Tag: The spare is doing it for us.
Alex Tagliani will start fifth in Monday's London Champ Car Trophy in his back-up Rocketsports Racing Lola-Ford, the Canadian driver making plenty of progress during the second day of practice and qualifying at Brands Hatch.
Relegated to his back-up machine before provisional qualifying on Saturday, Tagliani's Rocketsports Racing engineers and crew worked on slight changes to the configuration of the 33X machine to give them the advantage of more downforce around the undulating 1.2-mile Brands Hatch Indy circuit.
Alex Tagliani will start fifth in Monday's London Champ Car Trophy in his back-up Rocketsports Racing Lola-Ford, the Canadian driver making plenty of progress during the second day of practice and qualifying at Brands Hatch.
Relegated to his back-up machine before provisional qualifying on Saturday, Tagliani's Rocketsports Racing engineers and crew worked on slight changes to the configuration of the 33X machine to give them the advantage of more downforce around the undulating 1.2-mile Brands Hatch Indy circuit.
Tagliani attributes Sunday's improved results to the set-up changes and better grip offered by the Bridgestone tyres in Sunday's warm conditions.
"The # 33X Johnson Controls Lola, our back-up car, is doing it for us this weekend," said Tagliani, whose 37.422secs qualifying standard was actually third fastest of Sunday's final session. "We made some improvements to the car to gain more downforce, which would have been good to have yesterday. We are happy with better results and third quickest today. The warmer track, with more grip, also made a great difference.
"It has been difficult to control ourselves, not to put too much downforce in the car because we still have Germany to think about. The Johnson Controls team feels good about the car and happy things are going as planned. Of course our goal is to finish first and we know how good third place feels. We are happy to start fifth tomorrow and a top-five finish would be realistic."
