Having not even been in the field when Bump Day closed a week before the race, Alex Tagliani made the most of Conquest Racing team owner Eric Bachelart's decision to put him into the car qualified by Bruno Junqueira by claiming rookie of the year honours in the 93rd Indianapolis 500.
Pat Sullivan - MCTell us about working your way through the front, and what that was like for you?
Alex Tagliani:First of all, the day started when I walked into Gasoline Alley and saw the grandstands the first time here on Race Day. So quite unbelievable, very, very happy that I had the chance to do this race. And, you know, for the team, they did a fantastic job on the car. Obviously, from where we were starting, we pretty much had no choice but to go for a little more downforce on the car, and I think that's why at the end of some runs some guys were struggling pretty bad with their tyres and they were coming back to us. We made some ground and when I was unable to pass, I saved a lot of fuel in every pit stop; the guys did really, really good.
Slowly but surely, we were going into the front, and at the end when we got into the pack with the top ten runners, obviously it was a lot easier to stay flat all around for my runs because I was really stuck. And then it was harder for guys to pass us. So, you know, our day was pretty simple. Just like make no mistakes and stay out of trouble and continue to make some grounds toward the front and no mistakes in the pits, and that's exactly what we did. The team obviously in the stops with having to put less fuel from saving so much, we kept leap-frogging a lot of the guys and, girls and we got ourself into P11. So really good job, team effort.
Q:Alex, did you feel after Bump Day and not having a ride, then having a ride afterward, that you would be sitting in eleventh position at the end of the 500?
Alex Tagliani:Well, you know, in all honesty, you know, we definitely missed first weekend qualifying from the crash on Sunday morning. So that really put us back a little bit. And like the last weekend of qualifying, we qualified Saturday and we probably showed exactly what not to do, just went out there, you know, feeling safe and doing race trim all day long, and at 4pm pulled the car in the garage and go to qualifying sim and basically run the clock down until we had no time to go put our lap in. Obviously, the car was quick. As a driver, you know the car is fast enough to compete in the field but, you know, from an exceptional situation, we just got bumped and never seen before. It was not actually a Bump Day; it was a replica of Saturday because everybody pulled their time off.
But in the race, you know, like obviously with the car we had, we just... it was unfortunate that we started so far back and we had to put like quite a bit of downforce on the car because like in the last stint I felt like, you know, maybe a degree less on the rear wing and we would have been able to compete inside the top ten. The car was really, really good. So I guess the consolation was to just win that Rookie of the Year trophy and showing that the team is not only good on road course now but is also pretty good on ovals.
Q:Alex, I just wondered, I ran into Bruno this morning, had a couple of words with him. He's such a gracious guy. Now that the race is over, I wonder if you could tell us whether you got any help from him prior to the race after following qualifications and if you said anything to him in the interim. How did that go?
Alex Tagliani:No, actually, not really any help. But just like a really good conversation with him on Sunday night, you know. Obviously last year after finishing fourth with the team in Australia, they decided that they wanted to build like a long-term program. They knew sponsorship was going to be the first big challenge, and we kind of like decided to work together. So at that exact time in 2008, I became kind of like the number one driver for Conquest Racing. So when Bruno came, we worked on the car, they put the same setup. You know, he came up to speed really fast because of his experience here, and when the team decided that, made a mistake on Bump Day and we had the fastest car of Sunday, felt it unfair to let me miss the Indy 500, and they got me into the second car that was sponsored. So the only conversation I had with him was just to thank him, to be understanding and that's all. After that just spent a lot of time with the engineers and get settled in in the second car and pretty much go forward from that.
