A race at Elkhart Lake's Road America greets race fans with a carnival atmosphere from the start of the day all the way to the end. With the smoke from grilling bratwurst, tents and campers lining the spacious grounds and entire families soaking up the sun, a race at Road America seems like a day at the circus more than a trip to one of the world's finest racing circuits.
Today the drivers of the Bridgestone Presents The Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford got a whiff of that carnival atmosphere and then proceeded to put on a show that would have been right at home under the Big Top.
Grand Prix of Road America Presented by the Chicago Tribune was a high-wire act from start to finish at the 4.048-mile Elkhart Lake facility, and ended with a grand finale that saw Alex Tagliani (#8 Johnson Controls Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) emerge with his very first Champ Car World Series victory.
Tagliani used shrewd pit strategy, a strong race car and some long-awaited luck from the Fates to score his first win, taking the checkered flag for the first time in his 85 career starts. The Canadian led 16 laps on the day, including the last six, to best Rodolfo Lavin (#3 Corona Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) by 1.855 seconds.
The action started right from the drop of the green flag as the first seven drivers on the starting grid mashed the push-to-pass button rolling into the first turn. Everyone got through the first turn cleanly but two of the pre-race favorites failed to complete the entire lap as Jimmy Vasser (#12 Gulfstream Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) and Ryan Hunter-Reay (#4 Herdez Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) tangled in Turn 12 and performed simultaneous spins that knocked them both out of contention.
Series points leader Sebastien Bourdais (#2 McDonald's Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) led the field back to the restart where his Newman/Haas Racing teammate Bruno Junqueira (#6 PacifiCare Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) joined him in building a two-second lead on the field. The lead was erased on Lap 11 when Roberto Gonzalez (#21 Nextel Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) spun, and led to what would eventually be one of the key moments of the race.
Tagliani led a group of five cars that made the first of their three mandatory green-flag pit stop on Lap 15, taking the gamble that a yellow flag would bunch the field back up and leave them one fuel stop ahead of the rest of the field. That gamble paid off like a fistful of aces just two laps later when Junqueira spun while trying to wrest third place from Bourdais, as the duo had been passed by a pair of cars on the restart.
Junqueira's spin, in essence, put Tagliani in the proverbial driver's seat with the next not even a third of the way through. He took the lead for the first time on Lap 23 as the rest of the field made their first stops, but gave it back to Paul Tracy (#1 Indeck Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) when he took his second stop on Lap 30. He retook the lead again on Lap 37 when the remainder of the field made their second stops, then made his final fuel run three laps later.
He came out of the pits as the first driver to make all three of his stops, but found himself in second place Lavin came out of the pits ahead of him after his Lap 42 Pit Lane trip. Lavin, who started 10th, snuck into the top five with a pass of Mario Haberfeld (#5 Cummins Ford-Cosworth/Reynard/Bridgestone) on Lap 20 and stayed there for the rest of the day.
However, Lavin had used all of his allotment of push-to-pass power in making his way to the sharp end of the grid despite the fact that Champ Car officials added an extra 15 seconds to the driver's power bank before the race, giving them 75 seconds of added boost to use. Tagliani came past the pits in second place as Lavin came out directly ahead of him, but the fact that Lavin had no push-to-pass available coupled with cold tires, allowed Tagliani to close on the Mexican pilot and make the inside pass as they headed into Turn Five on Lap 43.
There was one final caution period, and fittingly it came at three different points on the racetrack. Tracy and Junqueira went nose-to-tail on the backstretch in a drag race that ended in another Junqueira spin in Turn Five. At the same time, Alex Sperafico (#14 Mi-Jack Ford-Cosworth/Reynard/Bridgestone) spun off course while A.J. Allmendinger (#10 BG Products/Red Bull Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) spun and stopped on the backstretch.
The multiple incidents brought out the caution flag on a race that ended up being shortened four laps due to time constraints, setting up a restart with two laps to go. Tagliani got the jump on the restart and rolled away from Lavin, with Bourdais having worked his way back up the ladder to score the third spot. Haberfeld was holding down the fourth spot, fighting off furious challenges from Hunter-Reay and Mario Dominguez (#55 Herdez Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone), but went off course on the penultimate lap and would lose seven spots.
The misstep promoted Hunter-Reay to the fourth spot while Dominguez rounded out the top five, giving the Herdez Competition squad its first double top-five of the season. Bourdais' podium run gave him the largest lead of the year in the Champ Car World Series, as the Frenchman has built a commanding 47-point lead over Junqueira after eight events.
Oriol Servia (#11 YokeTV.com Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) came home in the sixth spot, followed by rookie Justin Wilson (#34 Mi-Jack Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) - who was one of the five drivers that pitted with Tagliani in the first round of stops. 2003 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Guy Smith (#17 Rocketsports Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) brought his new mount in 10th in his very first Champ Car start.
The Champ Car World Series will head directly to the Mile High City of Denver, Colorado for next week's Centrix Financial Grand Prix of Denver, Round Nine of the 2004 series.
Quotes From The Top Three Finishers
ALEX TAGLIAN: "I feel good. I mean, this is a race that I really led in 2000. It was not easy. The last six laps after the restart, I was kind of worried a little bit. And I was not going to just think that it was going to be easy until I saw the white flag. Maybe, you know, today honestly we got a little bit lucky with the way the yellow turned out in the race. But many races this year we were unlucky. I think today all the ingredients were there."
RODOLFO LAVIN: "It feels great. I've been working for this since I was in the series level, in the Atlantics, all that. Thanks to my sponsor Corona, they've been sponsoring me for many years; pretty close to 11 years they've been supporting me. I am very thankful to them and obviously very thankful to the team to the Forsythe Racing Team. I think we've been performing pretty well. Last race in Vancouver, we qualified on the front row, we qualified second. We knew, you know, it was coming. It was just case of keeping, you know, us out of trouble all day and making consistent lap times."
SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: "Well, I don't really know what to think about this race really because there have been so many things that I don't know what happened myself. All I know is we were leading the race. Then this yellow came out at the wrong moment. I got passed by a couple of people; I passed a bunch of people. And here I am on the podium, and I have no idea what happened in between."
Noteworthy
Today's Grand Prix of Road America was the first race of the year where three different drivers led as many as 10 laps in the race. Alex Tagliani and Paul Tracy each led 16 laps while Sebastien Bourdais paced 13.
Points leader Sebastien Bourdais has led in five consecutive races after pacing 13 laps today. He was the only driver in the series to lead five consecutive events a year ago when he led in each of the year's first five races.
A.J. Allmendinger maintained his lead in the Rookie-of-the-Year standings with a 13th-place finish Sunday. He leads Justin Wilson 116-107 after eight events.
Alex Tagliani came from 13th on the grid to win Sunday, marking the furthest anyone has to come win a Champ Car race since Mario Dominguez started 14th in his 2002 Australia victory.
