Finish Line--and Titles--Are in Sight

A young driver with a familiar surname is one of only two remaining contenders for the PPG-Dayton Indy Lights championship, which will be decided in the final race of the season Sunday at California Speedway.

Casey Mears, second in the series standings to Dorricott Racing teammate Oriol Servia of Barcelona, is a son of former off-road racing champion Roger Mears and nephew of three-time CART champion and four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Rick Mears.

Not that his lineage will matter much once the 21-year-old straps himself into his car Sunday.

“As far as me driving, other than the help and support I get from Rick and my dad, the name doesn’t help at all,” Mears said. “It’s not like it’s intimidating to other drivers or anything. . . .

“But just being involved with my family is what’s gotten me to where I am today.”

Trailing Servia by 14 points--and with a maximum 22 available to a driver this weekend--Mears is a longshot to add another piece of hardware to the family trophy case, but that only means he’ll be more determined.

“I’m going out to win the thing,” he said of Sunday’s race.

Even if Mears wins the season finale, Servia, 25, can win the championship by finishing as low as fifth.

Servia, though, is taking nothing for granted.

“Obviously, I wanted to have my title before the last race,” he said. “But obviously I could not make it, so it’s going to be interesting. Fontana is probably the most challenging race for all the Lights drivers because there are more chances for everybody to win because of the importance of the draft. . . .

“One lap you are first, the next lap you are 12th. I’m not exaggerating. You cannot be conservative. You have to try to win the last lap, and maybe you are first, or maybe you are eighth. It’s a crazy race. So you have to be very smart, very bright.”

Servia said his young teammate is all that--and more.

“He has tons of talent,” the Spaniard said of Mears. “He’s very brave. He has proven it in the ovals, where I think he has done the most [passing] maneuvers, the more amazing maneuvers. . . . He’s not there by good luck only. In a championship like this, he has proven a lot.”

Neither Servia nor Mears has won any of the year’s previous 11 races, relying instead on consistency to amass points.

Mears has completed all 635 laps of the series, though he has not led one, and Servia has completed all but six. A third Dorricott driver, Philipp Peter of Austria, has completed all but two laps, and won three races, but he was eliminated from the championship chase when he finished eighth last month at Laguna Seca.

“I would probably describe myself as patient,” Mears said. “My dad has always been an aggressive driver and my uncle’s always been a very patient driver, and I’ve tried to learn from both.

“I’ve learned to be patient at the right times, and learned when I can be aggressive. It has been the consistency this year that’s put us where we’re at today--charging hard when I can, but staying out of trouble when I need to.”

Not surprisingly, Mears has been racing almost from the day he could walk while growing up in Bakersfield. He started on Big Wheels when he was 2 or 3, he said, and progressed to BMX bicycles and motorcycles as a youth.

When he was 13, he set a track record while racing a go-kart at Riverside International Raceway. This is his third year on the Indy Lights circuit, the final rung in CART’s ladder system of driver development for the FedEx Championship Series, and has been easily his most successful and enjoyable.

And it could get better.