Twin Ring Motegi Qualifying Report
AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Race 16 of 17

Qualifying Results:

Position: 23rd

Speed: 195.483 mph

Pole Winner/Speed: Helio Castroneves, Team Penske/201.992 mph

Alex Tagliani on Motegi Qualifying:

“Today’s results were not quite what we were looking for in times. We were struggling a bit with understeer in the first practice session and although we made some positive changes for the second session we still needed to free up the car. The guys worked really hard to try to get the car to where we thought we wanted to be for qualifying but, unfortunately, we went too far. We just have to work that much harder tomorrow to make sure we have a good result for Bowers & Wilkins and TorcUP.”

Rob Edwards COO/General Manager on Motegi Qualifying:

“Considering that we qualified slower than we ran in the first practice session we are clearly very disappointed with where we are starting tomorrow’s race. The compressed schedule today did not allow any room for error and we were just too ambitious with the changes that we made for qualifying. I have every confidence in Alex and our engineers working through the data tonight to give us a good race car for tomorrow and we will hope for the chance to execute a strategy to move up through the field.”

Event Notes:

  • Motegi is a 1.5-mile oval located 80 miles north of Tokyo, Japan.
  • This is the eight IZOD IndyCar race at the circuit.
  • Scott Dixon is the defending race winner with six different winners in the past 7 events. Only Dan Wheldon has won the event more than once with back to back race wins in 2004 and 2005.
  • Helio Castroneves has earned the pole in three of the last four races.
  • This marks the seventh of eight events and the final event in the Oval Championship.
  • There are now three Championships that the teams and drivers strive to win in the IZOD IndyCar Series; Oval, Road/Street and Series Overall. The highest points scoring oval and road/street drivers will be crowned champion of their respective racing discipline. The road course championship concluded on August 22 at Infineon Race way and the oval challenge will come to a close on September 19th at Twin Ring Motegi. The Homestead-Miami Speedway event has been reserved to honor the IZOD IndyCar Series Champion on October 2. Will Power is the winner of the Road Course Championship with a total of 412 points beating out Scott Dixon by over 100 points.

About FAZZT Race Team: The FAZZT Race Team was formed in July 2009 as a partnership between Andre Azzi of the Azzi Race Division, ATG, and other business partners. The team fields a full-time IndyCar Series team that made its debut at the season opening event in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The team has four Dallara chassis and has Canadian driver Alex Tagliani to drive the #77 entry. Andre Azzi, a Montreal based entrepreneur, is the teams' Chief Executive Officer and Rob Edwards is the Chief Operating Officer and team General Manager. The team is housed in a 25,000 ft. race shop on the north side of Indianapolis with a second facility that will house their Research and Design division in Montreal. For more information, go to www.FAZZTRaceTeam.com.

Media contact:

Megan Lundgreen

FAZZT Race Team

(262) 853-4343 meganl@fazztraceteam.com