Opinion: Sarah Fisher's Groundbreaking Transition

Today's big IZOD IndyCar Series news came out of the Sarah Fisher Racing camp, as team namesake Sarah Fisher announced her retirement from IndyCar competition. While her No. 67 Dollar General Dallara-Honda will return to competition next season for nine races, Ed Carpenter will be its new driver.

Fisher steps aside after 25 years competing in various forms of racing, dating back to her early childhood. Ever since her early start, she's been a go-getter and an overachiever, scoring everything from multiple World Karting Association championships to IndyCar drives, all the way up to a Formula 1 test with McLaren-Mercedes in 2002. Off the track, she's even written a book, entitled "99 Things Women Wish They Knew Before Getting Behind the Wheel of Their Dream Job". You name it, she's done it.

She first began contemplating a transition out of the car earlier this year, when she gave Graham Rahal a three-race deal to drive the No. 67 to keep him in practice as he looked for more consistent employment. With three full seasons gone by since her last top-10 finish, a seventh place in IndyCar's first Iowa event, and a family-owned team running a part-time schedule against such superpowers as Chip Ganassi Racing and Team Penske, her prospects for taking the checkers as a winning driver were slim.

But Fisher showed that she could still hang up front with the big boys at Chicagoland this year. She took the lead under caution thanks to an alternate pit strategy, holding it for 10 laps. Although Ryan Briscoe got by her soon after the green flag waved again, she managed to hold her position in the top five for quite a while afterward. If anybody ever doubted that she still had the skills to run up front, even after her brief NASCAR sojourn in the middle of the decade, Chicagoland was their rebuttal.

Now, Fisher transitions into her most difficult and important role yet: full-time team owner.

Yes, this will be Sarah Fisher Racing's fourth IZOD IndyCar Series season, so it's not as if Fisher hasn't had to face those difficult ownership decisions before. Things will certainly be less tense around the SFR shop than they were in 2008, when she and husband Andy O'Gara formed the team out of pocket. That year, a sponsorship disaster with RESQ Energy Drink and an Indianapolis 500 accident nearly sidelined the team for good before it could even get off the ground.

Things have been looking up ever since Dollar General stepped in for two late 2008 events. The team expanded to two cars for 2010, adding Jay Howard to a limited slate of events, and of course had the popular Rahal compete in three events.

Now with Carpenter behind the wheel for the team in 2011, and the elimination of the perpetually off-the-pace second car, Fisher can fully focus on building a strong race team that will compete for IndyCar wins and championships for years to come. Carpenter and Fisher alike have been featured in successful and popular IndyCar marketing programs over the past few years; while Fisher has become a prominent face in Dollar General marketing, Carpenter has represented longtime Indy sponsor Menards and newcomer Fuzzy's Vodka in the past few years. The tandem of two affable American racers with old-school roots (both came from USAC backgrounds) should prove interesting to new potential sponsors.

Of course, Fisher's transition to full-time ownership represents a step forward for IndyCar for more reasons than that. Most forms of motorsport have never seen a top team led by a female owner, IndyCar included. Fisher has the potential to do that with SFR.

IndyCar has already asserted itself as a predominant form of racing for minority drivers, especially women; a record five female drivers attempted to qualify for the 2010 Indianapolis 500, with four - Fisher, Danica Patrick, Simona de Silvestro, and Ana Beatriz - competing on race day. But of the four, only Fisher was financing her own car (not counting Patrick's equity stake in her Andretti Autosport team). And Fisher almost put two cars in the race, with Howard only failing to make the race due to faulty Bump Day strategy. That's a big deal for such a small team, no matter how many cars show up.

Fisher has been embracing the ownership role more than that of driver as of late, anyway. Putting Rahal in the car was a solid move that led to the team's first-ever top-10 finish, a ninth place run at St. Petersburg. It was a decision to improve her team's performance, not to feed her ego and keep her in the car, and it paid off. Fisher gave her sponsor a top-flight driver and a chance to make some noise in their brief time together, and garnered a lot of respect from IndyCar fans and competitors - not only for employing the best driver not to have a full-time ride, but also for knowing when to step aside for the benefit of her team.

