In spite of a rain-shortened Saturday, it was a great weekend in Speedway. 33 cars are in the field and some weird team play left one of the fastest 33 watching Memorial Day weekend.
Alex Tagliani was the last car to be bumped from the field, by one of my favorites, Ryan Hunter-Reay. An emotional Tagliani, who had turned laps of 221+ earlier pulled his car out of tech two or three times as he gambled on other teams not finding the speed. But, his team own pulled some shinanigans late Sunday as they announced Tagliani would actually drive the car qualified by Junqueira.
Bruno had made an amazing qual run earlier in the weekend by getting the car up to a solid speed after just 15 laps in the machine. Now, Tags will start from 33rd since he didn't qualify the car.
John Andretti, a long-time favorite of mine was extremely emotional after bumping RHR out of the field...Reay turned right around and bumped the aforementioned Tagliani out as the gun sounded.
Andretti whose bloodline comes by way of the lesser-known Aldo Andretti, has never been one of the fastest at Indy, but he's a humble guy, which is pretty refreshing in this sport. He dedicated the improbable qualification effort to his Dad. His pal Tony Stewart called to help him with his technique and his team did some amazing work to get him in. He gained about 2.5 mph by a wing adjustment and a couple other tweeks as the clock neard 6:00 at the 100 year old oval.
This is an interesting field to me...a lot of very experienced drivers are in the field and many of the under-experienced people are still fast and have long resumes. But, Milka Duno is in, so there are exceptions to every rule.
I'm not a fan of hers for a myriad of reasons...but one of the main ones is that she has a knack of being about 5-7 mph off of the pace during the race and driving with an inconsistent line...She's cleaned up more than one contender with her lack of skill and I don't want to see any more than that.
And let's be real honest- without Chavez's backing, she wouldn't have a job...there's the rub. Dictator-backed race car drivers can suck it. Plus, it looks to me like she's had a few too many plastic surgeries...which is unfortunate, she'd probably be pretty good looking without them.