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: Danica Patrick

2010 will go down as a year that Danica Patrick would like to forget.

The media darling of the IZOD IndyCar Series emulated a career path chosen by Tony Stewart in 1998, fitting in a handful of stock car races around and in between her primary IndyCar commitments, and both sets of results suffered in 2010. Patrick barely slid into 10th place in points after the season finale at Homestead, marking the first time in her IndyCar career that she failed to improve on the previous season's results.

In 2009, Patrick finished an impressive fifth in the championship, tops among the non-Penske and Ganassi drivers. But the addition of a third Penske car had a lot of pundits confident on who would take the top five spots. Meanwhile, some miserable stock car spots and a restructuring of the new Andretti Autosport team had others wondering if Patrick could keep up her streak of improvements.

It was not to be the case.

Never a shining star on the road courses, Patrick's finishes to begin the season this year were nothing short of abysmal. Twice, in the new events in Sao Paulo and Alabama, she failed to finish on the lead lap. While teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay took victory at Long Beach, she finished a subpar 16th, fighting rookie Simona de Silvestro, who was equipped with a far older and slower car, for the position. Patrick ended the early road course segment of the season 16th in points, her title hopes for the year already all but gone. An 11th place run at Kansas, two laps down, put her more than 100 back of leader Will Power, and that was that.

Greater troubles came in qualifying for the Indianapolis 500. Patrick had never failed to start worse than 10th in the race until this year, when she could only muster a 23rd place run. On television interviews, Patrick threw her Andretti Autosport crew under the bus, blaming them for an unstable and slow car, to a chorus of boos from the speedway faithful. After apologizing to her crew, who received nothing but praise in most subsequent races, she managed to finish sixth in the event.

The next race at Texas proved to be Patrick's strongest run of the year. She managed to lead a lap, her only lap led all season, but in the end fell just over a second short of rival Ryan Briscoe's pace. The run had some suggesting that Patrick's season, while not championship-worthy, could at least elevate her past 11th place in points.

But Patrick didn't visit the top five again for the next eight races, with a sixth at Toronto the lone highlight. In that span, Patrick placed 15th or worse four times, continuing her run of road course futility. In fact, in that championship subcategory, she finished a disappointing 15th, as road course champion Power scored nearly three times as many points on road courses as she did.

Returning to Motegi, the site of her lone career IndyCar win in 2008, Patrick had nothing for a dominant Helio Castroneves, but still mustered a fifth place finish. At Homestead, she traded chop blocks with teammate Tony Kanaan to score another second place finish, before learning that Kanaan's sponsor, 7-Eleven, would shift its marketing dollars to her next season. These two runs allowed her to slip by Justin Wilson for the final spot in the top 10 of the championship standings.

To say Patrick's 2010 was difficult would be to understate. Hard luck results and a slip in the standings weren't the only issues. Infighting at Andretti, particularly with Kanaan, dogged her for much of the season, and the celebrity that once came with being IndyCar's first female winner died out as she began to shift attention to stock cars. When ESPN referred to her as "NASCAR's Danica Patrick" at the ESPYs, all ties to her former stardom may have been lost.

Patrick is safe at Andretti for next season, guaranteed a ride by a large GoDaddy contract. She may stand to benefit from potential contraction; if the team cannot find sponsorship to keep Kanaan and Hunter-Reay aboard, she will likely stand to inherit some of their teams' top crew members. But driving in two distinctly different disciplines is a difficult task for anyone to imagine, and if Patrick struggles in stock cars next year as she did this year, it may once again affect her IndyCar performance.

IndyCar Season Review: Ryan Briscoe

The championship-run hangover hit Ryan Briscoe hard.

Of the five IZOD IndyCar Series cars campaigned by iconic owners Chip Ganassi and Roger Penske, Briscoe brought up the rear of the field for the second time in three years. It was a far cry from 2009, when Briscoe scored over 600 points and had a solid spectacular lead with as few as two races to go.

In 2010, Briscoe scored over 100 fewer points to finish a distant fifth in the standings, 120 back of eventual champion Dario Franchitti.

