hadn’t even recorded a top-five finish from the first 15 rounds of 2005, as Andretti-Green cleaned up. Dan Wheldon won four of the opening five races of the season including at St. Petersburg, the first of the year’s three tracks to include right-hand corners, and the all-important Indy 500. His team-mates, Dario Franchitti and Bryan Herta all got in on the act too, while Honda power also helped Fernandez Racing’s Scott Sharp to score his final open-wheel win at Kentucky.
"He was really a terrific driver, no question about it. We had to run the car with a lot less downforce to be competitive and so in the road track situation, with the lack of downforce at Watkins Glen, that was a fun ride for the driver!"After a two-day test at Sonoma, Pantano was quickly on the pace for his debut at the Californian track and clocked the fastest time in opening practice.
“100% it was just inexperience,” he says. “Starting there, your second race in IndyCar, starting P2 without experience you try to do your best but to be honest I didn’t know what to do. They explained me a little bit but it’s difficult to put it all together in two races. When you are in the first row, it’s not the same as to be in the middle.”
Pantano admits he expected to have offers for the following year and says, “if I had to, I was prepared to do” the ovals that continued to make up the majority of the calendar for the next several years. This reluctance to take a chance on a driver without oval experience it appears was widespread among IRL team bosses at the time. Many more drivers with backgrounds on the European scene were blooded in the rival Champ Car series that predominantly consisted of road and street courses, but its dwindling health relative to the increasingly dominant IRL meant few squads could offer a salary as Ganassi could.
came “close to sign a deal but they were running just one car, and they didn’t find a financial situation for me”, and most teams “were only looking for money, that’s it”.