When Alex Tagliani made his debut in the CART Indycar series in 2000 at the Player’s-backed Forsythe Racing team, it began a three-year partnership with fellow French-Canadian Patrick Carpentier.
Results during that period were a mixed bag and Toyota Atlantic graduate Tagliani was frequently left to lament misfortune that meant his abundant pace didn’t translate into an overdue maiden win until Road America in 2004, after joining Rocketsports Racing.
But Carpentier, two years his elder, stands out to the 2011 Indianapolis 500 pole-winner as his favourite from an illustrious list of team-mates that also counts Will Power and Justin Wilson. The pair spent an enormous amount of time together across 57 race weekends (Carpentier missed three rounds to injury in 2000), but also travelling to events as both were based in Las Vegas and even lived on the same street!
“We spent a lot of time outside of racing doing stuff together, going for dinner with our wives and stuff like that, enjoying life and having lots of fun,” reflects Tagliani, who was signed to fill the vacancy left by the late Greg Moore, who had signed for Team Penske prior to his fatal accident at Fontana in 1999. “We were living in Vegas five or houses apart, so we were traveling together, testing, racing - most of it was all together.
“Living on the same street, it was a coincidence, but living in Vegas was a choice. Where I chose my place was about 3,000 ft above sea level and there was a place called Red Rock where a lot of the guys were cycling. You were climbing all the way to 5,000 ft and then back to 3,000 ft, so my body was producing more red blood cells naturally. The fitness was better, the heat, the cycling was extremely demanding.”
Carpentier had made his CART debut in the first season following the US open-wheel split in 1996 with Bettenhausen Racing, before joining Jerry Forsythe’s team for 1997 alongside Moore.
Even his prodigious talent had never managed to yield more than two wins in a year with the underpowered Mercedes engine, but once armed with Cosworth-Ford engines for 2000, the blue-and-white Reynards of Carpentier and Tagliani were a competitive force. Tagliani could have won on his debut at Homestead had he not overtaken the pace car on his way into the pits under caution and been banished to the back of the grid for the ensuring restart.
From pole, he dominated at Rio until he spun moments after a late restart with 10 laps to go and was also leading at Road America until a broken driveshaft put him out. However, despite his strong start to life in the team which included finishing fourth on his second start at Long Beach, Tagliani maintains that Carpentier remained an open book.
“There was lots of data that was shared and I don't think there was any mental games that we were playing against each other, because the time that we were spending outside of the race car together was so much that it would have made things extremely awkward,” he says.
"I don't think there was any mental games that we were playing against each other; the time we were spending outside of the race car together was so much that it would have made things extremely awkward"
Alex Tagliani
“I was able to early on convince the team that my feelings in the car were valuable. If my start would have been different with a lot of problems and poor performance, it would have been difficult to convince them that I was an asset technically, so I was able to make my spot in the team and then work together. We had good chemistry, good atmosphere also.”
Tagliani believes he and Carpentier employed a “fairly similar” approach to driving on ovals, and “were struggling in the same way” on occasions when the team struggled to nail its set-ups. Tagliani recalls: “We were running together in a tandem and his engineer was calling him and saying, 'Stick with Tag, he's losing the rear end, his tyres are gonna get worn out' and Pat would respond and say 'yeah, I can see it', but he was suffering the same problem.”
But there could be no faulting Forsythe’s approach to the 2001 Michigan 500, where their team tactics were crucial in earning Carpentier his maiden victory. With the Handford Device contributing to continual positional swaps, the race came down to a final lap showdown involving Dario Franchitti, Michel Jourdain Jr and Carpentier.
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But Tagliani, running a lap down, was in the mix with the leaders and able to play a decisive role in deciding the outcome. When he shot between Franchitti and Jourdain on the final lap approach to Turn 3, robbing them of momentum, it allowed Carpentier to slingshot around the outside and cross the line ahead.
However, the Quebec pair were not totally aligned on set-up preferences. Tagliani recalls that Carpentier favoured an “extremely light” front-end but when he attempted to run the same differential settings “it made my car completely undriveable and so loose on entry”.
“It was very track dependent,” explains Tagliani. “My car was set-up similar to Pat on a regular basis, but there was some small differences that would end up being extremely huge the moment that we would arrive in a place where the track is fast and it has a heavy entry. For some reason, it was better for the car to have a free diff, contrary to a tight diff.
“I had a tight diff on entry and it got me a lot of push. If I would put more downforce, put more front-end, put more rake in the car, put stiffer springs in the rear, then all of a sudden this free diff on entry would be just like out of control, it would send the car out of the window, it would make the car just no good at all. We had to be very careful with that.
“At Road America with the way my car was set-up, I was so strong and it was the opposite where Pat was really struggling. But you take that kind of philosophy set-up and you bring it to Cleveland, all of a sudden my car worked less than his.”
Another mechanical failure, this time a broken transmission, dashed Tagliani’s hopes of victory while leading in Vancouver later in 2001, and second in Toronto proved his best result of the year as the duo finished 10th (Carpentier) and 11th (Tagliani) in the standings.
Team Penske driver Gil de Ferran won back-to-back titles with Reynards using bodywork developed by Penske Cars in Poole, but despite the best efforts of Forsythe technical director Bruce Ashmore, the tide was turning against Reynard.
By 2002, as Lola forged ahead in the development race with Cristiano da Matta (Newman-Haas) beating Bruno Junqueira (Chip Ganassi Racing) to the title, opportunities to win with a Reynard were becoming less regular. Carpentier did score two wins – his best-ever tally for a season – and finished third in the standings as the top Reynard runner, while Tagliani cracked the top 10 for the first time in eighth, peaking with second places at Motegi and Road America.
“The Lola became the car that everyone wanted, because it had more downforce,” remembers Tagliani. “The underwing was working much better and it was fast in the straightaway because the downforce was extremely effective.
“The team invested money and money and money on to try to make this Reynard work. And in the process at some times, we were able to have flashes of performance, even with a car that was maybe not the best.”
Tagliani left for 2003 when Forsythe signed Paul Tracy, but remained on good terms with Carpentier, who after finishing third in 2004 switched to the Indy Racing League in 2005 at Cheever Racing before calling time on his single-seater career.
“Actually, I saw him not long ago,” says Tagliani. “We talked on the phone a lot and we're always trying to see if we can go for dinner, he stayed a really good friend of mine.”
