HILLIARD, Ohio - In recent years, nearly every team from Columbus that makes a trip to Michigan for any sort of sporting endeavor returns with a fresh victory whether it be a visit to Ann Arbor, East Lansing or Detroit.
 
Now the Hilliard-based Rahal Letterman Racing team will try and follow the lead of the Ohio State University squads and take another win out of That State Up North with this weekend’s IndyCar Series visit to the Michigan International Speedway.
   
The duo of Scott Sharp  (#8 Patrón Dallara/Honda/Firestone) and Ryan Hunter-Reay (#17 Ethanol Dallara/Honda/Firestone) will lead the RLR charge to the demanding two-mile MIS oval this weekend as the IndyCar season hits the homestretch. The Michigan Indy 400 is the 13th event of the 17-race schedule, meaning that time is running short on those that have designs on climbing the championship ladder. Sharp is eighth in the standings with five races left to run, and could climb even higher this weekend if his background on the big ovals is any indication. The former Trans-Am champ has scored top-10 finishes in seven of his last eight IndyCar starts on oval tracks of two miles or more in length. In his 20 career IndyCar starts on the big tracks (Indianapolis, Michigan, Fontana), Sharp has 13 top-10 finishes and 12 top-10 starts—highlighted by a polewinning run at Indy in 2002.
 
“I always remember sitting on the couch during the summer with my father and the one, big, mid-summer race was the Michigan Indycar race,” Sharp said. “Its always been high speed, big drafting, lots of action.....I'm excited to get back to MIS with our Patrón RLR Team!  I think we've taken large steps forward on the bigger tracks and are ready to contend for the win!"
 
Meanwhile, Hunter-Reay has a carrot of his own to chase despite making his IndyCar debut just one race ago. His seventh-place debut thrust him in the middle of the hunt for the Bombardier Learjet Rookie-of-the-Year award. He is only the third rookie to compete in Indy Cars this year and is looking to cut into part-time pilot Milka Duno’s 43-point advantage in the rookie standings.
 
“I just can't wait to get back in the Ethanol car at Michigan,” remarked Hunter-Reay. “Coming off a great first race together we have a solid platform to build on moving forward.  I have a great teammate in Scott Sharp.  I can learn a lot from him as he really knows the ins and outs of these cars and tracks.  Jumping from a challenging road course to the high banks at Michigan is what makes this series so unique, you really have to be on your toes to get the most out of every weekend.  I can't wait to get back to work with the Ethanol team.  We only have three days on track together, but we already have a chemistry that we can use to our advantage. Just like Mid-Ohio we look to steadily progress through each session and get a good result.”
 
The 13th race on the 2007 IndyCar schedule will take place Sunday at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time and can be seen live on ESPN2. The Indy Cars will run a two-day show this weekend  with each driver slated for two hours of Saturday practice that leads into the run for the AAMCO Transmissions Pole Award, which takes place at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time. As always, fans can follow all of the action via the timing and scoring feature on www.indycar.com.
 
Rahal Letterman Racing Michigan Notes:
 
This will be mark the end of a six-year run that has seen the Indy Cars race at the high-banked Michigan International Speedway each year since 2002. The two-mile D-shaped oval , which was a staple of the IndyCar and Champ Car circuits from its inaugural race in 1968, has been the site of a number of triumphs for Rahal Letterman Racing and its co-owner Bobby Rahal, including wins by Bobby in 1982 (his first oval-track win), 1985 and 1986.  The track is also the site of the team’s most recent win, that coming courtesy of Buddy Rice in 2004.
 
Scott Sharp broke a league record with his polewinning performance in Texas, snapping an 87-race streak between pole positions. The pole was the sixth of Sharp’s career and his first since the Kentucky event in 2001. Sharp will make his 142nd IndyCar Series start, the most in league history. Sharp expects to make his 134th consecutive start which is also a IndyCar Series record. His 79 top-10 finishes are also a league record, two more than the 77 put up by Sam Hornish Jr.. He has finished all but 14 of the 2,164 laps of competition run this season, which is second only to points leader Dario Franchitti in the series. Sharp reached the $10 million mark in winnings in his IndyCar career and needs to earn just $53,745 more to reach $1 million for this season, which would mark the fourth time in the last seven years that Sharp has earned more than $1 million in a season.
 
Ryan Hunter-Reay made his IndyCar Series debut two weeks ago at Mid-Ohio, scoring a seventh-place finish to match a RLR record for the best result by a driver making his debut with the team. He will be competing at Michigan International Speedway for the first time in his career. His only start on a oval of two miles or more in length came in 2003 when he started 15th and finished 11th at EuroSpeedway during his rookie season in Champ Cars.