Now, the team has a chance to score some underdog oval wins with Carpenter, who came tantalizingly close to pulling out another surprise Kentucky victory this year. And Carpenter has another chance to learn the road courses, his longtime Achilles' heel in IndyCar competition.

Who knows, a strong 2011 season could attract enough sponsors for full-time competition in 2012, when new chassis and engines debut. And in the mess that comes with a blank slate, you never know what a little team could pull out of its hat.

Could Sarah Fisher be the first female owner to win an IZOD IndyCar Series race? Perhaps even the first to win an Indianapolis 500? Don't doubt it. She's never been one not to accomplish her goals.

IndyCar Season Review: Dan Wheldon

Dan Wheldon's 2010 IZOD IndyCar Series season may have been his most up-and-down campaign to date.

Wheldon's road course results lagged in comparison to his championship competitors, and a lawsuit against his employer, Panther Racing owner John Barnes, to collect back taxes made life difficult for the Englishman. But some world-class oval performances, the suit's resolution, and the chance that he may return to the team next season helped level the good and the bad for the former series champion.

When all was said and done, Wheldon finished ninth in points, one spot better than he had in his first full season with Panther last year.

Wheldon, like a handful of other drivers ahead of him, surprised in the season-opening Sao Paulo Indy 300 with a fifth place finish, but a spectacular wreck at St. Petersburg sucked the momentum out of the team for a time. Wheldon ran mid-pack for the next few races as the old-school IRL driver, with only one career road course win to his name, bided his time in wait for the ovals.

Kansas only yielded a 15th-place finish, two laps down, after a disappointing 25th-place qualifying run. But at Indianapolis, Wheldon and Panther worked their way up from the 18th starting spot to claim second place in the race's closing laps. Wheldon, like leader Dario Franchitti, was on a fuel-saving strategy, and perhaps could have caught him for the win, as the car still had fuel in the tank post-race. Regardless, the second place finish in the sport's biggest race was Wheldon's second in a row, Panther's third in a row, and yielded over $1 million to both.

The team, however, could not quite sustain the momentum for the next few events. Wheldon led a single lap at Texas on the way to a ninth place finish, but could not do much at Iowa (the site of his last victory, in 2008). He was spun at Watkins Glen by Alex Lloyd, but managed to work his way back through the pack for a respectable sixth place finish. Toronto yielded a 10th place run, four spots better than the previous year's finish.

But then came the struggles - a 20th place result at Edmonton, a so-so 14th place at Mid-Ohio, and the icing on the cake, an aborted Sonoma start that saw Wheldon's car upside down before even taking the green flag. Wheldon had been 146 points out of the lead after Toronto, but by the end of the Sonoma race he had lost another 99 points.

At this point, Wheldon and Panther began to turn on the heat. Perhaps it was the addition of Ed Carpenter in a second team car that got Panther rolling. Perhaps it was the knowledge that Wheldon's contract was up after this year and unlikely to be renewed that got him back in the zone. Perhaps it was a mutual dissatisfaction between the two parties over the past two seasons, culminating in a $2.5 million lawsuit for back wages by the driver's management, that had them both motivated to show off for potential new partners. Whatever it was, it worked.

Wheldon, who had won the Chicago race in 2005 and 2006, kicked it into high gear at that event, challenging Franchitti for victory once again and losing the fight by .042 seconds at the line. At Kentucky, Wheldon led 93 laps, most of all drivers, and almost nobody was more deserving of the win; however, Helio Castroneves' unorthodox fuel-saving strategy allowed him to take the victory, with Carpenter second and Wheldon third. By this point it was common knowledge that Wheldon was on the way out at Panther, but any team looking for oval prowess certainly had him in their eyes as a candidate for employment.

Motegi and Homestead also yielded top-10 finishes, but the big news before the season's final race was the settlement of Wheldon's suit against Panther and discussion of Wheldon's potential return for 2011. Whel all was said and done, Wheldon offset a disappointing 12th in the road course standings with a solid sixth in the oval championship, and scored the best points finish of any driver not employed by Roger Penske, Chip Ganassi, or Michael Andretti.

