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Alex Tagliani Opens Season with a Fifteenth Place Finish

Topics:  Alex Tagliani, Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg

Alex Tagliani Opens Season with a Fifteenth Place Finish

Monica Hilton
Bryan Herta Autosport
March 25, 2012

Alex Tagliani and his Team Barracuda – BHA crew earned a fifteenth place finish for his #98 car on the streets of St. Petersburg for the IZOD IndyCar Series season opener on Sunday.

The team made consistent improvements throughout the race weekend, leading up to Saturday’s qualifying effort, where Tagliani earned P17 on the starting grid. On Sunday, the Canadian driver completed 100 incident-free laps in the Series’ brand-new Dallara DW12 chassis and finished higher than all the other Lotus-powered cars in the competition.

“I’m very proud of Team Barracuda – BHA, and I want to thank Barracuda and Bowers & Wilkins,” said Tagliani. “After a very limited testing schedule, we came here aiming for the best we could do. The guys did very well. We had a fair amount of problems this weekend, especially with the electronics in pit lane. It was fun to be out there fighting with some good cars at times, though.

Some of the other teams have an advantage on us at the moment and we know that, but our race pace was fairly good. At some stage in the race, we were matching leader’s pace, but we are still working with Lotus to get the engine program where we all want it to be. With the group of guys and the engineer we have, we should’ve been a top five car today. We have some issues and unfortunately the team is paying the price, but we will fight every lap.”

In one week, the IZOD IndyCar Series heads to Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama. The Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama will take place at 2 p.m. ET and will be broadcast live on NBC Sports.

Results:
Pos Driver Team/Car Gap
1. Helio Castroneves – Penske DW12-Chevrolet
2. Scott Dixon – Ganassi DW12-Honda + 5.5292s
3. Ryan Hunter-Reay – Andretti DW12-Chevrolet + 7.5824s
4. James Hinchcliffe – Andretti DW12-Chevrolet + 10.6526s
5. Ryan Briscoe – Penske DW12-Chevrolet + 11.7854s
6. Simon Pagenaud- Schmidt-Hamilton DW12-Honda + 31.2623s
7. Will Power – Penske DW12-Chevrolet + 34.6582s
8. EJ Viso – KV DW12-Chevrolet + 35.5943s
9. Charlie Kimball – Ganassi DW12-Honda + 43.1425s
10. Justin Wilson – Dale Coyne DW12-Honda + 44.3141s
11. Josef Newgarden – Fisher Hartman DW12-Honda + 44.8275s
12. Graham Rahal – Ganassi DW12-Honda + 45.1080s
13. Dario Franchitti – Ganassi DW12-Honda + 45.8468s
14. Marco Andretti – Andretti DW12-Chevrolet + 1 lap
15. Alex Tagliani – Herta DW12-Lotus + 1 lap
16. Oriol Servia – Dreyer & Reinbold DW12-Lotus + 1 lap
17. Rubens Barrichello – KV DW12-Chevrolet + 2 laps
18. Ed Carpenter – Carpenter DW12-Chevrolet + 2 laps

Did not finish:

JR Hildebrand – Panther DW12-Chevrolet 95 laps
Mike Conway – Foyt DW12-Honda 74 laps
Sebastien Bourdais – Dragon DW12-Lotus 72 laps
Takuma Sato – Rahal DW12-Honda 72 laps
Katherine Legge – Dragon DW12-Lotus 58 laps
Simona de Silvestro – HVM DW12-Lotus 21 laps
Tony Kanaan – KV DW12-Chevrolet 20 laps
James Jakes – Dale Coyne DW12-Honda 18 laps