- American Dream Motorsports
American Dream Motorsports is a racing team that currently competes in the
Indy Racing League 'sIndy Lights series and theIndianapolis 500 owned by Eric Zimmerman and William T. Kelsey. Until May 2008 it was known as Playa Del Racing and was owned byJeff Brougher ,Ernie Moody ,Gary Sallee , andSusan Schafer .2005 to 2007
The team was formed in 2005 and fielded a
Panoz -Toyota forJaques Lazier in the2005 Indianapolis 500 . The team returned in 2006 and co-ownerJon Herb was to join Lazier in a second car, but he was unable to find speed and was replaced with veteranRoger Yasukawa . Herb subsequently parted ways with the other owners and re-formed his own team,Racing Professionals . The team has stated intentions to become a full-timeIndyCar Series team but has been unable to find the necessary sponsorship to do so and has only participated in 2005, 2006, and 2007 Indy 500's.PDR fielded an
Indy Pro Series car in the 2007 season starting with rookieA. J. Russell at Miami. After his poor showing, the team usedAl Unser III for four summertime oval events andPhil Giebler for eight road-course events with modest success from each and also fielded a car forSean Guthrie when hisGuthrie Racing car was unavailable due to crash damage.Playa Del Racing entered two cars into the
2007 Indianapolis 500 driven by former IndyCar race winner Jaques Lazier and one of their IPS drivers, the young AmericanPhil Giebler . Both ended up crashing out of the race, but Giebler managed to capture the 2007 Indy 500 Rookie of the Year title.2008
For 2008, Playa Del Racing will compete in a full season in the development IRL
Firestone Indy Lights Series (formerly the Indy Pro Series) with Al Unser III as their full-time driver, thanks to sponsorship from Ethos Fuel Reformulator. On May 2, 2008 it was announced that the team had been purchased byWilliam T. Kelsey andEric Zimmerman and also announced that Phil Giebler would return to the team to drive its entry in the2008 Indianapolis 500 . Giebler crashed the team's Panoz during practice on the third day of qualifying, totaling the car as well as suffering bruised lungs and a cervical sprain. The team had planned to run theBombardier Learjet 550 atTexas Motor Speedway in June with a newDallara chassis and Jaques Lazier behind the wheel. [Lewandowski, Dave. [http://www.indycar.com/news/?story_id=11405 Lone Star state bound] , IndyCar.com, May 18, 2008] However, an entry for the team was not on the entry list posted by the league on June 3. The team's Indy Lights entry also failed to arrive at the first race after theFreedom 100 with no official reason as to why. In an interview on July 4, 2008,Al Unser, Jr. indicated that the team had gone bankrupt and that he and the team's sponsor were seeking to acquire the team's assets in bankruptcy court.IndyCar Drivers
*
Jaques Lazier (2005-2007)
*Roger Yasukawa (2006)
*Phil Giebler (2007)References
External links
* [http://www.playadelracing.com/ Playa Del Racing Official Website]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.