A clean opening day of NTT IndyCar Series action at Road America took a different turn Saturday morning as three contenders for pole position returned to pit lane with their cars dangling from tow trucks. The first to crash was Chip Ganassi Racing’s …
A clean opening day of NTT IndyCar Series action at Road America took a different turn Saturday morning as three contenders for pole position returned to pit lane with their cars dangling from tow trucks.
The first to crash was Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou, who flew off at Turn 14 and damaged the right side of the No. 10 Honda on his third lap. Although the damage was not excessive, the brief two-hour gap between the end of the second practice session and the start of qualifying is where the pressure to affect repairs in a timely manner was impossible to ignore.
The biggest crash, however, was reserved for Palou’s teammate Scott Dixon and Team Penske’s Will Power, who was hit by the No. 9 Honda on the way up the hill leaving Turn 12. With Dixon having spun, recovered, and while running slow on the right side of the track, the CGR driver waited for Romain Grosjean to clear him before turning left but didn’t appear to see the oncoming Power as he ventured directly into the path of the oncoming No. 12 Chevy.
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The ensuing crash did extensive damage to both machines, breaking suspensions and wings before the cars came to a stop on the grass. An enraged Power climbed from his car, flipped Dixon the middle finger with both hands — reminiscent of his “double birds” incident at the Loudon IndyCar race in 2011 — before charging down to Dixon’s car and pushing him before AMR Safety Team members restrained him.
Dixon, who took responsibility for the clash, didn’t attempt to parry Power’s advances, acknowledging his rival was “pretty fired up.”
Experience took precedence over youth in IndyCar’s second practice session on the new downtown Detroit racecourse, Scott Dixon leading Will Power, as all drivers struggled to find a clear lap between traffic and red flags. Since yesterday, the pit …
Experience took precedence over youth in IndyCar’s second practice session on the new downtown Detroit racecourse, Scott Dixon leading Will Power, as all drivers struggled to find a clear lap between traffic and red flags.
Since yesterday, the pit exit has been pinched, the blend line moving three feet closer to the right-hand wall to allow cars on the track to swing out and take a wider entry into the left-handed Turn 1 that follows.
The session was barely three minutes old when the first red flag flew as Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden got his Penske-Chevrolet stuck down an escape road and needed retrieving.
One of his teammates, Scott McLaughlin, was the first driver to set a sub-650second time with a 1m04.3660s on his sixth lap, an average of 92.005mph around the 1.645-mile course.
Kyle Kirkwood obliterated that with a 1m03.5658s for Andretti Autosport-Honda, and Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda’s Alex Palou also ducked under the 64-second barrier but then out came the second red to retrieve Rinus VeeKay of Ed Carpenter Racing-Chevrolet.
Palou had just moved up to the top of the times but then spun down an escape road and stalled, so out came the third red. The fourth followed soon after, thanks to Colton Herta’s Andretti car stranded in the Turn 8 runoff.
Another constant throughout the first half of the session, was the speed of yesterday’s pacesetter, the Arrow McLaren-Chevrolet of Pato O’Ward and Palou’s teammate Marcus Armstrong, the Kiwi shining on a track that is new to everyone. Both of them were within a tenth of Palou’s 1m03.7165s.
With a quarter-hour to go, Callum Ilott was a late improver in the Juncos Hollinger Racing-Chevrolet, but then he brushed a tire wall and pitted.
Scott Dixon delivered a 1m03.5s, then a 1m03.2317s to go to the top – a very impressive time on primary tires. Kyle Kirkwood’s earlier 1m03.5658s was also re-installed on the glitchy timing and scoring screens to put him second, while Penske’s Will Power kept trimming his time after a spring change at the rear of the No. 12 car to put himself in the top five. However, with 10mins to go he was bumped out of the top five by McLaughlin.
Just a couple of minutes later, Turn 7 claimed Devlin DeFrancesco who went in head-on and this was followed by a right-side impact.
With the No. 29 AA car scooped up and cleared away, there were nine minutes left as the field got the green flag, the drivers blended together from the two-abreast pitlane and then tried to find a gap to set a flyer. On such a short track, that was near impossible for anyone more than five cars back.
