[h=2]Castroneves on future: 'To be continued'[/h] Saturday, 15 July 2017
By RACER Staff / Image by IMS Photo
Above: Helio Castroneves was all smiles before Saturday qualifying at Toronto.
Helio Castroneves might find it hard to focus over the home stretch of the Verizon IndyCar Series season.
Amid the news that the Honda Performance Development and Roger Penske will team up to field a pair of Acura Daytona Prototype internationals in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship – and that the three-time Indy 500 winner is expected to join Juan Pablo Montoya on the driver roster – the 42-year-old is trying to avoid questions about his future, rather than the afterglow of his win in Iowa, which ended three-year winless drought.
"To be honest, if you start thinking about the future, that's where it starts being distracting to be honest, right at this point," said Castroneves, who will start third on Sunday at the Honda Indy Toronto.
"The only future that I'm thinking about is the race, which is Toronto, which is only one day from now. It's difficult to assume, and right now there is a lot of speculation for sure, and even between when we have some conversations, we're just still on the same page. "I mean, the team is going to make a sports car team, and we all here would love to drive. I mean, no question about it. We would like to drive whatever they have an opportunity like you have in the past. But at the moment, there is no commitment, no official decision, and I'm just focused – in my case, I'm just focusing on doing my best for the race here and the championship.
As
RACER first reported, the creation of the Acura-Penske ARX-05 DPi project will debut in January of 2018 at the 24 Hours of Daytona, and
RACER has learned Penske will move Castroneves to the DPi team while continuing to field a car for him at the Indy 500.
Testing for the Acura ARX-05 is set to begin later this month.
It's certainly not due to his performance – he currently ranks second in the Verizon IndyCar Series standings, just eight points behind leader Scott Dixon, and is having a strong season with a win, three poles positions, two podiums and a pair of fourth places.
When he was asked to talk about his future, he responded, "There are people with more power than me actually to make things happen."
"A lot of decisions are – it's not in my hands, or results. Sometimes it's common sense. But at this point, I feel that I'm going to do everything I can. If we're in that position to make it harder for everyone if there is a decision in the end to change or not.
"To be continued."