This season started off with a Briscoe brain fade, much like the Motegi pit error in 2009 that eventually cost him the championship. In Sao Paulo, Briscoe held the lead before failing to negotiate a corner and stuffing the car into a barrier. From there, he began to recover in the standings, inching up to seventh in points before the Indianapolis 500.

There, Briscoe had a great chance to win his first Indianapolis 500 and redeem himself from two years of poor finishes with Team Penske. An alternate pit strategy put him in position to steal the win from Franchitti. Another brain fade - pushing the car too hard on cold tires - saw him in the wall with his second DNF in three years.

From the season's biggest lowlight came its greatest highlight - a victory at Texas over de facto rival Danica Patrick. It led to a run of five races with finishes of fourth or better, and saw him climb to as high as fourth in the season point standings after the Sonoma race. Granted, it wasn't 2009, when Briscoe finished second or better 10 times in the final 13 races, and the rumors that Briscoe would lose his job at Penske after the season began to fly.

Despite leading the most laps at Chicago, luck was not on Briscoe's side, as he could only muster an 11th place finish. A DNF at Kentucky allowed teammate Helio Castroneves to pass him for fourth in points and let Ryan Hunter-Reay close the gap on fifth place to 14 points with two races left in the season.

Not wanting to be the only Penske driver to fall outside of the top five, Briscoe stepped up his game in the final two races, becoming one of only two drivers other than Castroneves to lead any of the Motegi race and making things as difficult for Franchitti as possible at Homestead, in hopes that teammate Will Power could come away with the title. In both of those races, he placed fourth, cementing a his top five position in the standings.

2010 wasn't as difficult as Briscoe's debut season at Penske; he only had two DNFs, fewer than most drivers in the series and as many as Scott Dixon and Castroneves, the two men directly ahead of him in the standings. But brain fades on track and Twitter wars off it generated the perception that Briscoe was in danger of losing his ride. The team says he is safe for 2011, but with an employer as used to winning as Roger Penske, strong results next season will be crucial for the Aussie.

Texas to Host First Open-Wheel Doubleheader in 30 Years

The 2011 IZOD IndyCar Series schedule got a little more interesting yesterday, with the announcement of the Firestone Texas Two Step, to be held at Texas Motor Speedway on June 11 of next year.

What was once the Firestone 550k - a 228-lap, 342-mile race under the lights the weekend after the Indianapolis 500 - will become the Firestone Twin 275s, two full-field races that will each count for half points towards next year's championships. The series and track have not yet decided on how to set the field for either of the two races, nor have they settled on a time allotment between both races, though it seems likely that there will be a day race and a night race.

The race weekend has also been moved back one week, re-establishing the traditional off week between Indy and Texas that existed from 1997 to 2005. That slot was filled by Milwaukee from 2007 to 2009, assuming the track's former Champ Car date. Milwaukee was left off this year's schedule due to outstanding fees owed to multiple sanctioning bodies.

It will be the first American open-wheel doubleheader in nearly 30 years, the last coming on June 28, 1981 at the Atlanta Motor Speedway under CART sanctioning. Rick Mears swept both of those races. All in all, since 1967, 17 doubleheaders were held, the first 13 under USAC sanctioning. 10 of those 17 doubleheaders were swept by a single driver, including the first six USAC doubleheaders and three of the four held under CART sanctioning.

Doubleheaders are also a staple of many European feeder series to Formula 1. Usually, these consist of a sprint race and a feature race, though they normally award the same amount of points.

The idea of returning the doubleheader to IndyCar is not too strange, nor has it been all too long since it was last suggested. In fact, promoters for Cleveland's Burke Lakefront Airport were attempting to use the idea to bring open-wheel racing back to the track for the first time since Champ Car's final hurrah in 2007. The difference there, however, was that one race would take place on the traditional road course layout, while the other would be run on a brand-new oval layout.

Human Errors Led to de Silvestro Fire

When the Indy Racing League bought out the assets of the former Champ Car World Series before the 2008 season, the league gained nine new teams, a handful of races, and the rights to the entire history of championship car open-wheel racing in the United States. More importantly, they gained the rights to Champ Car's Holmatro Safety Team, a staple at every event and one of its most important assets as a racing series.

