Fernandez Not Jumping To IRL

After rumors that Fernandez racing could be one of 3 teams to make the jump from ALMS to Indycars in 2010, it doesn't look like they'll be racing anywhere next season. According to SPEEDS Robin Milller, unless a sponsor steps up soon Fernandez Racing will close by the end of October.

Miller also reports that Adrian Fernandez could of possible kept Lowe's, his ALMS sponsor, if he were to pilot a Dallara in the Indycar Series. However Adrian turned down the offer saying "I've got a wife, two kids and my health and I'm too old for Indy cars."

Of the other 2 ALMS teams that were rumored to make the jump, Gil de Ferran Motorsports has already announced there commitment for a 2 car IRL team in 2010. Highcroft Racing has also shown interest, but it's more likely that there driver Scott Sharp will make the leap along with sponsor Patron to an already established IRL team.

"It's been a good run but we're between a rock and a hard place and our poker hand didn't come up so good this time. I told our guys that we didn't have anything that's even close so they all needed to go look for jobs. Go look now and go look hard. We only have 17 employees but there's a lot of good ones and most of them have been very loyal so that makes this deal even tougher."

"I don't know what I'm going to do but I want to stay in racing. If you know anybody who wants to buy a good sports car, two haulers, pit equipment and our shop machinery, tell 'em they can have it all for $1 million."

Adrian has always found his own sponsors but we've both turned over every stone looking for something and we even hired a guy with some connections down south to try and find us sponsorship. Ideally, the cheapest deal would have been to stay in sports cars because we've got our car, we could lease an engine from Acura and probably do the season for $3-3.5 million. After that, we thought Indy cars made the most sense but it's really tough right now to find anything" -Tom Anderson, Fernandez Racing Co-Owner