Oilpressure

Well, that was fun! I don’t know how it looked on television, but from where I was in the pits (and watching a couple of monitors) This was a very good race. I’m not sure where it stacks up against Gateway a couple of weeks ago, but it was certainly better than what we saw at Iowa last month. There were two passes for the lead before the first caution took place on Lap 83, when Katherine Legge spun coming out of Turn Two without hitting anything.

Other than watching Pato O’ Ward start from eighth and earn his way to a very satisfying win for him, there were two drivers that were so fun to watch, it was worth the price of admission just to watch them carve their way through the field – Conor Daly and Santino Ferrucci. Daly started eighteenth and finished third, while Ferrucci started twenty-second and finished fourth.

Ferrucci was running second behind O’Ward and appeared to be catching him. A 2.5 second lead lead turned into a 1.2 second lead in about 20 laps. There was one problem – Will Problem was running third and was hungry. He caught Ferrucci and in the process of passing him, the two touched. Ferrucci lost two spots to Power and Daly. For a few laps, Alex Palou passed Ferrucci as well, relegating him to fifth. But Ferrucci eventually got that position back and settled for fourth.

Every driver on that podium earned their way up there. Power lost position to Palou on a gutsy move by Palou when both were exiting their respective pits, but Power got the spot back on the track.

As I mentioned earlier, this was a very satisfying win for Pato O’Ward. He has been caught in a firestorm this weekend, in a war of words with Penske Entertainment President Mark Miles, over O’Ward being angry about NASCAR securing a race in Mexico City instead of IndyCar. Miles fired back saying something to the effect that O’Ward is not as popular in his own country as he thinks, and that former Mexican driver Adrian Fernandez was much more popular than O’Ward. It escalated from there.

Needless to say, It was a very raucous press conference. When Pato O’Ward has a chip on his shoulder and comes through with a win – he can be very entertaining.

This was a very clean race. There were only three cautions. The first was the aforementioned yellow flag for Katherine Legge, who avoided contact with anything and was able to continue. She finished nineteenth, but was six laps down at the end. The only crash of the night came on Lap 147, when Marcus Ericsson and Josef Newgarden got together in the Turns1-2 complex. Ericsson was moving inside to pass Newgarden. Those that watched on Peacock probably have a better idea on who was at fault, but by the replays I saw – it was hard to tell. If I was forced to assign blame, Ericsson may have just a little bit more of the blame than Newgarden, because Ericsson looked to be a little high – but it was mostly just a racing incident, at least by what I saw on monitors.

The last caution came on Lap 187. Colton Herta had just pitted, but shortly after he left the pits, his left-front wheel left the car and went rolling across the track on its own. Viewers at home probably know more than I do about what made the wheel come loose.

I hate to admit it, but the crowd was much better than I expected. I was in the pits, directly across the track from the main grandstand. The upper deck looked about 90% full, while the lower level was probably about half full. I’m not good at estimating numbers in the crowd, but I do know when something exciting happened like a good pass – you could hear the crowd roar over the sound of the engines. That was impressive. I also noticed late in the race that those in the upper deck were standing as things got exciting. That’s something you don’t see at every race.

IndyCar, The Milwaukee Mile and Hy-Vee should be very happy and proud the way Race One turned out. There were 667 on-track passes in the race. 106 of those came from Conor Daly and Santino Ferrucci – who had 53 each. From what we saw tonight, I’m anxious to see what tomorrow brings,

We will be back here late tomorrow morning. The race broadcast on USA Network begins at 1:30 pm local time (CDT), and the green flag flies at 2:00 pm. The weather forecast calls for it to be much cooler tomorrow than today – probably a ten-degree difference. We’ll see how that affects the racing, but if we get on Sunday what we got on Saturday – we should all be happy.

I’ll close again with some of Susan’s photos from the race. Check in tomorrow.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on August 31, 2024 at 9:02 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.