TrueCar to sponsor rising star in Lotus-powered Dragon Racing entry

INDIANAPOLIS, Monday, Jan. 16, 2012 – Talented international driver Katherine Legge, the first woman to win a major open-wheel race in North America, will compete in the 2012 IZOD IndyCar Series for Dragon Racing.

Legge will drive the No. 6 entry for Dragon Racing, with primary sponsorship from TrueCar.  Her teammate will be four-time Champ Car World Series champion Sebastien Bourdais.

Both Legge and Bourdais will compete with Lotus power, as Dragon Racing was named as a factory team for the iconic sports car manufacturer that is one of three engine suppliers this season in INDYCAR.

The 2012 IZOD IndyCar Series season starts Sunday, March 25 at St. Petersburg, Fla, with the 101^st Indianapolis 500 on Sunday, May 27 as the marquee event of the schedule.

“I am very proud to be driving in the 2012 IndyCar Series for Lotus Dragon Racing , with the gracious support of my sponsor TrueCar,” Legge said. “Lotus, Dragon Racing and TrueCar have put together an amazing programme that I have every faith will succeed and win races.

“Lotus has such a great heritage and racing background and will be an enormous strength to our program.  I am very much looking forward to working with all of those involved, and I am excited to get out on track now alongside a fantastic teammate in Sebastien Bourdais.”

Legge is resuming her elite-level open-wheel racing career after three seasons as an Audi factory driver in the European-based DTM, the world’s top touring car series. She drove for Futurecom TME, Abt Lady Power and Team Rosberg during her three-year DTM career from 2008-10.

Legge, 31, achieved the greatest success of her career to date in North American open-wheel racing.

She won three races in the Toyota Atlantic Championship in 2005, becoming the first woman to win a major open-wheel race in North America.  Legge then became the first woman to compete full time in the Champ Car World Series, in 2006, and was the first woman to lead a lap in that series.

Before coming to America for the first time in 2004, Legge built an impressive portfolio of success in many ultra-competitive European open-wheel series.

She became the first woman to win a pole in a British Formula Ford Zetec event, in 2000.  She also earned pole position at Oulton Park in England during the 2002 Formula Renault season with a time quicker than the lap record set by eventual Formula One World Champion Kimi Raikkonen.

Those results helped her become the first woman to receive the prestigious British Racing Drivers’ Club “Rising Stars” honor in 2002.

Her successful 2005 season in Toyota Atlantic also led to a test late that year with the Minardi team in Formula One, the world’s most prestigious series.

Dragon Racing, owned by Jay Penske, is based in Los Angeles.  The team made its IZOD IndyCar Series debut in 2007 as Luczo Dragon Racing and guided Raphael Matos to Rookie of the Year honors in 2009.

“I am extremely excited and proud to partner with Lotus Cars and TrueCar,” Penske said. “The combination of having the technical support of Lotus as a factory team, the financial backing of a game-changing company TrueCar as a primary sponsor and the unquestionable driving skills of Sebastien and Katherine makes us a force to be reckoned with in 2012.”

GRand Solutions LLC, based in Indianapolis, is representing Legge during her debut IZOD IndyCar Series season.

About TrueCar, Inc.

TrueCar is dedicated to helping you save time and money on your next car purchase.   With TrueCar, you can discover what other people in your area really paid for the car you want before you visit the dealership.   TrueCar customers also enjoy a fast, easy, no-hassle car buying experience from a trusted Certified Dealer in the TrueCar network.

TrueCar, Inc. is an automotive solutions provider focused on changing how cars are sold by providing a significantly better consumer experience while helping qualified dealer partners gain incremental market share and reduce costs.  TrueCar is a visual publisher of new and used car transaction data.  TrueCar price reports help both dealers and consumers to agree on the parameters of a fair deal by providing an accurate, comprehensive and simple understanding of what others actually paid recently for an identically-equipped vehicle both locally and nationally.  TrueCar works with a national network of dealers that provide a no-hassle car buying experience.  In addition, TrueCar assists some of the nation’s largest and most well respected membership and service organizations to meet the auto buying needs of their members and customers.  TrueCar is headquartered in Santa Monica, CA and has offices in San Francisco, CA and Austin, TX.  Since 2006, TrueCar has connected hundreds of thousands of consumers with dealers nationwide resulting in dealers selling over 400,000 vehicles and is developing a suite of products and services centered on radical clarity through the comprehensive analysis of market data and information.

