While the majority of teams and drivers will use this weekend's Kansas Speedway race as a final tune-up for the month of May and the Indianapolis 500, none has more to gain from the Road Runner Turbo 300 than Tomas Scheckter and Luczo Dragon Racing.
The partnership makes its 2008 debut this weekend, with South African Scheckter joining the outfit that finished a surprise fifth in last year's Indy 500 with Ryan Briscoe. Giving up a full-time ride for the first time in several IRL seasons, Scheckter returns behind the wheel at a circuit that has given him four top ten finishes in six starts, but knows that a repeat may be hard to come by as Luczo Dragon runs for the first time as a team in its own right.
"To be honest, you could cancel [the Indy 500 start] out in my eyes, because I think it was a start they did under a Penske banner, and this is really their first start as a team on their own, with their own equipment in their own garages," the South African commented, "This is a team put together by John Cummiskey, who is the team manager, and Steve Luczo and Jay Penske. It is really their own deal and their first start on their two feet.
"What Ryan Briscoe had and what I have is two different worlds. That's why I give a lot of credit for the amount of work that these guys have put in, to come from a car from scratch, from having no help from anybody."
As a result of the late start, and the relative inexperience of the team, Scheckter is not setting his sights too high for either Kansas this weekend or the Indianapolis 500 at the end of May.
"I think our expectations of Indy.... I don't really know yet, because I've got to see how we perform in Kansas," he admitted, "But, certainly, at Kansas, we want to have a strong finish and make sure we don't have any mechanical problems. Making sure that everybody works well together and making sure that we get our stops right [will be] a good basis for a good working relationship within the team that we can move on to Indy."
