[NAC]

More details on the Matsuura thing


From www.irl-live.com
Super Aguri Panther Racing has scheduled a driver announcement for Saturday afternoon at 2:20pm at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.

While speculations have been rampant, the team is expected to announce that Hideki Mutoh will run a third Panther Racing car in the IndyCar Series finale at Chicagoland Speedway on September 9th.

Presently, Super Aguri Panther Racing fields Kosuke Matsuura as a teammate to Delphi Panther Racing's Vitor Meira. The team also runs Mutoh under the Super Aguri Panther banner in the developmental Indy Pro Series. Sources close to the team have confirmed that Matsuura will be in the #55 car IndyCar Series machine for the rest of the season.

Mutoh has shown well in 2007, his first season racing in the United States and the first oval races of his career. He presently sits second in IPS points, 132 points behind Alex Lloyd who has dominated the 2007 IPS schedule with seven wins in eleven races.

Matsuura has struggled in 2007. He is presently last (18th) of the full-time drivers this season and he has notched just two top 10 finishes. Interestingly, his arch nemesis of 2007, Jeff Simmons, was fired coming in to this weekend after three times knocking Matsuura from a race.

With this expected announcement it becomes increasingly obvious that Mutoh will take the IndyCar Series seat from Matsuura in 2008. The possibility of both drivers running the ICS in 2008 was initially considered, though those talks seemed to have quieted as Matsuura suffered through a dismal season.

Matsuura was 12th in today's afternoon practice session.