DELAWARE, ON – Canadian driver Alex Tagliani, hailing from Lachenaie, Quebec, entered the weekend focused on maintaining his third-place position in the drivers’ standings, and that is exactly what he did. Tag could have fallen to 5th place in the standings, but he and 22Racing put together a strong effort, securing a top-3 season finish.
Tag’s weekend didn’t begin as planned. He recorded the 13th fastest lap in practice but managed to improve by four spots in qualifying, earning him a starting position on the inside of row five in the P9 position, feeling that the car was going to be good on the long run.
After qualifying, the 22Racing team went to work thinking how to improve the car even more during the race. It was evident as soon as the green flag waved. By the 54th lap, Tagliani had advanced to the 5th position. Over the next 125 laps of the 250-lap event, Tag maintained a clean car, biding his time for a strong push in the final 75 laps. Unfortunately, all his efforts were in vain as Tagliani encountered an alternator issue, resulting in a loss of 9 laps while changing the battery around lap 170. Despite this setback, Tag persevered, steering clear of trouble and ultimately crossing the finish line in 13th place, securing a strong 3rd place overall in the final driver’s standings.
“We secured our 3rd-place finish in the overall championship standings, and that’s okay,” said Tagliani. “It was a good year all in all. We achieved some excellent results, including a win and a couple of podium finishes. The competition was exceptionally strong this year.”
“Today we had a great chance to end up strong. The team did a good job on the pit stop. The car really came alive, it was so fast and stable getting into the corners. It was a shame we had the alternator problem and had to change the battery. When I re-entered the race I was several laps down and couldn’t advance my position so I stayed clear of any aggressive racing because I didn’t want to get involved in anything that could hurt our position in the standings. It would have been great not to have had the problem and been able to race with those guys on the lead lap the car was so fast I was really happy with the ½ break changes from the team, after the bad luck we had in Delaware I would have loved to be on the lead lap with the pace we had.”
“Overall, I am very happy that our team, 22 Racing, won the championship with the 20 car and we were able to finish 3rd overall.”
“I also want to extend a big thank-you to all our sponsors. We would not be able to do what we do without the support from each and every one of them.”
In the driver standings, Alex Tagliani finished the season in the 3rd place position.
The Pinty’s Fall Brawl will air on TSN on Saturday, September 30th at 2:30 pm ET and RDS2 in Quebec on Saturday, October 21st at 4:15 pm ET.
Fans can follow Alex Tagliani by visiting www.tagliani.com, or by following him on Twitter at @TAGLIANI, or @tagliani18 on Instagram and, like him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Tagliani.
NASCAR.ca has live coverage of each event, including live timing and scoring, on Race Center.
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