Title-winning Carlin joins Indy Lights for '15 season
DEC 01, 2014
Championship-winning British race team Carlin will expand in 2015 to incorporate Indy Lights Presented by Cooper Tires.
The team has previously worked with Verizon IndyCar Series drivers Will Power, Charlie Kimball, Josef Newgarden, Takuma Sato, Mikhail Aleshin, Graham Rahal and Carlos Huertas in addition to Sebastian Vettel, Daniel Riccardo and Nico Rosberg in the junior stages of their careers.
The team will retain its operations in GP2, GP3 and Formula 3 and returned to Formula Renault 3.5 after a year's absence. Carlin wrapped up the GP3 team championship last month in Abu Dhabi with Alex Lynn earning the driver title.
The Carlin Indy Lights team will operate out of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., with personnel from both its base in England and the U.S. It has not announced any Indy Lights drivers for 2015.
“We’re extremely excited to be taking the Carlin team to the U.S. and embarking on this new challenge into the Indy Lights series," racing director Trevor Carlin said. "We’ve had one eye on the U.S. for some time now and the time is right to widen our focus. We’re seeing more and more drivers look across the Atlantic from categories such as Formula 3 and GP2 Series to careers in Indy Lights and IndyCar and it makes sense as a European team to offer that route to our customers.
“While we remain completely focused on our race programs in Europe, it is also important to take on new challenges and projects that maintain our momentum as a company of people. By offering new opportunities, we are able to offer strong team members new goals and challenges internally and retain them within Carlin. By no means do we underestimate the challenge ahead but we believe we have a great team of people to help us be competitive in Indy Lights. We see this as an important new chapter for Carlin and the entire team are excited for the future.”
Indy Lights opens its season March 27-29 in St. Petersburg, Fla., as part of the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg featuring the Verizon IndyCar Series. The event will mark the competitive debut of the new Dallara chassis and 2-liiter, turbocharged engine manufactured by Advanced Engine Research.
The Carlin team has long associations with Dallara and Cooper Tires in British F3.