This season has been an amazing story about success, team effort and lots of hard work.
Nothing is more rewarding than being put in a position of challenge and being able to pull through and exceed expectations. At the end of last year, a lot of bets were made before sponsors were signed and obviously before any results were accomplished. They were bets placed in more than just faith. Newman/Haas and myself had the certainty that together we would be able to get the best out of each other no matter the circumstances.
As soon as we announced our deal, we got Telemundo involved and that was just the first sign of how things were going to go for us. Telemundo not only was going to be a sponsor on the car but also was going to provide us and the whole IndyCar paddock with a well-deserved Hispanic audience. The sector of the Hispanic population is the fastest growing in the country and having a direct channel of communication with it has become a priority for all companies in the U.S.
Quick stats
Top-five finishes: 6
Top-10 finishes: 11
Laps led: 18
Average start: 11.1
Average finish: 8.9
The combination of a top team like Newman/Haas, the leading Hispanic media group in the U.S, Telemundo, and myself being from Spain and able to relate to all the different Hispanic nationalities was a recipe for success.
After the first three races of the season we were already in the top five in the championship and we could start to see that we were at the front to stay up there until the end. We arrived to Indianapolis third in points, and although we knew we were going to be somewhat competitive we had no idea of how good we really were going to be. I don’t think is an over statement to say that Pole Day for the centennial of the Indianapolis 500 became not only a season high but one of the biggest accomplishments of my, and the team’s, history.
We qualified on the front row. We had a lot confidence in our abilities for the race but we didn’t expect to have such speed in qualifying. It was a result of a very methodical approach to the month of May and a defining moment of what I believe would be the tone of the rest of the season. We became very good at taking big risks but only on very defining moments. The race was as every Indy 500 is — full of surprises and uncertainty until the very end.
We had our shining moment when we led for almost 20 laps and got a real taste of what the victory at the biggest race in the world must taste like. We ended up with a strong final position of sixth that felt not good enough after how well we ran the whole race, but it gave us the confidence that we were a team to contend with not only on street and road courses but also on the ovals.
Since that point on we never fell lower than fourth in the points and we battled for podiums and wins until the very last race.
There are really no words to express the amount of work and commitment that the whole team had week after week. It was the Newman/Haas magic that kept us all together working harder than ever but maintaining a great team spirit between mechanics, engineers, sponsors and drivers. There were no two sides in the team.
Everybody who worked on the No. 2 car was totally involved also in the No. 06 car’s success and the same the other way around. Every team tries to get that type of synergy but its rare when it really clicks the way it happened this season. James Hinchcliffe was a rookie but a very talented and hard working one, and the moment he saw how Newman/Haas really operates as one team he jumped on it with both feet. We worked together all season like we had been teammates for 10 years. The flow of communication between us and both engineers was constant.
A big part of my final fourth in the standings and Hinch becoming Sunoco Rookie of the Year has a lot to do with it. I have no doubt that neither of us would have accomplished it without one another.
Another very important factor not to forget is that I ended up being the driver who had completed more laps, with an over 99 percent completion of the possible laps. This just reinforces my earlier statement that we accomplished what we did with great teamwork giving us unbeatable reliability and again the ability of taking risks only when it counted.
The fact that Honda and Firestone had given us, once more, a 100 percent reliability goes without saying.
Overall, it was a great season of success and definitely one to build on. The series has definitely been on a high the whole season and although the general economic recession affects our sport like most industries it seems like IndyCar keeps finding ways to gain appreciation among our fans and keeps increasing the numbers of them.
Having such a tragedy in the last race of the season has been a big blow for the series. Death in any sport is just terrible, but when you lose one of your champions and a guy so charismatic like Dan Wheldon it is a huge hit no one was prepared to receive and knows even less how to recover from.
The sport will continue and because of it safety for the drivers and spectators will improve immensely. It is just very sad that it takes such a price to pay for us to react and put in place the right measures but unfortunately, like in everything else in life, no big leaps forward happen without a big shake of the community like this one.