Interview: Sebastian Saavedra - IndyCar's Next Big Thing

For the past two years, Sebastian Saavedra has been establishing himself as one of the brightest young talents heading up the Road to Indy ladder.

Since coming stateside in 2009, joining the illustrious AFS Racing program in the Firestone Indy Lights Series, Saavedra has posted two wins and two top-10 finishes in the championship, coming third in 2009 and eighth this year. This year's finish was even more remarkable considering the fact that he missed the final two races of the season after leaving Bryan Herta Autosport.

Saavedra made his IndyCar debut in the 2010 Indianapolis 500 for Herta's team, and returned to the series at the end of the year with Conquest Racing. After a strong American debut in 2009, Saavedra spent much of 2010 assembling a strong team of advisors; his new manager in America is longtime IndyCar mechanic and team owner Derrick Walker, while two-time Indianapolis 500 runner-up and Colombian countryman Roberto Guerrero serves as a driver coach.

Saavedra is currently home in Colombia relaxing after a hard-fought 2010 campaign, while also attempting to put together a program that will see him compete for IZOD IndyCar Series Rookie of the Year honors in 2011. In between travel obligations, Saavedra agreed to an interview with us, and we're happy to provide the transcript below.

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First things first: how and when did you get your start in auto racing?

SS: I started when I was 8 with an uncle who bought me a go-kart. My dad wasn't very into the idea of racing so I needed to wait couple of years before he got the bug. I did the racing school and surprised many heads around so my career started right away here in bogota, colombia.

You’ve taken wins in Formula BMW, Formula 3, and Firestone Indy Lights cars. How do these very different cars compare to one another? Was one type of car easier to drive than the others? Faster?

SS: I would say there's no easy car to drive. They all have their secrets and their way to be driven. Of course the speed changed with each class cause of the HP but they all had their charm. I really enjoyed the F3 as it was the nicest, lightest and with more Down-force.

You drove for Andretti Autosport in 2009 before moving to BHA this year. How were the two teams different from one another? Did you have to work with one team differently than with the other?

SS: They were both very professional teams with a particular goal in hand. Win. As a driver you need to change with the situation and scenery. Andretti was a very interesting experience in every way.

By now everybody knows that your season with Bryan Herta Autosport in Indy Lights did not end as well as either side would have hoped. Can you explain why things went downhill, and how your relationship with the team ended?

SS: The relationship never ended, things happened and were unfortunate. We were more focused on the IndyCar program than Indy Lights and sometimes it hurt but I enjoyed driving for a great driver I followed when i was younger and he gave me the opportunity to do the Indy 500 which I will never forget.

Do you have any regrets about the way that things ended with BHA?

SS: Not at all. This is a very professional bussiness and we both understand the paths we need to take to keep our success. Bryan is an amazing guy with lots of future, maybe not with me.

After that, you worked with Conquest Racing and Derrick Walker for this year’s season finale at Homestead. Were you pleased with the way things went at Homestead? What was it like working with a new team for only one race weekend?

SS: Was by far the nicest experience I've had in a long time. Was very risky as we left it all in the table but thank god all went our way. Conquest Racing gave me the right material and engineering to show all my potential which I'm very thankful. Derrick Walker managing me from now on is a big honor aswell as I admire his working scenario and ethics.

Do some of the things you learned driving in Indy Lights translate to the bigger IndyCars, or are they completely different?

SS: I got to say that the Firestone Indy Lights was the best school possible to move up into the IndyCar. It's very close on the way of driving the cars and gives you a very good idea on how its going to be when you get to the big cars. So yes it does translate many things.

Looking forward to next season, you have said that you will be racing full-time in the IZOD IndyCar Series. Do you have sponsorship lined up already? Can you give us any insight on which team you might be driving for? Are Conquest and Walker options for next year?

SS: Mr. Derrick Walker is not part of Conquest Racing, he is my manager. We are still working very hard on getting the right sponsorship and we have good team options that we are already finishing with but thats as much as I can give you right now ;)

Growing up in Colombia, I’m sure you had some different racing idols growing up than some American drivers did. Who are some of the drivers that have influenced you?

