Paretta Autosport will miss the Indianapolis 500 this year in favour of taking on at least three road and street course events in the 2022 IndyCar season.
Team founder Beth Paretta has chosen to continue the programme kick-started by the team’s Indy 500 entry last year by contesting a trio of events starting with a pair of road courses races, Road America in June and Mid-Ohio in July. The team will return for a third event the following month on the streets of Nashville.Their number 16 IndyCar entry will be driven by Simona de Silvestro and crewed by the same, largely female squad which tackled the 2021 Indy 500 last year. However the engineering partnership it formed with Penske last year will not continue, as the team members involved have moved on to other motorsport projects this year.
“I started working on this, realistically, right after the 500 ended last year,” Paretta explained. “I knew that my arrangement that I had with Team Penske was not going to be the same.
“Roger and I, we talked about that from the beginning because the people that we worked with last year have been redeployed to a different racing programme. The people are doing something else, so I didn’t have the availability to work with them.”
Paretta has therefore teamed up with Ed Carpenter Racing to continue the team’s IndyCar campaign. Ed Carpenter already had three cars for the Indy 500 this year, which Paretta argued was the decision-making factor in choosing not to repeat last year’s entry and instead wait for other events later in the season.
“If Ed is going to be running three cars at the 500, it wasn’t as appealing for us to be a fourth car for Ed’s system because it’s about that pragmatic growth. And if we’re sitting across the table and crafting this together, there’s two things at play here: it’s a smart competition decision and a smart business decision, and both of those things are weighed equally, especially if you’re in Ed’s chair.
“And so the decision was ‘okay, they’re going to do the three cars for the 500,” Paretta continued. “But then this allows us to have room to do these races later in the year. And so I’ve known that answer for months.”
The deal with Ed Carpenter is for a minimum of the three races and could be extended to include further races, Paretta and Carpenter confirmed.
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Mark (@blueruck)
19th April 2022, 20:30
I hope they find the sponsorship they need for a full season.