IndyCar Season Review: Alex Tagliani

Alex Tagliani spent more of this season racing up front than anybody could have expected.

The Canadian spent the 2010 IZOD IndyCar Series season with the newly established FAZZT Race Team outfit. While much of the personnel, including former Walker Racing team manager Rob Edwards, had been taken from established teams, their cars had been purchased from Roth Racing, a former series backmarker. Expectations were, therefore, not overly ambitious for the new team.

So it was a surprise, to say the least, when Tagliani opened the season from the outside pole at Sao Paulo.

Unfortunately, through 28 laps of that race, Dan Wheldon got into the back of Tagliani and sent him spinning into the wall. The damage was severe enough to knock Tagliani out of the race, setting an unfortunate trend for the rest of the season: strong, quick runs in qualifying sessions, only to be marred by relatively disappointing finishes.

St. Petersburg and Birmingham gave the team its first top-10 finishes of its short existence, but Tagliani suffered a wrist injury during the Long Beach weekend, crashing out of that race as well. The team would thus head into the first oval segment of the season mired in 14th in points. Expectations were once again low, as the former Champ Car driver had only three oval starts in IndyCar.

But Tagliani and FAZZT shocked and surprised in the next three events. Kansas and Indianapolis alike yielded fifth place qualifying runs, and two more top 10 finishes. At Texas, Tagliani managed to lead 33 laps, although he only came out of the weekend with an 18th place run, finishing three laps down.

From there, unfortunately, the finishes were not particularly strong.

A series of low finishes from Iowa to Toronto was punctuated by a crash coming off a restart at Edmonton, where the Canadian was tagged by Mario Romancini in his final start of the season. The high point of this period was the stylish Hot Wheels livery that Tagliani carried in the two races in his home country; unfortunately, he could not bring home a solid finish in either event after nearly taking the Toronto victory in 2009.

Mid-Ohio broke the streak of subpar finishes. The team's best race of the season saw Tagliani, who had seen bad luck take him out of races all season, finally stick around for the finish. He led a race-high 30 of 85 laps to finish fourth. It would prove to be his only top five finish and final top-10 of the season. Even still, it affirmed the paddock opinion that Tagliani and FAZZT were no pushover, if only their luck could improve a little bit.

From there, the rest of the season was nothing to write home about. Tagliani, who had qualified eighth or better in five of the first six races of the season, only had three top-10 starts from Texas to the end of the season. Four of the final five events yielded finishes between 13th and 15th, with the lone exception a crash out at Chicago. He ended the season 13th in the overall standings, scoring 302 points with five top-10s and four DNFs. He also placed 13th in both the oval and the road course sub-championships.

As far as new teams went in 2010, Tagliani and FAZZT were far and away the best. With sponsorship somewhat stabilized, the team establishing a solid rapport through the growing pains, the potential of a teammate, and Tagliani entering the second of a four-year contract, 2011 should be an even better year for the small all-Canadian outfit. In fact, Tagliani may be primed for his best season since his seventh place run in the 2004 Champ Car World Series.

IndyCar Season Review: Dario Franchitti

With the 2010 IZOD IndyCar Series and Firestone Indy Lights Series seasons having drawn to a close, we begin the season review process for all notable drivers and teams in both. First up is IZOD IndyCar Series champion, Dario Franchitti.

Dario Franchitti has begun to establish himself as one of the best open-wheel racers of all time.

Barring a brief and unsuccessful foray into NASCAR in 2008, Franchitti is now three for three in his past three attempts to win the IZOD IndyCar Series championship. He took the first title in 2007 with Andretti Green Racing before jumping to stock cars with Chip Ganassi in 2008, then joined Ganassi's IndyCar team the next season to win the next two.

Since joining Ganassi, he has taken eight of his 26 career wins, and now is the first IndyCar champion of the Randy Bernard/IZOD era.

The picture didn't always look so bright for Franchitti this season, however. One of the top drivers in the CART era, which primarily focused on road and street course prowess, he finished no higher than third in any of the first four races of the season, leaving him sixth in the standings and 60 points back of leader Will Power going into the first oval segment of the season.

It was then that Franchitti began to find his stride. He followed up a runner-up finish at Kansas with his second career Indianapolis 500 victory. He took the win in dominant fashion, leading a remarkable 155 laps from the third starting spot. He briefly assumed the points lead at Texas, but issues with the car at Iowa handed the lead back to Power as the series began another road course jaunt.

Franchitti finished no worse than the bottom step of the podium in the next five road course races, taking the win at Mid-Ohio, but still lost another 45 points on the dominant Power over that span. But heading into the final segment of the year, a stretch of four ovals, Franchitti and his Chip Ganassi Racing team were confident that they could make up the 59 point deficit.

Most of the ground was made up in the series' final race at Chicagoland Speedway. Franchitti took the victory while Power finished a lap down in 16th, having run out of fuel achingly close to the finish. Of the 64 points that the Scot eventually gained on Power, Chicago accounted for 36 of them.

