“I'd like to thank Alex for coming in in the middle of the weekend to help us out," the ex-pat Belgian commented, "He has done an outstanding job, giving good feedback to the engineers that helped us to give him a good car for the race.

"I have been really impressed with his knowledge and professionalism, as well as his speed, and our engineers have done a very good job of improving the car in such a short time, so it's unfortunate that we had to stop with gearbox problems as I too believe we had a top five car today.”

With just a week between Detroit and the final round of the season, at Chicagoland, this Sunday, Bernoldi is facing a race against time to rehabilitate his injured hand, although the team has made no mention of Tagliani being drafted in as replacement just yet.