If we use your argument about ‘running at the front’, he has done so in the ALMS with AGR. If you don’t rate that as a indicator of his ability, go as Roger Penske about Ryan Briscoe. It really is a shame how you seem to undervalue contemporary sportscar racing here. You are not the only one either.

In Montagny’s one race at ‘this level’ at Long Beach in 2008, he was runner up to Will Power. Earlier that year he was fastest on both of the days he tested with the entire Champ Car field at Sebring.

I understand the case as to why you think Junquiera should get the ride but dismissing Montagny’s ability and accomplishments does not make any sense.

In the end, I want to see Junquiera AND Montagny in the series, if IndyCar is to grow it needs the best possible pilots from around the world and right now, there are few better drivers that are available than Montagny.

Cheers,

Dex

Cheers!!!

I’m going to put my general moody-ness down to an awful week at work and shortness of sleep due to traveling. I shouldn’t let all of that crap angry up my blood that way, but…I’m human, I guess. My bad on the escalation when George clearly asked the very next day (yesterday, that would be) to knock it off. I’m an idiot. Agree to disagree, indeed. Sorry ’bout that.

My “Pretty Fat Girl” era is the CHAMP CAR one… where Sebastian Bourdais & Paul Tracy grabbed the championship glory. I had followed CART since ’79 & the CCWS era was as I said earlier “Glorified Club Racing”. It was painful to watch. Bruno SHOULD have beat an aging Jimmy Vasser in a PKV Racing car. Should have beat AJA in a underfunded RuSport team (or should have been higher in points due to his Forstythe switch)

Like you said… he could through stats that support out arguments all damn day. I disagree with you that a rookie would be a bad hire. Not all rookie are Mike Conway. Rafa Matos is a rookie & he has performed better than Conway… Plus the series can build on Matos. He young & a better potential than Bruno.

We agree to disagree!

That said, Bruno does not suck. Race car driving, once again, like basically everything else in life, is not a binary “you are awesome / you suck” proposition. The point of the original column (which I thought was quite well written, George, minus the possible eye of doubt cast toward Montagny, who I think is the *&^%) was that Bruno has been a solid-or-better driver basically since he stepped foot into a Big Car. “Prettiest Fat Girl”? Let’s list some of the guys that Bruno beat in the points in CART, shall we? 2002: Franchitti, Tracy, Carpentier, Fittipaldi, Brack, Kanaan, Vasser. 2003: Bourdais (in his rookie season), Carpentier, Tagliani, Vasser, Hunter-Reay (this wasn’t CART’s best season). 2004: Carpentier, Tracy, Allmendinger, Vasser. 2006: Tracy, Power, Tagliani, Servia. 2007: Pagenaud, Tagliani, Tracy. If Bruno sucks, then all of those guys suck too. Kick all of them out of the League for good.

If you’re starting a team for 2010 and you want the possibllity of running in the top-10 from the first session of the year, you don’t hire a Mario Romancini (not to short him, because I think he’s potentially a future star), you hire a guy who you know can be quick, but still bring the car home in one piece: a Bruno Junquiera. Hiring a Romancini or an Ana Beatriz as your ONLY driver can bankrupt you beneath a pile of crash damage bills, as they learn the ropes. If you’re building a team for 2012 and beyond, by all means, hire one of the young guns as a #2 or a test driver in order to develop them as a driver. If you’re hiring a driver to help work on setups and bring the car home safely just about every week (and maybe even catch a lucky break that will allow you to grab a podium), you hire a guy like Bruno. Different horses for different courses.

Props for Bruno’s Indy Q this year, but saying the guy was “Top 5″ in Champ Car is like saying you are dating the Prettiest Fat Girl! CCWS was a glorified club series & Bruno was driving for Newman Haas. Bourdais owned him & just like F1 that’s not a good thing.

Indycar needs drivers they can build around… JMO, but they should build up / market some young Indy Lights & Atlantic grads instead of 30 something Brazilians who have had their shot. That’s common sense as well

Good God, everybody. Take a deep freaking breath. Slamming Bruno and Minassian for lack of performance for Ganassi in ’01 is a joke. Neither had driven a CART car before that season. No experienced teammate to set up the car = crappy performance. Ask TK about that. Blame that season on Chip for thinking he could throw anybody into his cars and they’d win. Zanardi and JPM both benefitted from having Jimmy Vasser as a teammate, since he’d been around since ’92 and had plenty of development experience by ’96. Read Alex’s autobiography for mor insight there. Slamming Bruno for lack of performance with Coyne in ’08 is also a joke. No dollar team making transition into series with many longstanding teams and more well-funded transition teams + teammate with no big car experience = bad team performance. That was never going to turn in any decent results. Bruno turned into the #2 at N/H/L behind Bourdais, but he was still an undisputed top-10 (and maybe even top-5) guy in ChampCar. That doesn’t mean that he sucks, just that he’s not a top-3-in-the-IRL guy. No crime there, there’s a lot of guys around who fit that description.

As for Franck, the guy’s been competitive in everything he’s driven. Championships, race wins, dusting off his teammates in F1 and with Peugeot. That’s a guy who belongs in IndyCar. Yes, it’s a “what have you done for me lately” series, but Bruno has done plenty lately, too. Just three months ago, he stuck a car in the Indy 500 on one hour of practice. He’s got more than enough recent success (I’m talking ’07, not ancient history or anything) to merit being in the series, too. Fact of the matter is, there are only so many seats in the series, and several have to have a bag of money attached. Bruno has no bag of money, but Moraes, EJ and a few other guys who Bruno’s probably quicker than do have a bag of money. This is an easy equation to figure out.