Oilpressure

As we returned to the Media Center after today’s race, I saw another media member who will go nameless. He looked at me and uttered “snooze-fest”. I will respectfully disagree.

I actually enjoyed today’s GMR Grand Prix at the IMS road course. Now, I’ll admit that I wasn’t fully aware what was going on. That’s typical when you are at a race in person, instead of watching it on television.

Unless it’s raining (or freezing), we don’t normally watch races in the media center. For the start of the race, Susan and I sat in the Tower Terrace stands. At about Lap 35, Susan went inside to cool off and I went into the pits. To my surprise, with about 20 laps to go, I ran into her in the pits, where we stayed for the remainder of the race.

Alex Palou won his first race of the 2023 season, becoming the fifth different winner in five races. For those keeping score for team victories; Team Penske has two, Chip Ganassi Racing has two and Andretti Autosport has one. Arrow McLaren has been knocking on the door at every race, but they are still on the outside looking in. In fact, they had all three cars finish in the Top-Five, but not on the top step of the podium.

There was a decent crowd here today, especially considering the local forecast was calling for rain about halfway through the race. As I type, however – the skies have darkened and it is really dark looking to the south.

Christian Lundgaard started on the pole, but by the time the field came around for the first time – Palou was leading the field. He definitely had the fastest car today, but Lundgaard was able to lead thirteen laps today. Of course, Palou led more laps than anyone, running in the top spot for fifty-two laps.

Graham Rahal was shuffled to the rear of the field at the start, but he managed to earn a top-ten finish. on Lap Two, Sting Ray Robb appeared to commit the ultimate sin – he took out his teammate, David Malukas. On Lap Eleven, Kyle Kirkwood got together with Will Power and spun him around. Power fell to the rear of the field. Kirkwood’s penalty was that he had to take one space behind Power. Power ended up in twelfth place, while Kirkwood finished fourteenth.

From the stands, I found this to be an entertaining race with different strategies at play. Ultimately, it didn’t matter – the best car won today.

As Palou pulled into Victory Lane, I was able to get a very good video with my phone.

That will do it for us for the weekend. Tomorrow we get to sleep in and visit the main gift shop in the museum at our leisure. We will grab some Long’s Donuts on our way out of town, and maybe a possible last trip to the Mug-N-Bun – as it is still for sale. I’ve heard rumors that neighboring Allison Transmission may buy it and level it. That’s a shame, so we plan to enjoy it while we can. Although the food is so-so, the root beer is outstanding.

Susan will (hopefully) have a post here tomorrow, but it may be later in the morning. I will have my usual Random Thoughts post on Monday and will continue to post every day in May all next week.

I’ll close with a few photos from today, taken by both me and Susan – including Emma Dixon signing autographs, Dario Franchitti and a dejected Simon Pagenaud after he fell out of the race. Thanks to everyone for following along with us this weekend. The Month of May is here!

George Phillips

This entry was posted on May 13, 2023 at 6:22 pm and is filed under Indianapolis 500. 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.