Oilpressure

The 2022 Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama is now in the books. Pato O’Ward avenged his disappointing loss from a year ago, made the winning pass on pole-sitter Rinus VeeKay on Lap 62 and won this year’s race at Barber Motorsports Park.

The podium ended up featuring the Top-Three qualifiers, just in a different order. Last year’s winner, Alex Palou, finished second and took over the points lead, with VeeKay finishing third.

Chevy is now four-for-four heading into the Month of May. This is the first non-Penske win for Chevy, further enforcing the idea that Honda could be in trouble this season. We are now almost a quarter through the season. In four races, Honda has one pole and no wins. Today, Chevy had two of the three steps on the podium and four of the Top-Six finishers. The lone bright spot for Honda is that one of their drivers (Palou) is now in the points lead.

I spent the day wandering the pits, during the race. I happened to be in the Kyle Kirkwood pit, when he came in for his first stop. I decided to get a video of it. It was not a clinic on how to do a pit stop. It probably lasted about thirty-five seconds, due to a faulty air gun.

I know these things happen, but they seem to happen to the Foyt team a lot. Coincidence?

So, congratulations to Pato O’Ward and Arrow McLaren SP on their win today. It gives them and Chevy a ton of momentum heading into the Month of May.

We are about to get on the road. I’d like to think that we will be home before dark. I will probably have an abbreviated Random Thoughts article here tomorrow – that’s assuming we don’t get into any unforeseen traffic.

Thanks to everyone who followed along through the race weekend. We get next weekend off, and then it will be three consecutive weekends in Indianapolis. There’s no place I’d rather be in May.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on May 1, 2022 at 3:34 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.