Last week, Alex Palou screamed “we are so back” as he crossed the finish line to take the checkered-flag. The thought occurred to me that he had not gone anywhere, since the last time we saw him – he was hoisting the Astor Challenge Trophy in Nashville.
Well, I’m here to announce the Phoenix is back! And in case you hadn’t noticed, Phoenix Raceway did go away. I has been eight years since the NTT IndyCar Series raced at Phoenix, and when they did race there from 2016-18 – they put everyone to sleep. Not anymore!
IndyCar put on a fantastic show on Saturday, showing a lot of NASCAR fans in the stands what good close racing can look like when you don’t need to add stage racing and green-white-checkers to manufacture synthetic drama. There were nineteen lead changes among eleven different drivers in Saturday’s race. Race winner Josef Newgarden made a bold pass on Kyle Kirkwood with only six laps remaining. When it was all said and done, Newgarden lad a total of eight laps on the day – including the final six. Pole-sitter David Malukas led the most laps – 73 out of 250.
There were four cautions in the race. The first involved no contact, but an incredible save. Rookie Dennis Hauger spun on what is now the backstretch at Phoenix. He hit nothing and released his brake just at the instant that the car started rolling backwards. He rolled down the length of the backstretch going perfectly straight. Just as the last car in line was going by, he whipped his car around like he had made that move a thousand times before. Was it skill or luck? Either way, I would take it. Hauger pitted for flat-spotted ties and continued on. He ultimately finished fifteenth.
The second caution was the most impactful for the entire series. At the beginning of the race, points leader Alex Palou wasted no time moving from his tenth starting spot to being close to the front. On the restart after the Hauger incident, Palou got snarled up in traffic and dropped a couple of spots. Conversely, Rinus VeeKay was on the charge after the restart. When he came upon Palou who was already having a tough time with traffic; VeeKay got greedy and tried to stick the nose of his car between the car of Palou and the wall. There was no room. The result was the championship leader was into the wall, and VeeKay suffered damage. Palou was out and would’ve finished dead last, had Romain Grosjean not failed to take the green flag due to a clutch failure.
By the end of the day, Palou dropped from leading the points to fifth – nineteen points behind race winner and new points leader Josef Newgarden. You Tuber David Land put out an interesting stat on Twitter last night.
While it was a foolish move that could have caused serious injury to Palou, VeeKay and possibly others. I’m sure most of the paddock were secretly thankful that Palou had finally met up with some bad luck and that someone other than Palou can be in the championship hunt.
While Malukas led the most laps and Newgarden won the race; I think it’s fair to say that this race was dominated by ECR’s Christian Rasmussen. With a little more than eighty laps to go, Rasmussen had been dazzling fans with moves on the 1.0-mile oval that no other drivers seemed to be able to make. With his fearless demeanor and a car that was obviously very hooked up, it seemed he could put his car anywhere on the track and it would stick.
Will Power had worked his way from starting dead last up to near the front of the field after his last pit stop. Once teammate Marcus Ericsson made his final stop on Lap 197, Power found himself in the lead and seemingly in control of the race. But then here came Rasmussen. Power was able to drive defensively and hold him off for a few laps, but then Rasmussen tried passing Power on the outside on Lap 207. Power faded up the track and the two cars touched. Power’s right rear tire made contact with Rasmussen’s left front-wing endplate. The result was a cut tire for Power and Rasmussen made contact with the wall. Power made it back around to the pits for a quick tire change, while Rasmussen assumed the lead with a car that suddenly had suspension damage.
Miraculously, Rasmussen was able to lead another thirty-five laps with his damaged car. He held off Kyle Kirkwood until Lap 242, and subsequently brushed the wall jus a few turns later. Ultimately, Rasmussen dropped down to finish fourteenth – two spots ahead of Will Power who finished sixteenth.
