RLL Announces Key Promotions and Additions to Sports Car and Indy Car Programs
Assistant engineer Uwe Wolf, who will be starting his ninth season with the team over two employment terms, has been promoted to race engineer for the TUDOR United SportsCar program. The first of two key appointments for the Verizon IndyCar Series program is Mike Talbott, who was most recently senior trackside engineer with Wirth Research in support of Honda Performance Development's Indy car program and worked with driver Graham Rahal at Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing (NHLR) in 2008. Talbott will lead the vehicle dynamics program. Martin Pare, who was race engineer for Rahal at NHLR from 2009-2010 and at Chip Ganassi Racing in 2011-2012 has joined the team as head of the vehicle ride control development program.
"I'm very pleased to elevate Uwe to the role of race engineer" said Bobby Rahal, co-owner of RLL with David Letterman and Mike Lanigan. "Uwe has been with the company for many years and has spearheaded our damper program on the sports car side and also the Indy car side so it's great seeing him in this new position that he has certainly earned. We look forward to great things from him."
"We're really pleased to bring Mike and Martin into the Indy car team," added Rahal. "Mike has a long, successful history in motorsports at Newman/Haas Racing and others previous to his role at Wirth Research. He brings a lot of value to the team as does Martin, who engineered Graham for nearly four years at Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing and Ganassi. Martin brings a wealth of experience and knowledge that can certainly help the performance of the team. Overall I think these are three great appointments that will help us to move to the front of the grid."
The 2015 TUDOR United SportsCar Championship begins January 24-25 with the Rolex 24 at Daytona. The 17-race Verizon IndyCar Series season begins March 8 with the Brasilia Indy 300.
About Uwe Wolf
Wolf graduated from The Ohio State University in 2003 with a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering. While in college he was the co-captain of the Formula Lightning Electric Race team and later the shock absorber team leader of the school's Formula SAE race team. Also while in school, he was a data acquisition engineer for Intersport Racing's ALMS and Rolex Sports Car Series programs from August 2001 to March 2003 and won the 2002 ALMS P675 class (similar to current LMP2) Driver's Championship. In addition, he was an assistant engineer for the wind tunnel test program for Doran Racing's Rolex Sports Car Series team in December 2002. After graduating college, he joined Team Rahal as an assistant engineer for Danica Patrick's Toyota Atlantic program (April 2003 to October 2004) and then became shock engineer for the Indy Racing League program in November 2004. While focusing on the Atlantic program, he assisted the Indy car team with their 2004 Indy 500 effort that resulted in a win from pole. For 2005-2006, he was a damper engineer for the Indy car program and also provided simulation support. In 2004 and 2005, the team set the fastest qualifying laps at the Indy 500. He departed the team in September 2006 to become a test engineer for American Showa, Inc. and stayed with that company for two years before his return to Rahal Letterman Lanigan in September 2008 as assistant race engineer for the team's ALMS, and later USCC sports car programs. He oversaw the damper department and electronic systems on the BMW M3's and Z4's. Wolf also provided support in Germany for the build and initial tests of the all-new BMW Z4 GTLM car in the winter of 2012-2013 prior to its 2013 debut. During those years the team won two manufacturers and team championships, one driver's championship and a total of 10 wins and 15 poles. He was promoted to race engineer in November 2014.
About Mike Talbott – Vehicle Dynamics
Talbott earned a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Wyoming in 1997 and his Master's of Science in mechanical engineering at Purdue University in 2002. While at each school he was involved in the Society of Automotive Engineers group (Formula SAE), first as a member and later as a teaching assistant while studying for his Masters. While pursuing his Masters, he worked at Honda R&D Americas, Inc. in Raymond, Ohio from 2000-2002 as an engineer in the Suspension Development Support Group.
