By Susan Phillips
In a few hours our 2021 racing travel season will come to a close. The Bommarito Auto Group 500 usually signals the last race we attend for the year. I will be envious of the people we see at Portland, Laguna Seca, and Long Beach, but I’m not entirely sure I am up for cross-country flying and being race-ready when we arrive. I have done well to go to three consecutive races in a row!
Well…at least the Team Penske cars of Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin were sizzling on a very hot and muggy afternoon at World Wide Technology Raceway. They paced the one and only practice for tonight’s Bommarito 500. The ninety-minute practice session went without incident, which should be a big relief for all teams. Nothing could have been much worse than to have a team wad up a car just a couple of hours before qualifying.
Good morning from a cloudy and very muggy World Wide Technology Raceway in Madison, Illinois; directly across the mighty Mississippi River from the famous St. Louis Arch. Based on what the radar showed around 6:30 this morning, it looked as if a long morning of steady rain was imminent. A storm system with red cells moved through Kansas City last night and appeared to be bearing down on the St. Louis area. The red cells expanded to large areas of dark green that were headed our way and looked certain to, at best, create a wet track for the only practice session of the weekend – scheduled for 12:15 CDT (available on Peacock). But within the last area, what didn’t dissipate headed to the south of us. At this point, it looks as if practice will take place as scheduled.
After fans of the NTT IndyCar Series went four straight weekends with no races, we head into our third straight racing weekend. It seems that it is feast or famine. The stretch started two weeks ago with the Music City Grand Prix. Then last weekend was the IndyCar/NASCAR double-header weekend on the IMS road course. This weekend brings us the Bommarito Automotive Group 500 from World Wide Technology Raceway (formerly Gateway Motorsports Park), just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis.
By Susan Phillips
I guess I don’t share the popular opinion of the hard-core IndyCar fan—I didn’t feel the same revulsion that many people felt about the Cup cars defiling the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I don’t look at the Speedway as a race, I don’t breathe in the smell of Ethanol fumes and feel the blood racing in my veins.
They have been running stock car races at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway since 1994, when the first Brickyard 400 ran in August of that year. Although the name, date and now format of that event have gone through several changes, the general public still refers to this as the Brickyard weekend. I have been attending the Indianapolis 500 since 1965, although I’ve certainly missed several of them in that time frame. Not until this past weekend have I ever seen stock cars on this track. I am not kicking myself for not doing it sooner.
After a span of about ten and a half months, Will Power is finally back in the win column. After a very disappointing 2021 season that saw Will Power enter the Big Machine Spiked Coolers Grand Prix eleventh in points and winless after earning only two podiums on the season, Power showed his mastery of the 2.439 mile IMS road course with a 1.1142 second win over Romain Grosjean.
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