Overheard in St. Petersburg

UPDATE All 2011 IndyCar races will be broadcast live in Spain on the Canal+HD network. IndyCar has yet to announce their international TV broadcast plans for this year but we hear ESPN International will still handle the distribution…..Sebastien Bourdais was an innocent victim on Saturday. Conquest Racing's Sebastian Saavedra came out of the pits hard trying to get a late lap in Q1 qualifying but he came out right in the path of Bourdais. Saavedra's left rear clipped Bourdais' right front sending Saavedra spinning hard into the wall and breaking Bourdais' right front suspension, ending both their days. "Saavedra tried to get in front of me as he exited the pits but there was no room. He apologized to me," said Bourdais……We ran into former Champ Car driver Katherine Legge, who has been back in the USA since January trying to put an IndyCar deal together with the help of Gene Cottingham's Grand Solutions sports marketing and consulting firm. They report that a lot of CEOs know who Legge is and this has opened a lot of doors. They hope to put a deal together by Indy. On a more personal note, Legge is engaged to be married to German Peter Terting. A January wedding is planned.

03/26/11 According at AR1.com sources Raphael Matos will be in the AFS team IndyCar for all road course races plus the Indy 500. If additional sponsorship can be found they may run more races, but the focus is more on doing a full season next year with the new car. The team recently hired Neil Micklewright who ran The Forsythe Racing Champ Car team for years……The Telemundo sponsorship deal with Oriol Servia and the Newman/Haas team holds great potential to tap the Hispanic market for both the team and the series. We hear there will be discussions to add on-air IndyCar content to Telemundo in Spanish. Since Versus and Telemundo are both owned by Comcast this makes a lot of sense. They may go as far as even broadcasting races in Spanish, but not this year and even that has not been decided, but it sure makes sense, doesn't it?

There is a lot of speculation in the paddock as to whether the Japan Motegi race will happen given the earthquake, Tsunami and nuclear reactor leak. Randy Bernard said that will be the call of the race promoter…….Everyone is wondering which five drivers Randy Bernard and his team will pick for the $5 million bonus prize at the season finale in Las Vegas. Bernard said it would be unfair to announce who the leading candidates are because if the top 5 rank changes between now and then there would be hard feelings and a lot of questions asked. Mark C. Reporting from St. Petersburg.