Power’s original best was invalidated for a yellow flag violation, but in the closing moments he set a 1m03.4627s to vault into second, albeit still 0.23s off Dixon’s benchmark and after a wild fishtail moment into the tires at the final turn.
NBC Sports revealed that Meyer Shank Racing did not have to change Helio Castroneves’ Honda unit despite his electronics causing engine over-revs yesterday, but they did make an early switch-out of the Honda unit in the back of his teammate Simon Pagenaud’s No. 60 entry.
Will Power was the fastest driver at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Monday at the field of 33 starters for the Indy 500 took part in a two-hour practice session before spending the next three days inspecting and rebuilding their cars for …
Will Power was the fastest driver at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Monday at the field of 33 starters for the Indy 500 took part in a two-hour practice session before spending the next three days inspecting and rebuilding their cars for Friday’s Carb Day outing.
The Team Penske veteran turned a 229.222mph lap in the No. 12 Chevy and was nearly matched by Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon, who produced a 229.184mph tour in the No. 9 Honda. Power was the only Penske representative towards the front of the drafting party; Dixon’s CGR teammates Takuma Sato (228.382mph) and Alex Palou (227.392mph) were next, followed by Arrow McLaren’s Tony Kanaan (227.094mph) in fifth and Ed Carpenter Racing’s Conor Daly in sixth (227.093mph).
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Elsewhere, front-row starter Rinus VeeKay was limited to 27 laps and was unable to rise above 33rd; fellow Fast 12 qualifier Santino Ferrucci was also mired at the bottom of the speed chart, relegated to 31st.
The main news of the afternoon was the big crash by Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s Katherine Legge and Dreyer & Reinbold’s Stefan Wilson, who was hit from behind by Legge in Turn 1, sending both drivers spinning into the wall and causing major damage to their respective cars. Legge was seen by trackside medical personnel and released, while Wilson — who gave everyone a thumbs up as he was loaded into an ambulance – was taken to a local hospital for further evaluation.
Team Penske’s Will Power joins RACER’s Marshall Pruett to recap the Indianapolis Grand Prix, where Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou stormed away to secure a dominant victory.
Team Penske’s Will Power joins RACER’s Marshall Pruett to recap the Indianapolis Grand Prix, where Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou stormed away to secure a dominant victory.
We’ve put the first quarter of the NTT IndyCar Series season to bed, and with that in mind, it’s time to make a few observations and draw a few conclusions about all that’s taken place before we hit the fast forward button and blast through the …
We’ve put the first quarter of the NTT IndyCar Series season to bed, and with that in mind, it’s time to make a few observations and draw a few conclusions about all that’s taken place before we hit the fast forward button and blast through the month of May, starting with Saturday’s Indianapolis Grand Prix.
• Spanning the opening four rounds, this has been the season of Romain Grosjean. With the 37-year-old leading three of the four races and showing himself to be Andretti Autosport’s most consistent threat and its steadiest performer, he heads to Indy sitting fifth in the championship, just 15 points out of the lead. That breakthrough victory can’t be far away.
• As much as I didn’t anticipate Grosjean would assert himself as Andretti’s top dog (so far), I also failed to imagine a scenario where Colton Herta would get through the four opening races with zero poles and zero wins. Herta’s had more than enough adversity to open the season and holds P10 in the championship, but so has Kyle Kirkwood, whose lone finish inside the top 10 came with his Long Beach win. It’s a bit of deja vu from 2022 for Herta, who entered the Indy GP sitting P11 in the championship. Herta, rolling into the Speedway, while P3 among Andretti’s four drivers? That’s a shocker.
Gavin Baker/Motorsport Images
• Kirkwood’s one spot ahead of Herta in the standings in P9. If it weren’t for his terrible luck at St. Petersburg (launched over Jack Harvey) and the suspension failure at Texas, he’d be a lot closer to Grosjean in the championship. And he’s almost out of bad finishes if he wants to be a title contender; you only get three or four poor results before championship aspirations start to fade, and registering two with 13 rounds left to run means Kirkwood needs to race clean and avoid cartoon anvils over the next five months.
