Oilpressure

For the past nine days, we have been living nostalgically in the Month of May. I’ve spent the past several days listening to old episodes of The Talk of Gasoline Alley with Donald Davidson, as well as new nightly episodes of Trackside with Curt Cavin and Kevin Lee and Beyond the Bricks with Jake Query & Mike Thomsen. I’ve also subjected Susan to random videos covering the past 80 years of the Indianapolis 500. Well, the Month of May gets real starting today.

Susan and I are (hopefully) on the road to IMS as you read this. The plan was to leave Nashville about 5:30 am CDT. That should put us in Indianapolis around 11:00 am EDT, losing an hour to the time change. It really messed things up for us folks in the Central Time Zone, when Indiana chose to observe Daylight Saving Time (DST) – meaning they stayed on Eastern time year round. In the past, Indiana was an hour ahead of Nashville in the winter months, but on the same time as Nashville in the spring and summer months. Indiana chose not to observe DST before 2006 – they simply stayed on Eastern Standard Time year-round, so it was essentially the same as Central Daylight Time. That went away in 2006. Change is Bad!

There is no way that we will make Practice One, which starts at 9:30 am EDT and shown live on Peacock. So we plan to get the month off to a nice start by going straight to The Workingman’s Friend, for one of the best burgers you’ll ever eat. The late Robin Miller went there often and loved it. What else needs to be said? Hopefully, we will make it to the track in time for Practice Two, which starts at 1:10 pm EDT, and will also be shown on Peacock.

Don’t forget, this is always a Saturday race, so qualifying will take place Friday afternoon at 4:20 pm EDT, also on Peacock.

Unfortunately, the big story for this weekend – and probably the entire month – is the suspension of Tim Cindric and three others from Team Penske. We will probably never know what all happened with the P2P fiasco at St. Petersburg, but I know one thing – I’m tired of hearing about it. Do I think Team Penske blatantly set out to get away with using P2P on re-starts? No. Do I take everything they are saying as complete and total face-value? No. The truth lies somewhere in between.

All the holier-than-thou approach from the other teams in the paddock, however, is almost comical. It reminds me of when one football school gets caught cheating in recruiting and their biggest rival acts so shocked – as if they would never stoop so low, while all the while they are doing the exact same thing.

There have been a lot of funny and creative memes pop up out of all this, but I guess if you are Roger Penske, Tim Cindric or Josef Newgarden and your integrity and reputation is being dragged through the mud – it’s probably not as funny. My fear is that this will overshadow all of the other usual storylines we get at this time of year. I hold out hope that this will go away after this weekend’s Sonsio Grand Prix.

Speaking of the Grand Prix, I think that this could be anyone’s race. Sometimes, this race can serve as an indication as to who might be strong in the Indianapolis 500, then other times – there is absolutely no correlation whatsoever. In 2018 & 2019, the winner of the Grand Prix, went on to win the Indianapolis 500. Last year, Alex Palou won the Grand Prix and the pole for the 500. Had it not been for Rinus VeeKay hitting Palou in the pits and sending him to the back of the field on Lap 93; I think there is a good chance that Palou could’ve won the race. That’s how strong he was.

On the other end of the spectrum, last year the Rahal Letterman Lanigan (RLL) cars were strong in the Grand Prix, but were way off pace for the 500 from the very first practice – leading to Graham Rahal being the only car bumped from the race.

This is the tenth anniversary of this race, so I guess it will be the eleventh running. Of course, that first race in 2014 featured the infamous standing start that saw pole-sitter Sebastian Saavedra stall his car. Most of the field was able to avoid the sitting duck, but Carlos Muñoz and Mikhail Aleshin finally crashed into him. I happened to be in the right spot to capture the moment.

Simon Pagenaud won that race for Sam Schmidt Motorsports. From 2014 through 2019, race victories at the Grand Prix bounced between Pagenaud and Will Power. After the 2019 race, the tally was three apiece. There was no race in 2020, but 2021 broke that trend when Rinus VeeKay won his only career race. The 2022 race was run in the rain, with Colton Herta putting on a show as he displayed his skills for driving in the wet. Last year, it was Palou taking the checkered fag in dominating fashion. It was the beginning of a stretch that saw Palou win four out of five races, pretty much wrapping up the championship in the first half of the season.

In the past, there have been no huge surprises – with the possible exception of VeeKay in 2021. But this year’s race is hard to pin down. The RLL cars were good at this race last years, but were great in the race during the Brickyard weekend. The seem to have this track pretty well figured out.

Quite honestly, I think there is too much turmoil going on at Team Penske this week. Things may settle down by the time practice for the oval rolls around on Tuesday, but I think they are still reeling a little bit from all of the drama there over the last few weeks. They will not win on the road course this weekend.

Scott Dixon pulled a fuel-mileage rabbit out of his hat in the August race at IMS last year, much like the one at Long Beach last month. Palou has been strong, but hasn’t won a race yet (and please don’t throw Thermal Club in my face). I’m sticking with my theory that five cars may be too much for Chip Ganassi Racing, especially when the 500 practice and qualifying rolls around next week. Three Indianapolis 500 rookies combined with two savvy veterans could be taking its toll on this team. I’m saying neither driver will repeat their 2023 wins on this track this weekend.

We can no longer say that Arrow McLaren has gone winless for almost the past two seasons, but it has been since Iowa in 2022 since we’ve seen a McLaren driver in an IndyCar Victory Lane. We saw one last week in Miami, so their luck may continue.

Andretti Global has been solid so far this season, but not spectacular. They won twice last year, and could certainly use a win to kick-start May.

My guess is the Sonsio Grand Prix at Indianapolis will come down to three teams – RLL, McLaren and Andretti. I also think that any driver could win among Andretti, and two drivers each from McLaren and RLL could come away with the win. I’m going back and forth between Graham Rahal and Marcus Ericsson, but I think Ericsson will have a slightly better car and he is ready to break out for his new team. Therefore, I am predicting that Marcus Ericsson will win the 2024 Sonsio Grand Prix. My apologies to the Ericsson family and his team for dooming his race weekend.

Although the race will be run on Saturday (3:00 pm EDT coverage on NBC); Friday is the better value day to be at the track, with two practices (9:30 am & 1:10 pm) and qualifying at 4:20 pm EDT – all on Peacock.

With this being our first weekend in Indianapolis since we came to the Brickyard weekend last August, we plan to hit many of our regular spots. After eating lunch today at The Workingman’s Friend, we plan to have dinner tonight at Dawson’s. We may eat breakfast Saturday morning at Charlie Brown’s, but we might save money and eat the free hotel breakfast. We are staying out in Plainfield past the airport, so we will probably eat dinner at our new favorite spot out there – The Coachman.

Don’t tell Mrs. Oilpressure, but I plan to take her to a place for Sunday brunch she has been wanting to go to for years – Café Patachou in downtown Indianapolis. For at least the past ten years, she has been asking to go there – b ut racing always got in the way. With no track activity on Sunday, I plan to treat her there for Mother’s Day before heading back to Nashville.

We plan on posting through the weekend, and Oilpressure.com will continue posting every day in May until past the 500. Please check back regularly throughout the weekend. May is about to get real!

George Phillips

This entry was posted on May 10, 2024 at 4:02 am 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.