Alex Lloyd announced via Twitter this morning that he will be parting ways with Target Chip Ganassi Racing and entering free agency. Lloyd won the 2007 Firestone Indy Lights championship, then known as the Indy Pro Series, in dominating fashion, winning a record setting eight of the sixteen races. After the 2007 season, he was placed under contract by Target Chip Ganassi Racing as a development driver, but after one and a half years with the team, there is still no potential for a full-time ride. TCGR was able to secure funding for Lloyd to run in the 2008 and 2009 runnings of the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race, and although Nintendo and HER, a new energy drink company, were please with their respective performances and visibility, neither company was willing or able to provide funding for more than Indianapolis. As Alex watches yet another season of open-wheel racing pass by, he has apparently given up on TCGR. Not that he’s leaving on poor terms, in fact in his twitter message, he was careful to point out how hard the team had worked to find funding for him, but regardless of their efforts, they were unsuccessful.
So now Alex Lloyd is out and available for hire, but who’s out there who can hire him? After all, one of the best driving talents of the past 15 years, Paul Tracy, can’t even secure more than one-off rides. Team3G might have been a possibility for him, had he made his decision to leave TCGR earlier, but now that seat has been filled by his past Indy Lights competitor, Richard Antinucci. Who’s left? If KV had funding, they’d have put Tracy in a car by now. HVM had made noises early in the season about adding a second car, but that’s washed out. Same holds true for Conquest. It may turn out that we’ll lose this remarkable talent to sports car racing, if something doesn’t develop soon.
Alex got great exposure at the 500 this year! But part of his problem with the Ganassi development deal is Chip’s contract with Target. It supposedly stipulates that for Chip to run a 3rd car, then he has to have the same level of funding as his 3 Target cars which would mean that Chip needs to raise around 7 million dollars in sponsorship to put Alex in a 3rd seat.
So either had to wait for Chip to raise the funding or wait for Chip to put him in one of the Target cars.
Maybe Chip has cut him loose so he can pursue a Nintendo/HER sponsorship package with another team that doesn’t require the 7 million dollar sponsorship.
The fact that this is being done in the middle of the season makes me think that we will see Alex some more this year behind the wheel.