SS: For sure Montoya was one of the big drivers I followed since I started as he put the sport on the map here in Colombia. I've always been a big fan of TK and as I lived in Brasil for cuople of years he became very big for me.

Obviously IndyCar is mostly an American series, so you spend a lot of time in the States during the racing season. How often do you travel home to Colombia during the racing season?

SS: I'm living in Indianapolis the complete season. I like this as I can keep very focused on my gym and engineering. I usually go to Colombia when theres a sponsor event or any important deal going on, so usually I hope to go down a lot. HA

Your management group includes Derrick Walker, and earlier this year you had former Colombian IndyCar driver Roberto Guerrero as a driving coach. How much does it help to have two people with that much experience in IndyCar helping your career along?

SS: It's great to have such an interesting group of people behind me as they give me great confidence with the amount of experience they have to give. Im very pleased on their work and want to continue close together for a long time.

Anything you’d like to tell your fans?

SS: There's something very important I've been giving my fans and its the pleasure of dreaming! When you dream very hard and wish something, with lots of work everything is possible.

Finally, what are your goals for the future? You’ve said that an Indy 500 win is one of your goals, but beyond that, are you looking to go to Formula One someday? Any other championships or races you’d like to win?

SS: F1 for sure is my big goal. Something I've often heard its just too hard to get but my dad has always said.." if it was easy anyone could do it' I go by that principle and work on it. I want to win more than one IndyCar championship and be a positive Colombian figure to follow.

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Thanks once again to Seb for agreeing to do the interview, and we at OWA wish him the best of luck in 2011 and beyond. Check out his personal website at http://www.ssaavedra.com, and be sure to follow his Twitter account at @sebsaavedra.

IndyCar Season Review: Raphael Matos

Raphael Matos could have used some better luck in 2010.

The 2009 IZOD IndyCar Series Rookie of the Year headed into 2010 looking to continue a three-year streak of winning awards in every series in which he competed. He had won the 2007 Champ Car Atlantic title, and followed that up with the Firestone Indy Lights crown in 2008 before scoring his IndyCar rookie award last year.

One of the hottest young drivers in the sport had a new advisor, as former Indianapolis 500 champion and countryman Gil de Ferran bought into the Luczo Dragon Racing team, renaming it de Ferran Dragon Motorsports in the process. The team also added a limited program for Davey Hamilton, who brought Hewlett-Packard funding to the team full-time. Both driver and team set goals for a top-10 points finish this year after running 13th last year.

Matos opened the season in his native country of Brazil, where he took a career-best fourth place finish, second-best among Brazilian drivers in the event. He followed that up with three laps led and an eighth place run at St. Petersburg, where he had crashed out in 2009. Through the first quarter of the season, Matos maintained ninth place in points, easily within the team's goal for the year.

But next on the schedule were Kansas and Indianapolis, two tracks at which the team had failed to finish in 2009. Matos survived Kansas in 16th place, but for the second year in a row failed to complete the sport's biggest race. Not long after losing a wheel in the pits, Matos slammed the outside wall on lap 73, and his day was done. His crash, combined with Hamilton's first-lap incident, meant the team would scramble to prepare a single car for the next two oval events.

It took a return to the road courses for a reversal in Matos' fortunes, as another fourth-place finish came at Watkins Glen. But Toronto saw an accident with E.J. Viso kill any momentum the team may have had.

Mid-Ohio saw Matos' fourth and final top-10 of the season, as he came home seventh, but the rest of the year wasn't much to write home about. Back-to-back DNFs at Sonoma and Chicago were less than conducive to maintaining his position in points, as he dropped all the way down to 15th in the order. In each of the final three races, the team finished outside the top 15 as well.

When all was said and done, Matos finished 14th in points, despite qualifying no better than 10th all season and producing half the amount of top-10s he had in 2009.

Indeed, declining qualifying performance was a decisive factor in Matos' 22-point decrease from his rookie season. 2009 saw Matos start no worse than 18th, as he qualified in the top 10 seven times for an average of 11.8. This year, Matos started 20th or worse five times, never making it to the Firestone Fast Six as he had in 2009, resulting in a 16.5 average start. His average finish also dropped to 15.7 from 12.8 in 2009.