Since 2008, the Holmatro Safety Team has been a cherished part of the IZOD IndyCar Series, gaining a reputation for a generally stellar job at cleaning up crash sites and attending to drivers. However, when Simona de Silvestro crashed into the outside wall in the June 6 Firestone 550k at Texas Motor Speedway, the team took nearly a full minute to get her out of the burning car. This unacceptable response, though a rare and outstanding incident in years of service, led to a league-mandated inquiry into what went wrong.

Today's findings, released by the league and track safety coordinator Mike Yates, cited two key errors that led de Silvestro to languish in the car for so long. The first was a procedural error in the packing of the fire hose, leading to its malfunction. The second was a failure to take pressurized water canisters and Cold Fire to the car before utilizing the hose.

The failure of the safety crew to follow this protocol, as well as the malfunction of the hose, meant that de Silvestro was trapped alive in her burning vehicle. Eventually, Safety Team members had to physically rip her from the vehicle, not an easy task given the HANS device and other implements designed to keep a driver safe in the event of a major accident.

Luckily for the Swiss Rookie of the Year candidate, she only suffered a burned hand and was cleared to drive again the following day. Her helmet was also charred in the incident. This report by Indianapolis' WISH-TV showcases the remains of her helmet. (Thanks to 16th and Georgetown for the link.)

After the review, the Holmatro Safety Team will address all protocol in preparation for this weekend's Iowa Corn Indy 250. The way in which the fire hose is mounted will also be altered from this point forward. The Indy Racing League, IZOD IndyCar Series, and Holmatro Safety Team expect nothing less than another stellar weekend in Iowa, with the Safety Team handling any and all incidents with the same level of skill and professionalism as they have in almost every situation in the past.

IndyCar Race Review: Firestone 550k

In Ryan Briscoe's first Texas race for Team Penske, in 2008, he started and finished third. In his second, last year, he started and finished second.

Briscoe continued his positive Texas trend in last night's Firestone 550k, leading 102 laps and opening up a big gap on a hard-charging Danica Patrick in the later stages for his first win of the 2010 IZOD IndyCar Series season. His victory helped make up for Penske's disappointing Indianapolis 500 last weekend, when Briscoe crashed and finished 24th, and teammates Will Power and Helio Castroneves barely cracked the top ten.

But that's not to say that the night was a complete success for Penske; Castroneves was taken out of the race just past halfway when Mario Moraes squeezed him into the wall. Power, who had been running third in the late stages of the race, had to give up his position to pit for fuel with four laps to go, falling to 14th, one lap down.

Instead, the top team overall in the Texas tilt was Andretti Autosport. Besides Patrick's second-place finish, Marco Andretti placed third for the second week in a row, and Tony Kanaan wound up sixth. Ryan Hunter-Reay, in his first race since having thumb surgery and potentially his last race for Andretti due to sponsorship reasons, placed seventh.

In between the Andretti cars were the two Chip Ganassi Racing teams of Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti, respectively. Franchitti managed to lead 86 laps of the 228-lap race, but after losing his clean air was never quite the same.

Alex Tagliani and the FAZZT Race Team continued to show promise, but were once again bitten by bad luck. Tagliani led 33 laps, third most in the field, but a lap 167 pit stop in which fueler Phil McRobert did not remove the fuel hose before Tagliani put the car in gear altered the entire course of his race. Adding insult to injury, the team fell seven laps short on fuel and had to pit before the end of the race, falling three laps down and finishing 18th.

Texas was not generally kind to the series' six rookies. While Alex Lloyd and Dale Coyne Racing carried on their momentum from a fourth-place finish at Indy, crossing the line eighth, Lloyd was the only rookie driver to finish on the lead lap. Meanwhile, Mario Romancini was the only other rookie driver to finish, two laps down in 17th.

Three rookies - Bertrand Baguette, Simona de Silvestro, and Takuma Sato - were involved in crashes that prematurely ended their nights. De Silvestro had a particularly fiery crash in which safety crews struggled to remove her from her burning car. The last rookie, Jay Howard, experienced mechanical failure after 37 laps to finish last.

The next IZOD IndyCar Series race will be the Iowa Corn Indy 250 at Iowa Speedway in two weeks. Franchitti won last year.

