Oilpressure

One thing you can say for the double-header weekend at Iowa – the racing was sure better than last year. IndyCar and Firestone both made the proper adjustments to not have a repeat of last year’s twin duds. It’s interesting how you can run the same drivers on the same track, two days in a row – yet get different results.

A perfect example for that was what happened at AJ Foyt Racing. On Saturday, Santino Ferrucci had the better car, and finished eighth after running as high as seventh very late ion the race. His teammate, David Malukas, was mostly anonymous on Saturday, and finished a very quiet twelfth. On Sunday, Malukas was challenging for the win in second, late in the race; before settling for fourth after getting caught in the pits by an untimely yellow. This time, it was Ferrucci who was silent and finished an unremarkable fifteenth.

While Pato O’Ward and Alex Palou each won one of the two races at Iowa this weekend, the top car & driver combination was undoubtedly Josef Newgarden. It was a botched pit stop late in the race that saw the left-front tire changer bobble a tire just long enough to allow O’Ward to exit the pits ahead of Newgarden. On Sunday, he was caught in the pits by a yellow – not once, but twice. He had just recovered from the first one and taken the lead, when he and several Chevy drivers pitted, just before the yellow came out for Colton Herta hitting the wall.

I got a little tired of hearing Newgarden referred to as the King of Corn County, but it certainly fits. He put on a clinic for both days, and came away with one podium to show for it.

Saturday’s race took a while to get interesting, but the last 35 laps or so, ere great. Sunday’s Race Two was good from the drop of the green flag. It was refreshing to see O’Ward, Chevy and Arrow McLaren all get their first win of the season. On Sunday, it was back to business as usual, with Alex Palou winning his seventh race of the season. I think even the most optimistic fans that thought this championship race would tighten up, is now resigned to the fact that Palou is going to run away with this championship by Portland, if not Laguna Seca. The season finale in Nashville will be to decide who finishes second. All we can do now is appreciate what we are watching.

Michael Andretti and Al Unser, Jr each won eight races on the way to their respective championships in 1991 and 1994. Now the question will be if Palou can surpass those numbers. He has five races to do it. I think he could hit nine, or possibly the historic ten races. That would be impressive.

TV Coverage: I will warn you on the front-end. This is a rant. If you don’t like my rants, skip down to the next section.

When will this slobbering love affair between James Hinchcliffe and Devlin DeFrancesco stop? I get it that they both hail from the Toronto area, but does that make it law that you must blindly pull for a driver, no matter how awful he or she is?

The thing is, I really like James Hinchcliffe, as a former driver, a personality on the air and in his podcasts. Most of his analysis in the booth are pretty much spot-on, but his fellow Canadian man-crush is damaging his credibility.

From the moment that Devlin DeFrancesco stepped in an Indy car for the 2022 season-opener at St. Petersburg, Hinchcliffe made it clear that he thought “Dev” was something special. In the second race of the season at Texas, DeFrancesco clearly took out Helio Castroneves and Graham Rahal about halfway through the race. There was no doubt who was at fault, but Hinch proceeded to try and lay blame on one of the other two drivers.

For the next two seasons, any time there was an incident involving DeFrancesco; we were led to believe from the booth that Dev was a victim of being in the wrong place at the right time.

I am not one to think that sports announcers are biased. On Monday mornings during football season, social media is full of fans claiming that so and so, clearly hates their team and was so obvious in pulling for the other team. I usually scoff at those claims. I usually watch the same game and that thought never dawns on me – so don’t think I usually scream that announcers are always biased. They couldn’t care less usually. They just want a good game, or race, in this instance.

When De Francesco mercifully lost his ride at the end of the 2023 season, I was relieved for two reasons. First and foremost, he would stop taking out other drivers. But also, because it meant we would no longer hear Hinchcliffe trying to explain how Dev’s most recent wadded up car was somehow someone else’s fault.

It happened again yesterday. When DeFrancesco inexplicably lost the back end of the car, before even getting to the line to take the green-flag. He also took out Scott McLaughlin who actually was in the wrong place at the wrong time. In doing so, he deprived us of getting to witness Part II of what McLaughlin did on Saturday – carving his way up through the field from last-place to finish fourth.

They showed the replay and I think even our yellow lab, Maley, could have been able to tell who was at fault. Yet, Hinchcliffe watched the same replay we were all looking at and somehow came to the conclusion that McLaughlin had come down into Dev and caused the contact. It took the usually excitable Townsend Bell to be the voice of reason and correct Hinchcliffe by telling him that DeFrancesco was at fault.

What’s even more perplexing is why Hinchcliffe defends DeFrancesco in the first place? He comes across on television as a very unlikable guy. The clip they showed of DeFrancesco and McLaughlin at Thermal earlier this season does not show Dev in a good light. I’ve noticed a very condescending attitude from DeFrancesco any time he is interviewed – especially by Georgia Henneberry. An unlikable guy who is also a bad driver is not a good combination. I know Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing needs funding, but at what cost? He is tearing up a lot of race cars, and acting surly in the process.

I hope that James Hinchcliffe will take off his maple leaf-filled lenses and realize that his constant defense of Devlin DeFrancesco is hurting his own credibility and reputation. Someone needs to tell him to stop the love fest for a driver that really has no business being in the series, except for the money he brings. End of rant.

The Crowd: I’ve always been one to think that if there is racing at a race track, that’s all I need to know. I’m there. About 20 to 25 years ago, when IndyCar tracks started having concerts before or after races – I scoffed. My thought was that if you need a concert to go to a race, then you’re not a real race fan.

