Schmidt signs Dare for Indy bid.

Brazilian Airton Dare will make his return to the IRL IndyCar Series for the first time in two years after being confirmed as the driver of the #88 Panoz-Honda entered by Sam Schmidt Motorsports for this year's Indianapolis 500.

Dare, who last competed in an IRL race two years ago at Indianapolis, admitted that after a bad crash in an AJ Foyt entered car that year he had all but given up hope of returning to a series where he competed full time between 2000 and 2002, winning once and scoring 14 top ten finishes including an eighth place effort at Indy in 2001 whilst driving for the now defunct Team Xtreme operation.

"For me, it's a dream come true to be back," said Dare, who is still just 28 years of age. "When I had that accident in 2003 driving A.J. Foyt's car and I went back to Brazil to drive stock cars, I thought I'd never come back here. I went to the Homestead (IndyCar Series) race this year to see some guys, and then we started to try to put together a deal to come to Indy, and with everybody having the same (Honda) motors that was a plus for us, it makes it more interesting."

While the #88 Octane Motors/Sanitec backed Panoz has yet to hit the track so far this month, the Schmidt team have put together solid Indy 500 efforts in each of the last three seasons despite having stopped fielding a full time IRL team at the end of 2002.

"We're thrilled to be able to put this deal together and return to the Indianapolis 500," said Schmidt. "Sixty days ago, we didn't think we had a shot, but once again we've been able to pull things together. We feel very fortunate to have a driver of Airton's calibre. Not only has he won an IndyCar Series race in the past, but he's also had a top-10 finish here at Indianapolis. We've got a lot of work ahead of us, but we're looking forward to it."