Season Report Card V – And the Rest…
Alex Tagliani: B
Highlight: Shocking the world with his performance in the first half of Long Beach
Tags was rumored to get into Bernoldi’s drive for months. Just as it looked like it wouldn’t happen, he got the seat for Belle Isle after an Enrique Bernoldi thumb injury. The thumb "wasn’t healed" a week later, and Tags got into Chicagoland as well. The rumor was that he was driving the wheels off of it at Detroit (we’d never know for sure, thanks to horrid television coverage), but ended up out of the race. His performance with Walker Racing at LB in a DP01 that resembled Will Power’s car was second to none with a team in shambles.
Paul Tracy: A
Highlight: Fourth at Edmonton
Simply put, his one ICS race showed that the old man still has it. He deserves a ride. I was a little skeptical beforehand, wanting PT for his flare not his ability. Well, his ability is still there. I was wrong.
Sarah Fisher: B
Highlight: Getting exposure at Kentucky for duking it out with Danica
Sarah is hard to grade. That said, you can’t argue about her performance with a from-scratch team. She faced hurdles in May, signing a deadbeat sponsor and almost illegally contributing to the Hillary Clinton campaign. She rebounded by getting Dollar General to fund her to achieve her three-race goal. I’m in no way as high on Sarah as much of the Internet IndyCar Community. In fact, I argued that there causes more worthy of donation. She did a pretty cool thing by sending pieces of her busted car to those who donated, though. Sarah is an asset to the league. For that, I hope she can get a bigger program together next season.
One-Offs
Roger Yasukawa: F
Didn’t qualify for Indy in a Beck car. Got points for finishing poorly at Motegi. A lot of people say he didn’t deserve the seat for Indy, but I don’t agree. Roger isn’t the world’s greatest driver, but he’s not the worst. He brought money to a team that didn’t really have any. It talks.
Davey Hamilton: D
In a post-unification world, I don’t know that Davey has a place in the cockpit.
He’s upgraded to D from F because I like his radio work.
Buddy Lazier: B
One of the greatest qualifying runs I’ve ever seen. Hemelgarn’s Dallara is probably closer to a Yugo than one of a top tier team. He had a horrid race, but that was expected. Buddy helped bring drama back to bump day by showing that he deserves to be considered in part of the legend of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and not the guy who won one during the dark years.
Alex Lloyd: I
He had a meh Indy, crashing three-quarters of the way through the race. He had a Ganassi car, but jacked it up before the first weekend. He had a great livery, but it was green. He deserved more races, but Chip couldn’t get a third car together for him outside of Indy. Incomplete, and I hope for his sake, he isn’t relegated to sports cars.
Jeff Simmons: I
Honestly, I have very little recollection of his Month of May, except seeing him come out of the Foyt garage when I was up for Pole Day.
No-Offs
Max Papis: F
Max whacked his car up before getting an attempt to qualify it in the second weekend. They got it reassembled, but they never really got it going again. He had a shot with a car that should have made the field, but he didn’t get it in.
Phil Giebler: D
Phil was the only man to go out in May with a Panoz. The team was essentially threatened to get up to speed or get off the track. Well, ICS officials essentially sent Phil into the wall, hurting his back and ruining his weekend. Phil was actually getting the car near where it needed to be, though. His team, American Dream Motorsports, went to jail or something. What a joke, but Phil is no joke. I hope he gets another shot one day, but I’m not holding my breath.