TrueCar to sponsor rising star in Lotus-powered Dragon Racing entry
INDIANAPOLIS, Monday, Jan. 16, 2012 – Talented international driver Katherine Legge, the first woman to win a major open-wheel race in North America, will compete in the 2012 IZOD IndyCar Series for Dragon Racing.
Legge will drive the No. 6 entry for Dragon Racing, with primary sponsorship from TrueCar. Her teammate will be four-time Champ Car World Series champion Sebastien Bourdais.
Both Legge and Bourdais will compete with Lotus power, as Dragon Racing was named as a factory team for the iconic sports car manufacturer that is one of three engine suppliers this season in INDYCAR.
The 2012 IZOD IndyCar Series season starts Sunday, March 25 at St. Petersburg, Fla, with the 101st Indianapolis 500 on Sunday, May 27 as the marquee event of the schedule.
“I am very proud to be driving in the 2012 IndyCar Series for Lotus Dragon Racing , with the gracious support of my sponsor TrueCar,” Legge said. “Lotus, Dragon Racing and TrueCar have put together an amazing programme that I have every faith will succeed and win races.
“Lotus has such a great heritage and racing background and will be an enormous strength to our program. I am very much looking forward to working with all of those involved, and I am excited to get out on track now alongside a fantastic teammate in Sebastien Bourdais.”
Legge is resuming her elite-level open-wheel racing career after three seasons as an Audi factory driver in the European-based DTM, the world’s top touring car series. She drove for Futurecom TME, Abt Lady Power and Team Rosberg during her three-year DTM career from 2008-10.
Legge, 31, achieved the greatest success of her career to date in North American open-wheel racing.
She won three races in the Toyota Atlantic Championship in 2005, becoming the first woman to win a major open-wheel race in North America. Legge then became the first woman to compete full time in the Champ Car World Series, in 2006, and was the first woman to lead a lap in that series.
Before coming to America for the first time in 2004, Legge built an impressive portfolio of success in many ultra-competitive European open-wheel series.
She became the first woman to win a pole in a British Formula Ford Zetec event, in 2000. She also earned pole position at Oulton Park in England during the 2002 Formula Renault season with a time quicker than the lap record set by eventual Formula One World Champion Kimi Raikkonen.
Those results helped her become the first woman to receive the prestigious British Racing Drivers’ Club “Rising Stars” honor in 2002.
Her successful 2005 season in Toyota Atlantic also led to a test late that year with the Minardi team in Formula One, the world’s most prestigious series.
Dragon Racing, owned by Jay Penske, is based in Los Angeles. The team made its IZOD IndyCar Series debut in 2007 as Luczo Dragon Racing and guided Raphael Matos to Rookie of the Year honors in 2009.
“I am extremely excited and proud to partner with Lotus Cars and TrueCar,” Penske said. “The combination of having the technical support of Lotus as a factory team, the financial backing of a game-changing company TrueCar as a primary sponsor and the unquestionable driving skills of Sebastien and Katherine makes us a force to be reckoned with in 2012.”
GRand Solutions LLC, based in Indianapolis, is representing Legge during her debut IZOD IndyCar Series season.
About TrueCar
TrueCar, Inc. is an automotive solutions provider focused on changing how cars are sold by providing a significantly better customer experience while helping qualified dealer partners to gain incremental market share and reduce costs. TrueCar is a visual publisher of new car transaction data. TrueCar price reports help both dealers and consumers to agree on the parameters of a fair deal by providing an accurate, comprehensive and simple understanding of what others actually paid recently for a similar car both locally and nationally. TrueCar works with a national network of dealers that provide up-front, no-haggle, competitive pricing to assist some of the nation’s largest and most well respected membership and service organizations to meet the auto buying needs of their members and customers. Collectively these audiences represent over 1M in-market customers each month. TrueCar is headquartered in Santa Monica, CA and has offices in San Francisco, CA and Austin, TX. With 131 percent annual growth since 2006, TrueCar has helped dealers sell over 400,000 vehicles and is developing a suite of products and services centered on radical clarity as a result of comprehensively analyzing market data and information.
You can follow TrueCar on Twitter and become a fan of TrueCar on Facebook.
About Dragon Racing
Dragon Racing is an IndyCar Series team owned by Jay Penske, the Chairman and CEO of Penske Media Corporation (PMC). Dragon Racing began under the original banner of Luczo Dragon Racing founded by both Penske and Steve Luczo, the Chairman and CEO of Seagate Technologies. The team debuted in 2007 at the Indianapolis 500 with driver Ryan Briscoe and finished fifth. In 2009, during the team’s first complete season, it won Rookie of the Year honors with driver Raphael Matos. In 2012, Dragon Racing has forged an alliance with Lotus to become the Lotus Factory Team, along with lead strategic sponsors Microsoft, TrueCar, and McAfee. Dragon Racing has two entries in the IZOD IndyCar Series for 2012: Katherine Legge, the first woman to win a major open-wheel race in North America, and four-time Champ Car Series champion Sebastien Bourdais. Dragon Racing has operations in Indianapolis, Indiana and Los Angeles, California. For more information on Dragon Racing or its drivers please contact press@dragonracing.com.
About Lotus
Group Lotus PLC, is based in Norfolk, UK, and has three operating divisions:
Lotus Cars, Lotus Engineering and Lotus Racing. Lotus Cars builds world class, high performance sports cars including the award-winning Evora, the iconic Elise and the stunning Exige and the road / track orientated 2-Eleven. Lotus New Era, the future product line-up, was unveiled in Paris on 30th September 2010 featuring the new Esprit, Elan, Elite, Elise and Eterne. Lotus Engineering provides comprehensive and versatile consultancy services to many of the world’s OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers and is an internationally recognised automotive engineering consultancy. Global facilities include those in the US, Malaysia, China and offices in Germany and Japan. Lotus is a global high-tech company, committed to driving forward technology for both Lotus Cars and its Engineering clients, spearheading research into such areas as hybrids, electric vehicles and renewable fuels. Lotus Racing (formerly Lotus Motorsport) operates the motorsports activities of Lotus and includes the strategy to return the Lotus name to a great number of series including endurance racing with GT2, GT4 and LMP2, single-seater racing with GP2, GP3 and IndyCar. Lotus also returned to F1 with Lotus Renault GP from the start of the 2011 F1 racing season onwards.
For more information about Group Lotus please contact:
PR Department, Group Lotus PLC, Potash Lane, Hethel, Norfolk, UK, NR14 8EZ
Tel: +44 (0)1953 608264 Email: pr@lotuscars.com
Contact: Ron Green, ron@GRand-Solutions.net (317) 341-1820