With the hopeful addition of a full-time teammate and mentor for 2011, Matos' prospects may improve markedly, but only if the team is able to expand and thus retains him. With Tony Kanaan on the market, there have been rumors that Matos may be replaced, as nobody knows the status of Matos' multi-year contract with the team. But the addition of the fellow Brazilian and former IndyCar champion to the team, if in a second car, should help Matos improve as a driver dramatically next season and beyond.

IndyCar Season Review: Alex Tagliani

Alex Tagliani spent more of this season racing up front than anybody could have expected.

The Canadian spent the 2010 IZOD IndyCar Series season with the newly established FAZZT Race Team outfit. While much of the personnel, including former Walker Racing team manager Rob Edwards, had been taken from established teams, their cars had been purchased from Roth Racing, a former series backmarker. Expectations were, therefore, not overly ambitious for the new team.

So it was a surprise, to say the least, when Tagliani opened the season from the outside pole at Sao Paulo.

Unfortunately, through 28 laps of that race, Dan Wheldon got into the back of Tagliani and sent him spinning into the wall. The damage was severe enough to knock Tagliani out of the race, setting an unfortunate trend for the rest of the season: strong, quick runs in qualifying sessions, only to be marred by relatively disappointing finishes.

St. Petersburg and Birmingham gave the team its first top-10 finishes of its short existence, but Tagliani suffered a wrist injury during the Long Beach weekend, crashing out of that race as well. The team would thus head into the first oval segment of the season mired in 14th in points. Expectations were once again low, as the former Champ Car driver had only three oval starts in IndyCar.

But Tagliani and FAZZT shocked and surprised in the next three events. Kansas and Indianapolis alike yielded fifth place qualifying runs, and two more top 10 finishes. At Texas, Tagliani managed to lead 33 laps, although he only came out of the weekend with an 18th place run, finishing three laps down.

From there, unfortunately, the finishes were not particularly strong.

A series of low finishes from Iowa to Toronto was punctuated by a crash coming off a restart at Edmonton, where the Canadian was tagged by Mario Romancini in his final start of the season. The high point of this period was the stylish Hot Wheels livery that Tagliani carried in the two races in his home country; unfortunately, he could not bring home a solid finish in either event after nearly taking the Toronto victory in 2009.

Mid-Ohio broke the streak of subpar finishes. The team's best race of the season saw Tagliani, who had seen bad luck take him out of races all season, finally stick around for the finish. He led a race-high 30 of 85 laps to finish fourth. It would prove to be his only top five finish and final top-10 of the season. Even still, it affirmed the paddock opinion that Tagliani and FAZZT were no pushover, if only their luck could improve a little bit.

From there, the rest of the season was nothing to write home about. Tagliani, who had qualified eighth or better in five of the first six races of the season, only had three top-10 starts from Texas to the end of the season. Four of the final five events yielded finishes between 13th and 15th, with the lone exception a crash out at Chicago. He ended the season 13th in the overall standings, scoring 302 points with five top-10s and four DNFs. He also placed 13th in both the oval and the road course sub-championships.

As far as new teams went in 2010, Tagliani and FAZZT were far and away the best. With sponsorship somewhat stabilized, the team establishing a solid rapport through the growing pains, the potential of a teammate, and Tagliani entering the second of a four-year contract, 2011 should be an even better year for the small all-Canadian outfit. In fact, Tagliani may be primed for his best season since his seventh place run in the 2004 Champ Car World Series.

IndyCar Season Review: Vitor Meira

Vitor Meira showed a lot of heart by returning to the IZOD IndyCar Series in 2010.

In 2009, his season was ended prematurely after a major wreck in the Indianapolis 500 broke two vertebrae in his lower back. The Brazilian, who had made 97 career IndyCar starts without a win, was not a lock to return to A.J. Foyt Enterprises.

But the immortal A.J. Foyt, after going through a revolving door of replacements the rest of that season, retained his driver for 2010, hoping once again to put together the team's best season in recent memory. Immediately Meira paid back his owner's loyalty.

Meira scored a third-place finish at Sao Paulo, making him the highest finishing Brazilian driver in his home country. An emotional Meira wore a Brazilian flag on the podium to celebrate. He then led 12 laps in the next event at St. Petersburg, a race he may have won on an alternate pit strategy had it been about ten laps longer.