IndyCar Race Preview: Firestone 550k

Ryan Briscoe and Dario Franchitti will make up the front row for tonight's Firestone 550k at Texas Motor Speedway, and both drivers are looking to continue trends that would bring them to the winner's circle.

Since joining Team Penske, Briscoe started and finished third in the 2008 race, and started and finished second in 2009. His pole suggests that he might be able to continue that trend this year. Franchitti, meanwhile, will look to be the third Indianapolis 500 winner in a row to also triumph at Texas.

Penske and Chip Ganassi Racing-owned cars will, unsurprisingly, make up the top five starters, with Will Power (Penske), Scott Dixon (Ganassi), and Helio Castroneves (Penske) starting 3-4-5. Shocking, however, will be Alex Lloyd's sixth-place start for Dale Coyne Racing; it comes on the heels of his fourth-place start at Indy, and Milka Duno's shocking sixth-place run in Texas practice. (She'll start back in 17th, though.)

Lloyd is the highest qualifying rookie, with Takuma Sato next best in 11th. None of the other four rookies qualified inside the top 20 of the 26-car field.

Tomas Scheckter, replacing the injured Mike Conway in Dreyer & Reinbold Racing's No. 24 Dallara-Honda, qualified 18th. Scheckter led laps in last weekend's 500, as did two of the other three DRR drivers, only to fall to 15th and a lap down when the checkers waved. Scheckter hasn't been guaranteed the ride beyond this weekend, but a strong showing may keep him in the car; on three occasions he's led more than half of the Texas race, meaning he could be a threat for victory. In fact, Scheckter's most recent IndyCar win came at Texas in 2005, when he drove for Panther Racing.

With two oval races completed, the Ganassi cars of Franchitti and Dixon lead the oval points, followed by Castroneves, Dan Wheldon of Panther Racing, Tony Kanaan and Marco Andretti of Andretti Autosport, Power, Alex Tagliani of FAZZT Race Team, Briscoe, and Danica Patrick. Wheldon and Patrick are separated by only eight points, but from there the gap widens; Castroneves is 10 ahead of Wheldon with 69, Dixon is 22 ahead of Castroneves with 91, and Franchitti is 13 ahead of Dixon with 104, bolstered by a 64-point Indy 500.

This Week in IndyCar: June 4, 2010

A collection of news clippings from around the IZOD IndyCar Series over the past few days:

- The Baltimore Grand Prix, which had long been rumored to join the IndyCar schedule for next year, will become a reality in 2011 and beyond. The August 5-7 event will take place on a temporary street circuit that passes by Camden Yards, home of the Baltimore Orioles, and runs through Baltimore's Inner Harbor. The circuit also runs close to M&T Bank Stadium, home of the Baltimore Ravens.

The city's contract with IndyCar guarantees at least five years of the event, which has been designed as an east coast alternative to the always popular Grand Prix of Long Beach.

- Mike Conway's loss is Tomas Scheckter's gain, at least temporarily. While Conway will lose at least three months of his IndyCar season after his spectacular wreck at the Indianapolis 500, Scheckter will gain a ride, at least temporarily. He will fill in for Conway in the No. 24 Dreyer & Reinbold Racing Dallara-Honda in this weekend's Firestone 550k at Texas Motor Speedway, and possibly beyond.

Scheckter was the natural choice for the team to fill in, as he drove a third entry for them in this year's Indianapolis 500, even managing to lead a handful of laps. Scheckter's record at Texas has been spotty, but he has shown flashes of brilliance, winning the pole in his first two starts there and leading over 100 laps in each race before mechanical failures ended his days. Scheckter did, however, win the 2005 Texas race after leading 119 of 200 laps. It was his last IndyCar win to date.

- A handful of drivers will be running different paint schemes in this weekend's Firestone 550k. Scheckter will be running a Roll Coater scheme on his No. 24 Dallara-Honda, which will be black instead of the normal blue that the car carries when Dad's Root Beer adorns the sidepods. Dario Franchitti, fresh off his Indy 500 triumph, will run a red and black Energizer scheme on his No. 10 Dallara-Honda. Finally, Alex Lloyd will again run the BSA 2010 scheme on his No. 19 Dallara-Honda, celebrating 100 years of the Boy Scouts of America.