But by the time Kirkwood too the lead; Newgarden, who had pitted for fresh tires during the caution for the Power/Rasmussen contact, was almost completing his charge to the front. With twenty-seven laps to go, Josef Newgarden was in eight place. He then started picking off cars one by one. With six laps to go, Newgarden shot past Kirkwood as if he was sitting still coming out of Turn Four. All Newgarden had to do from there was to coast.
The last time the NTT IndyCar Series ran at Phoenix, it was three straight years of dismal racing that came to a merciful end in 2018. Quite honestly, I was not thrilled when Phoenix returned to the schedule for this season. The old clichés of “what have you done lately?” or “you’re only as good as your last race” kept coming to mind, and I was fearful that we may be in for more processional type racing, where the only passes occur in the pits. You tend to forget that there have been some exceptional IndyCar races at Phoenix over the years.
Fortunately, I was wrong. Since Iowa put everyone to sleep in 2024 (the only year Susan and I attended), IndyCar has been tweaking their short oval package. They’ve now perfected it and the results are in extremely exciting oval races, which is what we got on Saturday.
TV Coverage: We had a very severe thunderstorm come through Nashville just before the start of the race coverage. We did not lose power, but it caused our local FOX affiliate to have audio difficulties that were not fixed until around Lap 200. Fortunately we got a clear picture of the race, just bad audio problems. Sometimes the problems were a lot of static that drowned out the voices. At other times, the sound was so distorted that the announcers sounded like Martians that had inhaled helium and then started talking through a pillow. To make matters worse, they had a giant weather crawler at the top of the screen that covered up some of the scoring tower on the left. I had no idea what lap we were on. When the broadcast cut away to a side-by-side commercial, the weather crawler blocked the running order that was showing the running order which had been moved to the top.
So, for me to critique the Saturday race broadcast would not be fair – except that I could tell there was way too much NASCAR being thrown in for my liking. I did not watch Sunday’s NASCAR race from Phoenix, but I am willing to bet that the NASCAR broadcast did not have near as many mentions of IndyCar as Saturday’s broadcast did for NASCAR.
But I do have a couple of comments from Friday’s practice and qualifying broadcast. As I mentioned last week, I am not a fan of the term box being used for pit. Hinch and Townsend Bell were both using it freely in all three of the Friday broadcast. When I could hear the race broadcast, I think I heard box being used during the race. Box originated from Formula One to refer to the pit box. Since Drive to Survive became popular during COVID, it has crept into IndyCar broadcasts and print media. It needs to stop.
Another complaint I had from Friday was when they (Hinch and Townsend) were making comparisons between IndyCar and NASCAR. That would be natural since this was an IndyCar/NASCAR double header weekend. Plus, James Hinchcliffe drove in the NASCAR Truck race at St. Petersburg just the week before. But they were both referring to the NASCAR stock cars as “NASCARs”. I cringed every time I heard it.
The cars that run in NASCAR are called stock cars, not NASCARs. NASCAR is the acronym for a sanctioning body (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing). It is not a type of race car. If you’ll notice, when I am writing about the sanctioning body of the series we follow, I refer to it as IndyCar. I don’t capitalize the entire name because it is not an acronym. It doesn’t stand for anything. But when I am describing the type of race car that races in the Indianapolis 500, I call it an Indy car – not an IndyCar. Am I nitpicking? Some will say yes, but that’s what I do.
Penske Resurgence: One of the biggest stories heading into this season was whether or not Team Penske could regain their footing with new management in place, or if 2025 was a sign of things to come for the once-proud team that had dominated IndyCar racing for decades. Even though Scott McLaughlin won the pole at St. Petersburg and finished second, it was hard to say that Team Penske was truly back. Josef Newgarden had a horrible qualifying session that made him start near the back of the field, but he salvaged the weekend with a seventh-place finish. David Malukas started fifth in his debut with Team Penske, but fell to a very forgettable thirteenth-place finish in sort of a mixed weekend for Team Penske.
