Indy Racing Revolution (temporary site)

I’ve been using Twitter for some time now and it’s grown to be a useful tool in my journalism and blogging careers. If you choose the right people to follow, you can really gain some good insight that can help you with a story. Of course, you’ll also get some everyday, average-joe stuff like where they go for ice cream and such.

If you follow IndyCar driver Graham Rahal’s tweets, then you’ll know his 140-character-long thoughts are mostly in that vein. But in the last couple of weeks, I’ve noticed that some of his missives have indicated some distress over the business side of racing.

We may have found the reason why he’s worried. According to Curt Cavin of The Indianapolis Star, he doesn’t have a contract for 2010 yet. Cavin also reports that both the Ganassi and de Ferran teams are interested in grabbing him away from Newman/Haas/Lanigan — if they can get the funding to pull it off.

There’s some other “silly season” stuff Cavin puts out in the open, including:

• Alex Lloyd and former Andretti Autosport driver Hideki Mutoh being expected to finalize deals with N/H/L.
• Justin Wilson being rumored to jump from Dale Coyne’s team to Dreyer and Reinbold Racing.
• Bruno Junqueira and former Champ Car driver Jan Heylen attending the meeting with Conquest Racing owner Eric Bachelart.
• Atlantics standout Simona de Silvestro having to do some Firestone Indy Lights races and an IndyCar oval test before being allowed to do those races in such a car.
• FIL driver Ana Beatriz trying to find a team to drive for at the season-opener in her home country of Brazil, plus a few other IndyCar events.

Who wants to bet that some of this won’t be settled until right before Sao Paulo? Not only do we have to see how all of the above scenarios play out, the IRL’s got two of their top American drivers in some weird situations – Ryan Hunter-Reay is with Andretti Autosport but only in a part-time capacity as of now, and Rahal’s apparently up for grabs just two months away from the opening race.

The IRL silly season – such a strange beast.