Ryan Briscoe welcomes new race engineer
Cowdin joined the Team last fall and immediately found success with the #6 Team Penske car as he and Briscoe teamed up to earn the Australian's third win of the 2008 season at Surfers Paradise. With one race under their belt, you can be sure that Cowdin and Briscoe will look to replicate that success as the 2009 season gets underway.
Cowdin began in open-wheel competition working with Forsythe Championship Racing/Tasman Motorsports Group from 1995-1999. There, he first met driver Tony Kanaan and worked with him in 1996 and 1997 in the Indy Lights Series, winning the 1997 Championship before moving with Kanaan to CART in 1999. He also worked with Cristiano Da Matta in his Championship 1998 Indy Lights season.
In 1999, Cowdin moved to Mo Nunn racing, working with Kanaan during the 2000 and 2001 CART seasons and Felipe Giaffone during the 2002 IndyCar Series Season.
In 2002, Cowdin joined Kanaan at Andretti Green Racing as his race engineer. For nearly six years, Cowdin and Kanaan worked together to win 13 races, ten pole positions as well as the 2004 IndyCar Series Championship.
"The off-season has really given me a chance to settle in at Team Penske," said Cowdin. "You see that this Team is a first-class organization when you're on the outside looking in; but it's not until you become part of the Team that you realize just how truly amazing this group is. Ryan and I have been able to work together a couple times already, which was good to get in before the new season begins. As we look to the first event of 2009, we will definitely take full advantage of the limited testing available to us. We've been working hard at the shop during the off-season and now we'll get a chance to implement some of those things on the racetrack. Being able to test on both an oval and a road course will help us in accumulating data for the upcoming season. Just because we won't compete at Homestead until the last race of 2009, doesn't mean that we won't be able to apply the things that we're going to learn to the races proceeding it. I'm looking forward to next week and I'm happy that the 2009 season is finally here." Team Penske PR