• Marcus Ericsson’s doing something for the first time in his IndyCar career, and it bodes well for the future. A poor qualifying run to P16 in Texas? He flipped that into a finish of P8. Another underwhelming start at Barber where he rolled off P13? Improved to P10 by the checkered flag. Ericsson’s turning bad starts into better results, which is why he’s leading the championship and will continue to do so if he can keep landing on the podium as he’s done twice this year. He’s one of only two drivers — along with Ganassi teammate Alex Palou — to finish inside the top 10 at every round, and that’s how title bids become possible. The only fix Ericsson needs right now is to get his qualifying results back in order.
• Piggybacking on Ericsson’s season to date, Pato O’Ward has been a beast with a pair of seconds and a fourth. If he could go back to Long Beach, avoid the unwise lunge on Kirkwood that caused him to spin and trade a likely podium for P17, O’Ward would be the runaway championship leader.
• Leaving Barber last year, Team Penske landed at the Indy GP as Chevy’s top squad with Scott McLaughlin holding P2 and Josef Newgarden at P3 in the standings; O’Ward and Arrow McLaren, in P5, were second on the Bowtie’s depth chart. The tables have been turned departing Barber where McLaren is Chevy’s No. 1 team heading into the Indy GP, with O’Ward in P2. McLaughlin, in P4, isn’t far behind.
• Newgarden and Kirkwood are having extremely similar seasons where one big win has been surrounded by largely forgettable results. P6 in the standings, Newgarden’s been wearing his anger and frustration on the outside — readily visible in person, and on the broadcasts — which only emerged sporadically last season. Maybe “Angry Josef” is the persona that’s needed to earn a third championship.
• As noted, Palou has been a vision of consistency with all four finishes being between P3 and P8. If there’s a surprise here, it’s not in his solid performances; it’s in how he’s yet to look like a threat for victory, with a brief exception at Texas. Coming off a turbulent 2022 where it took until the 17th and final race for Palou to deliver a strong win, I didn’t anticipate the new season getting under way without him being in the mix for victory on a regular basis.
• Chevrolet caught Honda by surprise last year and ran away with the manufacturers’ championship after winning the first four races and seven more of the remaining 13. In response to its shellacking by the Bowtie, Honda’s taken two of the first four rounds this year and, thankfully, there doesn’t appear to be a major difference between the two, which should make for good fun as both appear capable of winning every race.
• The only caveat to the apparent engine parity is the Indy 500, where Honda mopped the floor with Chevy in 2022. One brand owned the season; the other owned the biggest race. Will we see a reversal of fortunes in qualifying and the race? Or will Chevy match or exceed the power and fuel economy Honda used to such devastating effect at the Speedway? I can’t wait to find out in a few weeks’ time.
• The mounting number of unforced errors by Helio Castroneves has been hard to watch and harder to ignore. Three off-track excursions of his own making at Barber, along with the solo lap 1, Turn 1 spin and crash at Long Beach, have placed the 48-year-old on the hot seat.
• The four-time Indy 500 winner’s struggles are emblematic of his Meyer Shank Racing team’s season. To his credit, Castroneves has MSR’s only top 10 — a P10 at Texas — and every other result when combined with Simon Pagenaud’s output has been P15 or worse. Said another way, of the eight total races with both drivers, seven of the eight finishes have been between P15 and P26, which isn’t sustainable. I can’t think of a tandem that needs to have a transformative Indy 500 more than Castroneves and Pagenaud.
• Rookie Sting Ray Robb heeded the advice of many entering Long Beach: Just get to the finish. And after two DNFs to open his season, the dialed-back mindset helped. A fiery end to Barber wasn’t his fault, but it did compound the issue of completing so few race laps. Of the 525 race laps run in 2023, Robb’s missed out on 101 in just four races.
