Roth orders Curry.

Marty Roth has confirmed that his eponymous Roth Racing outfit has hired IndyCar Series veteran, and former Vision Racing team manager, Larry Curry as its new chief engineer.

In his role, which takes immediate effect, Curry will not only oversee the set-ups for the #24 and #25 cars driven by IndyCar Series rookie Jay Howard and Roth himself, but also will set about restructuring the team's engineering department.

Roth suffered a major pre-Indy 500 blow when a proportion of his engineering team quit ahead of the 'month of May', but hopes that Curry will bring a guiding light to see the squad through both qualifying and racing at Indianapolis, as well as the rest of the 2008 campaign.

"Having a person of Larry's experience join our organisation, especially as the month of May and the most important race of the season is upon is, should be a huge boost to us all," the Canadian owner-driver said.

"Although we realise that changing team personnel at the season's fifth race may put us slightly behind the eight-ball as we head into the first weekend of qualifying at Indy, we feel that the knowledge and leadership that Larry brings to the team will only make us better as we continue to develop our programme and strive to become more competitive at each race.

"Our team has made huge strides this year. We've added a second car with Jay, who passed his rookie orientation on Sunday, and, at the last race in Kansas, we posted the best-ever qualifying effort in team history. We fully expect that, as the season progresses, we will continue to develop and run further toward the front."

Curry was hired by Tony George when the IRL CEO set up his own team back in 2005 but, following technical irregularities being found on both the cars of Ed Carpenter and AJ Foyt IV at this season's opening round at Homestead, the two parties decided that it would be in their best interests to split. Vision has since appointed former crew chief Keven Kukuliwicz as its new team manager.

"I had a great three-and-a-half years at Vision Racing, and I want to thank Tony George for his support over the years," Curry commented, "I now look forward to a long tenure with Roth Racing and to the challenges of helping to build the team into a competitive, first-class organisation."