Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring Green flag in: 
 
 
 

 


Patrón Highcroft Racing's Scott Sharp is returning to America's open-wheel Mecca for this year's running of the Indianapolis 500 in a Patrón-sponsored entry with Panther Racing. In addition to his full-season duties with David Brabham in the Patrón Highcroft Acura ARX-02a, Sharp is racing at Indy for the first time since 2007 when he placed a career-best sixth. He'll keep americanlemans.com visitors up to date with his latest musings from both the Brickyard and Miller Motorsports Park throughout the month.

  • Posted 05.25.09
  • THE SHARP END: WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

  • Scott Sharp battled understeer at the Indy 500 but still managed a 14th-place finish.
    It was a long day at the office for in the Tequila Patrón car in the Indy 500.  We had high expectations coming into today after running a very similar set-up to my teammate Dan Wheldon and it seemed like early in the race neither of our cars were great, but we were pretty similar.

    We had problems with understeer when I was behind people, then it would get loose off the corners. We never really solved the issues. We got it better at times, especially in the last run when I was basically flat our for the last 15 laps.

    The bars and weight jackers were maxed out, but I still had that understeer behind people.  We really could never get the front to work well enough in traffic.

    We were able to make it to the end without doing that final stop.  We had to turn the fuel down a notch and (Ryan) Briscoe couldn't get us at the finish so that was fine.

    We were unlucky with the yellow coming out just after our first pit stop, but that turned around later when we were about to pit early later in the day and the yellow came out just at the right time for Tony Kanaan's crash.

    We're obviously a little disappointed with the end result, but this is still a great race to be involved with. It is very easy to get yourself pumped up about this one event even though you try to remain calm.  When you don't get the end result you were chasing it is a little bit depressing. But looking back on the day I am really grateful for the guys at Panther. Many of these guys hadn't worked together before, but we had some great stops and beat people out of the pits which was great.

    We made it to the end, but it would have been nice to be fighting around 10 spots higher up the leaderboard. It certainly makes you want to come back here even stronger. This race has a lot of ups and downs and you normally hope you can keep them pretty level. Unfortunately for the Tequila Patrón/Muscle Milk car today, they were a little more exaggerated on the downside.

    This place certainly has an incredible draw to it – today's result only makes you more determined to come back again next year. I'm really looking forward to Indy number 15 for me – only about 335 sleeps before we are back at the Speedway.

    With May drawing to a close, I now get the chance to get back home. It has been a frantic few weeks. We have a newborn baby at home so it will be great to spend some time with the family. I'll also be hitting the gym pretty hard. Being on the road so much certainly makes that a challenge to keep that up.

    The Patrón Highcroft Racing boys are taking the chance to take a breath before getting stuck into preparations for the next round of the American Le Mans Series at our home track at Lime Rock Park in July.

    The boss Duncan Dayton just had a win there on Saturday in Mario Andretti's Lotus 79 in the historic F1 race – David Brabham and I will be out to repeat that effort in July.
    Sharp: "I'm really looking forward to Indy number 15 for me – only about 335 sleeps
    before we are back at the Speedway    ."