Late Indy Car driver rumors

Will Tracy land at Coyne or Shank?

The race is on to land the last of the Izod IndyCar Series seats for the upcoming season. A field that could reach 30 competitors currently has 22 confirmed car-and-driver combinations, with another two believed to have been secured: Justin Wilson at Dale Coyne Racing and Takuma Sato at Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing.

The six remaining potential seats are the second cars at Coyne, Rahal and Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, the third seat at KV Racing Technology and single seats at Conquest Racing and the new MSR Indy team owned by Michael Shank.

Coyne's second car figures to be filled by Paul Tracy or James Jakes; Tracy also could sign with Shank. Rahal is believed to be working with Jay Howard. KV could have Vitor Meira, Esteban Guerrieri or someone else. The plans of Dreyer & Reinbold and Conquest are less known.

Sam Schmidt Motorsports has been trying to assemble a program to partner with Simon Pagenaud, but that seems less likely by the day. Owner Sam Schmidt said his deadline to act on a Honda deal is nearing.

"I continue to maintain staffing and (a second car) is still my primary goal, but we won't compromise (financially) to do it," he said.

At present, Chevrolet has nine combinations, Honda eight and Lotus five. Teams without engine deals are Conquest, Ed Carpenter Racing and Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing. Indy Star