Milwaukee Mile: Notes and Quotes

Juan Pablo Montoya and Tony Kanaan attack winner Will Power with Wisconsin cream puffs.  [Russ Lake Photo]

The 2015 merger of IndyCar teams owned by Sarah Fisher-Wink Hartman and Ed Carpenter was a major story this weekend.

The two single-car teams will be headquartered at the current Sarah Fisher Hartman racing shop on Main St. in Speedway, IN, just west of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

“There will be a lot of work to do during the off-season to bring the two teams together to form one new team,” said Carpenter who is likely to continue sharing the cockpit with his road course driver Mike Conway, “but we feel that it’s a great opportunity for all of us to grow and reach new heights of success. There are a lot of details to finalize after the season comes to a close, so for now we’re focusing on finishing the season on a high note.” For Fisher and Hartman, the coming merger may see a new driver in their entry, but for now they also have a season to complete while thinking about 2015. “The merger of the teams is a big-picture plan. At the nucleus of all parties, there is a lot of synergy that has great potential for the future,” said the team’s owner and original driver.” And remembering the first win that Carpenter scored for her team at Kentucky in 2011, Fisher hoped that was a good sign for the future. “I look forward to the many (wins) that will come as a result of bringing all the parties together.”

Details on the future of CFH Racing, including personnel, suppliers and sponsors will be announced in the near future. One supplier decision centers around which way the Fisher/Honda and Carpenter/Chevrolet engine decision will go; one manufacturer will have to leave in favor of the other.

• At a Sunday morning press conference Andretti Autosport and Ryan Hunter-Reay announced a multi-year extension of the DHL Company’s sponsorship of the No. 28 AA Indy car. In addition, Hunter-Reay will return to the team for 2015 and beyond.
  
  

  “Together, Ryan and DHL, (a global logistics and delivery group), have won their first series championship (2012) and the Indianapolis 500 and we couldn’t be happier to have both returning to the Andretti family,” said team owner Michael Andretti.

• Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame member Dominique Wilkins got a tour of the Chip Ganassi No. 83 driven by Charlie Kimball Sunday morning. The car, sponsored by Novo Nordisk, a leading global diabetes care company, was special to Wilkins who has suffered from Type 2 diabetes since 2000. Wilkins, who is also a vice-president of basketball for the Atlanta Hawks, watched practice at the Milwaukee Mile on Saturday, and was a guest at Sunday’s race. Driver Charlie Kimball has also suffered from Type 1 diabetes since 2007. Both athletes hope to inspire others who have the disease.
• A one-day test of the new Dallara IL-15 Indy Lights car will be held at the Milwaukee Mile on August 27^th. Conor Daly and Tristan Vautier have previously tested the new for 2015 vehicle at MidOhio and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval. James Hinchcliffe and Scott Dixon will take over testing duties September 5/6 on the IMS road course where some preliminary tests have already been held.
  
  

  With only eight cars were entered here for the Sunday Lights race, series officials hope that the new vehicle will encourage greater participation in 2015 and beyond.

  More series’ information can be found at www.indylights.com.

• IndyCar officials have said that the 2015 schedule will be announced “sometime in September”. That means that the calendar is likely to be released after the final two events at Sonoma next week and Fontana on August 30. With the focus on those final two races that will determine the Verizon series champion, one would hope that the anticipated schedule could be part of that newsworthy weekend.
• Andretti Marketing has announced that the 2015 ABC Supply/IndyFest race at the Milwaukee Mile will again be held after the Wisconsin State Fair as part of the late August three-race run for the Verizon championship.
• NOTE THE QUOTE: “My ears are clean and dry.”  Race winner Will Power after being attacked with champagne and cream puffs in victory lane by Juan Pablo Montoya and Tony Kanaan.
• “I’ve learned to understand that when a car is bad (on an oval), you’re not a bad driver.”  Power, on something he’s discovered that has made him a better oval-track driver.
• “When people talk about ovals, they tell you it’s all about momentum and timing. But until you really get it for yourself, those are just words. In sports car racing you learn all about fighting against other types of cars that are slower than you in different corners. Learning how to navigate around those cars is all about timing and momentum, too. Today I made the connection between the two.”  Simon Pagenaud, explaining the hidden battle that goes on in the cockpit to learn how to race on an oval track after years of sports car/road course experience.

Paul Gohde

Paul Gohde heard the sound of race cars early in his life.

Growing up in suburban Milwaukee, just north of Wisconsin State Fair Park in the 1950’s, Paul had no idea what “that noise” was all about that he heard several times a year. Finally, through prodding by friends of his parents, he was taken to several Thursday night modified stock car races on the old quarter-mile dirt track that was in the infield of the one-mile oval -and he was hooked.

The first Milwaukee Mile event that he attended was the 1959 Rex Mays Classic won by Johnny Thomson in the pink Racing Associates lay-down Offy built by the legendary Lujie Lesovsky. After the 100-miler Gohde got the winner’s autograph in the pits, something he couldn’t do when he saw Hank Aaron hit a home run at County Stadium, and, again, he was hooked.

Paul began attending the Indianapolis 500 in 1961, and saw A. J. Foyt’s first Indy win. He began covering races in 1965 for Racing Wheels newspaper in Vancouver, WA as a reporter/photographer and his first credentialed race was Jim Clark’s historic Indy win.Paul has also done reporting, columns and photography for Midwest Racing News since the mid-sixties, with the 1967 Hoosier 100 being his first big race to report for them.

He is a retired middle-grade teacher, an avid collector of vintage racing memorabilia, and a tour guide at Miller Park. Paul loves to explore abandoned race tracks both here and in Europe, with the Brooklands track in Weybridge England being his favorite. Married to Paula, they have three adult children and two cats.

Paul loves the diversity of all types of racing, “a factor that got me hooked in the first place.”

racingnation.com

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