Feb. 2 newsstand

Silly Season update to follow ...

Just a few nuggets of news over the last few days ...
Front office news: Cotman to IRL
Former Champ Car race steward Tony Cotman is now joining the IRL's staff as Brian Barnhart's sidekick. Many CC folks said Cotman was the best thing that the series had last year, but he recently resigned.
Says TC: “I’m just going where I think the future of open-wheel racing is going to be. It’s a good job. I’m going to oversee anything that has to do with competition, technical issues, tracks and assist Brian in race control.”

Tomas to Luczo Dragon
Patrick Long had been rumored for this seat, but Tomas Scheckter is likely to pilot the Luczo Dragon ride for the Indy 500. Jay Penske's team is also planning to run Kansas and one other race ... more if sponsorship materializes.
Says Roger's kid of Scheckter: ""He's certainly one of the best out there who doesn't have a ride."

Wheldon to NASCAR in '09?
Ganassi signed Alex Lloyd for a reason ... we noted this in the last newsstand, but Wheldon talks about the '08 season and the future with ESPN.com.
Says the soon-to-be-bachelor-no-more: "At the end of the day, people have always tagged me as the next driver to go to NASCAR, and I have said that I would like to try that. I'm not going to deny that. But going into this season, I want as little distractions as possible, and I have totally cast that stuff aside. I'm a firm believer in this saying: If it's meant to be, it's meant to be."

Split news
This is a few days old, but TG's offer for open-wheel unity didn't go very far, at least this year, as TG scrapped it as we got closer to the season. TG would've provided cars for CC teams, plus brought Long Beach and a couple of other races into the fold.
The big quote was this from Carl Haas in Robin Miller's story: “It hasn’t happened yet but we’ve certainly considered going. It may not happen this year, but it’s highly probable we’ll do it in 2009 because there needs to be one series.”
Says TG, in Cavin's story: "Teams started coming to me in December and January, and there's not much I can do at that point. I needed to know earlier so we could get the cars ordered."

While looking for pigs to fly as I read this, Robin Miller says the IRL will win the war, and blasts Champ Car for keeping it going. The big point in this story was RM's discussion of Carl Haas' comment from above: "Haas ... went to the IRL leader because he, (Paul) Newman and Mike Lanigan are troubled about the lack of professionalism, lack of communication and lack of anything resembling a future."

Meanwhile, although Justin Wilson has a home at NHLR, most of Champ Car's driver lineup is not set for the first race.

Catching up with the runner-up
Scott Dixon can't fly under the radar anymore.

From the tabloids & features
OK magazine interviews Helio Castroneves, while people show up to see him in Grand Rapids.
Tony Kanaan takes a spin around Belle Isle

Former drivers news
De Ferran to ALMS
Former Indy winner Gil de Ferran, one of the all-around good guys in motorsport, is leaving his F1 post with Honda to join the ALMS with Tom Anderson. He isn't ruling out an IndyCar effort in the future. Gil also talks with Crash.net.

Sam isn't ruling out Indy in the future
This story has finally made it to NASCARworld, so here goes.

IPS news
Doug Prendeville to Andersen Racing (which has a partnership with RLR)
Richard Antinucci to Sam Schmidt Motorsports, where James Davison will be his teammate
Bobby Wilson in Team E ride

Racing biz stuff
ESPN.com's Terry Blount discusses the difficulty of finding sponsorships in motorsports.

Joost Web TV is giving the Indianapolis Motor Speedway a boost