Smaller teams deserve credit
Part-timers show they belong, too
INDIANAPOLIS – Look at the front two rows of the grid for the 94th Indianapolis 500, and what do you see?
Three cars from Penske Racing. Two from Chip Ganassi Racing.
And one from the FAZZT Race Team.
Yes. FAZZT.
That’s not a team that’s won multiple races and championships, not one built with hundreds of years of combined experience in the Indy-car business. It’s not one that has dozens of engineers poring over data on their laptops. The team didn’t exist at this time last year.
So maybe there is still hope for the little guy in big-time auto racing.
“We noticed that whatever they were doing, they were doing the right thing,” said Penske’s Helio Castroneves, the pole-sitter for the race and a three-time and defending champion. “You’ve got to give them credit.”
FAZZT had two of the fastest seven qualifiers over the weekend with Alex Tagliani fifth and Bruno Junqueira seventh overall. Because Junqueira qualified on the second day, he’ll start 25th.
While they have been the most noticeable exceptions to the money-buys-speed rule, Tagliani and Junqueira are hardly the only drivers to outperform expectations at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Graham Rahal will start seventh in a car thrown together by his father’s team, which stopped racing regularly in 2008.
Ed Carpenter, who is scheduled to race only the 500, out-qualified full-time teammate Dan Wheldon, an Indy and series champion, to start eighth. Townsend Bell, the No. 10 starter, hasn’t competed since last year’s 500 and is driving for Sam Schmidt, whose Indy Lights team operates a Ganassi satellite for the 500 only.
Those part-timers will line up ahead of all but one entry from championship-winning Andretti Autosport and the full-time Newman/Haas, PKV, Dreyer & Reinbold and Coyne teams.
“For us, we only decided to do this two weeks ago,” Rahal said on pole day. “The cars were still blue from last year, kind of sitting in the corner of the shop.”
For May, anyway, they’re white and pink, the colors of Quick Trim, a weight-loss product associated with cover girl Kim Kardashian.