FEBRUARY 7, 2005

Tony George Racing

Tony George, the owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the man behind the United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis is to become a team owner in his own Indy Racing League series this year, having decided to jump in to help his step-son Ed Carpenter (the son of George's second wife Laura) in the IRL. Carpenter raced for Red Bull Cheever Racing last season - his rookie year in IRL - and had a lot of accidents and Eddie Cheever decided not to renew the contract.

George has now bought the Dallara chassis which were being used by Kelley Racing and is expected to get Toyota engines. The team is likely to be based in the old Kelley premises but it is not yet clear what it will be called. The word on the street in Indianapolis is that Carpenter will be engineered by Tim Wardrop. The English engineer was in Fomula 1 back in the early 1980s but in recent years has worked in America. He won the Indianapolis 500 engineering Arie Luyendyk with Treadway Racing and last year worked as engineer for Bruno Junqueira with the Newman Haas team in the Champ Car World Series.