The rest of the season would not be as quite as strong. Meira fell out of the top 10 in points by Long Beach, but through the first five races of the season managed four top-15 finishes. Indianapolis, once again, proved a struggle, but for different reasons; he qualified a poor 30th and crashed out on the backstretch after 105 laps. Regardless, simply surviving the 500 was a small victory.

The first four ovals marked Meira's strongest period of the season, even with the Indianapolis disappointment; all three other tracks, Kansas, Texas, and Iowa, yielded top-10 runs. Meira was now ranked 12th in points, a position he would generally hold to the end of the season.

Meira spent the next five races, all road course events, in the middle of the pack. A negative sign was that Meira never qualified better than 17th in any of those races; however, in four of those five events, Meira made up at least six spots by the end of the race, and never finished outside of the top 20. His Toronto drive was most impressive; from the last starting spot, he posted his best finish of the third quarter of the season, a respectable 11th.

Next up, Meira led his final six laps of the season at Chicago on his way to a ninth place finish, but an errant move in the next race at Kentucky into a passing Simona de Silvestro ended both of their days and killed his momentum. Meira ended his season with a 17th-place run at Motegi and his sixth top-10 of the year at Homestead, a sixth place effort.

Meira's return to IndyCar yielded a 12th place finish in points, his best result since 2007. He also ranked 12th in the oval championship, to go with a respectable 14th in the road course standings. It wasn't one of his best years in the sport as a driver, nor one of Foyt's best as an owner, but the results give both hope for another, even stronger go-round in 2011.

IndyCar Season Review: Justin Wilson

2010 was a year of ups and downs for Justin Wilson.

Driving for his third IZOD IndyCar Series team in three years, the British driver looked to improve on his ninth place run in 2009 with Dale Coyne Racing. For 2010, he went to series mainstay Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, forming an all-British pairing with Mike Conway and bringing the Z-Line Designs sponsorship with him. The goal was to make DRR as viable a threat to win on the road courses as they had always been on the ovals.

Wilson had time to gain a rapport with his team early on, as the first four races were road and street events that played to his strengths as a driver. Wilson followed up a third-place qualifying run at Brazil with runner-up finishes at St. Petersburg and Long Beach, placing him fourth in points through four races and establishing him as a dark horse title contender.

Those were the ups. Unfortunately, there was nowhere else to go but down.

Wilson's only respectable oval finish in the second quarter of the season came at the most important event, Indianapolis, where he placed a respectable seventh, leading his first 11 laps of the season. A better summation of his oval fortunes came at Iowa, however, where a first-lap accident with Mario Moraes in turn four ended his day. Wilson had free-fallen to eighth in points, but the twisties were coming up on the schedule again, offering him an important opportunity to ascend the championship table once again.

Consider it a missed opportunity. Wilson could not defend his 2009 victory at Watkins Glen, placing 10th, and struggled at Edmonton to come home 21st. Mid-Ohio was marred by two incidents, one in qualifying with Ryan Briscoe, and another 22 laps into the event with E.J. Viso. His best finish of the second half of the season came at Sonoma, where he ran sixth.

Wilson's fortunes at Toronto probably summed up his year the best. The 2005 winner of the event in Champ Car, Wilson had the field covered in qualifying, taking the pole by nearly two tenths of a second over Will Power. Wilson led much of the race, only surrendering the lead due to alternative pit strategies taken by Paul Tracy, Dario Franchitti, and Tony Kanaan.

A late race caution for Raphael Matos' crash with Viso bunched the field, and Wilson had nothing for a surging Power on the restart. Soon after, a self-induced spin took Wilson out of contention for the win completely. He battled back to finish seventh, but such was his luck for the majority of the season.

Once again, Wilson was a mid-pack driver on the series' ovals, with a seventh at Chicago his final top 10 run of the season. By the time the series made it to the season finale at Homestead, Wilson was down to 10th in points, holding a 22-marker advantage over Danica Patrick. But she finished second in that race as he ran 21st, bumping him down to 11th in points.

