conway's third-place finish in this race last year. He had nearly half a second on Bertrand Baguette, the second-best rookie.

In all, 23 of the 25 drivers attempting the race were within two seconds of Franchitti's best lap. The lone two exceptions were Francesco Dracone, making only his second career IndyCar start with Conquest Racing, and Milka Duno, who has been consistently off the pace all year with Dale Coyne Racing. The buzz around Duno gets stronger every week, with more and more fans calling for the IRL powers that be to park her. Last year, Duno had her second best finish of the season at Infineon, placing 17th.

Penske 1-2-3 in Glen Qualifying

It’s Roger Penske’s world, and we’re all just living in it – at least if qualifying results for Sunday’s IZOD IndyCar Series Camping World Grand Prix at the Glen are to be believed.

His drivers, Will Power, Helio Castroneves, and Ryan Briscoe, will start 1-2-3 for the 60-lap event after besting Dario Franchitti, Takuma Sato, and defending race winner Justin Wilson in Firestone Fast Six qualifying. It marks Team Penske’s eighth consecutive open-wheel pole, a new record, as the team has won every Glen pole six years running.

Power capitalized on an extra set of alternate-compound Firestone tires in the final qualifying session, allowing him to post the fastest lap of the day. Castroneves pushed a little too hard, sliding into the turn eight gravel, but was allowed to keep his fast two laps because he only brought out a local yellow. IndyCar rules stipulate that any driver who causes a full-course caution during a qualifying session will have their two best laps voided.

Such was the case for Ryan Hunter-Reay in the first round of qualifying. Despite turning some very competitive laps in the second group, he lost control of his car and required the assistance of emergency vehicles to remove him from the gravel. To make matters worse, Hunter-Reay, having to push especially hard to make up the loss of his two hot laps, had his run compromised by the slow car of Milka Duno at the end of the session, and did not advance to round two.

Hunter-Reay immediately made his way over to Duno’s pit at the end of the session and expressed his feelings. “There are 14, 15 corners here, and she’s the 15th or 16th corner,” Hunter-Reay said after the session, affirming the same comments that many drivers have made over the past couple of years.

Dale Coyne, Duno’s owner, was quick to point out that Duno was not the driver who caused a full-course yellow. Coyne won here last year with Wilson; this year, in a reversal of fortune, his two cars will start 22nd and 24th.

Most of the cars to advance to the second round of qualifying came from the sport’s four top teams: Team Penske (all three), Chip Ganassi Racing (two), Andretti Autosport (two), and Dreyer & Reinbold Racing (two). Raphael Matos and de Ferran Dragon Racing made the tenth car, and KV Racing rebounded from E.J. Viso’s crash in practice to put their other two cars, driven by Sato and Mario Moraes, in the top 12 as well.

Meanwhile, Hunter-Reay, Tony Kanaan, Dan Wheldon, Alex Tagliani, Vitor Meira, and most prominently, Danica Patrick were among the names not to advance.

Bumping in and out of the top six in the second round of qualifying took place almost every lap. Eventually, Scott Dixon, who won this event in each of its first three years, found himself in seventh, on the outside looking in. Both Andretti cars that had advanced, driven by Marco Andretti and Adam Carroll, found themselves in the same position. Carroll was, in fact, a surprise to make the second round, as he had struggled in morning practice. Matos, Moraes, and Paul Tracy were the other three not to move on.

But the focus of the day remains on Power, who has now won an impressive fifth pole in nine starts thus far this year. Briscoe won two of the other three consecutive Penske poles, while Castroneves led the field to green at Indianapolis. Power is also the series’ only multiple winner thus far, taking the checkers at Sao Paulo and Barber, while Castroneves and Briscoe have a victory apiece.

In Firestone Indy Lights, James Hinchcliffe of Team Moore Racing won the pole for tomorrow’s Corning 100, which will directly precede the IZOD IndyCar Series race at 1:30 PM.

The Camping World Grand Prix at the Glen will begin at 3:30 PM. It will be broadcast live on ABC.

IndyCar Season Preview: Dale Coyne Racing

Dale Coyne took his first win in over 20 seasons as an open-wheel owner last season in the IZOD IndyCar Series, taking victory with Justin Wilson at Watkins Glen. The team also nearly won the season-opening race at St. Petersburg, and scored a third top five finish at Edmonton, allowing Wilson to take ninth in points.

Boosted by this success, Coyne attempted to return to two cars for 2010, as his team had run in 2008 and in the former Champ Car World Series. Coyne signed the Boy Scouts of America to a sponsorship deal for the No. 19, and attempted to bring back Wilson to the No. 18.

