Sam Schmidt Motorsports – OpenPaddock.net

Indy Lights – Championship Tightens Up After Toronto

July 10, 2012 Doug Patterson

The Firestone Indy Lights race on Saturday was just as chaotic and messy as the Star Mazda race on Sunday, even though there were only eleven drivers this past weekend. Four of the eleven would end up parked with broken equipment, on Lap 1 and the other two late in the race on Lap 30. A driver that we mentioned at the beginning of the season would be coming into strong form this season, Victor Carbone, put his #3 Sam Schmidt Motorsports machine on pole during a qualifying session where…

IndyLights – New Hampshire Beat Down

August 14, 2011August 14, 2011 Doug Patterson

The Firestone Indy Lights race at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway can only be described as a beat down by Josef Newgarden (@RacerOfTomorrow) who was the ONLY driver to finish on the lead lap. That’s right. He lapped the entire freakin’ field! He might have done it twice if not for the yellows. The three primary Sam Schmidt Motorsports cars of #11 Newgarden, #7 Esteban Guerrieri, and #77 Bryan Clausen (@BryanClauson) were in a completely different class during qualifying. During practice, Josef, Bryan, and Esteban posted times of 147.457, 145.749,…

IndyCar – Plowman’s Snowball Express Announcement

August 3, 2011 Doug Patterson

IndyLights – Andretti Autosport Strikes Back

July 11, 2011 Doug Patterson

So far the 2011 Firestone Indy Lights Championship has been dominated by Sam Schmidt Motorsports. In past years, Andretti Autosport, when they were in partnership with AFS Racing, had fielded back-to-back championship winners with Raphael Matos (2008) and J.R. Hildebrand (2009). Up until the Toronto race, SSM drivers had won five of the six races, only losing the Barber race to Team Moore’s Victor Garcia (who may have been running with an illegal suspension). While there’s no doubt that the SSM staff is extremely talented, and they have been working…

Indy Lights – Milwaukee Wrap-Up

June 21, 2011June 21, 2011 Doug Patterson

Discord and dissension plagued this weekend’s Firestone Indy Lights event. The minimal car count on Saturday for qualification got smaller still on Sunday as Peter Dempsey pulled off the track refusing to take the green flag in protest to what he and his team, O2 Racing Technology, feel is favouritism shown to some teams by INDYCAR by ignoring technical violations found in post-race and post-qualifying inspections over the past years. In a release issued by the team later Sunday evening, it was revealed that not only were team officials and…

INDYCAR – Tagliani Storms to Pole!!

May 21, 2011 Shaun

Pole position for the Indianapolis 500 has always been a big deal. The toughest four laps in motorsport to claim the honor of leading the field is on everyone’s radar. The day started very sunny and warm. Things would not be so sunny for Ryan Briscoe who would trash his car in turn 2 during morning practice. The team would scramble to get the backup car ready in time for their qualifying run. Luckily for them the 6T car was scheduled to qualify 34th. So there was plenty of time…

IndyLights: Long Beach 100 Recap

April 18, 2011 Doug Patterson

Last week after the Firestone Indy Lights race at Barber Motorsports Park, I went on a bit of a rant regarding the need for these young aspiring drivers to learn a modicum of control. Apparently, many of their team managers went on similar rants as this week’s race on the Streets of Long Beach was far less chaotic. To be sure there were incidents and accidents, but just your normal racing incident type of things, not the mass carnage and mayhem we saw at Barber. For a circuit that has…

IndyLights – Newgarden Signs with Sam Schmidt Motorsports

March 10, 2011 Doug Patterson

We already knew that Josef Newgarden, @RacerOfTomorrow on Twitter, had made the bold move of declining his invitation to the FIA Young Driver Excellence Academy after his 2010 season in GP3 in hopes of securing a ride in the Firestone Indy Lights Series. Well, it seems that Newgarden’s gamble paid off big time as it was announced yesterday that he’ll round out the Sam Schmidt Motorsports Firestone Indy Lights full-time squad joining Victor Carbone and previously rumored, but not yet officially confirmed, Esteban Guerrieri. Bryan Clausen and Conor Daly will…

Mazda Road to Indy Weekly Wrapup: 2/13-2/19

February 20, 2011February 20, 2011 Doug Patterson

There’s not been a whole lot going on this past week in the Mazda Road to Indy Program, but we did get a couple of big driver announcements late in the week. The fields are starting to fill up, so in the coming weeks, we’ll be putting together a preview of the 2011 seasons for the Cooper Tires presents the US F2000 National Championship powered by Mazda, the Star Mazda Championship presented by Goodyear, and the Firestone Indy Lights Series including a summary of driver/team combinations. For now, though, let’s…

Mazda Road to Indy Wrap-up: 2/6-2/12

February 12, 2011 Doug Patterson

Well, I mentioned it on the OpenPaddock.net Podcast Ep. 75, but I didn’t think things would happen so fast. We’ve had a lot of testing going on recently, and at this late date, testing isn’t solely for the cars, but is a genuine evaluation of driving talent. Think of these late pre-season tests as job interviews. With so much testing going on, it only stood to reason that we’d start hearing more and more driver announcements in the comming weeks. Well, we ended up with four just this week and…