IndyCar Series

SPARTA, Ky. -- Jimmie Johnson has won five consecutive championships, yet doesn't always get the proper recognition -- both in NASCAR and across all professional sports -- for such a remarkable feat.

The same could be said about Dario Franchitti.

BALTIMORE -- Some things never change. As you walk around the hospitality and pit areas at an IZOD IndyCar race you can still find Mario Andretti signing autographs more than five decades since he drove his first racecar in competitive open wheel racing.

Andretti, the most versatile American racecar driver in history, is at age 71, theoretically, long retired. But that's hard to prove.

Through four decades beginning in the 1960s he won four Indy Car championships and became the only driver in motorsports history to win the Indianapolis 500 (1969), the Daytona 500 (1967) and the Formula One World Drivers' Championship (1978).

INDIANAPOLIS -- A.J. Foyt will do anything to win next season -- even if it takes a Japanese engine manufacturer to put him in Victory Lane.

Yes, IndyCar's career leader in victories and a major proponent of American racers said Tuesday his team will go with the Honda engine in 2012.

EDMONTON, Alberta -- Alex Tagliani says anyone who was surprised by the demolition derby at the Toronto IndyCar race can expect more of the same in the open-wheel circuit's next stop.

The Canadian predicts that the long straightaway into the 90-degree Turn 1 at Edmonton's new airport track will guarantee more crashes unless IndyCar modifies the controversial double-file restarts.

"In Edmonton, I expect multiple wrecks out here," Tagliani said Tuesday in Edmonton, where the recent closure of one runway, the first step in the eventual shutdown of the entire facility, forced organizers to redraw the circuit. Drivers will now navigate 13 turns, going counter-clockwise on a 2.3-mile course.

MILWAUKEE -- Placed smack-center on Charlie Kimball's steering wheel, a blood-glucose monitor stares into the cockpit of the race car like a digital Cyclops surrounded by all the usual gauges and buttons.

For the 26-year-old rookie driver, this device is no monster but a life-saver.

WEST ALLIS, Wis. -- It's a gritty one-mile oval with its share of rough edges, set in the middle of a modest neighborhood just west of downtown.

No, the Milwaukee Mile isn't the prettiest or most polished racetrack around. And it nearly slipped off the motorsports map for good last year, when financial problems left it without a viable promoter or a date on the NASCAR or IndyCar schedules.