©1997 SpeedCenter Internet Publishing, Inc.
By Peter Burke
The silly season seems to be coming towards a close with most rides alreadysolidly signed. The few remaining holes in our silly season table seem to beclosing rapidly as we approach the end of the year and the beginningof serious pre-season testing in 1998.
Insiders relay to me that JJ Lehto is pretty much a done deal withHogan, even without a big press release. Robby Gordon has signed adeal with Toyota in the off-road racing arena (Ford is really out ofhis life now). He also was seen a lot around the AAR trailers atFontana already. Given the "All-American-Racers" moniker, it'spossible that there will be a Jones/Gordon USA/USA driver lineup. Onecan just hope Gordon has learned how to stomach a car that may not bethe best in the field....
Moreno at Bettenhausen has been a pretty good guess since the end ofthe season, and with the number of available options deminishing, Iconsider him a done deal.
A lot of talk revolves around Buddy Lazier, although I feel much ofthe talk was spread by IRL folks who'd love to see their man get aride in CART to give their series some form of credibility. However -Lazier doesn't come to mind when thinking of 'experienced CART testdriver' for a new chassis. His recent accomplishments were alsorather focused on ovals, which amount for only about half of the CARTschedule.
Hot Tasman news just in this morning: According to my sources, Kanaan is a done deal with LCI money(this comes as a surprise), and the Reynards are already ordered. The second car is at this point unconfirmed, and it may take a driver to come with sponsor money to make Tasman remain a2-car-team in '98.
Regarding Andreas Leberle's Project Indy: the last thing I heard wasthat they may become the Lola factory Team, and with Tasman a confirmedReynard customer, this may really happen.The driver mentioned last to me would beChristian Danner, unless somebody shows up with some serious sponsormoney.
In other news: The '98 Penske cars reportedly had a first test session at Silverstone in England. The British "Daily Mirror" reported that the car did spectacularly, with Unser Jr. unofficially breaking the track record heldby a Formula 1 car... The new car was equipped with the physically muchsmaller and higher-revving 1998 edition of the Mercedes-Benz engine. Thisengine allowed engineers to drop the new car's centerof gravity below what was previously possible, improving handling and aerodynamics. The Mirror reports Pensketesting various 'unique v-shaped wing configurations' during the session.An evolution of this first prototype is to test at Laguna Seca in 2 weeks.