INDYCAR: Dragon To Split Single Entry For Bourdais And Legge
With a single full-season engine supply deal in place from Chevy, Sebastien Bourdais and Katherine Legge will split one car for the remainder of the season.
Sebastien Bourdais drove Katherine Legge's No. 6 TrueCar in practice at Indy, and now the teammates will split a single car and share the promotional responsibilities of the team's sponsors. (Photo: Marshall Pruett)
With a single full-season engine supply deal in place from Chevrolet after the Indy 500, SPEED.com has confirmed that Dragon Racing's Sebastien Bourdais and Katherine Legge will now share one entry for the remainder of the season.
Despite swelling its engine supply ranks to 16 cars for the 500, including two engines for Dragon, Chevy will reduce its full-time supply figure to 13 cars starting this weekend at Detroit, leaving team owner Jay Penske in the position of consolidating his two-car program for the remainder of the season.
At 13 leases, Chevy is still beyond its contractual obligation to series, and like Honda, has picked up teams (Dragon and Dreyer & Reinbold) that parted ways with Lotus after the season began.
While there is some hope that Chevy will be able to accommodate a 14th engine lease later in the year, there are no firm plans or guarantees at this point that Bourdais and Legge will have individual entries, but SPEED.com has learned that Penske has retained most of Legge's crew, but at least a limited numbers of team members have either left of been given notice.
As he did last year with Dale Coyne Racing, Bourdais will now handle the road and street course driving duties for Dragon in the No. 7 McAfee-sponsored car, and Legge will pilot the No. 6 car carrying primary TrueCar branding at Texas, Milwaukee, Iowa and the season finale at Fontana.
Bourdais, who was already scheduled to miss Milwaukee due to its conflict with the 24 Hours of Le Mans, is expected to feature with Chevy's twin-turbo V6 engine behind his, but sitting 21st in points at the moment, dropping the oval races won't significantly impact his place in the final standings. It could, however, impact Dragon's ability to retains its Leader Circle funding if the entry ends the season outside whatever championship position cutoff--20th or similar--the series implements. Legge is currently 24th in the standings.
With Legge's TrueCar women's racing initiative serving as Penske's highest-profile sponsor program, it's expected the last-minute need to serve two sets of sponsors with a single entry will see an amplified presence by Dragon's major backers regardless of who's driving the car.
Marshall Pruett is SPEED.com's Auto Racing Editor, covering IndyCar and sports cars. He also contributes to Road & Track and Racecar Engineering. Follow him @MarshallPruett on Twitter.