Viso’s Vision: Getting ready for the season ahead

KV Racing IndyCar driver E.J. Viso will be a regular columnist at AR1.com in 2012, bringing his perspective on happenings in the IndyCar Series

Hi to all my friends at AutoRacing1, we are starting the IndyCar season with many new things to come both on the technical and sporting side with changes that will surely provide more excitement to the series. We will premiere the new Dallara chassis, which bear the initials of our unforgettable and irreplaceable friend and colleague, Dan Wheldon. He was a special person on and off the track, a true champion and we all will miss him.

The unfortunate accident that occurred in Las Vegas last year could've happened to any of us, a tragedy that provided the purpose for IndyCar to make the necessary changes that were long overdue.

IndyCar has introduced their new race director, Beaux Barfield, who I feel confident, along with my peers, will bring forth a fresh and impartial viewpoint on behalf of all drivers. Safety concerns and the contradictory double"file restarts have been a long"standing issue and Barfield will be the voice to express our concerns.

For the third consecutive year, I will be with the KV Racing Technology team this season premiering the new Chevrolet engines. We have worked hard on developing the new car. At Sebring we worked with Rubens Barrichello, who brought his experience of 19 years in Formula 1 and we are happy to have him with us. I like the idea of working with him, even though he hasn’t had any experience on the oval tracks, he proved he can contribute a lot in developing the new DW12 car.

Penske and Ganassi will be top contenders, Andretti should also be amongst those two teams and I am confident we will be a challenging team as well. For the first time since I’ve been with the series, there will be several engines including Chevy, Honda and Lotus. Hopefully all can offer excellent performance and good reliability.

Since the start of 2012, I’ve been very busy at work, despite not having started the season and racing. We were going to participate in the 24 Hours of Daytona with a prototype, but unfortunately commitments promised were not kept and at the last minute we were unable to compete along with Tony Kanaan. As always, one door closes and another open and now Team Viso has a very good proposal that we will soon release more details on.

Finally, we have worked hard to develop a project that we now call: “Team Viso Venezuela, (TVV)" which is a sports structure I created to feature a few hand"picked Venezuelan drivers who seek my support and experience of more than twenty years in racing. The young drivers: Bruno Palli, Diego Ferreira and Diego Borrelli form “TVV." All three are talented potential drivers I have followed in recent years and with whom I identify with by the similarity of our careers.

Palli and Ferreira race in the Star Mazda Series with Juncos Racing, one of the best teams in the category. We achieved a very good agreement with Ricardo Juncos and I am confident that the results will be equally as good. Borrelli will continue in karting because it is almost 13 years, but soon will jump to the next level.

“We just finished two intensive test days in Sonoma, which were very successful for the team. We developed a lot of new things. Each session we ran we went faster and faster. By the end of the second day we put on a race setup and simulated a race and the result was impressive. We ran a very consistent pace and were very fast. We just need to continue to work to find those extra tenths of a second to put us at the front of the grid."

It is nearly a month until the first official IndyCar race in the Streets of St. Petersburg, a track that I keep very good memories of, as it was my second race ever in the category (2008). I led the race with more than a 10 second advantage until a caution came out due to a crash by fellow racer Ryan Briscoe (Penske) that voided my lead and I wound up in fourth. This year I will be on the track, March 25th, with a brand new car powered by Chevy and I promise some surprises.

See you in St. Pete!