Talbott got his start in motorsports in January 2003 at Newman/Haas Racing as a design engineer and was promoted to data engineer for Bruno Junqueira for 2004. During the 2004 season Junqueira won two events and finished second seven times and was a championship contender until the season finale before he ultimately finished runner up in the season-ending standings to teammate Sebastien Bourdais. Talbott was promoted to assistant race engineer for Junqueira for 2005 but after taking the series points lead in Champ Car, Junqueira sustained a season-ending injury in the Indy Racing League-sanctioned Indianapolis 500 in May after running ahead of eventual winner Dan Wheldon. Oriol Servia was hired as Junqueira's replacement for the remainder of the Champ Car season. Junqueira and Servia each won one race in 2005 and earned a combined total of nine podium finishes in 13 races. Talbott moved to RuSPORT in January of 2006 to be the assistant race engineer for the car driven by A.J. Allmendinger and later Cristiano da Matta when Allmendinger was released from the team. After da Matta was injured in a testing accident in August, Talbott worked with Ryan Briscoe. He was promoted to race engineer for 2007 and worked with Justin Wilson who earned back-to-back second place finishes in the series standings to champion Bourdais. Talbott returned to Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing in the winter of 2007 as Wilson's race engineer for 2008 and the pairing brought the team its 107th and final win in Detroit. Graham Rahal was Wilson's teammate at NHLR that season and earned the team's 106th victory at St. Pete. From 2009 to 2012, Talbott was director of engineers at National Analytics, an engineering services company specializing in test systems for a variety of industries. During this time, he was also owner/principal of MST Engineering LLC, a motorsports consulting business. From 2013 to 2014 he was a senior trackside engineer at Wirth Research in support of Honda Performance Development's Indy car program.
About Martin Pare – Vehicle Ride Control Development
Pare received his Bachelor of Applied Sciences degree in Mechanical Engineering from Université Laval in Québec, Canada in 1992. During college he also completed a mechanical training program during the summer of 1990 at the famous Spénard-David Racing School in Shannonville, Ontario, Canada. He began his career in racing as a race engineer at Canaska Racing Corp., a Markham, Ontario based racing team, and worked there from 1993 to 1996 including engineering David Empringham's championship winning season in Formula Atlantic in 1993. The team also competed in the Indy Lights series and Pare also engineered the Chrysler Viper that finished 10th at the 1996 Le Mans race in France in its debut at the famous race. In the fall of 1996 he moved to Columbus, Ohio-based Tasman Motorsports as assistant race engineer for Adrian Fernandez's race car in CART. Forsythe purchased Tasman in 1999 and Pare remained there through the season as Tony Kanaan's engineer for his rookie season in CART. From 2000-2002 he worked at Fernandez Racing's CART team and was Shinji Nakano's race engineer. In 2003 he moved to the IndyCar Series and was the race engineer for Kenny Brack, at Team Rahal Inc. and Brack finished ninth overall in series standings. In 2004 he began a five year stint at Andretti Green Racing Inc. From 2004 – 2006 he was race engineer for Bryan Herta, who won the Michigan race in 2005 and finished in the top-10 in season ending standings two of those three seasons. For 2007 and 2008, Pare was Danica Patrick's race engineer and she finished sixth and seventh overall, respectively, in season-ending standings as well as earned his first Indy car victory in Japan in 2008. He joined Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing (NHLR) in February 2009 and was race engineer for Graham Rahal, who became the youngest pole winner in series history at the St. Petersburg season-opener and the youngest pole winner on an oval in series history at Kansas Speedway. Rahal earned two third place podium finishes that season and a seventh place rank, only eight points out of fifth. The following season Pare was race engineer for Hideki Mutoh for the first nine races before Rahal rejoined the team for six races beginning with Round 10 of 17 at Toronto. Rahal and Pare both moved to Chip Ganassi Racing's satellite program from 2011-2012. From 2012 through October 2014, Pare was a structures engineer at Markham, Ontario, Canada-based Multimatic Engineering. As part of his duties at Multimatic, Pare applied his racing background to shaker rig testing services.