Servia: Miami 'painful' for new teams

The KV Racing driver was the best of the newcomers, finishing five laps down but ahead of IRL regular Darren Manning (Foyt).

Servia said he took limited satisfaction from beating the other transition drivers, and was mainly pleased to complete a valuable race distance.

"Obviously there's always going to be a comparison amongst the transition guys of who was best, but that's not our goal - our goal is to be best overall," he said.

"We obviously have a long way to go. We knew it was going to be a little bit of a struggle, and it was.

"It's always painful, but the guys did a great job putting the car together and we could run to the end. We finished 12th, which means a lot of cars finished behind us.

"So we're doing the right things, it's just the process is painful. We knew it was going to be like this, it's just tough when we're there."

Conquest's Franck Perera, Newman Haas Lanigan's Justin Wilson and Dale Coyne driver Mario Moraes were the other transition drivers to make the finish, in 14th to 16th positions.

Wilson was delayed early on when he had to make an unscheduled pitstop following contact with KV Racing's Will Power, who was forced to retire with suspension damage, at the first restart.

"I had a car on the left, I was in the middle and there was a car on the right. I was the meat in the sandwich," Wilson said.

"Will was on the right and I'm not sure why he was coming down as much as he was but it just got too tight. I felt suckered into getting caught in the middle but it's how this racing goes.

"We lost three laps with that and it was then pretty much a case of trying not to lose much else and hang on."

But he said that finishing the race had given him a vital boost as he works to acclimatise to the IRL machinery.

"I'm a lot more confident," Wilson said. "I think our race pace is a lot better than our qualifying pace. I know we have a lot to do but this gave us something to build on for the future.

"We will go to Sebring on Tuesday to get an idea on how these cars feel on a road course then go to St Petersburg and do something we are more familiar with. We should be further up in order. Not necessarily at the front but certainly further forward on the time sheets."

The other transition cars also failed to finish. Ernesto Viso crashed his HVM entry in the closing laps, while both Enrique Bernoldi (Conquest) and Bruno Junqueira (Dale Coyne Racing) had to park ill-handling cars.

"The car was very loose, and I was almost crashing at every corner," Junqueira said. "I was going too slow on the track for everybody. We tried to change the car and it still wasn't good, so it was better to stop than put the car in the wall. I hope to go better next weekend at St Pete."