With continued sponsorship from Honda Canada awaiting Tracy, his first choice amongst teams would naturally fall within the Honda camp. Looking at the Honda-related landscape for 2012, Tracy’s options appear to be limited, but he’s reportedly spoken with a number of owners, regardless of engine affiliation.

“Honda’s chosen four teams so far, and other than that, they haven’t made final announcements on anyone else; Chevy has their teams and who knows what’s up with Lotus. My preference is a Honda team because I have sponsorship with Honda of Canada, so that’s my top priority, but until everyone knows exactly what engine they’ll have, it makes it hard to let negotiations get too far down the road.”

With a significant portion of his sponsorship coming from Canada, Tracy has specific needs for the type of team and engine to partner with on what could be his farewell tour. (LAT)

On a slightly humorous note, Tracy says he’s gotten a few laughs from the mixed information some teams have delivered.

“Of the teams I’m talking to, many of them can’t say definitively which engine they’ll have,” he explained. “Walking the paddock in Las Vegas, I had six teams—SIX—tell me they were going to be the factory Lotus team…the last one who told me that, I said, ‘Great…I hope you and the other five teams figure who’s in charge…’”

Of the remaining teams with driver openings, Tracy’s best chance to vie for a top 10 finish in the championship would likely come in a tie-up with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, and he’s believed to have another meeting scheduled with team owner Bobby Rahal next week. Until a contract is signed, look for Tracy to keep the phone lines open.

“We’ve talked to Foyt, we’ve talked to D&R, Foyt, Herta, Shank, Rahal and a half-dozen teams so far,” he said. “We’re doing like everyone else and talking to all of the teams with openings to see what might be a good fit on the competitive side and the commercial side. I wish it was easy like before when most people knew what they had for cars and engines and were already out testing by now. We just need to be patient, but we’ll get there.”

News & Notes

• Derrick Walker is ramping up to run the newly announced Ed Carpenter Racing effort from his Walker Racing base in Indianapolis. Walker will continue to run the Team Falken tire program in the ALMS, but the Scot is now on the lookout for an all-new open-wheel crew to run the Ed Carpenter- and Tony George-owned outfit

• Panther Racing picked up JR Hildebrand’s option for 2012

• With at least one vacancy to fill in its IndyCar program, Andretti Autosport will test Indy Lights graduates James Davison and Gustavo Yacaman next week in Florida

Marshall Pruett is SPEED.com's Auto Racing Editor, covering IndyCar and sports cars. He also contributes to Road & Track and Racecar Engineering. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.