Juncos Hollinger was right to bench Canapino – but what happens next?

Juncos Hollinger Racing made the right decision to pull Agustin Canapino from its car for last weekend’s NTT IndyCar Series race in Road America.

Team sources point to the Argentinian reaching an increasingly distracted mental state as the opening practice session drew near at 2:45pm on Friday. Although he was seen in a lighthearted mood in the morning, his disposition darkened in the hours that followed, and with the inherent dangers of racing at 200mph, the team — not IndyCar, but the team — chose to give the 34-year-old Canapino a break. But there was a lot more to the story.

It was clear that trying to power through the emotionally-charged events that followed the previous weekend’s race in Detroit was not the right approach to take. Giving Canapino time to process and purge the mounting anger he was demonstrating both privately and in his public behavior online became the new priority for JHR, so it acted accordingly.