Helio Castroneves, Team Penske
The cast: Race engineer – Jonathan Diuguid. Race strategist – Roger Penske. Chief mechanic – Travis Law.
Twitter: @h3lio, @Team_Penske
The car: No. 3 Chevrolet
The driver: Helio Castroneves turned 39 on May 10. … From Brazil, he lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. … He is the 2007 winner (along with professional partner Julianne Hough) of “Dancing With the Stars,” and in 2012 returned for “Dancing With the Stars: All-Stars” on ABC. He also is a longtime correspondent for “Entertainment Tonight.” … The active Indy car leader with 295 starts, he has been driving for Team Penske since the 2000 CART season.
Season finish: Placed second in the Verizon IndyCar Series standings for the second consecutive year. He has finished in the top four in four of the past five seasons and seven of the past 10.
The gist: Castroneves is a three-time winner of the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race, and in 2009 became the quickest to reach that milestone (in nine starts). … He is the active Indy car leader in laps led (5,252), which is fifth on the all-time list. … He’s tied with Team Penske advisor and four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Rick Mears for 11th on the career win list with 29 and is third with 35 second-place finishes. He’s also in the top 10 in top-3 (81) and top-5 (118) finishes and poles (41).
Season stats: Castroneves kicked off the season with a third-place finish at St. Petersburg and recorded four other top-five finishes, including a victory at Belle Isle 2, in the next six races. He won the Verizon P1 Award for Belle Isle 1 (finishing fifth) and led the most laps in both races. … The win placed him second in the championship standings, and he moved to first in a three-race span that included a pair of runner-up finishes (Pocono, Toronto 1) in July. He held the top spot before being overtaken by teammate Will Power following Mid-Ohio. Five consecutive finishes out of the top 10 to close the season crippled Castroneves’ opportunity to secure his first series title. … He started from the pole four times, including the 500-mile finale at Auto Club Speedway that determined the champion. … Overall, he had six podium finishes and 10 in the top 10. … Led 10 races for total of 282 laps and was running at the finish in 17 of the 18 races (contact at Houston 2 after earning Verizon P1 Award).
Year over year: 2013 best qualifying of first at Iowa (9.2 average), best finish of first at Texas (7.5 average). 2014 best qualifying first at Belle Isle 1, Houston 2 and Auto Club Speedway (5.8 average), best finish first at Belle Isle 2 (9.3 average).
Video: Helio Castroneves reviews his season
He said it: “What a great year 2014 was for Team Penske. Obviously, I would like to be the one holding the Astor Cup trophy at the end of the year, but the most important thing is that it came back to Team Penske. For me, I would have liked to have won more races – especially the Indianapolis 500 because we were so close – but we were very competitive all year long and took the championship fight all the way to Auto Club Speedway. I want to thank Hitachi, Shell-Pennzoil, AAA, Verizon and my No. 3 car guys for their support this year. We have a lot to be proud of and a lot to build on for 2015. I’m as excited as I’ve ever been to get back to racing. I’ve never been a part of a four-car team, which we will have next year with the addition of Simon Pagenaud, but I think Will, Juan Pablo (Montoya), Simon and myself will push each other to do great things.”
The chart (below): Looking at how Castroneves finished relative to his qualifying position:
Click to download the hi-res infographic
