Andretti needs to right his recent wrongs

by CHRIS ESTRADA, Special to FOXSports.com

Updated: April 25, 2008, 12:52 PM EST 3 comments

Considering that 2007 saw him rack up a whopping 10 DNFs, the 21-year-old couldn't be blamed for saying that. He had managed to hang tough with race leader Scott Dixon all race long and led a good chunk of the laps that night as well.

One month later, however, Andretti's reeling from a pair of self-induced last-place finishes at St. Petersburg, Fla., and Twin Ring Motegi in Japan. As the IndyCar Series heads to Kansas Speedway for a 300-mile event on Sunday, he's dropped from second all the way to 12th in the points standings.

St. Petersburg saw him relapse back to early troubles he had during his rookie season. On Lap 41, his pit stop for tires went wrong as he broke the car's half-shaft while trying to get out of his pit box.

Motegi was no better. One day after rains postponed the event, Andretti spun out in Turn 2 on cold tires and crashed on the first lap of the race.

He now has to stop his slide on a track where he's only completed 242 of a possible 400 laps. After finishing ninth in 2006, he was only able to run 42 laps last year at Kansas before he'd had enough of his horribly handling No. 26 machine.

"It was so scary for me," he said at the time. "I don't know what else to say. I don't know what happened. It felt like my front and rear wings were upside down. There was no grip on the car."

Andretti has failed to finish five of his last six starts dating back to Sonoma in August of 2007. But while his past two races have gone awry, he feels like he's had a good car under him at both Homestead and Motegi — something he hopes to have again this weekend.

"We have to put the last two races behind us and really focus on being quick at Kansas," he said. "The car was great at Homestead and I felt like the Forsythe car was good at Motegi, too."

He can also take comfort in the fact that he's already managed to get out of big holes before. His first season in 2006 saw him break two half-shafts in a row at Homestead and St. Petersburg, followed by a hard-earned 12th place at Motegi.

That set him up for the Indy 500 in which he came within six hundredths-of-a-second of ending the Andretti Curse before losing to Sam Hornish Jr. at the yard of bricks. The sting of that defeat quickly gave way to a solid summer that saw him win his first major open-wheel race at Sonoma, Calif.

As history shows, Andretti can certainly bounce back. However, in order to stage a second resurgence, he'll have to put behind him his trying day at the 1.5-mile oval last year.

"Our focus has to be getting a comfortable race car and then we'll be okay on Sunday," he said.

Scheckter's return

This weekend's race will feature a 27-car field. In addition to the new IndyCar drivers returning from the Champ Car finale at Long Beach, Calif. last week, Tomas Scheckter will make his first start since leaving Vision Racing this past offseason.

Scheckter will compete in the first of three races that he and Luczo-Dragon Racing have lined up. The team, lead by Roger Penske's son Jay and Steve Luczo, will race this weekend, at the Indy 500 and at Sonoma. Last year, LDR made its debut at Indy as a satellite of Team Penske and finished fifth with current Penske driver Ryan Briscoe.

The South African driver warns, though, that the LDR of 2008 is different from the LDR of 2007.

"To be honest you could cancel that start out before in my eyes, because I think it was a start they did under a Penske banner, and this is really their first start as a team on their own with their own equipment in their own garages," Scheckter said.

"And really, this is a team put together by John Cummiskey, who is the team manager, and Steve Luczo and Jay Penske. So this is really their own deal and their first start on their two feet."

Also making his first start of the season — in fact, his first IndyCar start ever — will be Jaime Camara, a longtime driver in the Firestone Indy Lights development league. Camara, a native of Brazil, has stepped into Conquest Racing's No. 34 car to replace Franck Perera after the team lost sponsors Opes Prime and ARES.

Opes Prime signed on as a partner with Conquest during the offseason, but recently went into receivership back in its home country of Australia. As a result, the team will stretch its sponsorship from Brazilian company Sangari to cover both Camara and second driver Enrique Bernoldi.

Camara has raced in the Lights series since 2005. He finished sixth in the championship standings last season with seven top-five runs.