"I'm thankful for the opportunity to have another year in Champ Car; we worked really hard during winter to get this deal done," da Matta said.
"We don't have a lot of time to prepare before Long Beach but we should be fine, since we're not changing chassis [PKV had switched from Reynard to Lola last year]. "It will be a challenge but we're happy to do it. We're hoping for a good season and I think we can fight for a top-six in the final points standings."
"To say I was a little worried during the off-season is a huge understatement," he admitted. "I had a couple of options for racing touring cars in Brazil but think I'm still too young for that. And when Dale told me about his plans for development, engineering and so on this season, it wasn't difficult to convince me."
"Can we win on pure performance? No, that would be underestimating Newman/Haas, RuSPORT and Forsythe, which have already done a lot of development work on wind tunnels, shaker rigs and simulations over the winter.
"But other than those, we have a fair shot at everybody else."