Kyle Kirkwood, the polesitter from the most recent race, spun on new tires, damaged his car, and fell to 12th in the Firestone Fast 12 session. Rinus VeeKay, the polesitter from last year’s Barber Motorsports Park NTT IndyCar Series race, got caught …
Kyle Kirkwood, the polesitter from the most recent race, spun on new tires, damaged his car, and fell to 12th in the Firestone Fast 12 session. Rinus VeeKay, the polesitter from last year’s Barber Motorsports Park NTT IndyCar Series race, got caught in a bottleneck with Team Penske drivers and then ran off track on his last flying lap and dropped to ninth.
IndyCar’s all-time pole winner Will Power also fell off the circuit and plummeted to 11th. Championship leader Marcus Ericsson simply lacked the speed to make the Fast 12 and settled for 13th. Those were just four of many IndyCar front runners who were expected to vie for strong starting positions but find themselves with a lot of passing to do over 90 laps on Sunday in Alabama if they want to salvage their weekends.
“It was just a dumb mistake, to be honest,” Kirkwood said of looping his No. 27 Andretti Autosport Honda and ripping a downforce-producing component from his car’s diffuser. “We lost the rear-left strake and that just caused a ton of understeer in the left-hand corners and a ton of oversteer on the right-hand corners.”
Power pointed to Team Penske teammate Scott McLaughlin as one of the authors of his adversity and also reckoned an engine on the verge of needing a rebuild conspired against finding greater success.
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“Scott went off in Turn 1 on the money lap and just put all that grass on (the circuit),” he said. “So I went wide there and lost some time there and was definitely up (on pace) coming to that. And then in Turn 13, the wheel locked and unwound itself because there was so much grip in the middle of that corner. And I just had to get out of the throttle and ran off, which screwed the next lap. But we’ve been a tenth-and-a-half down with the engine this weekend. We’re just hanging in there.”
Championship leader Marcus Ericsson was out of touch as Chip Ganassi Racing stablemates Alex Palou and Scott Dixon qualified second and fifth, respectively. Lining up 13th was not what Ericsson had in mind after delivering two strong qualifying performances at St. Petersburg and Long Beach.
“Yesterday we were really happy, and then today, in the morning session, we felt like the car was not as good,” he said. “So we went back a little bit to what we had yesterday and it felt a lot better. I think the car was pretty nice to drive, but it’s missing a few tenths. Disappointing.”
Kirkwood’s teammate Colton Herta didn’t have a spin or lose any bodywork from his car to explain the lack of speed with his No. 26 Honda at Barber.
“I never qualify well here; I’ve never been in the Fast Six,” he said after placing 14th. “We should transfer but unfortunately we didn’t. Have to look at what went wrong and why we’re so slow, but we shouldn’t be getting knocked out in round one.”
It should come as no surprise to learn that Team Penske has extended the contract for its reigning NTT IndyCar Series champion. At 42, Will Power is set to continue in the No. 12 Chevy, along with longtime sponsor Verizon, as both have recently …
It should come as no surprise to learn that Team Penske has extended the contract for its reigning NTT IndyCar Series champion. At 42, Will Power is set to continue in the No. 12 Chevy, along with longtime sponsor Verizon, as both have recently committed to multi-year extensions.
Previously unannounced, the team confirmed to RACER that Power’s presence will be seen and felt on the IndyCar grid for years to come — believed to be through at least 2025 — as the defending series champions pursue another title with the Australian and teammates Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin.
Power’s American journey began late in 2005 with Team Australia in the former Champ Car series and returned for his full-time debut the following season where he earned the first pole position of his career on the way to placing sixth in the standings. A pair of breakthrough victories and five more poles were added with Team Australia in 2007, and with Champ Car’s demise after the Long Beach round in 2008—a race he won—Power made the switch to today’s IndyCar Series with KV Racing Technology, the team behind Team Australia.
Since 2009, the rest of Power’s time in IndyCar has been spent behind the wheel of Team Penske entries where two championships in 2014 and 2022 have been earned along with his victory at the 2018 Indianapolis 500. Along with his most recent IndyCar crown, Power also surpassed Mario Andretti as IndyCar’s greatest qualifier after securing his 68th pole at the 2022 season finale in Monterey. The veteran also ranks fifth on IndyCar’s all-time win list with 41, one behind 1991 CART IndyCar Series champion Michael Andretti.