You can follow TrueCar on Twitter and become a fan of TrueCar on Facebook.

About Dragon Racing

Dragon Racing is an IndyCar Series team owned by Jay Penske, the Chairman and CEO of Penske Media Corporation (PMC). Dragon Racing began under the original banner of Luczo Dragon Racing founded by both Penske and Steve Luczo, the Chairman and CEO of Seagate Technologies. The team debuted in 2007 at the Indianapolis 500 with driver Ryan Briscoe and finished fifth. In 2009, during the team’s first complete season, it won Rookie of the Year honors with driver Raphael Matos. In 2012, Dragon Racing has forged an alliance with Lotus to become the Lotus Factory Team, along with lead strategic sponsors Microsoft, TrueCar, and McAfee.  Dragon Racing has two entries in the IZOD IndyCar Series for 2012: Katherine Legge, the first woman to win a major open-wheel race in North America, and four-time Champ Car Series champion Sebastien Bourdais.  Dragon Racing has operations in Indianapolis, Indiana and Los Angeles, California.  For more information on Dragon Racing or its drivers please contact press@dragonracing.com.

About Lotus

Group Lotus PLC, is based in Norfolk, UK, and has three operating divisions:

Lotus Cars, Lotus Engineering and Lotus Racing. Lotus Cars builds world class, high performance sports cars including the award-winning Evora, the iconic Elise and the stunning Exige and the road / track orientated 2-Eleven. Lotus New Era, the future product line-up, was unveiled in Paris on 30th September 2010 featuring the new Esprit, Elan, Elite, Elise and Eterne. Lotus Engineering provides comprehensive and versatile consultancy services to many of the world’s OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers and is an internationally recognised automotive engineering consultancy. Global facilities include those in the US, Malaysia, China and offices in Germany and Japan. Lotus is a global high-tech company, committed to driving forward technology for both Lotus Cars and its Engineering clients, spearheading research into such areas as hybrids, electric vehicles and renewable fuels. Lotus Racing (formerly Lotus Motorsport) operates the motorsports activities of Lotus and includes the strategy to return the Lotus name to a great number of series including endurance racing with GT2, GT4 and LMP2, single-seater racing with GP2, GP3 and IndyCar. Lotus also returned to F1 with Lotus Renault GP from the start of the 2011 F1 racing season onwards.

For more information about Group Lotus please contact:

PR Department, Group Lotus PLC, Potash Lane, Hethel, Norfolk, UK, NR14 8EZ

Tel: +44 (0)1953 608264 Email: pr@lotuscars.com

Contact:                 Ron Green, ron@GRand-Solutions.net (317) 341-1820

By James Foreman

In years gone by it was common practice for many of motorsports greatest drivers to earn a living and develop their skills by driving a variety of different racing cars throughout their careers. 

Whether it was single-seaters, sportscars, touring cars you name it they would drive it, having the willingness and ability to compete in different series provided them with a degree of versatility many of today’s drivers don’t get to experience. 

TO READ MORE OF JAMES’ ARTICLE AND INTERVIEW OF KATHERINE, PLEASE CLICK HERE

For those of you that have requested it, we have posted information here about Katherine’s recent photo shoot.

Ms. Legge came to us with a request to capture the fashion side of her brand, which included both photography and videography.  We secured the location and arranged for professional hair, makeup, fashion styling, art direction, photo crew, video crew, and post production.  The resulting products were a full portfolio of professional images, along with a “sizzle video” from the shoot, capturing the behind-the-scenes production.

