For the past 20 years, Stanton Barrett has dreamed of racing in the most-respected motor sports race in the entire world… the Indianapolis 500.

On Sunday May 17th, Stanton drove faster than he has ever driven in his life, recording a straightaway speed of 226.978 mph and recording an overall lap speed of 219.597 mph. He completed the Indianapolis Speedway’s 2.5 mile race track in an amazing 40.9841 seconds. This would have easily qualified Stanton to compete in most of the prior INDY 500 races, but on this day, it meant that he was just 0.365 of a second too slow to qualify for the 2009 running of the world’s most famous motor sports race… the INDY 500.

A total of 37 cars and drivers tried to qualify for the 33 starting positions in the 97th running of the Indy 500. Stanton and three others did not. After weeks of preparation by the entire 3G Team, and despite a complete last minute set-up change that was an educated guess at how to squeeze just a little more out of the race car, the crew chief and engineers could simply not give Stanton what he craved more than anything else, just a split second faster speed.

Over the two-week period, Stanton ran 387 laps with constantly improving speeds, but time to improve simply ran out ran out. Stanton’s final and best speed of 219.597 mph would have easily qualified him to start in each of the five prior Indy 500 races, (and in 91 of the races’ 97 prior events), but unfortunately not this year.

When the qualifying session was over, INDY 500 CEO, Mr. Tony George came to the Team 3G garage to congratulate Stanton on his very impressive attempt to qualify, as an IndyCar rookie.

Stanton has already qualified for and raced in two IndyCar street course events this year. His first IRL race was in St Petersburg Florida, second was in Long Beach California, and third was Kansas City. There are 14 more IndyCar events in 2009 including two in Canada and one in Japan, and Stanton expects to race in all of them. And then next year, he also expects to race his first Indianapolis 500 in 2010! Just three days after his first INDY 500 experience, Stanton was once again on an airplane, flying from Indianapolis to Charlotte North Carolina, to prepare to compete in his third NASCAR race of 2009.


The technical differences between an open-wheel IndyCar and a NASCAR are as different as their appearance. Despite the obvious speed differences, the aerodynamics of an IndyCar provides over 4,000 lbs of downward force that allows the cars to corner at much faster speeds than a NASCAR that only has about 1,000 lbs of down-force. The IndyCar weighs just 1,565 lbs and is propelled by a high-performance V-8 Honda that outputs 650 horse-power. By comparison the less-aerodynamic NASCAR weighs more than twice as much at 3,400 lbs, with a V-8 Chevrolet engine that outputs over 750 horse-power.

All this requires a huge adjustment by a driver and is the principle reason that very few race drivers even attempt to compete in both the IndyCar and the NASCAR series. Stanton’s first time back in a NASCAR provided impressive results. In his practice session, and despite a slipping clutch problem that slowed his shifting between gears, Stanton had a very positive lap speed of 177.842 mph and a time of just 30.364 seconds, just 0.688 seconds behind Carl Edwards, the fastest competitor during the practice. This placed Stanton in 26th, faster than 22 other drivers. Immediately following the practice, the NASCAR team immediately replaced the transmission and clutch assembly to alleviate the slipping clutch issue. Unfortunately Stanton will not get to test this new set-up prior to the qualifying session on Saturday.

Come Saturday afternoon, without an opportunity to test the new clutch assembly, Stanton went out and fearlessly qualified into a very impressive 11th position of 50 entries, ahead of many of NASCAR’s top teams and drivers, in the RWR Racing Team entry for Circle K / INTERUSH, This set the whole crew into high gear as they were anticipating a very positive outcome from the 300 mile race scheduled to start at 7:30 pm.

The race was delayed for an hour due to rain, then the green flag signaled the start. Immediately the cars ran up to over 175 mph lap speed. Stanton’s car was running well and everything was going as planned until the first pit stop when it became apparent that the pit crew was not going to provide the level of support this driver and crew chief expected. With each pit stop, valuable time was lost. In the end the race was ended 30 laps early due to the return of rain showers and Stanton had slipped to 25th position, however, the team was still very encouraged as they had seen tremendous speed improvement and they know that with each race they are getting closer to a top 10 finish!

Early Sunday morning Stanton flew back to the INDY 500 to enjoy the excitement of the world’s most famous race with Marty Matthews and Todd Mitsuishi of Interush, as a spectator, knowing in his heart that next year, he will be where he belongs, on the track, competing against some of the world’s best in the premier racing event.

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