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PHILLIPS: Apples & Oranges
Written by: David Phillips
SPEEDtv.com   http://www.speedtv.com
09/24/2007 - 07:00 PM
Pittsburgh, Pa.
 

While it's tempting to draw some obvious parallels between the recent lineup changes at Forsythe Championship Racing and Pacific Coast Motorsports, the fact is it's an apple/oranges comparison. To those whose memory needs refreshing, a couple of weeks back Forsythe announced it was replacing Oriol Servia – who currently lies sixth in the Champ Car points despite missing the first two races of the season – with David Martinez, who drove for the team last year at Mexico City and subsequently spent little or no time in a Champ Car until yesterday's test at Sebring. This past week, PCM announced it has replaced Ryan Dalziel – who currently lies 14th in the Champ Car points despite missing the San Jose race due to injuries suffered in a mountain bike accident – with Mario Dominguez, who drove for the team in Dalziel's absence and has a wealth of Champ Car experience dating back to 2002.
Servia's and Dalziel's enforced exits have different back-stories. (LAT photo) » More Photos

Many, myself included, were critical of Forsythe's Martinez-for-Servia swap noting, among other things, that Servia had outperformed team leader Paul Tracy during the season and that the Catalan was in the hunt for a top-five finish in the points. Moreover, while Martinez acquitted himself reasonably well at Mexico City last year, the Forsythe team bypassed him on a number of occasions this year. Coupled with the fact that team owner/Champ Car co-owner Gerald Forsythe also has a large stage in a Mexico City race which has suffered a steep decline in attendance of late, that suggests the decision to put the young Mexican in the No. 7 Indeck Panoz-Cosworth was a transparent, short-term attempt to pander to the local fans rather than an effort to improve the performance of the car or the team. Or for that matter, to begin rebuilding Champ Car's Mexican fan base.

Against that backdrop, some were quick to paint the Dominguez-for-Dalziel swap in similarly negative terms. Hasn't Dalziel convincingly outperformed teammate Alex Figge throughout the season? Isn't the 26-year old Scotsman – twice runner-up in the old Toyota Atlantic Championship and the victim of at least one other raw deal by another Champ Car team – the kind of new, young blood the series needs? Particularly compared to 31-year-old Dominguez who, although he is a two-time winner in Champ Car competition, has had his share of chances with more than half the teams now in the Champ Car World Series?
It's not quite so simple. First, a reality check: Alex Figge happens to be the son of Tom Figge, as in the man who has funded PCM from its start in Toyota Atlantic back in '03 through its switch to Grand-Am in '05 and into Champ Cars this year. If and when there is a driver change at PCM, it is never going to be Alex Figge who goes, unless and until he decides to hang up his racing shoes – at which point one would have to wonder whether the team itself would go forward absent self-sustaining funding from a major sponsor.

Beyond that hard fact of racing life is the small matter of PCM's performance in this, its rookie Champ Car season. Call it arrogance or naiveté, but after two reasonably competitive seasons of Grand-Am Daytona Prototype competition, the team switched to the Champ Car World Series without team president Tyler Tadevic adding much in the way of Champ Car experience to his technical staff. Yes, there's lots of Champ Car managerial and mechanical experience, team manager Michael Harvey and crew chiefs Roy Wilkerson and Chuck Miller, for example. But for all the Indy Lights and/or Atlantic victories and championship seasons to their credit, race engineers Burke Harrison and Tim Lewis had little hands-on Champ Car time. And while their lack of familiarity with the Lola B2K may have seemed immaterial heading into Year One of the Panoz era, in concert with two drivers whose combined Champ Car experience consisted of some testing and Dalziel's ninth-place finish in Toronto
. . . in '05 . . . in a Dale Coyne Racing Lola, PCM's lack of technical experience proved a loadstone on the team's progress.

Then there is the relationship between Dalziel and Alex Figge. The two met as competitors in their Atlantic days and became fast friends. That friendship was cemented when Dalziel joined PCM in its Grand-Am program and continued to blossom through the switch to Champ Cars. Anyone who spent time with Dalziel and Figge – as I first did while doing a story about PCM for the April issue of RACER – immediately grasped that these were not two ordinary teammates; rather they were best buddies having the time of their lives together racing Champ Cars. Equally, anyone with a modicum of experience in the take-no-prisoners arena of professional auto racing had to wonder how long the bon temps would rollé at PCM.

The answer came last week. It was rooted in that San Jose weekend when Dominguez subbed for Dalziel, one that gave the team an insight into the value of the feedback from a veteran driver – a veteran Champ Car driver. At the time, some on the team said they learned as much about their street course setup in that one weekend as they had during the whole season to that point . . .
Dominguez's (left) experience was a boost for Alex Figge and the PCM team at San Jose. (LAT photo) » More Photos

Combine that with the fact that PCM (which has brought more new sponsors into the series – even if they have generally been one- or two-race deals – than the rest of the teams and Champ Car itself combined) believes it is on the cusp of finalizing a significant deal for sponsorship with a Mexican-based firm, and the Dalziel-for-Dominguez swap is a no-brainer.

Yes, Dalziel performed well this season. He was en route to a podium finish at Toronto before a late-race clash with an aggressive Justin Wilson. And not only did he routinely outqualify Figge, increasingly he was narrowing the gap to the likes of Bourdais, Wilson, Will Power, Robert Doornbos and the other habitual fast qualifiers to a very respectable margin. And I, for one, hope that other team owners in Champ Car and elsewhere take note of his performance at PCM (not to mention at this year's 24 Hours of Daytona where he gave as good as he got racing Juan Pablo Montoya and Max Angelleli) and find a place for him next year.

But, the fact is that PCM team as a whole was not moving forward as quickly as it had hoped with the Dalziel/Figge partnership. The addition of Dominguez – frankly, unlike that of Martinez to Forsythe – is part of a plan designed to rectify that problem; a plan that includes the addition of experienced Champ/Indy Car engineer Bill Pappas as a consultant to the team. And if, if, Dominguez' presence solidifies a worthwhile sponsorship deal for the team – and the series – so much the better.

No doubt about it, PCM made its share of rookie mistakes in 2007. But their presence has also been a breath of fresh air to a Champ Car paddock in desperate need of some enthusiasm and, dare we say it, optimism. If that enthusiasm and optimisim were tinged with naiveté, so be it. The addition of Dominguez to their lineup at Dalziel's expense is evidence that a maturing PCM is facing the harsh realities of the Champ Car World Series.

• P.S. Did you see the time sheets from yesterday's Champ Car test at Sebring? In the full awareness that one test day at Sebring does not a season make, here are a few noteworthy items:

P3 Oriol Servia (52.31sec)
P4 Alex Figge (52.31sec)
P6 Mario Dominguez (52.41sec)
P10 David Martinez (53.07sec)

Just thought I'd mention it.

David Phillips is a Senior Writer for RACER magazine.


The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SpeedTV.com, FOX, NewsCorp, Speed Channel, or Haymarket Worldwide.