Cheever Racing

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cheever Racing is an auto racing team founded in 1996 by Eddie Cheever as Team Cheever in the Indy Racing League IndyCar Series. They have fielded a car for Cheever for much of its existence, but occasionally has become a two car team, almost always for the Indianapolis 500. The team won the 1998 Indianapolis 500 with Cheever driving and then switched to Infiniti engines and gained sponsorship from Excite for 2000. The team continued to be moderately successful and gained Infiniti's first series win. When Infiniti left the series in 2003 the team, which by then was sponsored by Red Bull switched to Chevrolet engines then switched to Toyota in 2005. Despite some of the most talented drivers in the league, a long string of bad luck and underpowered engines rendered the team little more than mid-pack. With no sponsor for the 2006 season, Eddie decided to trim the team to a single car and return to the cockpit as both a cost cutting move and to seize the opportunity to return to racing before he felt he got too old to be competitive. Cheever only committed to drive until the Indianapolis 500 but continued until the 8th race of the season. The IRL operation shut down after the Kansas Speedway race when it could not find a sponsor or pay driver to continue.

Cheever Racing also runs a Daytona Prototype car in the Rolex Grand-Am series. In 2007 Cheever purchased the intellectual property rights to the Fabcar chassis and has renewed its development and begun offering the chassis to other teams in the series.^[1] The car was subsequently renamed the Coyote chassis, in tribute to the racing cars built in the 1970's by A. J. Foyt Enterprises.^[2]

In 2006, Cheever also founded an Indy Pro Series team. In 2006 its car was driven by Chris Festa. Their driver for the 2007 season was Richard Antinucci, Eddie's nephew, who captured two wins on a part-time schedule.