Road racer Duno making excuses for poor performance

UPDATE A reader writes, Dear AutoRacing1, I couldn't agree more, a fantastic list of excuses there. The fact is, no amount of testing will make a slow driver go faster. Its a real shame that talented drivers like Paul Tracy, Oriol Servia, Bruno Junqueira are on the sidelines while Milka Duno, such a poor excuse for a driver, is racing in the IndyCar series, for no other reason than she paid to be there. But what I can't understand is why Dale Coyne hired her in the first place? I'm a huge fan of Dale Coyne and his team, as through even the worst of times he has always managed to field 2 sponsored cars with half decent drivers. You have to wonder why this year he chose a driver with zero talent, who is already causing great embarrassment to such a highly respected team. John Cook

Dear John, When in doubt, follow the money. There is no more Hulman George family money to support the teams anymore, so they are all scrambling to keep the doors open. Even Roger Penske's Briscoe and Castroneves cars lack a primary sponsor. Mark C.

03/30/10

Duno was sideways every time we looked this past weekend

Let's not forget that Milka Duno came from a road racing background, including Grand-Am prototypes. In fact she is not an oval specialist but a road racer, and never drove an oval until she came to the IRL. Below is a press release making excuses for her horrible performance this past weekend in St. Pete.

IZOD IndyCar Driver Milka Duno was out early due to handling issues after only seven laps in today's rescheduled Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. The race, originally scheduled for Sunday, March 28, 2010, was postponed due to heavy rains and rescheduled for a start today at 10am EST.

Duno had improved from the first practice to qualifying by over three seconds in lap time – which is one of several goals on her street and road-course learning strategy. Her first four races of this year's 2010 schedule are on street and road courses that she has not been on previously in an Indy car.

"This weekend was an incredibly challenging and frustrating experience for me," said Duno. "To start the season with four consecutive races on tracks new to me in an Indy car, compounded by the change in the track conditions here due to the rain yesterday and the track still being wet at the start of the race today, proved difficult to overcome."

"I know that I'm on a steep learning curve with regard to road and street courses in an Indy car – and I understand that," added Duno. "I'm competing in this series with drivers that have more time and experience in an Indy car on these types of tracks and in these types of conditions. It's just going to take me some time. Our intention was to do quite a bit of testing before the start of the season, but our program came together too late to accomplish this. We will be doing this testing – but we'll now need to fit it in between the races on the schedule."