The wall at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway might not have been kind to the Canadian drivers racing in the Indy 500 a week ago, but it delivered the win to another Canadian who was running things in the pits for 2011 champion Dan Wheldon.
While all three of Canada's racers, James Hinchcliffe, Alex Tagliani, and Paul Tracy, hit the wall and put themselves out of the running, it was a different story for Bryan Herta Autosport race engineer Todd Malloy. He watched late leader J.R. Hildebrand crash on the final corner which opened the door for his man Wheldon to cross the line first in the 100th anniversary Indianapolis 500.
"This is tops and it's tops by a long way for so many reasons," said Malloy, who was born in Oshawa, Ont., but grew up in Northern Ontario.
"It was the centennial of the Indy 500 – if there was one that everybody wanted to win it was this one, it was the most impressive field at Indy in my opinion in decades, and just for us to do it the way we did with our little group of merry men against so many bigger budget operations just feels really good."
"I just can't think of a better way to win the Indy 500. It's going to be hard to top, but the only way to do that is to go and do it again."
It was a huge turn around for the 38-year-old University of Waterloo graduate, who previously won the 2003 Champ Car title as Paul Tracy's engineer. He moved to the Chicago area in 2007 to join the Newman-Haas team, hoping to end his career with the storied outfit, but ended up being the odd man out when some sponsorships didn't materialize at the beginning of 2010. He took a contract job with the Conquest team last year, but it didn't turn into a permanent position. Then Herta came along with an offer that included the Indy 500 with Wheldon as the driver and Malloy jumped aboard.
Like many in the race, Malloy and his crew spent the final few laps wondering when late leader Hildebrand would run out of gas, which would hand the win to their No. 98 Dallara-Honda. Instead, Hildebrand kept his foot down until disaster struck on the final corner and he lost control passing another car and hit the wall.
In an instant, the emotion in the No. 98 pit went from disbelief to, well, disbelief. And then, pandemonium.
"We felt the guy we needed to beat was [Ganassi driver] Scott Dixon, so when we passed him I was like 'Yeah!' and then Hildebrand was still out here running," he said.
"I went from thinking 'we've got this' to 'you gotta be kidding me we are going to finish second' to then 'sweet, we got it.' There were a lot of ups and downs in the last couple of laps. We were all celebrating so much that poor Dan was out there driving around and nobody was talking to him."
And how do you show up at the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway and win the biggest race of the year with a small, one-car team? Lots of good old elbow grease combined with long hours.
"The thing that was hardest for us was that it was the first time we ran a car this year," he said.
"We had a lot of basic things to deal with — getting the radio and telemetry sorted – that the other guys who have been running the car all year long don't worry about, all they needed to was make the car fast."
One key to the win was an agreement with Sam Schmidt Motorsport to share data and information as a way to offset the bigger teams' advantage with their multi-car operations, which gives them more overall running time to figure things out. As it turned out, the rain that plagued practice made the collaboration even more significant in the win, due to the reduced time on track.
The nature of the Indy 500 also helped, because when you are competing in the "Greatest Spectacle in Racing," just about anything can happen.
"Actually the day before the race I said to our guys that if you do look back on the race over the years, there is something about Indianapolis that does cause very good teams make very unusual mistakes," said Mallory.
"There is a huge amount of pressure on them and the way we were going to win it was if we executed a mistake-free race and that's what we did and that's what won us the race."
For example in this year's race, Malloy insisted that Scott Dixon should have won, but the team somehow didn't put enough fuel in the car during the Ganassi driver's final pitstop. Forced to slow down to make it to the finish line with the remaining fuel in his car, he finish the race in fifth place.
On the other hand, as a one-off entry, there was little pressure on the Herta squad to perform since no one expected much from them.
Nevertheless, multi-car teams have a huge advantage over a single-car operation because they have more options available when it comes to strategy. When the last caution came out with about 40 laps to go, the bigger teams split their strategies to give them more chances to win, depending on how things unfold. Not so with the Herta crew.
"We were all-in on our decision," he said. "Ganassi did what they should have done and split the strategies so they were covered either way – we had to get the right one because we didn't have two cars to split the strategy."
And while they won the Indy 500 in a one-off effort, don't expect the No. 98 car to show up at the IndyCar season finale looking for the $5-million prize up for grabs for a non-regular driver who wins the race.
That's because the team isn't sure it will be eligible for the prize and its focus remains on 2012 and a full-time campaign in the IndyCar Series. Plus, Malloy insisted, winning the race in Las Vegas would likely be tougher than taking the chequered flag at Indy.
"Because of the nature of the track, it places an even higher emphasis of having what I would call an inherently fast car. It's a banked 1.5-mile oval so it's flat out the whole time. So it will be harder to win that one than Indy,' he said.
"Brian is an astute businessman and if he can make a good case for us to go race in Vegas, maybe we will. But our No. 1 priority is to put together a package so we a properly prepared for 2012.
One key to the win was an agreement with Sam Schmidt Motorsport to share data and information as a way to offset the bigger teams' advantage with their multi-car operations, which gives them more overall running time to figure things out. As it turned out, the rain that plagued practice made the collaboration even more significant in the win, due to the reduced time on track.
The nature of the Indy 500 also helped, because when you are competing in the "Greatest Spectacle in Racing," just about anything can happen.
"Actually the day before the race I said to our guys that if you do look back on the race over the years, there is something about Indianapolis that does cause very good teams make very unusual mistakes," said Mallory.
"There is a huge amount of pressure on them and the way we were going to win it was if we executed a mistake-free race and that's what we did and that's what won us the race."
For example in this year's race, Malloy insisted that Scott Dixon should have won, but the team somehow didn't put enough fuel in the car during the Ganassi driver's final pitstop. Forced to slow down to make it to the finish line with the remaining fuel in his car, he finish the race in fifth place.
On the other hand, as a one-off entry, there was little pressure on the Herta squad to perform since no one expected much from them.
Nevertheless, multi-car teams have a huge advantage over a single-car operation because they have more options available when it comes to strategy. When the last caution came out with about 40 laps to go, the bigger teams split their strategies to give them more chances to win, depending on how things unfold. Not so with the Herta crew.
"We were all-in on our decision," he said. "Ganassi did what they should have done and split the strategies so they were covered either way – we had to get the right one because we didn't have two cars to split the strategy."
And while they won the Indy 500 in a one-off effort, don't expect the No. 98 car to show up at the IndyCar season finale looking for the $5-million prize up for grabs for a non-regular driver who wins the race.
That's because the team isn't sure it will be eligible for the prize and its focus remains on 2012 and a full-time campaign in the IndyCar Series. Plus, Malloy insisted, winning the race in Las Vegas would likely be tougher than taking the chequered flag at Indy.
"Because of the nature of the track, it places an even higher emphasis of having what I would call an inherently fast car. It's a banked 1.5-mile oval so it's flat out the whole time. So it will be harder to win that one than Indy,' he said.
"Brian is an astute businessman and if he can make a good case for us to go race in Vegas, maybe we will. But our No. 1 priority is to put together a package so we a properly prepared for 2012.
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