Unfortunately, both Wilson and sponsor Z-Line Designs moved on, taking over the lead car at Dreyer & Reinbold Racing. As a result, Dale Coyne Racing will have two brand new drivers for 2010.

Milka Duno, longtime series backmarker, will bring her Citgo sponsorship to the No. 18 Dallara-Honda vacated by Wilson, and will run her first full-time IndyCar schedule. Duno still has not raced on a handful of the tracks on the series schedule, making this year a likely learning experience. Duno's best finish in a limited 2009 schedule was 16th at Kansas, her first race of the year.

After chasing Graham Rahal and J.R. Hildebrand for the No. 19 Dallara-Honda, Coyne eventually signed British driver Alex Lloyd for the seat. Lloyd won the 2007 Firestone Indy Lights championship and has competed in a handful of IndyCar races the past two years, including two Indianapolis 500s. Lloyd will officially only contest the season-opener in Brazil, but all signs point to an official announcement of him joining the team once the series returns stateside for the race at St. Petersburg.

The key to Coyne's potential success this year is whether or not the team can efficiently replace departed engineer Bill Pappas, the most important man in Coyne's pit last year. Pappas was a winner in the past and a winner with Coyne, but left the team after only one year, not coincidentally the best year the team has ever had.

As talented of a driver as Lloyd is, and as strong of a car Duno is stepping into, the team may fall apart without a strong leader like Pappas tuning the cars. If they can't replace him effectively, expect the Coyne cars to take a step back in 2010.

IndyCar Programming Begins on Versus

Versus, the lead television partner of the IZOD IndyCar Series, begins its programming rush for the 2010 season today with two programs. The first, "Danica's Decade," begins at 2PM EST, followed by "Inside the 2010 IndyCar Series" at 3PM.

"Danica's Decade" spotlights the first five full-time seasons of Danica Patrick in IndyCar, detailing the ups and downs of a career spanning 81 races. From her pit road incidents, to her dust-ups with other drivers from Dan Wheldon to Milka Duno, to her lone career victory in Japan, the program helps prime fans for the American's 2010 season.

"Inside the 2010 IndyCar Season" contains features on Patrick, Andretti Autosport teammate Tony Kanaan, 2009 Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves, and defending series champion Dario Franchitti. It helps prepare fans for the start of the season in Brazil next weekend. Versus pit reporter Lindy Thackston hosts.

Two Coyne Cars For 2010; Duno Snags One

Dale Coyne Racing will field two cars full-time in the IZOD IndyCar Series this season, for the second time in three years since joining the series in 2008.

Coyne mentioned this much in a teleconference with Bob Jenkins back in January, but could not provide driver names or sponsors. Today, Coyne is a quantum leap closer to being ready for the season opener in Brazil on March 14.

Milka Duno will run her first full-time schedule in IndyCar this season, taking over the No. 18 car from the departed Justin Wilson. The popular, albeit slow, Venezuelan driver will bring with her sponsorship from CITGO, the Venezuelan-owned oil company that has supported her since the mid-2000s. A photo posted at Pressdog.com shows Duno in an all-new, black firesuit, perhaps hinting at yet another new CITGO paint scheme. The photo is current, as last year's was a red firesuit, and this one carries the IZOD IndyCar and DCR logos.

Duno finished 24th in points last season while running a limited schedule, with a best finish of 16th. Her best career finish was an 11th place in early 2007. She does, however, have three race wins in the Rolex Sports Car Series, all in the Daytona Prototype class, from a career in that series that spanned from 2004 to 2006.

The No. 19 DCR car announced sponsorship from the Boy Scouts of America months ago, but still does not have a driver lined up. Alex Lloyd is currently the front-runner for the seat, having Twittered a seat fitting three hours away from his Indianapolis home not too long ago; Coyne's Illinois base is about three hours away from Indianapolis. Coyne offered a lucrative two-year deal to Graham Rahal, but he turned down the ride, feeling it was too restrictive. J.R. Hildebrand, another American driver and winner of last year's Firestone Indy Lights championship, recently tested for the team and was noted by Coyne as one of his targets, but may not end up in the seat as other Indy Lights graduates secure rides.

Opinion: De Silvestro Ready For Success

As far as diversity in major-league motorsports goes, the IZOD IndyCar Series has most of the racing world beat. For one, there's the biggest female racing star in the world right now, Danica Patrick. There's owner-driver Sarah Fisher, whose program has expanded gradually every year since she started her own team, and will even field two cars in some races this year. There's Ana Beatriz, a Firestone Indy Lights Series graduate who will make her IndyCar debut in her home country of Brazil in a week and a half. And yes, Milka Duno may still be hanging around.

But Simona de Silvestro may have the talent to surpass all of them.

