Oilpressure

The NTT IndyCar Series closed out the 2023 season with one of the craziest races I’ve seen in a while. The Firestone Grand Prix of Monterey was one for the books for chaos and unpredictability. Many thought that the newly paved WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca would provide record fast speeds. It did. After Thursday’s practice, it was also suspected that the track was very slippery, once a car veered off of the racing line. It was.

The result was a chaotic qualifying session on Saturday that set the stage for a wild and crazy race on Sunday, that produced eight cautions for a total of thirty-five laps.

Who usually benefits when races get crazy? Scott Dixon, who once again found himself in Victory Lane after being caught up in an early mishap, and having to serve a questionable penalty. Yesterday’s win was Dixon’s third win in four races and ran his career total to fifty-six, just eleven shy of the great AJ Foyt for all-time IndyCar wins.

We should have known what kind of day it would be, when the field could not make it out of Turn Two on the opening lap. No less than five cars were left stranded in the melee, yet all but Graham Rahal were able to continue. It’s always a sick feeling when the driver you predict to win on Friday, climbs out of the car before he even has a chance to break a sweat. The opening lap chaos was a sign of what was to come.

There was a lot of craziness on re-starts and also random spinning cars out of nowhere. Every time you thought someone had positioned themselves for the win, or at least a strong finish – the chaos would jump up and bite them.

Felix Rosenqvist started on the pole, and looked as if he might avoid a lot of the craziness. But when Alex Palou passed Rosenqvist for the lead, coming out of Turn Eleven on Lap 7 – his day went from bad to worse. He and Marcus Ericsson spun in Turn Two, on Lap 29; and it continued to get worse as the day went on. Rosenqvist finished nineteenth in his last race for Arrow McLaren.

The longest stint of the race came after Josef Newgarden hit the wall in a single-car accident on Lap Eight. When the race re-started on Lap Ten, nineteen laps of green were run until the Rosenqvist incident on Lap 29. No stint of green went longer than that.

In the end, Scott Dixon emerged as the surprise winner of the race, although no one should have really been surprised. He incurred a six-spot grid penalty after the morning warm-up, when he suffered an engine failure; and had to start eleventh. Then he was forced to serve a drive-through penalty for avoidable contact in the Lap One incident, when he accidentally punted Rinus VeeKay into the gravel trap. Yet, in complete Scott Dixon fashion, he cycled to the front on Lap 76 and led until the checkered flag flew on Lap 95, ending one of the craziest races I’ve seen in quite a while.

TV Coverage: Throughout the weekend, I thought NBC did an outstanding job of treating the season-finale as a really big event. Of course, they were originally planning on the championship being decided in this race, but that happened a week earlier. Still, they went all out in making sure the IndyCar season closed out with a bang. Unfortunately, with the NFL season kicking off yesterday – the numbers will probably not be good for the season-finale.

That’s not to say they had a perfect broadcast. I found Townsend Bell more annoying than usual. I’ve mentioned before about his overuse of the word “Delta” when talking about change or difference. It’s unnecessary and sounds pretentious. On Saturday, he was discussing how the tires were hardly degrading throughout a stint. His intent was to say there wasn’t much difference in the tires throughout the stint. Instead, he said “It’s a much closer delta”. Please! Just talk to us, don’t talk down to us.

On Sunday, he once again did the dreaded in-car interview during the parade laps. This one had so much static, you could hardly understand what Will Power was saying. One thing that did come through was that Power sounded very annoyed. This was high-tech stuff in the seventies and eighties. Now it is just awkward and unnecessary. I hope they scrap this idea in 2024.

But overall, I thought the pit-reporters did a great job, as well as the camera operators and the guys in the booth. I thought they closed out the season on a high note.

New Accent? Am I the only one that picked up on a faux British accent from Zak Brown, when he was being interviewed by Marty Snider before the race? I realize he spends a lot of time across the pond these days, but Brown is about as American as it gets. He was born and raised in California, and I’ve attended more Zak Brown press-conferences than I can count over the past several years. But had I closed my eyes in his interview yesterday, I would’ve sworn Snider was interviewing Red Bull’s Christian Horner.

