Oilpressure

It’s almost fitting that this race was called for rain. It was a strange ending to an equally strange weekend.

Not only was the ending strange, so was Victory Lane. Instead of the typical victory celebration in Poconos spacious Victory Lane in front of the fans, it was held in the Media Center – which became suddenly crowded with the multitude of photographers.

I picked Will Power to win this race. I didn’t do any great analysis of data or anything like that. I just based that pick on the fact that each time I come to Pocono, Will Power wins. It happened again. Three trips to Pocono for me, and three wins for Will Power. That’s my third correct pick this season. I’ve never done that before, but three out of fourteen races is still nothing to brag about.

Of course, Will Power winning on Lap 128 is not the real story of the day. What everyone is talking about is the horrifying crash that took place on the Opening Lap. I always watch the start of Pocono from a media perch overlooking Turn Two, and I always shoot a video of the Parade Lap and the Opening Lap. Until today, it was uneventful.

While it was unfortunate and very scary, I’m glad I was able to get most of it on video at a totally different angle. I think blame has already been assigned and I won’t get into that. I have also heard no further updates on the condition of Felix Rosenqvist, so I won’t speculate.

I’ve never been that close to an IndyCar crash in my life, and I’ve seen a lot of them in person. While it would’ve been smart on my part to duck and take cover, I continued to shoot video on my phone like an idiot. Fortunately, nothing of any size hit any of us on the perch. But my left arm felt like it had gone through a sand storm, as tiny bits from the violent crash showered all of us for a few seconds.

You will see that for a second, I didn’t even realize Takuma Sato and Ryan Hunter-Reay were just a little past us. And it wasn’t until I put my phone away that I realized that Rosenqvist was involved – although I did recall seeing a blue flash go by. It wasn’t until I saw a replay later that I saw how close Rosenqvist got to us. If you see a replay, I’m the moron in a black polo shooting video while an Indy car is flying by. Anyway, here’s the video I shot and some of the still shots that Susan got of the crash.

The race was red-flagged to clean up the mess and repair the fence. Once the race was restarted, it became somewhat processional. After the first round of green-flag pit stops, Spencer Pigot found the wall in Turn One. It was during that caution period that we left our perch in Turn Two and headed to the pits.

Somewhere in there, I think the complexion of the race changed. Pigot hit the wall on Lap 40, and by the time we got out on pit lane, it was Lap 71 and there was a completely different running order. I had to call my brother, who was watching on television to bring me up to date.

Shortly after that I got a text from a friend onsite, who said his weather app was showing a line of storms headed for the track and would be here in about thirty minutes. It was very accurate. By the time they brought the cars onto pit lane for a red flag, it was 5:15 pm. It was pretty obvious that this was not going to go green again. Everyone headed for cover before the rain. I think we got inside about three minutes before the bottom dropped out.

That’s going to do it for now. I plan on having probably abbreviated Random Thoughts article for tomorrow that I’ll write after we eat dinner. Thanks for following along all weekend. Please check back tomorrow for my ramblings.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on August 18, 2019 at 6:26 pm and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.