Jottings

• Tony Kanaan showed good team support by hanging out in the garage with his team while they thrashed his new car. Crew wrenches will tell you that they roll their eyes when drivers do this, but secretly nothing is more aloof than for a driver to disappear to his coach while the team stays up working of his car. The team sent him off to bed around 11:25pm.

• I have big concerns about Ryan Hunter-Reay even making the field unless they change something.

• Paul Tracy is driving that car on the knife's edge. He has a shot at the first 11, and I hope he makes it just to shake things up a little.

So Who Is DAFCA Software?

A possible sponsor for the #17 Rahal Letterman entry got a bottom-of-the-page mention over at Furious Wedge: DAFCA Software. Who no one has ever heard of -- unless you are a chiphead.

Trying to connect the dots, I wandered over to www.dafca.com. It turns out that they produce post-silicon waffer validation systems, otherwise known as chip testing software. Now why would they want to be on the side of an Indycar?

Recall Danica's new livery for the Indy 500, which no longer carries Motorola and now features Boost Mobile in cross-promotion deal with Motorola. I'm going to go on a limb here and speculate that DAFCA is a leftover part of Motorola's cross-promotion. In short, Rahal took Andretti's castoff sponsor.

Now there's several things that still don't line up here... for example, why not just put DAFCA on Danica's car (or Marco's) as an associate? And why would DAFCA want Servia in the car instead of 2004 Indy 500 Champion Buddy Rice?

I may be off on some details, but I'm betting on a DAFCA - Motorola tie-in here.

Jottings

• Pressdog has filed an excellent interview with Bob Varsha. It's mostly about F1, but there's still plenty of interest for the Indycar fan.
• To followup my Conquest-Tagliani story yesterday: Curt Cavin is confirming via twitter that Tags is in with Conquest.
• Rubicon is announcing King Tut sponsorship for Tagliani's #34 machine via twitter.
  
• Follow these and all stories as they are happening at http://twitter.com/racemind.
  

Conquest Expected to Tap Alex Tagliani

Breaking News: After the today's post about Indy TBA's and Conquest Racing, I've received word now that Conquest will name Alex Tagliani for the Indy 500.

After I speculated about Tomas Scheckter and Alex Tagliani, I was told "You are correct about one of those two, and it isn't Scheckter." Sly, huh?

Nevertheless, this isn't a shock as Tagliani was the presumptive driver if Conquest answered the bell. But it's one more piece of the TBA puzzle.

Some Clues About Indy 500 TBA's

The two Conquest Racing Indy 500 entries are still listed as TBA (driver To Be Announced), but there's some signs of activity.

First, the team twitter (twitter.com/ConquestRacing) sent out a teaser pic of a black-and-yellow bit of body work with this caption: "Our car will have a new paint scheme for Indy. We can't show what the car will look like just yet but you can try and guess!"

And guess I shall. The use of "our car" suggests they are planning to run just one car, not two. And the paint scheme looks vaguely like the Symantec car from last year:

(Photo Credit: daylife.com)

Now the word is that Symantec is not in a good financial position to be sponsoring Indycars, but it begs the obvious question: could this be a car for Tomas Scheckter?

...Or could it be for Alex Tagliani, Conquest's driver at Long Beach? Curt Cavin listed Tagliani as one of the Indy 500 rookies, even though Tagliani does not appear on the Indy 500 entry list.

Conquest has schedule an announcement for Tuesday, and I expect we will hear about either the sponsor or the driver -- hopefully both.

Buddy Rice May Reunite with Rahal for Indy 500

Breaking News: The word this morning is that Buddy Rice is working with Rahal-Letterman on an Indy 500 reunion. This would put the 2004 Indy 500 Champion into one of the better TBA rides out there. What's not yet known is the financial end; Buddy brings some money but probably not enough for the month, and Rahal seems to be holding out for a fully-funded shoe.

No word yet from Curt Cavin or Robin Miller on this pairing.

UPDATE: We're discussing this over on TrackForum here.

Racemind on Twitter

Yes, I've decided to give Twitter a try. You can find Racemind at http://twitter.com/racemind.

Helio's Agonizing Wait

As the racing world awaits Helio's fate at the hands of the jury, I find myself imagining what Helio is going through today. To come from the top of the world as a back-to-back Indy 500 champion, winner of Dancing with the Stars, loved by his fans in several continents... now he sits with his head in his hands after an enormously complicated tax trial, helplessly waiting for 12 people to decide if he spends the next few years behind bars.

Given the facts in this case, I believe that Helio never intended to break the law. He may have tried to find the best way to structure his money to minimize his tax burden. He may have gotten some bad advice. And it does appear that he may have been tinkering with the idea of moving to Monaco to avoid future taxes -- but that's the future, and this isn't The Minority Report.

And so Helio waits, with some of the verdicts already sitting in a sealed envelope on the judge's desk. With every passing minute, all he can think about is his lovely fiancee he'd be leaving behind. The storybook career as an Indycar driver that might be left in tatters. The love of his fans that would eventually fade as he sits behind bars.

I can imagine him wringing his hands. Breathing in, breathing out. Trying to think about something, anything besides that sealed envelope on the desk containing your fate.

Jury Deliberates Helio's Fate

Helio Castroneves' tax-evasion trial has gone to the jury. With deliberations underway, we have to wonder what a hung jury will mean -- will the government go through the effort of retrying the case?

The IRS will have a tough time walking away from the case at this point, because it might open the door for others to attempt this tax-avoidance method. But re-trying a case like this has a low probability of yielding a conviction. Most likely, they would announce their intent to re-try, and then offer Helio a one-time chance to pay up and plea down to a misdemeanor. But it will cost him, probably big.

The Racemind Take: The burden of proof is heavy on the prosecution, who must show that Helio knowingly attempted to break the tax law rather than just legally minimize his tax burden -- and they must show it "beyond reasonable doubt". While I think it's likely that Helio was planning to avoid paying the tax altogether in the future, he doesn't appear to have done it yet. Hopefully the jury agrees.

This whole episode has already revealed one loser, regardless of the verdict: the former Penske employee who called the IRS to snitch on Castroneves out of spite.

Tweeting the Season

There are so many questions left unanswered as this postseason winds down, perhaps the least of which is do Indycar fans use twitter?

What at first appeared as a cutesy way for 12-year-old girls to tweet each other when Hannah Montana tried a new shade of cheek glitter has now turned into a interesting news tool. The interface is still a bit too Limited Too for my tastes, but it might be more than a toy; many Indycar teams and drivers are starting to tweet news out to their followers.

Yes, they "tweet news out". That's the term, I'm not comfortable with it either.

Read more over at trackforum.com.