| | | | | | IMPORT DRIVERS | Who are these guys? | |
| | By Rick Minter / FlagshipNews.com Nextel Cup car owner Chip Ganassi appeared to be taking a big chance last year when he hired Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya away from the elite Formula One circuit to drive one of his Nextel Cup cars. But the risk turned out to be well worth it.
Montoya rewarded Ganassi with a victory in his first full season and competitive performances in many other races. Now Ganassi has added another international open-wheeler, Scotland’s Dario Franchitti, to his Cup lineup, and other owners have jumped on the bandwagon.
Gillett Evernham Motorsports has hired Canadian Patrick Carpentier to drive the No. 10 Dodge. Bill Davis Racing has hired Canadian Jacques Villeneuve, and the Wood Brothers plan to run Australian Marcos Ambrose in 12 races. Although he didn’t reach outside the borders for a new driver, Roger Penske is shifting Sam Hornish Jr. from his Indy Car team to the Cup side.
Also part of the open-wheel exodus is former Champ Car driver A.J. Allmendinger, who moved to Cup this season as a full-time driver for the Red Bull Toyota team. This represents a remarkable shift in the typical career path to Cup, where the top rides once went to young drivers who offered little more than potential. Most of the upcoming class is in their mid-30s.
But who are these guys?
PATRICK CARPENTIER
Patrick Carpentier, who was born in Ville Lasalle, Quebec, parlayed an impressive run in a Busch race at his “home” track in Montreal into a full-time Cup ride with a team, Gillett Evernham Motorsports, that is now owned by fellow Canadians, the Gillett family. In that race, he qualified on the pole and finished a strong second to race winner Kevin Harvick.
The 36-year-old Carpentier comes to NASCAR with a solid racing background.
He has raced in CART, Champ Car and the Indy Racing League, winning his first major race at Michigan in 2001.
Carpentier says he’s not as “foreign” as he might seem to those who haven’t followed his career.
“Part of my life I lived here in the states,” he said. “My kids, they’re Americans. And we live in Vegas, and I’m a U.S. citizen. I remember when I was young doing speed skating, going to Lake Placid (N.Y.) to train over the winter and stuff like that.”
Like his fellow newcomers, he’s counting on the Car of Tomorrow, which will be used exclusively next season, to help make up for his lack of experience in NASCAR-type racing.
“With the other car, as already explained to me, experience plays a big part into it,” he said. “It’s almost impossible to come in and keep up with these guys with all the experience and technical background they have.
“This year, you just got a lot of guys coming in at the same time. I think the reason for that is because of the switch to the Car of Tomorrow, and you see that there’s an opportunity for guys to learn and adapt and be able to be up there with these guys later in the year. Otherwise, I think it would be very difficult.”
And he points out that it’s not a new thing for open-wheel drivers to make a move to NASCAR.
“Tony (Stewart) comes from open wheels, and you’ve got Casey Mears, who comes from open wheels, and Robbie Gordon. And Kasey Kahne did some open wheels, too, and Jeff Gordon.”
MARCOS AMBROSE
Of all the upcoming Cup rookies, none one has traveled farther than Ambrose, who is set to begin his Cup career with the road-course race at Infineon Raceway in June.
He left his home in Launceston, Tasmania, two years ago to come to America and drive race cars. He started in the Craftsman Truck Series in a Ford fielded by his current team.
The first oval race Ambrose ever participated in was his NASCAR debut at Martinsville Speedway, where he qualified 20th, but completed only 198 of 250 laps.
“I pretty much hit everything but the pace car,” he said afterward, adding that he quickly realized that he was going to have to ease up a little on the throttle and learn the American way of racing.
This year, racing in the Busch Series, he had one pole, at Memphis Motorsports Park, and recorded one top-five and six top-10 finishes and led 58 laps en route to an eighth-place finish in the points standings. That came on top of a partial 2006 season in the Truck Series where he had a pole, two top-five and four top-10 finishes. At age 31, he’s considered a little old for a rookie, but he says age and experience overcome the advantages of youth.
“I realized that I knew nothing at 22,” he says. “At 29, I realized I didn’t know very much at 26.
