Double duty?

[Alex Toropov]

Helio Castroneves said during ALMS Sebring test, "I'd love to do double-duty at St. Petersburg" (driving Porsche RS Spyder on Saturday and his own Dallara on Sunday).

"What I like the most is the name of the car: Spyder! It's a great car and a great team. This really is a tremendous experience for me. This type of racing is not just about being fast; you have to be consistent as well. When Penske decided to give me this opportunity, I was very excited. I'd love to do double-duty at St. Petersburg.
"It's a different seating position. This car has features like carbon brakes and paddleshifting, and it is about 100 pounds heavier. It's much nicer and easier to drive with this configuration (than an Indy car)."

Will it be the first precedent of double duty during combined openwheel-sportscar events? Or there were others before... (can't remember any)

For stock car racing, double duty (sometimes even triple) is "business as usual", but not here obviously.

[Fish_Flake]

With more hybrid open-wheel/closed-wheel race meetings emerging with the continuing cohabitation between Champ Car, the IRL, Grand-Am, and the ALMS, I'm sure that it will become a more common scenario, especially as more teams are operating programs in each respective discipline. I know that it's happened before; World-class sports car races and Grands Prix were held concurrently when those championships raced outside of Europe during the 1950s and 60s, when factory teams like Ferrari, Mercedes, and Maserati were competing in both categories and the cars were more similar. Before the advent of the Porsche Cup, Formula 1 drivers would drive in similarly-prepared touring cars as exhibitions during Grand Prix weekends.

It's different in stock cars, because when they race multiple times in a weekend, they go from a NEXTEL Cup car to one with a slightly less powerful engine, but the same specs and handling characteristics. As Helio said in that article, there is a long list of fundemental differences between IndyCars and sports cars. But most of the drivers have experience in these vehicles, and they are of the caliber that they can well adjust to the task.