For The Win spoke with Will Power after the 41-year-old driver snapped his winless streak and won his second IndyCar title.
Will Power ended his eight-year IndyCar Series championship drought Sunday at the Grand Prix of Monterey at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, finishing the race third and winning his second career title in a remarkably consistent season.
So consistent, in fact, that he finished on the podium nine times, had a series-high of five poles — and broke his tie with racing legend Mario Andretti for the all-time most at 68 — but won just a single race.
“I think we could have won more races,” Power told For The Win. “But I had the most podiums I’ve ever had in season. To have nine podiums is crazy. That’s more than 50 percent of the races you’re finishing on the podiums.”
The driver of the No. 12 Team Penske Chevrolet entered the season finale with a 20-point lead over teammate Josef Newgarden and Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon and a sizable advantage over Ganassi’s Marcus Ericsson, the 2022 Indianapolis 500 winner, and Penske’s Scott McLaughlin.
Power, a 41-year-old driver from Australia, didn’t need to win the last race to claim the championship; a third-place finish clinched it regardless of how the others performed Sunday.
After his second championship, Power spoke with For The Win about his victorious season, the challenges of a long title drought and the incredible weight of IndyCar’s gigantic trophy.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
“You always appreciate, in a humble way, that this place is is magical,” Hélio Castroneves told For The Win.
For many race car drivers, the Indianapolis 500 is the most monumental and life-changing event they could win. It’s one of the biggest races in the world, and some spend their entire careers chasing that elusive checkered flag.
More emphasis, more pressure, more preparation and more practice are involved, along with an intensified risk factor from the dangers of racing around Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s 2.5-mile oval at 200-plus miles per hour. And even if a driver and their team have a near-perfect race, a competitor could be an inch closer to perfection. So, of course, the winner needs a little luck too.
Ahead of Sunday’s 106th running of the Indy 500, we’re looking back at the most recent races through the eyes of the last five winners — five of the eight champions competing in the 2022 race.
Alexander Rossi, 2016 Indy 500 champion: By the final few laps of the 200-lap race, Rossi, then a rookie, was out front and in a great position to win. He and his team gambled on fuel, and his car coasted on fumes across the finish line ahead of Carlos Muñoz.
Takuma Sato, 2017, 2020 Indy 500 champion: After trading the lead with Hélio Castroneves in the final laps, Sato put up some brilliant defense the final time he took the lead and won in 2017. He won the 2020 Indy 500 — held in August with empty grandstands because of COVID-19 – under caution ahead of Scott Dixon.
Will Power, 2018 Indy 500 champion: Power had a huge, 40-car length lead over Ed Carpenter going into the final lap, and he just had to hold on and not crash in the suspenseful final two miles to take the checkered flag.
Simon Pagenaud, 2019 Indy 500 champion: In one of the most thrilling Indy 500 finishes, Pagenaud battled with Rossi, trading the lead in the final laps. Pagenaud stole the lead from Rossi with a little more than a lap to go, and his masterful defense kept him out front for the win.
Hélio Castroneves, 2001, 2002, 2009, 2021 Indy 500 champion: Now in a four-way tie for most Indy 500 wins ever, Castroneves relied on his ample experience to get the best of Alex Palou in the 2021 race while working through traffic on the final lap. He was 26 years old when he won his first and 46 when he won his fourth.
You don’t want to miss out on Memorial Day Weekend in Indianapolis.
The Greatest Spectacle in Racing returns on Monday, May 29 as Indianapolis Motor Speedway hosts its second IndyCar event of the month and the marquee race of the season: The Indianapolis 500.
One year after Hélio Castroneves captured a miraculous and record-tying fourth Borg-Warner Trophy, the 2022 field is wide open and features some no shortage of star names.
Takuma Sato, Will Power and, of course, Hélio have already qualified. But so has stock car legend Jimmie Johnson and IndyCar royalty Ed Carpenter and Marco Andretti.
Scott Dixon will start on the pole alongside Alex Palou and Rinus VeeKay.
Here’s a full look at each driver’s starting position and odds to win the race via Tipico Sportsbook.
