IndyCar Season Opener Broadcast Live Sunday in Canada (02)
For Immediate Release-March 12, 2010 IndyCar Series Opener in Brazil is Broadcast Live on TSN2 on Sunday Morning São Paulo Indy 300 Race - Alex Tagliani Track Walk Report Driver: Alex Tagliani Entry: No. 77 Bowers and Wilkins FAZZT Race Team Dallara/Firestone/Honda Event/Track: São Paulo Indy 300, Temporary Street Circuit, São Paulo, Brazil Event Date: Sunday, March 14, 2010 11:30 a.m. on TSN2 and on Versus in the USA Race: 1 of 17 Event Notes: -The course is a 2.6-mile (4.184 km), 11-turn temporary street circuit comprised mainly of asphalt with a section of concrete in the Sambodromo area. -This is first time the IZOD Indy Car Series has raced in South America -Alex and the engineering team have walked the circuit noting information such as braking points, driving lines and discussing their strategy for the weekend. -For Canadian viewers, the São Paulo Indy 300 Race is broadcast live on TSN2. The show starts at 11:30 a.m. with the green flag waved at 11:55 a.m. (Eastern Time) Alex Tagliani on the Sao Paulo Indy 300 Circuit and his arrival in São Paulo, Brazil "Our first track walk as a team was very interesting because I got the chance to notice that our engineer, Allen MacDonald, is a daredevil! Allen (MacDonald), Brendon (Cleave), Robert (Gue), Alex (Timmermans) and myself were all walking the track, part of which is still an active highway, and Allen was walking on the 3-lane highway while the rest of us were trying to sneak behind the wall to try and stay out of the road and here is our chief engineer walking up the middle of the traffic in Brazil. But seriously, it has been great. For me to see how competent everyone is and we saw a track that is going to have the longest straightaway (1.5 km) for a street course in IndyCar history. So that will be really good as you come off the straight into a turn that is combination Toronto hairpin, wide exit, kind of a Cleveland type Turn One. The challenge of the track is going to be to find the compromise between how fast you want to go on the straightaway versus how much grip you want to give up in the corners. Because we are in higher altitude here in Brazil, we will have less power and less downforce so the car will be sliding around a lot more. On a street course you don't normally have to think about that kind of compromise but here you have this long straight so it is making us scratch our head a little on how we want to approach that as we only have the one day of practice and running to get it right before the race. Yesterday we walked the track, looked at it, and talked about our options between the engineering team and myself. The facility here is great. It is fantastic. The promoters have welcomed us and made everyone here very comfortable. The organizers have done a good job in the set-up and when you think that they have done it in just three months, I take my hat off to them in congratulations. The track I think is going to be one of the first street courses that provides good racing. The configuration is a corner into a long, long straight followed by a very tight corner which gives us what we need for passing. I think it is going be the perfect opener for the IZOD IndyCar Series." - End - Media contact: Max d'Orsonnens - Team Media Liaison 514 990-4988 - maxdo@videotron.ca Jana Watt - FAZZT Race Team 317 709-3855 - janaw@fazztraceteam.com The attached FAZZT Race Teamphoto is copyright-free for the media Robert Gue, Alex Tagliani, Brendan Cleave, and Allen MacDonald on the track walk in Brazil