Tagliani, the Conquest Racing driver who didn’t qualify for Sunday’s race, will drive in it. Junqueira, who did qualify, will not.
Why? Because Tagliani is Conquest Racing’s primary driver. This was just a one-time shot with Conquest for Junqueira, who arrived at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway without a car or a team.
This negates a remarkable performance during which Junqueira signed a last-minute deal with Conquest on Saturday, practiced less than 20 laps Sunday morning, then qualified 30th with a four-lap average of 221.115 mph.
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Tagliani, who was bumped Sunday right at the close of Bump Day qualifying, will replace Junqueira in the Conquest Racing car.
"I knew coming into this that Alex is Conquest's primary driver and that if something happened to the first car, I would likely give him my place," Junqueira said. "I completely understand it." News Sentinel
Another Canadian was at the centre of a similar circumstance in 1992. Scott Goodyear was the primary driver of a car in the old CART Series entered at Indy by Derrick Walker and sponsored by MacKenzie Financial Services of Toronto. Goodyear was a helluva racer but qualifying was not his forte, so Walker bought some insurance in the form of journeyman racer Mike Groff.
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Goodyear didn’t qualify and Groff did. So Walker did what Bachelart did this weekend: he asked Groff to vacate his seat so Goodyear could drive the car in the race. Of course, this meant starting 33rd – and last – which is what faces Tagliani next Sunday at Indy.
But, Goodyear was a race driver and when the green flag dropped, he set his sights on getting to the front.
Without going into every detail of what happened in that race, Goodyear caught Al Unser Jr., who was leading, with about a lap to go. He was right on his tail coming off the fourth turn on the last lap and if you blinked, you missed seeing them flash across the finish line just about together. In fact, the margin of victory for Unser was .043 of a second.
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It remains, to this day, the closest finish in the history of the world’s most famous automobile race. Toronto Star
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