Oilpressure

We really enjoy coming to the Sonsio Grand prix each year. It’s a great kickoff to the Month of May, seeing friends we haven’t seen since last May and visiting some of our favorite restaurants. But we don’t really expect great racing when we come for the first weekend of track activity of the month.

There have been interesting races during the Grand Prix weekend, but today was not one of them. Alex Palou started on pole, but Christian Lundgaard passed him on the start, and led the entire first stint of the race. Will Power also passed Palou during that first stint, shuffling Palou to third. It was looking like it could be an interesting day.

There was the usual mayhem going into Turn One, but it involved drivers in mid-pack. Then Colton Herta got into it with new teammate Marcus Ericsson. That will make for an interesting team meeting tonight.

But on the first series of stops, Palou came out ahead of Power and Lundgaard, and that was pretty much your race. The only real thing of note is that Lundgaard dropped from first to second on the first pit stop, and from second to third on his second. I’m not sure if there problems, or if Lundgaard’s Rahal Letterman Lanigan team just gave him slower stops. After the second and third set of pit stops, Palou kept extending his lead.

The only thing that might’ve slowed Palou down was an untimely yellow – the only one of the day. That came on Lap 66, when Luca Ghiotto’s car was stalled on the track. However, Palou got a great start and that’s how things ended eighteen laps later, with Palou winning by 6.5106 seconds over Will Power.

The box score says there were fourteen lead changes among eight different drivers, which indicates it was a thrilling race. It wasn’t. This race needed more than one yellow to make it interesting. Most of those lead changes came on green-flag pit stop shuffles.

Palou becomes the fourth different winner in four races in 2024. Chip Ganassi Racing has now won their second race of the season, while Team Penske and Arrow McLaren have one win each. Honda and Chevy have two wins each. Things seem very balanced heading into the 500.

Will Power finished second today, but in the post-race press conference he sounded like a man who had finished second to last. He did not sound like a driver who was only twelve points behind Palou, the new points leader.

I’m still impressed with Power’s focus this season. Even though he lost two crew-members for the 500 due to suspension – I’m still leaning toward picking him to win the Indianapolis 500…but not yet.

Am I complaining? Absolutely not. I have been coming to this race ever since the Inaugural Grand Prix in 2014. More times than not, this race tends to be processional. If we get to watch a great race, great!. If it is not real exciting like today – well, we got to spend two days at IMS watching race cars go by. What could be better than that? I look at this race as simply an appetizer for the rest of the month.

Last year this race started a massive run for Alex Palou, which saw him win four out of five races – the only non-win was a fourth place finish in the Indianapolis 500. From that point, the rest of the season was a runaway for Palou. Are we looking at a repeat of 2023? Stay tuned.

In keeping with the theme of posting every day in the Month of May, I will have a post here on Sunday, then I will have my usual Random Thoughts post on Monday and will have a post here every day leading up to Qualifying Weekend. Again, I’ll close with some of Susan’s photos from the day. Thanks to everyone for following along this weekend.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on May 11, 2024 at 6:27 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.