Columnist Brian Hilderbrand: Boat buys out IRL team, moves it to Phoenix

Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2001 | 9:07 a.m.

Brian Hilderbrand covers motor sports for the Las Vegas Sun. Reach him at bh@lasvegassun.com or 259-4089.

Billy Boat bought out the IRL team he co-owned and drove for this season and has moved the operation to his hometown of Phoenix.

Boat is now the majority owner of Curb/Agajanian/Boat Indy Racing, which will be based in the Phoenix suburb of Deer Valley. Recording industry executive Mike Curb and motor sports businessman Cary Agajanian are co-owners with Boat.

"Cary and Mike always had the desire to keep the team going into 2002," Boat said. "I think my desire was to bring something here to my community in Phoenix. I have tremendous resources at my disposal in this town and this community that I wasn't taking advantage of.

"I think there are a lot of assets here that help the team overall. Phoenix is a great sports town, and I wanted to bring an Indy team back into the mix with the other sports teams in town."

Boat bought out his partner, Greg Beck, who fielded the car this season from his shop in Indianapolis. Beck no longer is involved with the team, Boat said.

The new team will field a Chevrolet-powered Dallara in the 2002 Indy Racing League season and Boat has hired respected engineer Darrell Soppe as team manager and engineer. Curb Records, which sponsored Boat this season, will sponsor the car in 2002.

Boat, who finished a career-high fourth in IRL points this season, said the new team has modest goals for next season.

"Our goals for the team will be fairly conservative to start," Boat said. "Coming off a season like I had last year, I know that consistency is the key. We want to run up front, we want to have consistent runs and finish in the top five in races.

"If we can do that on a regular basis, we know we will have a good shot to win races."

Richard Day, the series' director of public relations, provided this explanation:

"Lasoski won the championship by performing much better than Kinser in the preliminary programs -- those 33 dates preceding the 63 main events the series ran (this) season," Day said. "This is especially astounding when one considers that almost four times as many points can be scored in a feature program.

"(Kinser) scored 8,833 points -- an average of fifth place -- in the 63 feature programs (and) outscored Lasoski, who averaged a sixth-place finish, by 132 points in the main events. (Lasoski) offset that, however, by driving Tony Stewart's No. 20L J.D. Byrider Eagle so consistently in the preliminary programs. He raced into the top 12 in all but one Preliminary Feature.

"On the other hand, Kinser and the No. 5M Mopar Maxim faltered in the shorter races, finishing 13th or worse 14 times. Lasoski outscored (Kinser) by 162 points in the preliminaries while averaging a sixth-place finish. Kinser was undone by finishing an average of 11th in the preliminaries."

Tony Hunt of Fair Oaks, Calif., holds a 28-point lead over Jeff Gardner of Fresno, Calif., in the Western Sprint Car standings. Danny Ebberts of Canyon Lake, Calif., leads Alex Harris of Simi Valley, Calif., by 48 points in the Western Midget Car standings.

Dave Darland of Lincoln, Ind., already has clinched the Worldcom National Midget Car championship.

Castroneves was featured in the November issue of Cosmopolitan magazine as its November "Hunk of the Month" and is featured in People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive -- 2001" issue as the "Sexiest Race Car Driver."