ELKHART LAKE, Wis. - Robert Wickens will temporarily fill in for Mikhail Aleshin at this weekend’s KOHLER Grand Prix at Road America.
The Schmidt Peterson Motorsports team released a statement on Thursday afternoon confirming Aleshin’s absence for at least Friday owing to immigration issues, with that potentially set to stretch into the remainder of the weekend if the situation is not resolved.
The statement is below.
A statement from us from the #KohlerGP. #INDYCAR pic.twitter.com/YWkL7Cwbcj
— Arrow McLaren IndyCar Team (@ArrowMcLaren) June 22, 2017
Hinchcliffe has also posted a tweet going into the weekend. The two participated in a ride-swap earlier this year where Wickens made his IndyCar test debut at Sebring (recap here) and Hinchcliffe ran in Wickens’ DTM car in Italy after the St. Petersburg opener (recap here).
Hope @mikhailaleshin is able to be back soon. Happy to have my ol' buddy @robertwickens join the team for this weekend to help out!
— James Hinchcliffe (@Hinchtown) June 22, 2017
The two drivers were teammates in A1 Grand Prix about a decade ago; Wickens has race experience at Road America as he finished seventh in a Formula Atlantic race in 2007. Hinchcliffe was 14th in the same race.
Beyond his DTM commitments, Wickens raced in this year’s Rolex 24 at Daytona with Starworks Motorsport, and ran 100 laps during the week in a PC class Oreca FLM09 he shared with a handful of others. Conor Daly and Sean Rayhall were among the notables in the other car.