The Swiss driver, 21, will join HVM Racing for the duration of the schedule after three years in the Atlantic Championship. Bringing her Atlantic sponsor, Stargate Worlds, with her, she will be one of up to four drivers competing for Rookie of the Year this season.

De Silvestro's first year in Atlantics, 2007, was a struggle, as is to be expected from a young driver moving up. But in 2008, she won the season-opening race at Long Beach, moving up to eighth in points at the end of the year. Last season, she dominated for much of the year, winning four races and staying in the title hunt until falling out of the final race of the year on the first lap. Eventually she finished third in points.

That's three more wins than Beatriz had over two years in Indy Lights, although each woman has a third and an eighth place finish in the standings of their respective series. As for Patrick, she never won an Atlantic race in two seasons despite running for a top team.

Katherine Legge was the last woman to dominate the Atlantic Championship, having spent much of 2005 on top and finishing third in the standings that year with three wins. Legge won in her first career Atlantic start, the 2005 season opener at Long Beach, and was even given a Formula 1 test at the end of the year for her efforts.

Legge, unfortunately, flamed out in Champ Car, perhaps a result of only spending one year in a major development series. A major crash at Road America in her rookie year, 2006, may also have affected her psyche. She has spent the past two years in the German DTM series, but has not yet scored a point in that series.

What gives de Silvestro an advantage over all of these other women, however, is the fact that she has spent enough time in developmental series to learn what it takes to drive consistently well. All of the other drivers in question had major ups and downs in their development seasons, and none of them really spent enough time in one major series to have a barnstorming championship run. Even Legge's 2005 season was marred by four finishes outside of the top five. Last year, de Silvestro only finished worse than fifth on two occasions. Nine races out of 12 she stood on the podium.

Unlike Beatriz, she doesn't have to focus on finding funding to run the rest of the season. Unlike Fisher, she doesn't have to balance the day-to-day responsibilities of running a race team. She can just focus on driving the race car.

In terms of gender, her only competition is Danica Patrick, who seems to be more and more of a falling star every minute. Three disastrous stock car runs, capped off by running full-throttle into the back of another car in Las Vegas, have shaken her. She has improved on her previous year's championship ranking every year since joining IndyCar, topping off at fifth last year, but with more competitive cars capable of winning on the grid this year, she may take a hit. She hasn't won a race since the split-series weekend in early 2008, and even that was won on fuel mileage.

Danica's celebrity is the biggest thing she has going for her, and it gets in the way of her racing. More and more people simply know her as the "Go Daddy girl," and more and more people are going to know her as a stock car driver as she inevitably expands her schedule in those cars.

De Silvestro will not have to face the pressure of being Danica Patrick, and that may be her biggest advantage of all. The expectations on her are not so great, as she is a rookie with zero oval experience driving for a single-car team that has unfortunately brought up the back of the grid for the past couple of years. Then again, last year's issues were partially due to a string of bad luck, and expanding to two cars mid-season began stretching the team's resources thin.

But because of that lack of pressure, she can work with HVM at her own pace, knowing that she will be somewhat competitive at the very least on road and street courses. For what it's worth, De Silvestro bested Patrick in the final open IndyCar test session last week.

By the time the oval sections of the schedule finally come up, de Silvestro will hopefully have had some competitive runs on the road and street circuits. With the confidence that she can run up front in the right situation, she should be just fine on the ovals once she gets a little experience.

Within a few years, provided the team sticks together and make progress, we may see Simona de Silvestro in the winner's circle with relative frequency. Time may anoint her a more accomplished driver than Patrick, if she can avoid the pitfalls of poor equipment and excessive celebrity.

Coyne Driver Lineup Set?

Ana Beatriz posted to her Twitter account in Portuguese that the driver pair for Dale Coyne Racing in the opening race of the season will likely be Alex Lloyd and Milka Duno.

This backs up reports in recent weeks linking both drivers to the team. Robin Miller first linked Duno to a Coyne seat in an article lamenting Graham Rahal's free agent status for the 2010 season. Duno brings sponsorship from Citgo, making her an attractive driver to an underfunded team like Coyne's.

Lloyd tweeted to his own followers this week that the phone "finally rang" for him after a supposed deal with Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing fell through. He spoke of a late-night, three-hour drive to get fitted for a seat, and with Coyne's Chicago shop three hours away from Lloyd's (and many drivers') home in Indianapolis, the prediction made sense. While N/H/L also has an Illinois base, Coyne has a car with sponsorship already, from the Boy Scouts of America.

If Lloyd gets the seat, he will have beaten out American J.R. Hildebrand for the ride. Both drivers have won Firestone Indy Lights championships, with Lloyd taking the honors in 2007 and Hildebrand claiming victory last year.