Wheldon's 2010 finishes, relative to 2009's results on the same tracks, were actually worse in most early-season instances. But solid finishes in new events, combined with vast improvements toward the end of the season, helped make Wheldon and Panther a potent late-season combination that actually scored 36 more points this year.

Though few may view the Englishman as a title contender these days, Wheldon's prospects for 2011 may be stronger than they were when he left Ganassi at the end of 2008. If he stays with Panther, the team clearly has their oval program worked out, and the potential addition of a second car will only strengthen the team's results - considering that Wheldon's best three finishes came when Panther was also campaigning a car for Carpenter. A third season with the team may finally see both vault back up the standings into once-familiar territory.

IndyCar Season Review: Dario Franchitti

With the 2010 IZOD IndyCar Series and Firestone Indy Lights Series seasons having drawn to a close, we begin the season review process for all notable drivers and teams in both. First up is IZOD IndyCar Series champion, Dario Franchitti.

Dario Franchitti has begun to establish himself as one of the best open-wheel racers of all time.

Barring a brief and unsuccessful foray into NASCAR in 2008, Franchitti is now three for three in his past three attempts to win the IZOD IndyCar Series championship. He took the first title in 2007 with Andretti Green Racing before jumping to stock cars with Chip Ganassi in 2008, then joined Ganassi's IndyCar team the next season to win the next two.

Since joining Ganassi, he has taken eight of his 26 career wins, and now is the first IndyCar champion of the Randy Bernard/IZOD era.

The picture didn't always look so bright for Franchitti this season, however. One of the top drivers in the CART era, which primarily focused on road and street course prowess, he finished no higher than third in any of the first four races of the season, leaving him sixth in the standings and 60 points back of leader Will Power going into the first oval segment of the season.

It was then that Franchitti began to find his stride. He followed up a runner-up finish at Kansas with his second career Indianapolis 500 victory. He took the win in dominant fashion, leading a remarkable 155 laps from the third starting spot. He briefly assumed the points lead at Texas, but issues with the car at Iowa handed the lead back to Power as the series began another road course jaunt.

Franchitti finished no worse than the bottom step of the podium in the next five road course races, taking the win at Mid-Ohio, but still lost another 45 points on the dominant Power over that span. But heading into the final segment of the year, a stretch of four ovals, Franchitti and his Chip Ganassi Racing team were confident that they could make up the 59 point deficit.

Most of the ground was made up in the series' final race at Chicagoland Speedway. Franchitti took the victory while Power finished a lap down in 16th, having run out of fuel achingly close to the finish. Of the 64 points that the Scot eventually gained on Power, Chicago accounted for 36 of them.

Solid runs at Kentucky and Motegi secured the A.J. Foyt Oval Championship for Franchitti, and put him in a position to challenge for the overall title in the season finale at Homestead. By now, he was only 12 points back of Power, meaning a win from pole while leading the most laps would guarantee him the championship regardless of Power's finish.

From there, Franchitti did exactly what he needed to do. He qualified on the pole, led 128 of the race's 200 laps, and didn't push the car too hard to the finish when Power made a mistake and brushed the wall with under 70 laps to go. His eventual eighth place finish gave him the series title by a mere five points, the closest margin by which he has ever taken the title. (He won by 13 points in 2007 and by nine last year.)

At the season-ending awards banquet, Franchitti hauled in over $1.1 million worth of bonuses for his third consecutive championship, buoyed mostly by the $1 million check for winning the series championship. There, he announced that he was only a signature away from returning to Ganassi to attempt three in a row in 2011.

IndyCar Race Review: Peak Antifreeze Indy 300

If Saturday's Peak Antifreeze and Motor Oil Indy 300 will go down in history as the final IZOD IndyCar Series race at Chicagoland Speedway, the fans in attendance and watching on television certainly got everything they hoped for in a finale.

Dario Franchitti held off a hard-charging Dan Wheldon after a daring call in the pits gave him the late-race lead, producing the 17th-closest finish in IndyCar history. His victory closed some of the gap on points leader Will Power, who had been leading late in the race but ran out of fuel with five laps to go to finish way down the running order.

