"It's a very interesting situation but, right now, I'm just focused on this issue one step at a time. Like I said, Team Penske and I were able to talk about it. It's best for everyone. Those are my friends. Roger has really been an incredible person in my career - for me, having him give me tips, making me understand a lot of things, no question it's the best advice I can have. Right now, I'm just going to continue doing that as well. As soon as possible when this is over, I'll be ready for the 2009 season."

The Brazilian revealed that he expected the court date to last for approximately three weeks, but admitted that even his legal advisors had been hard-pressed to commit to either a duration or outcome.

"[A trial like this] they say is about 20 days, [but] the things always change," he pointed out, "In my opinion, to be honest, they are saying strongly that they never saw a case like this. They're very surprised. We're going to present ourselves the best way we can present but, in terms of time-wise, that's what the indictment says, about 20 business days. That's what we're counting on. We're going to go for it [and] after everything is over, like I said, I'll be more than ready."

Cindric confirmed that the Penske operation was taking things on a day-by-day basis, but had had to commit to a replacement in time to land one of the bigger names in IndyCar Racing. Without committing to details of Power's agreement with the team, the president admitted that he would jump at the chance to have Castroneves back in the #3, be it this year or in the future.

"We're very fortunate to have someone like Will available to join the team [but], the way I look at it is [that] we have three drivers," he insisted, "There's three drivers for Team Penske in 2009. We'll determine who drives which one of those two cars depending on how everything sorts out. We'll kind of take it a day at a time. That's what we've been doing to this point.

"It's one of those things where you look at it and say you need to make sure that we, as an organisation, can go out and test and we can go out and do all the things we normally do, let [Castroneves] remain focused. There really wasn't any definite timeline. It's always been something we've kind of taken day to day.

"There's nothing more than I'd want to do than come back to Indy next year and run [Castroneves] at the 500. Why wouldn't you want to? [However], I think, right now, we just have to, again, take this thing a day at a time. We're not going to make any commitments other than we're going to stand behind Helio and, in the meantime, we're going to get ourselves prepared as we can be to go win races this year.

"If Helio is ready to go at St Pete, he's in a situation where he's ready to go for the rest of the year, the #3 car is his. For us, we need to do everything we can to stand behind him. If he's ready to go in St Pete, then he's still our guy. If he's not ready to go in St Pete, then obviously Will's going to be ready to go in St Pete. Anything after that really is a matter of how everything plays out day to day."

Cindric would not be drawn on Power's longer-term future, perhaps letting slip the team's wariness over the outcome of Castroneves' case.

"At that point in time, we'll decide [whether he would be released to go elsewhere]," he admitted, "We'll decide what makes sense for all of us. I know that this isn't anything new to Will or to Helio or anybody else. I think everybody sitting up here understands exactly what the game plan is. We want to make sure that we're as up front as possible.