INDY Bump Day

Watching Indy Bump day, and the drama has already started. RHR is now on the bubble, lets hope Robby's future brother in-law can lock himself in the field. I gotta say, VS is doing a great job televising this event.Good to hear Bob Jenkins.

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Permalink Reply by Jaci on May 18, 2009 at 6:52pm

Bumped Tagliani will replace Junqueira, make first Indy 500 start

May 18, 2009
CBSSports.com wire reports

INDIANAPOLIS -- Alex Tagliani will drive in the Indianapolis 500 after all.

Conquest Racing team owner Eric Bachelart said Sunday night, hours after Tagliani was bumped from the 33-car lineup, that the Canadian driver will replace teammate Bruno Junqueira in the No. 36 car.

Junquiera, who didn't get his ride until Saturday, qualified the second Conquest Racing car Sunday in the final round of time trials, while Tagliani, who qualified Saturday, was bumped from the field by Ryan Hunter-Reay, the final qualifier.

• Qualifying results | Indy 500 winners | Track information

Tagliani was sitting in his car, next in line and hoping to requalify, when the gun went off to end time trials while Hunter-Reay was running his four-lap qualifying effort.

"We've been working with Alex for a long time now and have built our commercial and marketing program around him," Bachelart said in a team release. "He has been our primary driver since the start of the season and we felt that it was in the best interest of the team and our partners to have him in the car for the Indy 500 as we continue to build our future together."

Bachelart said Tagliani was not to blame for failing to put his No. 34 into the race field.

"It wasn't for a lack of speed or a fault of his own," he said. "Alex simply fell victim to exceptional circumstances. That's how the magic of Indy works sometimes; it can be good or bad."

Tagliani, a longtime open-wheel racer making his first start at Indy, was relieved to be back in the race.

"I want to first of all say thank you to Bruno for being so understanding and to the team for taking this decision," Tagliani said. "We have been building this long-term relationship for a while now and I'm more than thrilled to be able to pursue that by taking part in my first Indy 500.

"It's pretty much a fluke that I didn't make the field. We just got caught out. You never want to second-guess yourself but if we had to redo things we probably would do it differently, but now that is in the past."

The team also released a statement from Junqueira, thanking the team for its efforts on his behalf.

"It's a shame that Alex got bumped out of the field at the end," the Brazilian said. "I knew coming into this that Alex is Conquest's primary driver and that if something happened to the first car that I would likely give him my place and I completely understand it."

Tagliani will start the race 33th on Sunday.

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Permalink Reply by GrayAntiMatter on May 20, 2009 at 1:10am

Sucks for Bruno. He would be one of the five most talented guys in the field, but its no surprise.

The team completely blew it on Bump Day, if they had just sent Tags out instead of sitting on it, he probably would have been in and RHR would be sitting out.