BROWNSBURG, Ind. — Cape Motorsports, one of the most successful teams in the history of the Road to Indy driver development ladder system, announced it has purchased two new Dallara IL-15 chassis with plans to contest the 2023 Indy Lights season.
“We moved to Indianapolis a few years ago in order to move into Indy Lights,” said Dominic and Nicholas Cape. “It was part of our plan from the outset, it just got pushed back a couple of years. Indianapolis has such a racing culture but more than that, so many of the other teams and suppliers are based here.
“We started talking about it a few years ago, figuring out where we were going with all this. We figured we’d better get cracking on it now, before it was too late! And once the series changed to Firestone tires, we knew that would level the playing field a bit. Once we got the ball rolling, getting the cars was the first step. We’ll have cars in September and will begin testing drivers in the fall.”
The brothers moved from St. Petersburg, Fla. to their current Brownsburg location ahead of the 2020 season, with a five-year plan in mind to progress first to Indy Lights and then to the top of the American open-wheel scene, the NTT IndyCar Series. The close relationship between the two series was one of the keys to making the move work.
“IndyCar and Indy Lights are so closely tied together,” said Dominic Cape. “We have seen how contesting Indy Lights can open doors into IndyCar and that is our end goal. We have so much knowledge, growing up both in racing and in life. The people we have around us now give us a better opportunity to do well. The team members have been together for quite some time, so the resources are in place. And we’ve done this before, so we have an idea of how it works.”
Cape Motorsports has a storied history, capturing 13 Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship titles in the last 20 years, including nine of the last 11 driver titles. The team has also seen success in sports car racing, earning the IMSA Prototype Challenge championship title in 2006.
But as Dominic Cape noted, this will not be the team’s first foray into Indy Lights.
The team first contested the series in 2007, 2008 and 2010.