Rocketsports Racing's Champ Car team entered its third year of competition in 2005 with legitimate expectations of moving up the order following Alex Tagliani's victory at Road America and seventh place finish in the standings in 2004. source: champcarworldseries.com After breaking into the Winner's Circle for the first time in 2004 with 'Tag,' Rocketsports expected to maintain that level of performance with a new driver lineup featuring proven race winner Ryan Hunter-Reay and Formula 1 castoff Timo Glock. But while Glock claimed the Roshfrans Rookie of the Year Award, it was generally a disappointing season for Paul Gentilozzi's team that ended in acrimony thanks to Hunter-Reay's early departure. Somewhat surprisingly, Gentilozzi cut ties with Tagliani in favor of 23-year old German rookie Glock, who impressed for the Jordan Formula 1 team in the second half of the 2004 season and was very quick in his initial Champ Car tests. Further strengthening the driver line- up, departing rookie Nelson Philippe was replaced by Ryan Hunter- Reay, already a two-time race winner in Champ Cars at age 24. It all looked good on paper, but it rarely worked out on the racetrack, particularly for Hunter-Reay. The American's season got off on the wrong foot with some trying preseason tests that saw him comprehensively out-paced by his confident rookie teammate. Glock was equally impressive in the season opener at Long Beach, qualifying and finishing sixth. Hunter-Reay's seventh place finish at Monterrey in the second race of the season was offset by the fact that Glock was again quicker, turning the fastest lap of the race. Ryan hoped to turn his season around at Milwaukee, where as the defending race champion he led all 250 laps on the mile oval for the HVM team in 2004. But Hunter-Reay and Glock each wrote off cars in the May pre-race test at Milwaukee, and in the race, Hunter-Reay crashed heavily in Turn 2 on the sixth lap after qualifying a season- best seventh. Ryan's best starting position the rest of the season was 13th and he was outqualified at every race by Glock; a pair of sixth place finishes were the best he could muster on race day. Glock, meanwhile, came on strong in the second half of the season, only magnifying Hunter-Reay's woes. "I wouldn't say it was a disappointing year, because we got the rookie of the year award with Timo, and that's a big deal. But we didn't achieve what we were hoping to achieve and it just didn't work with Ryan," remarked Team Manager Phil Howard. "We struggled with a lot of crashes this year and that takes away money from areas where you could be doing other stuff. So it's been difficult, Milwaukee especially. The complete article here on Champcarworldseries.com
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