Isn’t it time for someone to reward Sage Karam’s talent

Sage Karam in the No. 02 Ganassi Ford

Some guy with a Twitter name of @JeffJustJeff posted the following during Saturday’s Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring sports car endurance race: "@SageKaram has thoroughly impressed me. Get that kid a full time ride."

Another guy named @DonMedia posted: “How in the name of all that is sane can @SageKaram NOT have a full time #IndyCar ride?"

I have to say that I have wondered the same thing ever since Karam put together that Firestone Indy Lights championship run last year.

Okay, so I’m not the world’s greatest authority on the matter. Neither are @JeffJustJeff and @DonMedia.

But last summer, when Karam was in the middle of his championship season, I asked a much more astute guy about the kid who also happens to be his neighbor up there in Nazareth.

Mario Andretti told me this about Karam in the week leading up to the return of IndyCar racing to Pocono Raceway.

Mario Andretti got his ride based on talent and look what happened. Superstar. Unfortunately Sage Karam is faced with the open wheel cancer of having to buy your ride no matter how talented you are.

"Sage has shown all the qualities of a future champion," Mario said. "He has been winning in all of the categories he has entered up until now. You can’t ask for anything more than that. He’s not just a flash in the pan. He’s competitive and he wins. That’s the recipe for a bright future for the young man."

Unfortunately, getting a big break in the country’s premier open-wheel these days isn’t the same as it was back in the 1960s when Mario got people’s attention by the way he drove midgets and sprint cars and was offered an Indy-car ride based on his performance.

I’ve never asked Mario directly, but I’d almost bet he’d say that if he had had to go out back then and put together a financial package to carry to a team owner, he might not have gotten into the big time. At that point of his life, Mario was not the multi-faceted businessman he has since become. He knew only one thing. Pedal to the metal.

Karam is a pedal-the-the-metal kid, too. And he knows how to do that very well. But he has also managed to attract the interest of Michael Fux, a self-made entrepreneur who knows what it’s like to be poor – his family immigrated to the U.S. from Cuba 56 years ago – and who likes sharing the fruits of his labor with others in need.

The fact that he also happens to be wild about cars – he has a collection that numbers somewhere around 130 – and speed don’t hurt, either.

Fux’s company, Comfort Revolution, has been backing Karam for several years now. It brought him up the Mazda Road to Indy ladder and, when the potential $1 million scholarship Karam received for winning the Firestone Indy Lights title wasn’t enough to open a door for a full-time ride in the Verizon IndyCar Series for this year, Fux stepped up again and cut a deal with Chip Ganassi Racing Teams to put Comfort Resolution on a car for the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona and the Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring.

Fux was in Sebring Saturday to watch Karam and the CGRT Ford Ecoboost Riley prototype challenge for the 12 Hours title, only to finish sixth.

Because the Comfort Revolution-Big Machines Records car was in first place after four hours, second place after eight hours and sixth at the end, it picked up enough points to win the Tequila Patron Endurance Award for the race.

During the post race awards ceremony, Ganassi and the three team drivers – Scott Dixon, Tony Kanaan and Karam – received bottles of Patron tequila.

Well, not quite. “They gave me mine, then realized I was only 19 and took it away from me," Karam told me on Sunday. So, Karam invited Fux to claim the prize for himself, which he did.

That may have been the most expensive bottle of booze Fux has ever had, but I’m sure that didn’t concern the West Long Branch, N.J., businessman.

Fux’s generosity has carried Karam a long way. Whether it will translate into a ride for the 98th Indianapolis 500 in May is yet to be determined. But there is no question that, today, the money talks.

The point here is, Karam’s ability behind the wheel should be more than enough to get him, at the very least, a test with an IndyCar team. That hasn’t happened.

Karam has told me there is a game plan in place that will work out fine in the long run. And, he is, after all, only 19 years old. Mario Andretti was 24 when he drove his first United States Auto Club Champ-car race in Trenton, N.J., so Sage has time.

The Verizon IndyCar Series lists four rookies for 2014. Carlos Munoz and Jack Hawksworth, who both finished behind Karam in the Indy Lights series last year, are 22 and 23, respectively. Russian Mikhail Aleshin, who signed with Schmidt Peterson Motorsports – a ride I thought might have gone to Karam – is 26. So is Martin Plowman, who is signed for only one race (Indy).

I hope that, if nothing works out in IndyCar this year, Karam will find another avenue for his talent.

He even mentioned something when we talked Sunday. The CGRT second sports car that Karam drove in two major endurance races this year, leads the Tequila Patron North American Endurance Cup series at this point. Karam said, “Maybe this will be incentive for Chip to keep the #02 car running" for the other two events that figure into the championship — the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen at Watkins Glen International on June 29 and the 10-hour Petit Le Mans powered by Mazda at Road Atlanta Oct. 4.

We’ll see. Paul Reinhard/The Morning Call