The second part of your post I fully agree with though. I hope that the Daytona 500 doesn't end up like the past Indy 500's were as far as TV coverage .
Rubens in a 4th KV car for Sao Paolo would be the ideal PR trick me thinks!
I hope he gets a full time ride but I do not see that happening to be honest! Guerrieri will most likely land in the 3rd car, so this means that KV would have to upgrade to 4 cars full time? And, does Rubens want to drive on ovals anyway? And if he does, will he get the green light from his wife and family?
This, or add Vitor in a 3rd car for that fantasy team. IMO Rubens will adapt well to Indy, he's definitely got the skill set and IMHO he's at a similar stage to Emmo was in the early 80s when he started in CART
I honestly couldn't see KV having a 4th car, considering Penske don't it wouldn't really make sense that KV does.
Either way Rubens has said Previously in interviews that if he had anywhere else he could live other then Brazil he has said Florida so he can enjoy Disney world with hes family, so i don;t know it can be all bad, if he can get over the dangers of oval(which are much less now that most of them are gone) it would be more appealing to hes family considering he will be in one country for the whole season(apart from the one off race in China) so no traveling around the place is really required.
Idk, if Rubens wants to continue racing Indy seems logical.
it's going to be interesting to see what happens re engines if more cars appear on the grid, all 3 manufacturers are committed to being able to supply up to 40% of the grid but they weren't expecting the grid to be this large.
now in theory 40% +40%+40% = 120% of the grid size they were expecting = enough to supply the larger grids but if the teams decide that for example the honda and lotus engines are the ones to have then those two will still have to supply 80% of the new grid, i.e. about the same number of cars as they were expecting to get supplied by all 3 manufacturers originally.
more realistically lotus may be struggling to get the engines delivered in time to all the new teams and unfortunately as the 3 manufacturers have different layouts for ancilliaries etc it's not an easy step for another manufacturer to help out even if the organisers place some preasure on them.
The main thing that i think has made the grid soo large is how much funding Lotus is giving to the teams, I think its a primary reason why you have such teams as Dragon running 2 cars this season.
But then agian it can be understandable because from what i know this is Lotus first ever time making race engines for a series.
I don't really get the Penske analogy. Apples and oranges really.
For Penske, having another car doesn't matter, because he's there to win, not to make deals with pay drivers and make profit/minimise the losses. And 3 cars is clearly enough to make an assault at the championship. Having more would possibly mean splitting ressources and losing focus on each individual car, etc.
Plus he'd have to deal with the ego wars. It seems like Power and Helio are not best friends already, so if you put a top-4th driver in the equation, it's going to make things even more messy.
See Dario and Dixon at Ganassi BTW, they're not very happy to have to team-up with Rahal... Even if they're not true "teammates" with him... This is quite understandable, you're having a fantastic and very efficient relationship with your workmate, and suddently the boss wants you to work with someone who could possibly threaten you on short term. How do you react?
To be honest I really do not see KV upgrading to 4th cars either, but in that case, the move would at least make sence, in a way:
Rubens suddenly arrives to the driver market, with possible great sponsoring deals thanks to his outstanding reputation in South America. Problem, the KV house is already full with TK, Viso and Guerrieri(Assuming that Guerierri has signed already, of course. If he hasn't and the deal fails for whatever reason, Rubens could still fill his car, who knows...).
KV can't fire any of their current drivers since they're all pay drivers. Now I'm not sure if TK himself brings a lot of money, but whatever, firing TK would mean shooting yourself in the foot really!
So, what's the solution to your problem? Upgrade to 4 cars! But of course I'm making it sound like more easy than it actually is!
Now, as I said, I do not see that happeing, as:
Does Rubens actually want to drive full time?
Even if we assume that he brings much money(pure speculation), would it be a viable move only 2 months before the season start? I mean, equipment and personal wise?
What's the situation chassis and engine counts-wise? Could they get spares so easily?
Lotus isn't building the engines, Judd is, and they have quite a decent amount of experience in the domain.
The main reason why no one wanted to stick with them is that they started working on the project several months after Honda and Chevy.
It also could be just that Tony got Rubens a test with KV because he's connected to both of them, and Rubens has no direct interest in participating in IndyCar at this time. Or maybe he does, but KV's just using him to get a different perspective on the car and he's using KV to get used to IndyCar machinery while he looks for a seat elsewhere.
I do care about him too! I reckon that the Coyne+Honda+Wilson+Pappas reunification could brong some cool results. Even if having no better or more experienced than Jimmy Jakes in the second car(if he stays of course, which looks likely at the moment) won't be good for the development side of things.
I won't comment on the Bourdais bit however
Isn't Franchitti himself older than Rubens actually...?
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