Athletes - Buddy Lazier

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	Athletes - Buddy Lazier

Buddy Lazier is an American open-wheel racecar driver born in Vail, Colorado on 31 October, 1967. He first appeared in a few CART beginning in 1989 and never participated in a complete season of CART Competition. In preparation for the founding of the Indy Racing League in 1996, he signed with Ron Hemelgarn's Hemelgarn Racing whom he drove in the Indianapolis 500 for in 1991. Buddy was one of the drivers in the first IRL race and won the 1996 Indianapolis 500, the first sanctioned by the IRL despite suffering a major back injury earlier in the season. Following the fame and money of the Indy win, a strong partnership between Buddy, Hemelgarn, and sponsor Delta Faucet formed. This partnership resulted in a model season for the team in 2000 with Buddy winning 2 races on his way to the series championship followed by a second place effort in 2001. Following the influx of former CART Teams and the new engine suppliers in 2002, Lazier and Hemelgarn had extreme difficulty competing at the level that they had before and they lost their sponsor following the 2003 season. Buddy only completed in the Indy 500 in 2004 for Hemelgarn and was signed to drive the 2005 Indy 500 for the Byrd Brothers and Panther Racing, placing fifth in the race, ahead of Panther's 2 regular drivers Tomas Enge and Tomas Scheckter in a race that many believe may have resurrected his career. Both Buddy's father Bob Lazier and brother Jaques Lazier are veterans of the Indy 500 as well.

In 2005, Buddy acquired a four-race deal with Panther Racing to drive the No. 95 Pennzoil/American Sentry Guard Dallara/Chevrolet. However, he received an extra race in Enge's No. 2 Rockstar Energy Drink Dallara/Chevrolet at Milwaukee on July 24 2005. Enge was injured during a crash at the Nashville Superspeedway during the Firestone Indy 200 a week earlier. He logged four top-tens in the No. 95 and an 18th-place finish in Enge's No.2 car. With Panther's contraction to a single car in 2006, Lazier was forced to search for another team, which he found in Robbie Buhl's Dreyer & Reinbold Racing.

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