“I think I’m in my prime as a racer. The timing is perfect.”
SAM HORNISH JR.
Like many successful race drivers, Sam Hornish Jr., 28, started out racing go-karts. The Defiance, Ohio, native soon moved from karts to Formula Fords to Toyota Atlantic.
In 2000, he made his debut at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and set a record for young race winners by taking an Indy Car victory at age 21 and tied another the next year by winning the Indy Car championship. He added another title in 2002, then switched from Panther Racing to Penske, his current employer.
In 2006, he took his third title and won the prestigious Indianapolis 500 with a first-ever, last-lap pass for the lead in the 500.
His road to NASCAR, which mirrors that of former Indy Racing League driver Tony Stewart, has been comparatively rocky. In nine Busch Series starts in 2007, he crashed four times and had an average finish of 31.3. On the Cup side, he showed up for eight races but qualified for only two. He finished 30th at Phoenix and 37th in the season finale at Homestead.
JACQUES VILLENEUVE
Jacques Villeneuve’s name is synonymous with world-class open-wheel racing. He’s the son of Formula One icon Gilles Villeneuve, who was killed during qualifying for the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix when Jacques was 11 years old.
But the tragedy didn’t stop the young Canadian from wanting to follow his father’s career path, and in short order, he moved from go-karts to the Japanese Formula Three Series to the North American Toyota Atlantic Series and then to CART.
In 1995, Villeneuve won the CART championship and the Indianapolis 500. A year later, he was on the F1 circuit, where his father had raced, and started on the pole and finished second in his first race. He won four races in his rookie season and took the F1 title in his sophomore season.
Villeneuve, 36, made his Cup debut at Talladega, which caused some pre-race worrying among his competitors about whether his experience elsewhere made him ready to race in the draft on a restrictor-plate track.
He voluntarily started in the rear after qualifying sixth, so he wouldn’t be mixing it up with the championship contenders, then steered clear of controversy throughout the race and finished 21st. He made a second start at Homestead in the season finale, qualifying 27th, but crashing in the race.
He also has raced in the Craftsman Truck Series, polishing his skills with seven starts in 2007.
DARIO FRANCHITTI
From a racer’s point of view, the timing also is perfect for Dario Franchitti to make the move from IndyCar racing to NASCAR’s Cup Series.
This year, he won IndyCar racing’s two biggest trophies. He won the Indianapolis 500, then followed that with the series championship. Then after the season, the Scottish-born driver announced that he was moving to NASCAR and driving the No. 40 Dodge, previously driven by David Stremme.
That makes him the first European to be a full-timer on NASCAR’s elite circuit.
His car owner, Chip Ganassi, was familiar with Franchitti because he also fields cars in the Indy Racing League.
“Anytime you can sign a driver of Dario’s caliber, you have to be thrilled,” Ganassi said in a statement announcing Franchitti’s hiring. “Dario is a world-class driver. He is a proven winner, an Indianapolis 500 champion and an accomplished individual that will be a super teammate to both Juan Pablo (Montoya) and Reed (Sorenson).”
Franchitti, 34, began racing karts in 1984 at age 11 and worked his way up to the CART series in 1997. In his time in open-wheel racing, he had 18 victories and 17 poles.
He now lives in Nashville, Tenn., with his wife, actress Ashley Judd.
Like other open-wheelers coming to NASCAR next year, Franchitti is taking a ride that, in the past, likely would have gone to an up-and-coming driver from the American short-track ranks. But he said during a break in a recent test session at Atlanta Motor Speedway that he and his fellow open-wheelers have earned their places in the sport.
“We all did the same thing as kids. We’re trying to get rides, and every kid goes through that,” he said. “But I think what we’ve managed to achieve so far has allowed us to be in this position. And ultimately it’s the team owners who have come to us and said, ‘Hey we want you to come do this because of that.’ And that’s the same way they pick young kids as well.’ ”
But that’s not to say he isn’t willing to pay his NASCAR dues.
“I see a lot of testing in my future,” he said. “Hopefully get some time off, but certainly a lot of testing.”
| | Posted December 14, 2007 , 7:15 pm EST
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