Indianapolis – Buddy Lazier of Vail finished fifth Sunday in the Indianapolis 500, the best result for a Chevrolet-powered car and a non-full-time Indy Racing League driver.
Lazier, 37, overcame several relatively long pit stops and fractures to his car’s front wings to extend his record of top-five finishes at Indy to five since the IRL began sanctioning the event in 1996. The 1996 winner finished fourth in 1997 and second in 1998 and 2000.
“Great effort,” Lazier said after stepping out of his No. 95 Panther Racing/Jonathan Byrd’s Dallara. “If you take a look at my front wings, I had contact with (Scott) Sharp in the last 10 (laps), so I broke the left front wing. We didn’t come in. We didn’t want to lose track position, and then we had contact again with another car blocking me.
“So without the contacts, I think I would have been able to make a better run of it at the end. But top-five finish, that’s really good. I’m happy with that.”
Lazier made his 13th start Sunday, the most of the field’s 33 drivers. He has been unable to find an adequate ride in IRL races outside of Indianapolis.
“Certainly my agenda is to be back full-time IndyCar racing, and hopefully this will help,” Lazier said. “I don’t know. We’ll just keep working at it.”
Colorado connection II
Centrix Financial, the Centennial-based company that co-owns the Grand Prix of Denver, sponsored Newman/Haas Racing drivers Sebastien Bourdais and Bruno Junqueira.
The Champ Car drivers, who have combined to win all three Denver street races around the Pepsi Center, wrecked.
Junqueira was eliminated and hospitalized after touching tires with the lapped car of A.J. Foyt IV on lap 77. Junqueira, running sixth, slammed into the turn one wall and spun several times.
He suffered a concussion and fractures of T-12 and L-1 vertebrae, and will have surgery today at Methodist Hospital, an speedway spokesman said. He was reported to be stable and in fair condition.
Bourdais was in contention to win, running fifth with a little more than 2 laps to go. However, he finished 12th after slamming into the wall between turn three and turn four with the white flag in the flagman’s hands.
“The race was really crazy and wild,” Bourdais said. “I should have been taken out five times before I was.”
Footnotes
Larry Foyt, who crashed to draw the first caution, was hospitalized with a fracture in his lower spine. He is expected to be released today. … The 15 cars running at the finish were the fewest since 1997, when just 13 survived 500 laps. … Dan Wheldon is the first race winner from the 16th starting spot, and the first winner with the car number 26. … Wheldon is the first British driver to win at Indy since Graham Hill in 1966. … Because the combined four cars from Newman/Haas and Team Penske failed to win Sunday, they remain tied with an open wheel-most 84 victories since 1983. Until 1989, Newman/Haas only had one driver (Mario Andretti) while Team Penske had at least two. Still, Penske is the king at Indy with an owner-most 13 victories, including two (2002, 2003) since the IRL was formed in 1996. Newman/Haas has zero, but has competed here just twice (2004 and 2005) in the past 10 years.
