Overheard at St. Petersburg – Saturday
We did hear that the three Race Directors (Beaux Barfield, Brian Barnhart and Johnny Unser) who will determine if there has been an infraction during an IndyCar race, practice or qualifying, will remain the same at least through the Indy 500. After that there could a some minor rotations. This year race control will have the ability to replay more of what TV sends them and they will also be able to go back further in time to see how an infraction may have developed and if one driver instigated it.
Derrick Walker said, "it’s really about equipment and procedures and really trying to improve our consistency and our ability to make the right call. I had the really fortunate ability when I joined INDYCAR to visit a lot of race organizations and different events and they were kind of enough for me to look at what they did and how they did. Everybody has the same problem. You don’t have enough eyes and just making the right calls is a risk factor. At the end, I took the best of the best and some of it could apply to what we do and some didn’t. We’re moving forward, cautiously, with a new system that really starts with equipment. We spent a considerable amount of money on screens and adding camera positions and a replay systems that will let us zoom in on details. It’s up and running here and it runs fantastic."
Graham Rahal tells us that Dale Earnhardt Jr. still would like to do the ride swap if they can get the manufacturers to agree. We asked him if a ride swap between Courtney Force and he could be arranged. "I have been trying to convince her to do it but she's afraid of hitting something with the car. I told her we could go to some remote airport track that is wide open so she could not hit anything."
Did you wonder why Dale Coyne's Justin Wilson was 2nd fastest in the first practice session on Friday and then only 19th in the afternoon session? It's because he ran the same set of tires in both sessions and saved a set of tires.
Speaking of the Dale Coyne team, did you know that 100% of Coyne's engineering staff are new this year. Led my experienced Mike Cannon, they also brought on Rob Ridgeway to engineer Huertas. Look for that program to make a step forward.
Bet you do not know the proper pronunciation of Mikhail Aleshin's last name. It's A'lou' 'shen'.
We hear that Mikael Grenier, from Quebec City, Canada, will try to do at least one test session this year for KV Racing with the goal of doing a full IndyCar season in 2015. And speaking of KV Racing, word is that team co-owner Kevin Kalkhoven is somewhere in the South Pacific cruising around on the boat called The World.
Rumor has it that Conor Daly may be in a GP2 car next weekend in Bahrain and if he is, he'll run GP2 all season. Although he would prefer to do a full IndyCar season, top IndyCar team owners prefer to run foreign pay drivers that America fans have no interest in because they want to ensure IndyCar eventually goes belly-up and they can take up gardening as a hobby. 
We hear that IndyCar has undergone a large uptick in popularity in Colombia now that Juan Montoya is back in the series. Imagine that, Colombians root for Colombians. Americas root for Americans. Good Americans. How come the IndyCar paddock cannot figure that out?
2015 body kit testing will not begin until the offseason. One complete $75,000 kit must include all the pieces necessary for a full year of running – all tracks, all type of tracks. Only Chevy and Honda will be supplying kits to start.
Robby Gordon won the Stadium Super Truck Saturday in the rain ahead of Jerett Brooks, and Justin Lofton. Mark C. reporting from St. Petersburg.