On Friday at the Honda Indy Toronto, an announcement was made with regards to the future of the Firestone Indy Lights. INDYCAR announced they’ve entered into an agreement with Andersen Promotions to license and operate the Firestone Indy Lights in 2014.
“This is a positive move for our sport,” Derrick Walker, president of competition and operations for INDYCAR, said. “A strong and relevant training system is important to develop the next generation of INDYCAR drivers.”
Indy Lights has served an important purpose in developing drivers throughout the years. Charlie Kimball, James Hinchcliffe and Tristan Vautier are just three of the drivers who’ve graduated from Indy Lights to the IZOD IndyCar Series. Many IndyCar teams run drivers in the Indy Lights to further develop their programs.
“The history of Firestone Indy Lights is so impressive with dozens of drivers graduating to IZOD IndyCar Series careers over the years,” Dan Andersen said. “I am honored to be given the opportunity to step in and steer the course for the future.”
The move makes sense as Andersen Promotions already manages the other series that are part of the MAZDA Road to Indy – the Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship Powered by MAZDA and the Pro Mazda Championship Presented by Cooper Tires. Drivers who want to race in the IZOD IndyCar Series are highly encouraged to use the stepping ladder system to gain experience.
Andersen has been behind the program since day one, saying that it is a unique program as other series don’t have a clear stepping ladder like this.
“As the person involved in the first two steps, I had a natural interest in and concern for the top step,” Andersen said. “In past years I also owned teams in the Indy Lights series. I know what it does. I know the tremendous amount of driers that have been graduated up to IndyCar and I know how valuable the program is.”
In starting to make changes, Andersen recognizes that cost is of importance, but also gaining interest back into the series as right now, the car counts are down with only nine cars.
“We need to do that via changes to the car, changes to the way we produce the whole series, mainly PR and marketing worldwide,” Andersen said. “There are numerous drivers participating in the ladders in other continents that are paying far more than the Indy Lights budget. For whatever reason, Indy Lights is not currently viewed in the way it once was. We need to recapture that.”
Andersen says the first change that you will see is to the car, which will be rolled out come Labour Day weekend.
Budget wise, he says the budget should be from $700,000 to $750,000 a year, given that the Pro Mazda budget is in the 350 to 450 range.
“We will take some steps to make sure budgets don’t rise with the new car and engine by reducing schedule challenges in terms of travel logistics and events,” Andersen went on to say. “We’ll likely introduce a few doubleheader weekends to improve the number of races being driven by the drivers. They need seat time. They don’t only need it in testing and practice but they need it in racing. We’ll attempt to get some more races out of the schedule that we’re operating.”
Indy Lights will be guaranteed 12 races a year, with 10 of those alongside the IZOD IndyCar Series.
If everything goes pertaining to Andersen’s thoughts, we should see 15 cars in the series by 2015, with 20 cars in the years to follow.
“I think it’s totally doable,” he said. “We had an owners meeting in here yesterday and currently Indy Lights has four team owners participating. We had I think 14 or 15 team owners in the room listening to our vision. In my view, if we enlist another four to six team owners, we’ve solved our problem.”
