By John Sturbin | Senior Writer
RacinToday.com
Utsunomiya, Tochigi, Japan – When I was a big-time boxing writer, Europe was my playground.
Actually, Europe was the playground of undisputed welterweight (147-pound) champion Donald Curry of Fort Worth. Curry’s career became my “beat” in the early 1980s while I was a sports writer at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  As [...]

Virtually all public announcements in motor sports are billed as big. Very few of them turn out to be more than mildly significant. There was one Friday, however, that was big and it will affect the oldest major racing series in North America.
The Indy Racing League held a press conference on Friday in Milwaukee. [...]

The IZOD IndyCar Series unveiled its 2011 schedule on Friday and it adds a new venue, reintroduces two others and drops four others.
The announcement was made at the historic Milwaukee Mile in West Allis, Wis. which will return to the schedule next June.
New Hampshire Motor Speedway also is back, and the inaugural street race in [...]

Helio Castroneves now knows both sides of what it’s like to play the fuel at Kentucky Speedway.
Denied a victory on the 1.5-mile oval when he ran out of fuel heading to the checkered flag in 2008, Castroneves collaborated with Team Penske president Tim Cindric on an ethanol-stingy strategy that won the IZOD IndyCar Series’ Kentucky [...]

RacinToday.com
Ed Carpenter on Friday afternoon won the pole for Saturday’s IZOD IndyCar Series race at Kentucky Speedway.
Carpenter, driving part time for Vision Racing in partnership with Panther Racing, had a two-lap average speed of 217.933 mph.
It was the first pole ever for Vision.
“It’s been an interesting day, the conditions changed a lot from this morning,” [...]

By John Sturbin | Senior Writer
RacinToday.com
Kentucky Speedway’s 1.5-mile layout technically classifies it among the “cookie-cutter” intermediate superspeedways on the IZOD IndyCar Series schedule.
To open-wheel veteran Paul Tracy, however, Kentucky Speedway qualifies as uncharted territory. That will change Saturday night, when Tracy returns to the series with Dreyer & Reinbold Racing for the Kentucky Indy 300.
Tracy [...]

Normally, I don’t have anything to say about coverage of the IZOD IndyCar Series on VERSUS. That’s because Charter Communications, my cable provider in Fort Worth, Texas, does not include VERSUS in either the basic or premium sports package to which I currently subscribe.
Used to get VERSUS for free, back when it was the Outdoor [...]

By John Sturbin | Senior Writer
RacinToday.com
Having just lopped 36 points off Will Power’s once-cushy advantage Saturday night, Dario Franchitti was asked to reassess his IZOD IndyCar Series championship chances with three races remaining.
“Trust me,” Franchitti said, “I’ll be pedaling as hard as I can.”
Franchitti and his Target Chip Ganassi Racing team used a clever bit [...]

RacinToday.com
Ryan Briscoe on Friday won the pole for this weekend’s Peak Antifreeze and Motor Oil 300 IZOD IndyCar Series race at Chicagoland Speedway.
The Team Penske driver’s speed was 216.346 mph.
“The car today was just spot on,” said Briscoe, who won from the pole at Texas Motor Speedway in early June. “I didn’t want to be [...]

By Jim Pedley | Managing Editor
RacinToday.com
Back during the days when American open-wheel racing was going through its civil war, then-CART driver Dario Franchitti didn’t hide his dislike for driving really fast cars right next to concrete walls on oval race tracks.
Having raced on nothing but road courses during his career, that dislike of ovals was [...]