Falling Off a Cliff: When Josef Newgarden swept the Iowa double-header, he was second in points and was still considered a threat to win the championship. Since then, it seems the Indianapolis 500 winner and winner of four races in 2023 has fallen off of a cliff. He somehow managed to finish fourth at Nashville, in a weekend where he mostly struggled. He had a pair of twenty-fifth place finishes at the Gallagher Grand Prix and the Bommarito 500, before finishing fifth at Portland. Yesterday, he finished twenty-fourth in the season finale.

From sweeping the double-header at Iowa, he fell from second to fifth in points. The Nashville native seemed snake-bit in his last five races and tied for his worst finish (fifth in 2018), since he joined Team Penske in 2017. He can take solace knowing that the last time he finished fifth in the standings, he came back to win the championship the following year.

Needing a Re-fuel: No, I’m not talking about any of the drivers in the race, I’m referring to the Honda Pace Car late in the race. Maybe they like to transport the cars with little or no fuel, but there were so many caution laps in yesterday’s race, the pace car had to be re-fueled. The NBC cameras caught IndyCar Technical Director Kevin Blanch manually pouring gasoline into the Honda, just after one of the extended yellows. Maybe no one else thought it was humorous, but it struck me as funny.

Why is This Different? Yesterday’s race produced eight cautions and everyone seemed to think it was great. It was. But last year, the Music City Grand Prix had eight cautions and everyone labeled it a “sh**show”. Being a longtime Nashville resident, I’m a little defensive about my hometown race; so I’d like to know why one was considered great, while another one was a sh**show?

Time to Say Goodbye: Longtime readers of this site know what huge Helio Castroneves fan I’ve always been. I always pulled for him in the 2000s when he was so close to winning a championship, but never pulled it off. I’ve always been a fan of his persona. I’ve met Helio a few times over the years. I certainly don’t claim to know him, but I can say that he is exactly the same in-person as he comes across on television – energetic, highly up-beat and personable. I was ecstatic when he finally won his fourth Indianapolis 500 in 2021.

All of that being said, from what we saw of Helio on the track this season, it was time for him to step out of the cockpit fulltime. This weekend underscored that. Through practice, qualifying and the race – it seemed that every time I looked up, Helio was spinning out of control.

I realize the Meyer Shank cars have been no picnic to drive this season, but Castroneves seemed to be more of a rolling obstacle than anything else this season. He still knows his way around the oval at IMS, and I’m glad we will still be seeing his there for the next couple of years. But his time on the road & street courses had already come to an end before this weekend. I’m glad he gracefully stepped out of the car and will still be around the paddock in a management role for years to come.

Tip of the Hat: I don’t mind admitting I was wrong, when it has such a positive outcome. I was certain that Juncos Hollinger Racing (JHR) was making a mistake to expand to a two-car team this soon after their first fulltime season in 2022. Then when I learned they were putting a thirty-three year-old driver from Argentina that had never even seen an oval before – I thought they were headed for a disastrous year.

While neither Callum Ilott or Agustin Canapino set the world on fire, they had a very solid season this year, and were both running in the Top-Six late in yesterday’s race. Ilott finished fifth yesterday, while Canapino nursed his car around with a broken front-wing for a fourteenth place finish, while running as high as third.

Drive of the Day: Speaking of JHR, I am going to give the Drive of the Day to Callum Ilott. He was hit numerous times, and spent a lot of time on pit-lane. But he kept his head down and continued to move forward. He was third late in the race, and ultimately ended up with a career-best fifth-place finish. This, after starting twentieth. He hasn’t signed with anyone yet for next season, but is expected to return to JHR. Surely winning the Drive of the Day, can give him some leverage in negotiations.

All in All: This race had the potential to be a dud. There was no drama regarding the championship, and even most of the finishing positions were locked up. There was a distinct possibility that drivers would simply show up and go through the motions this weekend. But that’s not what race drivers do.

Instead, everyone attacked the weekend with a go-for-broke mentality. The fast speeds caused by the new pavement helped, and the slipperiness of that new pavement created one of the most entertaining races of the season. I thought it was one of the best send-offs into the offseason, since the series ended the season on ovals like Texas and Chicagoland. So much for slipping quietly into the offseason.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on September 11, 2023 at 4:05 am 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.