Despite falling two spots in the standings from 2009, Wilson scored seven more points than he had last year. The 2010 season wasn't by any means a bad one, but both driver and team expected improvement in the ranks, not stagnation. As such, rumors suggest that Wilson may bolt to another team for 2011, perhaps Panther Racing as it looks to expand. Panther, judging by its late season oval runs, would offer the Brit an even stronger opportunity to place up front on both kinds of tracks.

Regardless, Wilson and whatever team he may drive for in 2011 will once again expect greater results. Wherever he goes, he will run up front and contend for wins on the road and street courses, but unless he can improve on a career-best oval finish of seventh, he may end up in the same position next year.

IndyCar Season Review: Danica Patrick

2010 will go down as a year that Danica Patrick would like to forget.

The media darling of the IZOD IndyCar Series emulated a career path chosen by Tony Stewart in 1998, fitting in a handful of stock car races around and in between her primary IndyCar commitments, and both sets of results suffered in 2010. Patrick barely slid into 10th place in points after the season finale at Homestead, marking the first time in her IndyCar career that she failed to improve on the previous season's results.

In 2009, Patrick finished an impressive fifth in the championship, tops among the non-Penske and Ganassi drivers. But the addition of a third Penske car had a lot of pundits confident on who would take the top five spots. Meanwhile, some miserable stock car spots and a restructuring of the new Andretti Autosport team had others wondering if Patrick could keep up her streak of improvements.

It was not to be the case.

Never a shining star on the road courses, Patrick's finishes to begin the season this year were nothing short of abysmal. Twice, in the new events in Sao Paulo and Alabama, she failed to finish on the lead lap. While teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay took victory at Long Beach, she finished a subpar 16th, fighting rookie Simona de Silvestro, who was equipped with a far older and slower car, for the position. Patrick ended the early road course segment of the season 16th in points, her title hopes for the year already all but gone. An 11th place run at Kansas, two laps down, put her more than 100 back of leader Will Power, and that was that.

Greater troubles came in qualifying for the Indianapolis 500. Patrick had never failed to start worse than 10th in the race until this year, when she could only muster a 23rd place run. On television interviews, Patrick threw her Andretti Autosport crew under the bus, blaming them for an unstable and slow car, to a chorus of boos from the speedway faithful. After apologizing to her crew, who received nothing but praise in most subsequent races, she managed to finish sixth in the event.

The next race at Texas proved to be Patrick's strongest run of the year. She managed to lead a lap, her only lap led all season, but in the end fell just over a second short of rival Ryan Briscoe's pace. The run had some suggesting that Patrick's season, while not championship-worthy, could at least elevate her past 11th place in points.

But Patrick didn't visit the top five again for the next eight races, with a sixth at Toronto the lone highlight. In that span, Patrick placed 15th or worse four times, continuing her run of road course futility. In fact, in that championship subcategory, she finished a disappointing 15th, as road course champion Power scored nearly three times as many points on road courses as she did.

Returning to Motegi, the site of her lone career IndyCar win in 2008, Patrick had nothing for a dominant Helio Castroneves, but still mustered a fifth place finish. At Homestead, she traded chop blocks with teammate Tony Kanaan to score another second place finish, before learning that Kanaan's sponsor, 7-Eleven, would shift its marketing dollars to her next season. These two runs allowed her to slip by Justin Wilson for the final spot in the top 10 of the championship standings.

To say Patrick's 2010 was difficult would be to understate. Hard luck results and a slip in the standings weren't the only issues. Infighting at Andretti, particularly with Kanaan, dogged her for much of the season, and the celebrity that once came with being IndyCar's first female winner died out as she began to shift attention to stock cars. When ESPN referred to her as "NASCAR's Danica Patrick" at the ESPYs, all ties to her former stardom may have been lost.

Patrick is safe at Andretti for next season, guaranteed a ride by a large GoDaddy contract. She may stand to benefit from potential contraction; if the team cannot find sponsorship to keep Kanaan and Hunter-Reay aboard, she will likely stand to inherit some of their teams' top crew members. But driving in two distinctly different disciplines is a difficult task for anyone to imagine, and if Patrick struggles in stock cars next year as she did this year, it may once again affect her IndyCar performance.

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.