1.      All-star INDYCAR lineup tackles Aussie track

2.      Panther-added package makes luge even cooler

3.      Astronaut taking INDYCAR to International Space Station

1. All-star INDYCAR lineup tackles Aussie track: For an encore, Sebastien Bourdais says, victories in both V8 Supercars Championship races in Surfers Paradise, Australia, would do nicely.Bourdais joins eight other IZOD IndyCar Series regulars in the Gold Coast 600 on Oct. 19-21 on the street circuit. Last October, he teamed with Jamie Whincup to win the Saturday race and finish second the next day to earn the Dan Wheldon Memorial Trophy  presented to the best-performing international racer.Bourdais will reunite with Whincup to co-drive the TeamVodafone entry in both 190-mile races. Whincup, who won earlier in the month at Bathurst in the Holden VE Commodore, has a sizable championship lead over teammate Craig Lowndes entering the 12th of 15 events."Jamie's in a great position to win the championship again, so that's pretty cool to be able to help him," said Bourdais, the first driver to win in an Indy car (2005, '07) and V8 Supercars race on the Gold Coast. "It would be great to go there and get a couple of wins, and enjoy the time in Australia after a pretty intense (IZOD IndyCar Series) season."IZOD IndyCar Series championship runner-up Will Power will partner with Mark Winterbottom in the 28-car field, while Team Penske teammate Ryan Briscoe will co-drive with Garth Tander. Power, a native of Australia who did not compete last year because of fractured vertebrae suffered in a race crash at Las Vegas, is looking forward to the engagement."It's now the only chance I get to race in front of a local crowd," said Power, who earned the pole for the October 2008 IZOD IndyCar Series exhibition race on the circuit won by Briscoe. "Last year's events aside, I have enjoyed racing at Surfers Paradise for many years and it will be great to team up with Frosty, who won there last year in the car I would've been in (with Richard Lyons)."Simon Pagenaud will share the seat with Lee Holdsworth, with whom he clinched third place in last year's second race. Justin Wilson will be teaming up with Greg Murphy, while compatriot Mike Conway will be driving with Taz Douglas."I'm really looking forward to driving alongside Greg," said Wilson, who will be making his first appearance in the event. "I know he's fast and has a never give up attitude. It will be a tough challenge driving a V8 for the first time and I know the level of talent already racing in the series is extremely high, so my goals are to listen to Greg and the team and help them get the best finish possible."Graham Rahal will share the car with Rick Kelly, while Marco Andretti will co-drive with Tim Blanchard and Andretti Autosport teammate James Hinchcliffe is paired with Michael Caruso."With the V8 Supercar you probably have just as much horsepower as an IndyCar but a lot more weight, and the tires are a lot skinnier with a lot less grip," Hinchcliffe said. "It's also a pretty gnarly track."2. Panther-added package makes luge even cooler: Technology that has been instrumental in Indy car racing for two decades will be applied to a USA Luge training sled with the goal of striking gold at the 2014 Winter Olympics.An informal conversation between Panther Racing director of technology David Cripps and USA Luge officials during the IZOD IndyCar Series race weekend at Belle Isle in June evolved into development ideas and collaboration on the project of installing on-board telemetry on a training sled.Team officials and development team sliders visited the race shop in Indianapolis last week. The National Guard, primary sponsor of Panther Racing's No. 4 car driven by JR Hildebrand, has been a longtime supporter of USA Luge and USA Bobsled."If you don't have some form of data acquisition you might be quick but you're not going to know why you're quick. Much the same if you're slow," Cripps said about the program. "Like an IndyCar, if it was based purely on time there wouldn't be a lot of information to give us the assistance to figure out an issue and cure it. It's important to lay historical data of where a driver or a slider found time on tracks, how they found that time and what is the impact of the ice degradation or climatic conditions and changes."Our goal is to provide USA Luge a tool set for better information and learn better methods of handling and how they set up their sleds."Aside from relative speeds, there are parallels between the sports."It was glaringly obvious early in our discussions that they're limited in the facilities in the U.S. that they can use (Lake Placid, N.Y., and Park City, Utah) and those tracks have limited amount of time that they have ice on them that they can test," Cripps said. "It's much like INDYCAR with our limited (2013) testing, limited track availability. The data acquired at those tests and how we use that data are more important than it's ever been."The sleds don't have quite the same understeer or oversteer of an IndyCar, but there are some parallels on how they're able to enter and exit the corner, the line they can run and whether they're scrubbing speed or not. All they have had is a stopwatch. In competition, they have segment times but don't get segment speeds or some of handling characteristics based on the temperature of the runners on the ice and other conditions."Additionally, this summer two mechanical engineers from Clarkson University utilized computer modeling and wind tunnel testing to potentially improve aerodynamics of the sled and slider. Luge is the only Winter Olympics gravity sport measured to 1/1000ths of a second, so miniscule alterations can greatly affect times.Senior and Junior National Team training at the Mt. Van Hoevenberg facility in Lake Placid is ongoing this month, and an international training week is scheduled for early November at the new Olympic track in Russia. The first World Cup competition of the season is Nov. 24-25 in Igls, Austria, while a second visit to Sochi, Russia, for the first official Olympic test event is Feb. 23-24.Cripps will visit during a practice day to help fine-tune the telemetry and illustrate the ways in which engineers analyze the data.3. Astronaut taking INDYCAR to International Space Station: The IZOD IndyCar Series is entering the space race.Actually, an IZOD IndyCar Series 1:64 diecast car is among the personal items accompanying U.S. astronaut Kevin Ford on his scheduled Oct. 23 voyage to the International Space Station.Ford, 52, a native of Montpelier, Ind., and a University of Notre Dame graduate, will join two Russian cosmonauts aboard a Soyuz capsule. The retired U.S. Air Force colonel will serve as the flight engineer through November before relieving another astronaut as the space station's commander through March 2013."I take a few things to remind me of my home state and home schools, and one of the things from my home state is a small race car that represents the Indianapolis 500," said Ford, who was the pilot of space shuttle Discovery for a September 2009 mission to the space station.Ford and his colleagues will be aboard the station during an exceptionally busy time that includes cargo operations of two SpaceX Dragon commercial vehicles, four Russian Progress resupply vehicles and the arrival of "Cygnus," the first commercial cargo spacecraft from the Orbital Sciences Corp., scheduled for December.