Overheard in Mid-Ohio

UPDATE Regarding the rumors of Moraes possibly going to the Andretti team next year, we spoke to KV Racing team owner Kevin Kalkhoven today at Infineon Raceway and he tells us he is confident of retaining Mario Moraes next year.

08/09/09 In order to boost its dwindling LMP class cars, rumor has it that at the Elkhart Lake Stakeholder’s Summit next week ALMS boss Scott Atherton will announce that the American Le Mans Series will add a prototype class based on the ACO’s Courage-Ford V-8 series. The prototypes, selling for $345,000 complete, will be built by EMT in Braselton. To control costs, engines will be sealed (and available only from EMT – owned by who else? Panoz), only two sets of gears can be used (long and short circuit), and only a “small range" of springs can be used to modify set-up. Courage (now owned by Oreca), Lola, Multimatic, and Haas will all have pieces of this pie. Don’t be surprised if Yokohama is the exclusive tire supplier. Instead of running as a standalone race (as the same cars do in Europe, and as IMSA Lights do in North America) these spec machines will run as a class within American Le Mans Series races…..Another rumor floating around is that Carl Haas might buy EMT

Will former F1 driver Takuma Sato come to IndyCar?

from Panoz, perhaps so Panoz doesn't have a conflict of interest……..Still hearing rumors that Mario Moraes might go to the AGR IndyCar team in 2010, but he's running pretty well with KV Racing, so why? It's not like AGR is doing much better this year……………..Still hearing rumors that Danica Patrick will move to Target Chip Ganassi Racing and also run some NASCAR Nationwide races for the team to see if she has what it takes to drive stock cars. She would replace Scott Dixon who would move to de Ferran Motorsports as teammate to Simon Pagenaud or Takuma Sato…………If Patrick leaves and Formula Dream leaves (as rumored) AGR will be hurting big time sponsorship wise…..Another rumor has Formula Dream moving to de Ferran to back Takuma Sato.