Solid runs at Kentucky and Motegi secured the A.J. Foyt Oval Championship for Franchitti, and put him in a position to challenge for the overall title in the season finale at Homestead. By now, he was only 12 points back of Power, meaning a win from pole while leading the most laps would guarantee him the championship regardless of Power's finish.

From there, Franchitti did exactly what he needed to do. He qualified on the pole, led 128 of the race's 200 laps, and didn't push the car too hard to the finish when Power made a mistake and brushed the wall with under 70 laps to go. His eventual eighth place finish gave him the series title by a mere five points, the closest margin by which he has ever taken the title. (He won by 13 points in 2007 and by nine last year.)

At the season-ending awards banquet, Franchitti hauled in over $1.1 million worth of bonuses for his third consecutive championship, buoyed mostly by the $1 million check for winning the series championship. There, he announced that he was only a signature away from returning to Ganassi to attempt three in a row in 2011.

IndyCar Race Review: Honda Indy 200

Dario Franchitti posted his first IZOD IndyCar Series road course win in nearly a year in today's Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio, holding off polesitter Will Power to the checkered flag.

Franchitti, whose last win on a road course came at Infineon last year, inherited the lead when Alex Tagliani made his final pit stop, put the power down for a few extra laps, and managed to beat Power out of the pits to retain the lead when stops cycled through.

Tagliani, for his part, drove one of his finest races of the year, scoring his best finish, a fourth place, between Helio Castroneves, who threw away the race at Edmonton two weeks ago on a blocking penalty, and Scott Dixon, who won that race. His pit crew, reading the race like a book, had him pit on lap 22, expecting a caution that would come almost immediately after. The Canadian led from lap 26, midway through the first caution, to his final pit stop on lap 56.

That first caution came when Justin Wilson, driving with an injured thumb from a Saturday incident with Ryan Briscoe, made an ill-advised attempt on passing E.J. Viso in the first turn on lap 23. Both cars went off track and were done for the day.

Almost immediately after the green flag flew after that caution, Takuma Sato brought the yellow out again, when a combination of cold tires and cold brakes caused him to careen off course, again in the first turn. That was just the icing on the cake for a bad weekend for KV Racing; not only were Viso and Sato out, Mario Moraes had given three of his pit crew minor injuries in an incident during race warmups.

Pit incidents were not out of the question all weekend, as a 27-car field meant that pit stalls had to be shortened to 35 feet. Normally, the Mid-Ohio pit accommodates 26 cars length-wise, and is also fairly narrow. Ryan Hunter-Reay became a victim of the tight space, getting sandwiched between the Penske cars of Castroneves and Ryan Briscoe during the first pit stops and having to return to the pits for damage repairs. He dropped back to 24th but recovered to finish 10th.

Two drivers made their IndyCar debuts during the race, but neither did all that much to impress. J.R. Hildebrand, last year's Indy Lights champion, was never a factor in a 16th place finish for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing. Meanwhile, Francesco Dracone caused the final two cautions of the race with two separate spins on different sections of the track. He finished three laps down in 22nd, beating only Milka Duno of the cars still on track at the finish.

On the other end of the spectrum, Simona de Silvestro and Bertrand Baguette were among the drivers who scored season-best finishes in the race. De Silvestro placed eighth in an older, heavier HVM Racing chassis that was able to chase down Penske cars in some points of the race. Baguette had a top-10 car for much of the race, but was bumped down to 11th by the checkered flag.

All in all, 21 cars finished on the lead lap, the last of them being Danica Patrick. Four cars did not finish the race: Wilson, Viso, Sato, and Jay Howard.

IndyCar Race Preview: Honda Indy 200

Team Penske will once again be the team to beat this weekend at Mid-Ohio, as Will Power tied a series record by scoring his seventh pole of the 2010 IZOD IndyCar Series season for tomorrow's Honda Indy 200.

Penske cars have been towards the top of the charts in every practice session, with Dario Franchitti also consistently posting solid runs. Franchitti qualified alongside Power on the front row, followed by strong runs for Takuma Sato and Ryan Hunter-Reay.

Row 3 consists of Scott Dixon and Helio Castroneves, involved in controversy over the finish at Edmonton two weeks ago, when a hotly contested blocking penalty on Castroneves handed the win to Dixon. Castroneves was previously the lone record holder for most poles in an IndyCar season until this weekend.

The 27-car field is one of the healthiest in IndyCar all season, and by far trumps the meager 21-car field that the series mustered last year. Besides the increase in full-time cars from last year to this year, part-time entries for Graham Rahal, Adam Carroll, and Jay Howard have inflated the field. Carroll qualified 17th, Rahal 25th, and Howard 26th.

This race will mark the IndyCar debuts for two drivers: J.R. Hildebrand, filling in for Mike Conway at Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, and Francesco Dracone, replacing Mario Romancini at Conquest Racing. They qualified 18th and 23rd, respectively. Hildebrand was the 2009 Indy Lights champion, while Dracone spent the majority of his professional racing career in Europe, primarily competing in the Formula 3000 Euroseries.

The race will be shown live on Versus at 2:30 PM EST on Sunday.