The tenth team for this team-by-team preview for the 2014 IndyCar season is the defending Indianapolis 500 winner KVSH/KV AFS Racing as he team returns with two new drivers for 2014.
2013 KVSH/KV AFS Racing Review:
Wins: 1 (Indianapolis).
Poles: 0
Best Start: 3rd (St. Petersburg).
Final Championship Position: 11th (Tony Kanaan), 13th (Simona de Silvestro).
2014 Drivers:
Sébastien Bourdais
The four-time IndyCar (technically ChampCar but 6-of-1, half a dozen of another) champion moves to his third team since returning to IndyCar in 2011. He had a rough start to 2013 but ended strong with three podiums in the final half of the season and six top tens in those nine races with a strong run at the season finale, leading thirty-five laps before spinning with twenty-one laps to go while in third. The Frenchman is looking for his first victory since Mexico City in 2007, the last race before reunification in IndyCar.
Number to Remember: 103. Races since Bourdais' last victory.
Prediction/Goals: Last year I predicted Bourdais would win a race. This year, he breaks through and gets a victory but only one. Add a handful of top fives and Bourdais will finish in the top ten of the championship for the first time since returning to IndyCar in 2011.
Sebastián Saavedra
The Colombian driver returns for his third season in IndyCar and joins Bourdais at KVSH/KV AFS after both teamed at Dragon Racing in 2013. Saavedra finished twenty-first in the championship last year, the lowest of the full-time competitors and only three points ahead of Oriol Servià, who missed seven races. Saavedra picked up his first career top ten in the second Belle Isle race and improved his best career finish later in the season at Baltimore where he finished eighth. Saavedra also set his best career starting position last year when he started sixth at Milwaukee but finished two laps down in thirteenth.
Number to Remember: 10. Amount of lead lap finishes for Saavedra in 38 career starts.
Prediction/Goals: Don't expect a big jump for the twenty-three year old. He will be toward the bottom of the championship picture again. A top ten may fall his way but don't hold your breathe. To only think, Gary Anderson returns with his company Automatic Fire Sprinklers to sponsor Saavedra and JR Hildebrand, a driver who was sponsored by AFS when he won the Indy Lights championship, has a dozen top ten finishes in his IndyCar career and was in contention for the win in the 2013 season finale at Fontana before an engine failure is without a ride and career is all but over barring he wins the lottery or stuns everyone and wins Indianapolis in an Ed Carpenter Racing one-off.
Other Notes: KV Racing is strongly considering a third car for the Indianapolis 500 and Townsend Bell is the leading candidate for that ride.
The 2014 Verizon IndyCar Series season opens this Sunday at the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. Coverage begins at 3:00 p.m. ET on ABC with green flag at 3:30 p.m. ET.
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