For the last three years, the Hy-Vee IndyCar weekends at Iowa Speedway were loaded with top-name attractions – most, but not all, were country music superstars who performed before or after each race. For the first couple of years, Hy-Vee subsidized a lot of the cost for these A-listers, but last year the cost was mostly passed to the customers. Much to the dismay of racing fans. Many of them sounded like me, saying there was no real need for concerts

This year, Hy-Vee is gone and so are the concerts. Ticket prices are much cheaper, but along with Hy-Vee and the concerts – the fans are gone too. I heard through the grapevine that less than 6.000 tickets were sold for each race. In all honesty, from what I saw on television – that was a generous estimate.

What happened to all those people that said they would go to Iowa if only they would lower prices and get rid of the concerts. I guess they are the same ones who swore they would attend a 500-mile IndyCar race at Pocono, if the series would ever return. The series showed up, but the fans didn’t.

I heard from several people that were at at Iowa this past weekend, that local promotion was non-existent this year. I’m not sure how they know that, considering the majority of them didn’t arrive at Iowa until Thursday at the earliest. But Hy-Vee did an excellent job of promoting that race. It was quite evident when we were there last year.

What I saw of the stands this weekend makes me worry for Milwaukee. That was an outstanding double-header race weekend, also promoted with the help of Hy-Vee. Well, the grocery chain has scaled back their efforts this year and it is a single race event. My fear is the stands at Milwaukee will resemble what we say at Iowa this weekend.

I also fear for this event in the future. The racing was bad last year, but the Hy-Vee crowd was good. This year, the racing was good, but the crowd was abysmal. On Trackside last week, they were talking about how a bad crowd and bad racing could spell the end of IndyCar racing in Iowa. Well, they got one out of two.

Will that be enough? I have an idea if the series returns next year, it will be down to one race. But the fine folks at Penske Entertainment need to get in gear to quickly find a Hy-Vee-like corporate partner, or Iowa could go the route of Texas, Phoenix, Pocono, etc…

The Next Bill Belichick? The latest topic for debate among IndyCar fans is the demeanor of Josef Newgarden. I have defended Newgarden’s surly demeanor, because he is in a place he’s never been in during his fourteen years in IndyCar. Since May, his entire professional world has been rocked by scandal, and their leadership has been decimated. Tim Cindric was Newgarden’s strategist, mentor, and friend. He was probably involved in every move of Newgarden’s life since he joined Team Penske for the 2017 season. Then suddenly one day, he’s gone – along with two other key people in the team’s structure.

Aside from the changes, everything at Team Penske has all gone terribly wrong this year. Newgarden looks miserable, because he probably is miserable. As recently as this past Friday, I urged fans to cut him some slack as the two-time Indianapolis 500 champion sorts things out.

Fans are evenly divided on this topic. Some fans vehemently defend Newgarden and think fans should leave him alone. Others are ready to dance on his grave and take joy in his misery.

I was more in the camp of the former, but this weekend I saw several interviews with Newgarden and it’s almost like he’s trying to be sour. After he had posted the fastest qualifying times of the day, which ultimately put him on the pole for Saturday’s race – Georgia Henneberry interviewed him and congratulated him on finally having some good fortune. Rather than happily agreeing with her, Newgarden scowled and simply mumbled something about we’ll see if it holds up.

For a minute there, I could have sworn I was looking at a younger version of former Patriot’s coach Bill Belichick. No matter if he was asked a good question or a stupid one, Belichick always had the demeanor of someone on their way to the proctologist. That’s how Newgarden looked this weekend, as if he was trying to cultivate a new bad guy image.

Some people can carry off the image of sarcasm, and some can’t. Alexander Rossi has always been eccentric with a very dry sense of humor. He can pull it off. Newgarden used to be a pleasant and enthusiastic kid, who couldn’t wait for his next chance to climb back into a race car. Now that things are going rough, he has morphed into this unpleasant curmudgeon that no one has seen from him before. Unlike Rossi, he can’t pull it off.

Josef Newgarden seems to be in a dark place right now. Is this strictly from bad luck and lack of results, or is there more to this than we know? I like Newgarden and think that deep down, he is a really nice guy. I am hoping there is nothing more to this story and that we see him back near the top of the standings next year; because he sure seems miserable right now.

Drive of the Weekend: This one was easy, even though he didn’t even make it to the green-flag on Sunday. Scott McLaughlin crashed on his first qualifying lap and was forced to start at the back of the field in both races. He responded by picking off twenty-three places on Saturday and finishing fourth. It was an old-school drive that would make Lloyd Ruby smile.

Without turning a lap on Sunday,m what he did on Saturday was good enough to earn Scott McLaughlin the coveted Oilpressure.com Drive of the Weekend.

All in All: A tornado that pushed through Newton, Iowa on Friday forced all practices to be pushed to Saturday morning. In a strange way, that may have been a good thing because it put a sensed of urgency into the entire paddock. Whatever the case, both races this past weekend were far better than the yawn-inducing races we saw last year from Iowa.

Was it the bad racing last year that kept people away, or was it the lack of Hy-Vee and any proper promotion? We will probably never know for sure, but one thing we do know is there was almost no one in the stands this weekend – and that was with pleasant and much cooler temperatures than last year. I am hoping this is just a one-year blip, because Iowa needs to have a permanent place on the IndyCar schedule. But the lack of attendance could spell doom for this fan-favorite, short oval track.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on July 14, 2025 at 4:03 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.