(23/08/04) Team Ecosse came to the home of American Motorsport two weeks ago looking for success but came away from Indianapolis with little more than disappointment all round. Both the Alienware Series #11 and BallRacing Cup #01 teams were in action but had little to smile about on Monday morning.

In the Alienware Series race at Indianapolis Raceway Park, Team Ecosse gave highly rated South African Marius Jacobsz his ESCORS debut and he repaid the gesture by going out on track in qualifying and placing the as-yet unsponsored Ford Taurus sixth on the grid. The race at the tight short track was not destined to go so well, however, and after an early collision sent him into the pits for repairs, the engine in the black car expired on the back straight on lap 106 of 150, spinning Jacobsz out of the race. "The engine is scrap," commented Catriona Rochford afterwards, who was not driving for CI Racing this weekend, so was watching from the Team Ecosse war-wagon in the pits. "The guys in the garage think that Marius bumped the wall leaving the turns one or two times too often after the engine was initially damaged and it led to a pretty catastrophic failure. Thankfully there are two weeks to the next race at Michigan so we've plenty of time to get a new unit installed as we'd like to give Marius a chance to show what he can do on a more conventional track. If things work out then maybe we can look at more races or possibly the remainder of the season with him at the wheel as he's clearly a very promising driver."

Team Ecosse owner Michael Hogg was also in action, making his debut in his sixth different car of the season, this time in the #21 MH Games Ford Taurus of Stefan Sigwarth's B-Fast Motorsports which was recently vacated by part-time driver Mattais Hedkvist. With no time to test, Hogg was a little off the pace but still got through qualifying to make the twenty-five car field and was just settling in to the new ride when the #18 Pro-Eco Motorsports Chevrolet of Thiago Moya rammed him off the road at high speed into Turn 3. "I don't know what Thiago was thinking there," he said afterwards. "He apologised later but the accident put me hard into the wall and lost me my rear-end. Add to that I picked up engine damage a little later and it was an expensive debut in Siggy's team. However, by crawling to the finish I actually went up two spots in the driver's standings to eighth so I guess it wasn't all bad. We just want to gel driver and team and get some good results rolling in the remaining thirteen races this season - I'm safe in this team to the end of the year unless I really screw up as a driver!"

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The #11 arrived at Michigan Superspeedway with a fresh engine and the whole team hoped that they and Jacobsz would be able to record the first finish for the black Taurus. Having qualified seventh, Jacobsz stuck with the head of the field all race and looked set for fifth place until a late yellow saw him back in the pack where he lost a couple of places to finish seventh. This was a great result, however and the team were elated to score a top ten finish. "The new engine ran perfectly and we managed to make a few tweaks to the car all weekend which really helped as well," said car-owner Rochford. "We have hopes that this car could really run well in the future." Hogg and Rochford and also ran in the race, finishing 14th and 19th in the #21 B-Fast Motorsports and #74 CI Racing cars.

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The #01 team took on the daunting task of attempting for the Brickyard 250 across town at the legendary Indianpolis Motor Speedway. With almost draconian qualifying limits placed on the field, only twenty-five of the entered thirty cars would qualify for the show and with a low placing in the provisional list the team would need to either qualify in the top twenty-two or hope for luck with provisionals if they didn't. After Hogg had been out and completed his laps, it transpired he had set the twenty-third quickest time, ahead of David Holden, David LaBlavec, Juhani Oksanen, Steve Claeys, Micha De Wals, Guilherme Cunha and Mats Gustavsson but this counted for nothing as LeBlavec, Cunha and Oksanen's cars were all ahead of the #01 in the provisional standings and would fill out the field. This made the team the first of the non-qualifiers for the race and they had to head to the haulers and go home early.

The team had better luck at Michigan, qualifying twentieth, but were forced to retire the #01 early with mechanical problems - they were classified twenty-fourth at the flag. The team are hopeful of a good run at the RacingUnderdog.com 300 at Fontana in California in a couple of weeks.

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Earlier, the three-car West Series operation was in action at the Willow Springs road course in California in the latest round of the series with Hogg and Rochford bringing their #10 Knockhill and #11 Highland Spring machines home in a decent tenth and twelfth respectively. The #37 Lidl car was without a driver until the day of the race when Keith Black was brought in to give the car a data-collecting run in the practice sessions and a start in the race. He was classified twentieth. Regular driver Mats Gustavsson is hopeful he should be able to complete the majority of the season in the car.

The West Series was also running at Michigan along with the top ESCORS divisions and Hogg had the best day despite a poor qualifying run. Having dropped to the back of the pack early on with a car that still wasn't handling to his liking, he made some changes under caution and got into a rhythm - enjoying a fierce battle with a group of cars before pulling away and recording a fourth place finish. The result saw him cling onto fifth place in the Driver Standings ahead of race winner and established "alien" Andrea Bonini who has been reeling him in for a while. Rochford looked to be running a good strategy to begin with, running as high as fifth, however the last part of her gamble didn't pay off and she was forced to pit for a splash of fuel with a handful of laps to go. A mistake at the pit entry lost her valuable time and she dropped to tenth at the flag. Gustavsson had looked strong in practice but got involved in the only big accident of the race when he was whacked by the car of Mike Jackson who had not slowed sufficiently for a yellow incident caused by Rich Jamison. Engine damage forced Gustavsson to the garage for the day. The teams will be out again at Golden Sands this week.