Sneak a peek inside Katherine’s photo shoot here:

Katherine was once again a guest on the Autosportradio.com show, live from McGilvery’s in Speedway, Indiana.  In this video from last night’s show, she is joined by Lyn St. James,  a retired professional IndyCar driver with 8 CART and 5 IndyCar Series starts to her name. She is just one of seven women who successfully qualified for the Indianapolis 500, and became the first woman to win the Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year  award in 1992.

The first two guests on the show were Ryan Briscoe (INDYCAR driver) and his wife Nicole (a NASCAR reporter on ESPN).  You can pick up Katherine and Lyn at 36:00 minutes into the show.

  http://www.autosportradio.com/libby/080211.wmv

An excerpt from the 2005-2006 Champ Car World Series Yearbook reminds us of Katherine’s passion to lead, both on and off the race track.

As the little girl cautiously approached Toyota Atlantic driver Katherine Legge for her autograph in the series paddock area at the Long Beach Convention Center, she was relieved to see a wide smile break across the young racer’s face.

“Do you want me to sign that?” Legge asked, accepting the racing hat that the wide-eyed girl held in her hands.

At the time, the young racing fan probably had no idea whose autograph she was seeking.  The girl just knew that this was a woman racing in a man’s sport and she thought that was pretty cool.  But soon she, and the rest of the world, would know that Legge, the British phenom, was more than just a pretty face.  She was a force to be reckoned with.

Later that same weekend, in her Atlantic debut, Legge made history and her life changed forever.  The personable racer stormed from a seventh-place starting position to claim the lead on the streets of Long Beach, holding off her talented teammate in the final three laps for a thrilling victory.  The win, the first ever for a woman in a major open-wheel race in North America, thrust Legge into the international spotlight.

Shaking off a mid-season slump after the breakout win at Long Beach, Legge earned impressive back-to-back victories at Edmonton and San Jose, and went on to claim third in the championship standings on the strength of her three wins and five podium finishes.  But perhaps even more impressive than her performances on the track was the way Legge handled herself as a role model to young women.  Something that little girl in Long Beach learned long before the TV interviews and champagne showers in Victory Circle.

“It’s an honor to have someone root for you and appreciate how hard you’ve worked to get where you are,” said Legge.  “If I can help motivate young women to get into racing and they feel they have a chance to succeed in sports, then that’s the thing I am really proud of.”

As we get ready for Katherine’s INDYCAR debut, it’s nice to revisit some of the press from her earlier accomplishments in the equally impressive cars she drove in her first season in the Champ Car World Series.  As the IZOD IndyCar Series heads to Iowa, we review what happened on this same weekend at the Grand Prix of Cleveland during Round 6 of the Champ Car World Series.

Katherine and her PKV Racing crew overcame an incident in practice on Saturday to get off to great start in Sunday’s race.  Oriol Servia was up front on the opening lap, while a melee of first lap action [typical of the Burke Lakefront Airport circuit] took place in front of Katherine, who successfully cleared the carnage, emerging in seventh place.  On lap 14, while battling for position, her car spun, cutting a tire and forcing a pit stop.  Never the less, Katherine demonstrated her trademark determination, and continued to battle and press the cars ahead of her.  Skillfully and methodically, her efforts began to pay off.  She ran in 13th position through her second stop on lap 39 and well into her third stint.  However, toward the end of the third stint Katherine moved into 11th just prior to her third and final stop on lap 72.  She was up to ninth following the Justin Wilson and Nelson Philippe incidents, then took over eighth with about ten laps to go when Will Power exited the race.  Had the race gone one more lap, Katherine would have finished fifth.

“I am disappointed with the way the race went today because I definitely thought the Bell Micro PKV Racing car should have finished in the top-five,” Katherine said.  “It makes me more determined to come back next time and have the type of performance I expect of myself,” she explained.  “We did finish in the top-10 today, so I feel good about that, but we should be, and would have been, in first if things had gone a little different in this race.  We had the speed and the crew was doing such a great job,” Katherine concluded.

