Helio Castroneves has been announced as the latest driver to join the Superstar Racing Experience. The races will air next summer on CBS. The three-time Indy 500 winner is the fifth driver to be announced for the inaugural season, joining co-founder and NASCAR Hall of Famer Tony Stewart, Bobby Labonte, Tony Kanaan and Paul Tracy.
In addition to three Indianapolis 500 victories, the Brazilian IndyCar driver brings a resume of 30 wins and 50 pole positions in the series. He is set to start from the 28th position in Sunday's Indy 500.
🚨#DriverAnnouncement: Let’s officially welcome @h3lio to the @SRXracing family!#LetsRace 🏁 pic.twitter.com/SeFFlqUZcy
— Superstar Racing Experience (@SRXracing) August 19, 2020
"You're kind of reunited with people that normally you're not able to race," Castroneves told CBS Sports. "It's another way to continue to innovate myself and get better as a driver."
Castroneves explained that while he's going to have fun racing against friends, he's going to be taking the competition seriously.
"Every time you put the helmet on, forget about friendship," he said. "Forget about whoever you think is best... That's my nature and my DNA. So you want to win as much as you can, you want to defeat them then make fun of them."
Out of the five drivers currently announced, Castroneves said he'd most want to best Kanaan and Stewart. He said Stewart was at his first IndyCar win in 2001, so it would be fun to beat him. Stewart was also excited about adding Castroneves.
"I guess for me it's kind of like a dream list of guys that who would I really, ultimately love to race with," Stewart said. "So far every driver that we've sent invitations to has accepted."
Stewart founded SRX alongside Ray Evernham, George Pyne and Sandy Montag. It's modeled on the International Race of Champions (IROC) series and is focused on making races about driver ability as opposed to who has the best car.
"I'm excited to see how these cars drive," Stewart said. "We know what we want these cars to feel like. We know what we feel like is going to put on good races and when you can bring the talent in to drive these cars that we're going to bringing in. I want these drivers to have fun driving the cars but I think we're going to be able to put on a great race for fans."
Stewart said over the next few weeks and months he will be revealing more about the series, including additions to the field of legendary drivers.
