Oilpressure

Day One of the Hy-Vee IndyCar weekend was a rousing success, as far as I’m concerned. It’s been a while since I’ve packed in this much fun in a six-hour period at a race track.

As soon as I put up my last post; a bunch of us went to eat lunch at Honda Hospitality, who is always kind enough to let media in to eat. As we were eating, Katherine Legge was over at the next table celebrating her birthday, which is today. The good folks at Honda had a surprise cake for her. Of course, I got a quick photo.

While we were eating lunch, the Indy NXT Series took to the track for their only practice of the weekend. About thirty minutes after their practice, the NTT IndyCar Series began their session to “rubber in” the track. I was standing in the pits and decided to take a quick video.

Once the real practice session started, it didn’t take long for the caution flag to come out. Andretti Global’s Marcus Ericsson hit the Turn Four wall. He was OK, but his car had some fairly significant damage.

During the prolonged caution period, I walked through the tunnel under Turns One and Two to go check out the main grandstands. It was in the sun, but there was a nice breeze blowing so it was really quite pleasant.

What I like about short ovals like Iowa, Gateway and Nashville is that you can see the entire track from the stands. I’ve not yet been to Milwaukee, so I can’t speak from experience on that track. I took a quick video of Scott Dixon leaving the pits and turning two quick laps, showing the view from the stands.

After I sat there for a good while, I came back down and checked out the vending areas. I was impressed with how many table areas there are for fans to sit and enjoy their food, instead of having it go all over their shirts while trying to eat in their seats. I speak from experience, because I’ve done that myself. Here are a couple of photos I took of the eating areas.

There were many food trucks on hand, offering a variety of foods. If you can imagine it, they had it. I went by one of the track operated concession stands and snuck a photo of their menu.

Once I got back inside the infield, I saw one of the trams that runs between the parking lot and the infield. Only in Iowa would you see a tram pulled by a massive John Deere tractor.

Just as I got back to the pits, Katherine Legge /spun coming out of Turn Four, but did a great job of saving the car and not hitting anything. The final mishap involved Romain Grosjean who spun coming out of Turn Two. he also managed to not hit anything, but as he and Scott Dixon were coming into the pits, Grosjean made contact with Dixon’s front wing. Looking at the replay on the video boards, it looked to me like it was Grosjean’s fault – but Dixon assumed blame for the incident.

When the checkered flag flew, Scott McLaughlin set the quickest lap with a time of 17.3134 seconds for an average speed of 185.891 mph. Not bad for a 7/8 of a mile oval. Alex Palou was literally just a tick behind with a time of 17.3465 seconds and a speed of 185.536 mph. Pato O’Ward, David Malukas and Alexander Rossi rounded out the Top-Five.

Josef Newgarden, who has won three of the past four races here, was only fifteenth quick with a speed of 181.511 mph.

At the other end of the spectrum, the bottom five were Marcus Armstrong, who was twenty-third quick; then Katherine Legge, Sting Ray Robb, Kyffin Simpson and Ed Carpenter.

There is no morning practice. IndyCar qualifications get underway at 2:45 pm CDT, with Race One starting at 7:00 pm CDT. We will get here sometime around lunchtime. Susan has almost finished her article and will post it sometime in the morning.

Speaking of Susan, I will close with some of the photos that Susan took today. Please check out her post for tomorrow and then I will “try” to post something between IndyCar qualifying and Race One – depending on if I go to the Luke Combs concert. Thanks for following along today, and check back tomorrow.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on July 12, 2024 at 6:50 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.