At Phoenix, things were a lot brighter. Team Penske locked up the front row with Malukas winning his first career pole, with Newgarden starting alongside. Scott McLaughlin had the worst weekend among the three Team Penske drivers. He started fifth and finished eighth. Malukas failed to turn his pole position into his first career win, but he finished third. Of course, Newgarden won the race after starting on the front row. Altogether Team Penske drivers took the first and third step on the podium.
I’m not ready to proclaim that Team Penske is back. The short oval has been the team’s greatest strength for the past few seasons. But had they faltered, I think we would be having a far different conversation today.
Back to Reality: Last week, we all raised our collective eyebrows when Dale Coyne Racing put both cars in the Firestone Fast Six, and backed it up with both cars finishing in the Top-Ten. This week, the team came back to earth. Rookie Dennis Hauger qualified twenty-second, and did well to finish fifteenth after doing his best AJ Foyt IV imitation by rolling down the backstretch pointed the wrong way.
Romain Grosjean, the team veteran, qualified only twentieth, but was not even able to take the green flag due to a clutch issue. The only saving grace for the team’s weekend is that neither car sustained any damage.
Bad Reactions from Both: After the race, everyone was anxious to get reactions from Christian Rasmussen and Will Power, after the two got together on Lap 207. On the television coverage, Rasmussen was despondent as he blamed Power for putting him into the wall. He appeared to be on the verge of tears as he relived the incident. It was not like this prevented his first career win, which he got a Milwaukee last year. To be disappointed is one thing, but he played out his being distraught on national television just a little too much. Quite honestly, it got old and I was embarrassed for him.
Will Power appeared to take complete ownership of the incident – or did he? On one hand, he accepted blame for the incident saying he didn’t know Rasmussen was up on his outside. In the next breath, he turned around and blamed his spotter for the incident. Power said he had the same spotter at Team Penske for seventeen years. He and his new spotter at Andretti Global were going through terminology issues. Had Power just stopped by taking full blame for the incident, he would have won the PR battle over Rasmussen. But when he continued by throwing the blame on his spotter, I thought that was a bad look. It probably was the spotter’s fault, but Power should have handled that internally and not in public. I can’t imaging Power helped the terminology issues between the two, by calling out his spotter in public. It probably didn’t help Power acclimate into the new team environment either.
Drive of the Day: There were a lot of candidates that I evaluated for this coveted award. Josef Newgarden was considered after he carved his way through the field in the final twenty-seven laps to take the win. So was Santino Ferrucci who overcame a bad qualifying effort to finish eleventh. I also considered Will Power for starting from the very back of the field to legitimately lead the race and contend for the win after his final pit stop. But since he couldn’t close the deal, I decided to give it to his new advisory – Christian Rasmussen.
Rasmussen overcame starting in the eighteenth position and a penalty that sent him to the back of the field for the re-start on Lap 20. To overcome that much adversity and to drive like he did all day, he is very deserving of this accolade. He may be disappointed that he did not win, but I’m sure that winning the Oilpressure.com Driver of the Day takes a lot of the sting out of his disappointment for not winning the race.
All in All: Although I was skeptical going in, I thought Saturdays Good Rancher 250 was about as good an oval race as I’ve seen in years. I was also skeptical about sharing the weekend with NASCAR, after seeing mixed results while sharing IMS during the Brickyard weekends. The stands looked very full. I’m guessing that a lot of these were curiosity seekers that happened to be NASCAR fans, who bought a package giving them tickets to all three days.
If that was the case, they probably came away with more than NASCAR would have hoped. They saw sleek looking race cars that were notably faster and put on a much better show. As I said earlier, I did not watch Sunday’s NASCAR race from Phoenix, but I’m pretty sure they did not provide as much entertainment as the IndyCar race on Saturday.
The racing was already good on Saturday, but Josef Newgarden put on a clinic on how to navigate traffic and the value of fresh tires. I am hopeful that IndyCar will continue to go back to the rack in the desert that was originally built for Indy cars.
George Phillips
Oilpressure 