Indianapolis Weekend Notebook

Photo: Porsche

***A total of 35 cars are officially entered for this weekend’s pair of Porsche Carrera Cup North America presented by The Cayman Islands races at Indianapolis Motor Speedway as part of the Porsche Sports Car Together Fest.

***Among the notable additions beyond the previously announced Jeff Gordon include Matty Graham (MDK Motorsports, Pro), Kyle Washington (GMG Racing, Pro-Am), Jeff Mosing (Topp Racing, Pro-Am) and Joseph Lombardo (Kelly-Moss, Am).

***Three Carrera Cup races were held last year as a result of a reshuffled calendar. Eventual Pro class champion Seb Priaulx won the first and third races with Parker Thompson having won Race 2. Five of the six driver who won at Indy have all returned including Efrin Castro (Pro-Am, Races 1 & 2), Curt Swearingin (Pro-Am, Race 3), Matt Halcome (Pro-Am 991, Race 1) and Lombardo (Pro-Am 991, Races 2 & 3).

***Gordon’s Hendrick Performance Group-entered Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car is competing in the Pro class but will be technically considered as an Invitational entry and thus not being eligible for points towards the Pro championship.

***The four-time NASCAR Cup Series champion and three-time Daytona 500 winner has been reunited with longtime crew chief Ray Evernham for the first time since the 1999 Cup Series season as well as his former NASCAR spotter Steve Barkdoll, who Gordon credits with helping connect the two in the early days of their careers.

***Evernham said he’s assembled a largely “rookie” crew and “begged, borrowed and stole” equipment to make the opportunity a reality. “Some of the younger drivers have come over to meet Jeff and meet me,” Evernham explained. “It makes you feel good. These guys are like pros and they’re 1-2-3-4 up on the board. So when they come to say hi to Jeff and meet me and talk about how fast we used to be, I ask them, ‘What tire pressure are you running?’ and stuff like that!”

***Premier Racing relinquished the No. 24 so Gordon could race his familiar number. Adam Adelson, who typically utilizes the number, will drive the No. 120 Porsche this weekend. Adelson, a multi-time winner in Pirelli GT4 America competition, is a lifetime Jeff Gordon fan.

***Porsche Motorsport North America President and CEO Volker Holzmeyer explained to Sportscar365 how the opportunity with Gordon came about: “He was approaching us and we thought of approaching him. It was really that easy. We didn’t need a master plan.”

***Holzmeyer said Porsche is looking to follow up with inviting more VIP drivers to Carrera Cup North America for one-offs similar to Gordon’s next year. When we did the examples with Patrick Dempsey [in Supercup] I think this was also good as a marketing value. We’d like to follow up that idea. You can plan for it but at the end you always have to find somebody that wants to do it.”

***While the 2023 calendar has yet to be released, Holzmeyer said he expects no major changes to it although it has yet to be announced since there are still some “balls in the air” as of the Road America weekend last month.

***Carrera Cup North America is the only remaining IMSA-sanctioned series yet to confirm its full schedule, alluding to the possibility that the single-make series could fill the sanctioning body’s previously announced slot on the NASCAR Chicago Street Race weekend on July 1.

***While being Canadian, Parker Thompson, who sits second in the Pro class standings, resides in Indianapolis. Thompson, who scored 50 points at the most recent event at Road America, is now trailing van Berlo by 16 points. With three wins in the last four races, Trenton Estep has closed to 32 points of the lead in his MDK Motorsports Porsche, meanwhile.

***Kelly-Moss accounts for 14 of the possible 36 class victories this season. MDK has ten class wins, while JDX has four, Mark Motorsports and Topp each have three and Nolasport and Wright Motorsports have one apiece entering this weekend.

***Qualifying is set to get underway Saturday at 10:10 a.m. CT followed by Race 1 at 3:15 p.m. ET and Race 2 on Sunday at 1:30 p.m. Both 40-minute races will be streamed live on PorscheCarreraCup.us and Peacock featuring the IMSA Radio commentary team led by John Hindhaugh, who is on-site this weekend.

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John