Congrats to her and the whole Andretti Green Racing team, but one fuel mileage win a legend does not make. Fuel mileage wins are more the crew than the driver, and any driver will tell you that, especially in the Indy Car series where there is not a lot of manual feathering of the throttle like there is in NASCAR. There wasn’t much racing to be done on her end after that pit stop, and she even said that in her post-race.
I really congratulate her team though, because they’ve been put through a rough time trying to get her to victory lane. It’s one thing when you put a bad driver in bad equipment, or a good driver in bad equipment, because either way, the results are going to be based on what the team puts into it.
But put a bad driver in good equipment (the case here), and you have probably one of the most frustrating situations in motorsports. I really feel for her team, for how many times she has hammered them and they’ve been blasted by the media, so my hat is off to them for getting it done today.
Now the challenge will be to avoid the Jamie McMurray Syndrome (McMurray won in his second NASCAR Winston Cup start, on fuel mileage, and then failed to win a race for five years). I still think she’s overrated. I hope for her sake she wins again this year.
Now that she has win under her belt, it will be interesting to see if her childish antics when she loses continue (no one wants a repeat of her temper tantrum at Michigan in 2006 where she stomped her feet like a little kid and threw her hands up in the air because she ran out of fuel).
I wish the media would focus on a female racer that really has talent AND a good attitude: Chrissy Wallace.
