When IndyCar teammates live on the same street

When Alex Tagliani made his CART Indycar debut in 2000 with the Player’s-backed Forsythe Racing team, he began a three-year partnership with French-Canadian Patrick Carpentier.

Results during that period were mixed, and Toyota Atlantic graduate Tagliani often struggled with poor performance in the races, despite his high pace, until he took his first win at Road America in 2004 after joining Rocketsports Racing.

But Carpentier stands out as his favorite among a roster of teammates that includes Will Power, the 2011 Indianapolis 500 pole winner who is two years his senior, and Justin Wilson. The duo spent a lot of time together over the course of 57 race weekends (Carpentier missed three rounds in 2000 due to injury) but also traveled to events because they both live in Las Vegas and even live on the same street!

“We spent a lot of time together outside of racing, doing things together, going out to dinner with our wives and things like that, enjoying life and having a lot of fun,” says Tagliani, who was signed to fill the void left by the late Greg Moore, who signed to Team Penske before his fatal crash at Fontana in 1999. “We lived five or more houses apart in Vegas, so we were traveling together, testing together, racing together — we were together most of the time.

“Living on the same street was a coincidence, but living in Vegas was a choice. The place I chose was about 3,000 ft above sea level, and there was a place called Red Rock where a lot of guys rode their bikes. You would go up to 5,000 ft and then go back up to 3,000 ft, so my body naturally produced more red blood cells. The fit was better, it was hot, the cycling was extremely challenging.”

Carpentier began his CART career with Bettenhausen Racing in the first season following the departure of US open-wheel racing in 1996, then joined Jerry Forsythe’s team alongside Moore in 1997.

Tagliani (left) and Carpentier worked together on the Forsythe team in CART IndyCar from 2000 to 2002

Photo: Motorsport Images

Even his prodigious talent failed to score more than two wins in a year with the underpowered Mercedes engine, but when equipped with Cosworth-Ford engines in 2000, the blue-and-white Reynards of Carpentier and Tagliani were a competitive force. Tagliani might have won on his debut at Homestead if he had not been cautiously passed by the pace car entering the pits and driven to the end of the grid to secure a restart.

He dominated from pole position until he spun after a late restart with 10 laps remaining in Rio, and he was leading at Road America until a broken driveshaft put him out. But despite a strong start to his life with the team, including a fourth-place finish in his second start at Long Beach, Tagliani maintains Carpentier is still an open book.

“There was so much data being shared, and I don’t think there were any mental games we were playing against each other, because we spent so much time together outside of the race car that it would have made things extremely awkward,” he says.

“I don’t think there was any mental game we played against each other; there was so much time we spent together outside of the race car that it would have been very awkward.”
Alex Tagliani

“I was able to convince the team early on that my feeling in the car was valuable. If my start was different with many problems and bad performances, it would have been difficult to convince them that I had an advantage technically, so I was able to establish myself in the team and then work together. We had good chemistry and a good atmosphere.”

Tagliani believes he and Carpentier took a “very similar” approach to driving on ovals and that when the team struggled to get their set-up right, they “struggled in the same way”. “We were riding in tandem together and his engineer would call him and say, ‘Keep going Tag, he’s losing the rear end, his tyres are going to wear out’ and Pat would say, ‘Yeah, I can see it’ but he had the same problem,” Tagliani recalls.

But there could be no faulting Forsythe’s approach at the 2001 Michigan 500, the team approach was crucial to Carpentier’s maiden victory. With the Handford Device contributing to the constant positional changes, the race came down to a final-lap battle between Dario Franchitti, Michel Jourdain Jr and Carpentier.

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But Tagliani, a lap down, was racing with the leaders and could have played a decisive role in determining the outcome. He passed between Franchitti and Jourdain on the final lap approaching Turn 3, stealing their momentum and allowing Carpentier to sprint around the outside and cross the line in front.

Bold moves by Tagliani, a lap down, helped Carpentier secure his first win on the final lap of the Michigan 500 in 2001

Photo: Motorsport Images

But the Quebec duo didn’t entirely see eye to eye on their setup preferences. Tagliani recalls that Carpentier opted for an “extremely light” front end but when he tried running the same diff settings “it made my car completely undriveable and very loose on entry.”

“It was very track-dependent,” Tagliani explains. “My car was regularly set up similarly to Pat’s, but there were some small differences that became extremely large when we got to a place where the track was fast and the entry was heavy. For some reason, it was better for the car to have a free differential than a tight differential.

“I had a tight differential on the inlet and that gave me a lot of power. If I had put more downforce, more front end, more lean on the car, stiffer springs on the back, all of a sudden that free differential on the inlet would get out of control, throw the car out the window, it wouldn’t do the car any good. We had to be very careful about that.

“At Road America I was very strong with the setup of my car, and where Pat really struggled was the opposite. But when you take that kind of philosophy setup and bring it to Cleveland, all of a sudden my car started running less than his.”

While leading in Vancouver at the end of 2001, a mechanical failure in his transmission again scuttled Tagliani’s hopes of victory, and a second place in Toronto was his best result of the year, with the duo finishing 10th (Carpentier) and 11th (Tagliani) in the standings.

Team Penske driver Gil de Ferran won back-to-back championships with Reynards using bodies developed by Penske Cars in Poole, but despite the best efforts of Forsythe technical director Bruce Ashmore, the tide was turning against Reynard.

In 2002, Lola continued to advance in the championship with Cristiano da Matta (Newman-Haas) beating Bruno Junqueira (Chip Ganassi Racing), while Reynard’s winning opportunities became less regular. Carpentier took two wins – his best tally for a season – and finished third in the standings as Reynard’s leading runner, while Tagliani finished eighth, breaking into the top 10 for the first time, and topped with second places at Motegi and Road America.

Vancouver 2001 was another race that could have gone to Tagliani before mechanical dramas intervened

Photo: Motorsport Images

“The Lola was the car everyone wanted because it had more downforce,” Tagliani recalls. “The lower wing worked much better and it was fast on the straights because the downforce was so effective.