What a Week for the Indycar Series

After what has been a very quiet offseason, a blizzard of news has come out this week which has made us even more excited for the upcoming season.

Let's start off with what is probably the biggest news: Will Power has joined the Penske Racing powerhouse! But he may not even race.

Helio Castroneves, driver of the Penske Racing No. 3 car, is faced with tax evasion charges and may have to face jail time. His trial is in March and if he is found guilty, he will not be able to race.

This means Will Power will be driving what he hopes will be a full season.

But if Castroneves is declared innocent, he will be racing this season and Will Power is left with nothing.

Will Power will be testing the car during preseason testing.

Penske had a lot of talent to choose from. Along with Will Power, Justin Wilson, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Paul Tracy and Oriol Servia were all in talks with the Captain.

Moving along to other news, Robert Doorndos, good ol' Bobby D, is back!

The former Champcar driver will be joining the Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing organization to be teammates with Graham Rahal. His sponsor is expected to be Red Bull, but nothing is certain yet.

Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing are also looking to expand to a third car, only if they can get Sebastien Bourdais to come back in American open wheel racing.

Bourdais was very dominant in Champcar, winning four consecutive championships. Last year, he was driving for the Toro Rosso Formula One team.

His contract with Toro Rosso has not been renewed yet and is currently a free agent. Let's all pray for a return to America, wasn't it fun to have an angry frenchman!

Remember when Marty Roth was selling his team; well, after I nearly forgot about that, we have some buyers.

You may remember Nelson Philippe, who used to race in Champcar. His family is reportedly buying the team. Their two drivers would be Nelson Philippe and brother Richard Philippe, who has been racing in Formula BMW.

The team will be known as Team France.

KV Racing, owned by former Champcar co-owner Kevin Kalkhoven and former CART driver Jimmy Vasser, have hired Mario Moraes to drive one of it's cars in 2009.

Moraes raced last year in the Indycar Series for Dale Coyne Racing.

Since Will Power, former KV Racing driver, is moving to Penske Racing, we expect Moraes to drive the No. 8 car, with Oriol Servia as teammate remaining in the No. 5 car.

But with sponsorship issues, Servia is not guaranteed a ride yet, so maybe KV Racing will be a one car operation with Mario Moraes as their only driver. Still huge question marks about this organization.

I'm sure more news is yet to come and we can only wait. But there is no doubt in my mind that even through these tough economic times, we should have a solid Indycar field and another great season.