When Tony George announced the formation of Vision Racing in 2005, the team had less than four weeks to prepare for the season, but hit the ground running and has been working hard to make up ground on its more-seasoned competitors ever since.
Entering its fourth season in 2008, and running two drivers from last season, the team now feels it has reached its maturation point. Ed Carpenter and AJ Foyt IV both return to the line-up, while Larry Curry is back as team manager, adding confidence to the squad's preparations.
"We think our drivers are seasoned enough now to understand how it all works," Curry said, "We think that we've done our homework over the winter. Certainly, on road courses, we feel like we're going to be much more respectable, to the point where we can go out and compete for some top ten finishes. On the ovals, the expectations are to win a race."
Carpenter is something of a permanent fixture at the Indianapolis-based race shop given his family relationship to George, but started last season with a sixth-place finish at Homestead, and believes that he can continue to improve if luck goes his way.
"Last year, we started strong but, from May on, I wasn't very happy," he said, "Some of the things that we've done will hopefully change that this season.
"Obviously, you'll have to step it up because we have a lot more teams coming in, and a lot more good teams with quality drivers. I think they will make us raise our games more on road courses because that's their strong point. The biggest thing is to be more consistent. We had some good runs last year; we were capable of running in the top five, but didn't do it consistently enough."
Foyt, the inaugural Indy Pro Series champion in 2002, came closest to Victory Lane last year, finishing third after leading 13 laps at Kentucky. He was fifth quickest in last month's open test on the oval at Homestead-Miami Speedway, and is looking forward to translating that sort of form into solid results in 2008.
"I'm excited about it," Foyt said, "We have a great team manager with Larry Curry, and his son, Matt, is my engineer. Toward the end of the year, you could see we were getting better and more comfortable with each other. The goal for this year - for me and Ed - is to get Vision Racing its first win. I finished third last year, and we just need to jump over that hill a bit more and get that first win, which would be a huge accomplishment. I think we have the opportunity to get that done."
![Ed Carpenter - Vision Racing [pic credit: IRL/Haines]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/306504.jpg)
