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Can Anyone Stop Alex Lloyd? |
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This years Indy Pro Series is looking to be the most exciting ever for this development series. With the much larger purse that Tony George introduced last year and the extra testing days offered to IndyCar Series teams for sponsoring an IPS team the number of entrants has ballooned. And on top of these two incentives, added road races have also helped attract more entries. This year there are 9 road races to go with 7 ovals.
Still, given some of the small fields last year, as low as 12-14 cars, the 24-25 entrants in the first three races this year have been a welcome surprise. Tony George and Roger Bailey deserve a lot of applause for achieving what so many have thought was impossible.
The question so far this season though is can anyone catch Alex Lloyd?
He certainly showed his road racing skill last year when he won the Liberty Challenge on the IMS F1 road circuit and then added a late season win at Infineon. And he also showed that he has good driving judgment on the track.
In winning the seasons opener at Homestead, he let everyone know that he can handle ovals also. But then, Sam’s guys have shown repeatedly that they know how to set up a winning car for Homestead. Was his win only due to driving a Sam Schmidt Motorsports car? No, we think he was just showing what he can do on an oval with a really good car.
St. Pete only added to Alex’s new image when he won both of the street races, in spite of the top-six inverted starting order. But back to the question. We think that there is just too much talent in the field for Alex or anyone to run away with the points this year.
Past series champions Wade Cunningham [AFS Racing] and Jay Howard [SpeedWorks] now have added incentive to show how good they really are, and other past IPS race winners such as Jaime Camara [Andretti Green Racing] and Bobby Wilson [Brian Stewart Racing] have expectations of winning their share of races.
Then there is the new group of rookies, a dozen or so, which is sure to have at least a couple of surprise talents. Already Hideki Mutoh [Super Aguri Panther Racing] has given notice with his 3rd, 2nd and 4th place finishes that he is a new guy to watch closely.
We will see if the Freedom 100 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Carb Day [May 25] gives us a clue as to who will be Alex Lloyd’s biggest challenger. Everyone will be going all out for the win and the fame at this one.
fromthetrack.com will have more to say later as the season progresses.
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