Nextel expands PacWest sponsorship.
Nextel Communications will have their colours adorned on both PacWest Racing Reynard-Toyota's for the remainder of the 2001 CART FedEx season at least after expanding their current deal with Mauricio Gugelmin to cover Scott Dixon as well.
PacWest Racing Group, in association with Nextel Communications, announced on Friday in Vancouver that Nextel has become a sponsor on the #18 Reynard-Toyota of Jim Trueman Rookie of the Year contender Scott Dixon for the remainder of the 2001 CART FedEx Championship Series season.
Nextel Communications will have their colours adorned on both PacWest Racing Reynard-Toyota's for the remainder of the 2001 CART FedEx season at least after expanding their current deal with Mauricio Gugelmin to cover Scott Dixon as well.
PacWest Racing Group, in association with Nextel Communications, announced on Friday in Vancouver that Nextel has become a sponsor on the #18 Reynard-Toyota of Jim Trueman Rookie of the Year contender Scott Dixon for the remainder of the 2001 CART FedEx Championship Series season.
Nextel, which currently sponsors the #17 PacWest entry of Mauricio Gugelmin, has elected to expanded their involvement with the two-car team to begin with the Molson Indy Vancouver and continuing through CART first European tour and the remaining stops on the calendar at Houston, Laguna Seca, Surfers Paradise and Fontana.
Nextel initially began their affiliation with PacWest Racing with successful projects at St. Louis in 1997, and Rio in 1999 before taking on their current level of involvement on Gugelmin's car at the start of the 2000 CART season after the departure of long time sponsors Hollywood
Dixon, the New Zealand rookie, is currently leading the standings for the Jim Trueman Rookie of the Year award, holding a 35-point lead over his nearest rival, Target Chip Ganassi's Bruno Junqueira. He has also completed 1711 of the 1757 laps run this season, the series leader in that category.
On Friday however Dixon could only post 17th fastest time in the opening two practice sessions for the Molson Indy Vancouver with a best lap of 62.528-seconds, more than a second slower than overnight leader Alex Tagliani while Gugelmin struggled even more and was all the way back in 20th position.
"We've got a few changes to make tonight, but overall my car is not bad," said Dixon. "I'm a little upset that we didn't get a chance to put in a fast time with new tires, but we went out twice on stickers and both times a red flag flew during my flying laps. We really couldn't gauge things under those conditions, but that's the way it is. I think we're going to sort out some of our gear ratios tonight, so we'll definitely be ready for qualifying tomorrow."
Gugelmin was also positive despite the task ahead of him saying, "My session was not too bad, despite what my position says. I'm fighting a little mechanical grip and the traffic was really bad today, but other than that I think we're okay. We have a good idea where to improve and today is not payday. The track was pretty green this morning, as expected, so we had several red flags to contend with but we kept the Nextel car intact and really learned a lot today."
New Nextel driver Dixon has one victory, five top-fives, and seven top-tens at this point of his rookie campaign. He has also scored championship points in six of his past seven starts, including three top-five finishes. In May, the then 20-year-old Kiwi became the youngest-ever winner of a Champ Car race, scoring a victory in Nazareth at the age of 20 years, nine months.
In his first season at PacWest, Dixon became the 2000 Dayton Indy Lights Champion with six wins, seven podiums, and one pole position, finishing the season with 155 points including a win at Vancouver.
Nextel Communications is the world's leading provider of fully integrated guaranteed all-digital wireless services. Nextel's all-in-one solution integrates digital cellular, voice mail, text/numeric paging capabilities and Nextel Direct Connect - a digital two-way radio feature that allows a user to instantly contact 1 or 100 of their co-workers at the touch of a button. Nextel uses iDEN (integrated digital enhanced network) technology developed by Motorola (a PacWest sponsors themselves until the end of 2000). This technology provides superior sound and transmission quality as well as built-in cloning and fraud protection.
The company is headquartered in Reston, Virginia and has an employee base of more than 10,000 dedicated team members throughout the country. Nextel International has wireless operations and investments in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines, and Shanghai, China.