All in all, the race featured a record-breaking 25 lead changes among 11 drivers. Ryan Briscoe dominated the early stages of the event, battling side-by-side with Marco Andretti for a good chunk of the race's early stages. Briscoe, the polesitter and defending race winner, led 113 of the race's 200 laps, though he could only muster an 11th place finish.

Meanwhile, the top four drivers in the finishing order - Franchitti, Wheldon, Andretti, and Ryan Hunter-Reay - all led at least two laps, with Franchitti's 28 tops among them. Franchitti actually did not lead until the very end of the race, when his team gambled by not taking tires under the final caution. While Briscoe could not keep others from leading laps while he was out in front, Franchitti managed to do just that

Some of the drivers who spent time up front were surprising, to say the least. Wheldon, Vitor Meira, and Alex Lloyd all led a handful of laps. Even the part-time entries of Ed Carpenter and Sarah Fisher spent time up front; Fisher stayed out under the race's second caution to gain the point, but managed to hold a top-three position for many laps after the green flag dropped.

Unfortunately for the little guys, nobody was really there at the end besides Wheldon. Meira salvaged a ninth place finish, but Fisher was the first car a lap down in 15th, Carpenter pulled out after 179 laps when his team couldn't get fuel into the car, and Lloyd crashed out to finish 21st.

Heartbreak was no stranger to the series' top team, either. Power nearly lost control of his car in the early laps of the race, making a fantastic save, a feat he would have to replicate a couple of other times before the night was over. Power drove his heart out all night, showing a level of talent we had previously only witnessed from him on the road and street courses, and was a contender for victory until the very end.

Unfortunately, Chicagoland left Power and his Team Penske crew with Indianapolis 500 deja vu: a fueler error ended all hope for a strong finish. At Indy, it was Power driving off with part of his fuel assembly; at Chicago, the team didn't quite get enough in the car to make it. To his credit, Power was surprisingly upbeat in post-race interviews, looking forward to the challenge of maintaining his points lead over the final three races.

With three races to go and Kentucky up next on the schedule, Power's points lead has shrunk from 59 to 23 over Franchitti. It may be a race between those two alone; third-place Scott Dixon is 85 points out, while no other driver is within 100.

IndyCar Race Preview: Peak Antifreeze Indy 300

This weekend, the IZOD IndyCar Series enters the fourth and final quarter of the season, another oval run that begins with the Peak Antifreeze Indy 300 at the Chicagoland Speedway. Last year's race, won by Ryan Briscoe by about six inches over Scott Dixon, was yet another example of how exciting IndyCar racing can be when the series heads to the Illinois speedway, and nobody expects any different this year.

In the lone practice session preceding qualifying, Briscoe once again paced Dixon, though the gap was much larger. Briscoe's 217.874 mph best lap was a full mile per hour better than Dixon's best. Will Power, the series points leader despite only ranking eighth in the oval championship, had the third best lap, with the four Andretti Autosport drivers - Marco Andretti, Danica Patrick, Ryan Hunter-Reay, and Tony Kanaan - ranking fourth through seventh.

In qualifying, Briscoe took the pole over Dario Franchitti, teammates Power and Helio Castroneves, and Andretti. Dixon could only muster a 15th place qualifying run.

Patrick, in particular, has to be excited to return to the ovals, after ranking a dismal 15th in the final road course standings. She was the only Andretti driver to place outside the top 10. Meanwhile, she ranks sixth in the oval standings, with a runner-up finish at Texas her best run of the season.

The field at Chicagoland, a whopping 29 cars, will be the largest field of the season (excluding Indianapolis) and the largest in a non-500 field since 28 showed up for this race in 2008. Entries for Graham Rahal, Ed Carpenter, Davey Hamilton, Jay Howard, and Sarah Fisher have expanded the field from the 24 full-season entries.

Four times out of nine, the winner has come from the pole position, a feat Briscoe achieved last year, after Castroneves won from the last starting spot the year before. Penske drivers have won the past two events at Chicagoland, while perennial series power Chip Ganassi Racing has only one win at the track, by Dan Wheldon in 2006.