Katherine made her first Champ Car start in Cleveland and the sixth of her career on this same weekend.  At this point in the season, Katherine had finished in the top-10 three times in the six races of the year, placing a season, and career, high sixth at Milwaukee and eighth in her Champ Car debut at Long Beach as well as here in Cleveland.  In Houston, she was headed for another top-10 finish, when she was hit by another competitor and eventually placed 14th.

Katherine, who became the first female to start a Champ Car/CART race since Lyn St. James at Michigan in 1995, when she made her Champ Car debut at Long Beach, had established in six races a number of records already in her first season in Champ Car. In Milwaukee, she became the first female to lead a race when she held the top spot for 12 laps in her very first oval race.  In addition, her sixth place finish at Milwaukee set a new high for a female surpassing a ninth place finish by Janet Guthrie at the 1978 Indianapolis 500.  Katherine won three races in her rookie season in the Atlantic Championship Series.  Her win in her debut Atlantic event at Long Beach made her the first woman to win a major open-wheel race in North America.

Yesterday, Katherine joined Lyn St. James, founder of the Women in the Winner’s Circle Foundation, and Pat Wachtel, president and CEO of Girls Inc. of Greater Indianapolis, for lunch and a private tour of Women in the Winner’s Circle: The Traveling Exhibit on view at the Indiana State Museum.

Lyn and The Henry Ford, in Dearborn, Michigan, have teamed up to create a tribute to the history of women in racing with a new exhibition. The display recognizes the past history, the growing achievements and the future growth of women in automotive racing. Women in the Winner’s Circle: The Traveling Exhibit informs visitors about the accomplishments of women in motor sports and showcases racing as a gender-neutral sport, where men and women truly compete against each other on an equal playing field.

Women in the Winner’s Circle Foundation is dedicated to professional development for talented, up-and-coming young women race car drivers and encourages women to pursue opportunities in automotive fields. 

Girls Inc. of Greater Indianapolis provides hands-on programs that address the challenges girls face today, such as self-esteem and bullying.  Girls Inc. inspires all girls to be strong, smart, and bold. 

Please take the opportunity to check out the Women in the Winner’s Circle: The Traveling Exhibit on view at the Indiana State Museum through September 6, 2011.  You’ll find Katherine in the display.

Katherine spent most of her weekend listening and learning from the Sam Schmidt Motorsports (SSM) teams, who finished the weekend with a pole position (#77, Alex Tagliani) and a fourth-place starting position (#99, Townsend Bell) on the grid for next weekend’s Indianapolis 500.  Both cars were quick and at the top of the speed charts during the week’s practice sessions.  Also consistently quick and qualifying sixth was the #98, Dan Wheldon entry, which was prepared by SSM and entered by Bryan Herta Autosport.  Look for all three SSM cars to do well in next weekend’s race.  Sam’s team has been the talk of the paddock since the first practice sessions.

It was a tough weekend for the women attempting to qualify, but each seemed to have their own unique challenges:

-       Simona de Silvestro had to qualify a backup car, after her primary car was destroyed in a crash during practice on Thursday.  She will be starting 24^th in a chassis manufactured in 2003.

-       Danica Patrick and the other three full-time Andretti Autosport drivers struggled to find speed all week.  The team was off with the setups of all four cars, which resulted in two of their drivers not making the field (Mike Conway and Ryan Hunter-Reay).  Danica starts 26^th and Marco Andretti will start 28^th.

-       Pippa Mann barely made it in and will start 32^nd, while her Conquest Racing teammate, Sebastian Saavedra could not find enough speed to make it into the field.

-       Ana Beatriz will start last in the field of 33 next weekend.  Her Dreyer & Reinbold Racing team was frustrated and chasing speed all week.  Teammates, Justin Wilson and Paul Tracy, will start 20^th and 25^th, respectively.

Teams will only have one more practice session on Friday, May 27^th, before taking the starting flag for the 100^th Anniversary of the Indianapolis 500.