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I wonder if we are beginning to see an alarming trend here in IndyCar events, as for the second race in a row Andretti Green Racing has resorted to either pit stop strategy of fuel management to secure victory in an IndyCar event. At the Texas Motor Speedway, visiting NASCAR scribe David Poole of the CHARLOTTE OBSERVER wrote that drivers were refusing to take the lead after pulling outside of the leader and falling back in line. He was referring to attempts during the race by Buddy Rice to get past Tony Kanaan, and I couldn’t disagree more on that point. In that case there were two drivers with awesome and probably equal Honda horsepower vying for the lead, Kanaan the leader, with a Dallara car and Rice the contender, with a G Force. In that case it was G Force downforce/drag issues that prevented the pass not Rice’s desire not to lead. My thinking is that Rice desperately wanted to get in front of Kanaan as his only chance of winning. In that race there were enough caution periods where all cars pitted to delay fuel economy issues to present their ugly possibilities until late in the race. At that time winner Kanaan admitted to slowing the race pace from the 208 range to around 204 mph laps. I can live with that, what driver, faced with running out of fuel or making an extra stop when others might not, wouldn’t slow? In fact Helio Castroneves and Marlboro Team Penske made a desperate, last ditch run to the finish without pitting as their only chance for a win, and came up short.
That brings us back to Saturday’s SunTrust Indy Challenge and Dan Wheldon’s pathway to victory. Wheldon started 20th after an early “Q” run attempt that was probably hampered by dissimilar tire residue left by the USAC Sprint and Silver Crown cars; that had practiced just before the IndyCar “Q’s”. Other drivers that qualified early; like Alex Barron and Ed Carpenter, started at the back of the pack as well, proving that point of contention. As it turned out the poor start would be Barron’s undoing, as Kosuke Matsuura drifted up into him early in the race and stuck him into the backstretch fence. Back to Wheldon, his “Q” run left him 6 mph off the pole speed in a car that was mid-pack in every practice session. Dan managed a 12th place run in the final practice session to disprove the 20th position in the race lineup.
With a back of the pack start, the AGR team took a daring approach to the race, detailing a race strategy to a dubious Wheldon that could even cause him to be a lap down early in the race, which turned out to be the case. I must admit that at that time Dan was so far under my radar screen that I don’t know if he ever pitted until lap 128, one lap before the race resumed after a 20-lap caution attributed to “moisture.” But that was Wheldon’s final stop if not his only one. The IndyCars have proven to be capable of 80 plus miles of green flag running, and that would be just over 100 laps at RIR, but up until Wheldon’s stop on lap 129, 43 laps or a third of the race to that point had been run under caution. After that stop, as the other drivers subsequently pitted for fuel, Wheldon, Vitor Meira and Buddy Rice remained on the track and the race was theirs for the taking if they could hold off a charging Helio Castroneves. Helio dispensed with Rice right away. Buddy drifted back to a 7th place position, while Helio finished 3rd behind Meira after passing him in a one-lap dash to the finish that was later negated by an IndyCar review, more on that later.
Not only did Andretti Green Racing have Wheldon on a different pit sequence, but they had Dario Franchitti on a different path to the finish as well, and Dario led more race laps than anyone (79) in what appeared to be a pull-away attempt at a win. Dario later made contact with Mark Taylor with 28 laps to go. At 200 laps into the race Taylor was reported 4 laps down and an angry Franchitti stated that the Taylor contact was further proof he doesn’t belong in the series. With Dario in the lead and pushing to maintain or increase his advantage, the burden is still on the overtaking car to assure there is enough room to make a pass, after all, he can see all of the Taylor car, and all Mark had to go on is what he can see in the mirror on a very busy track. Taylor is charged with maintaining his line, and I'm not sure he didn't. The resulting carnage also took out Taylor’s teammate Tomas Scheckter and Adrian Fernandez as well, as Fernandez took a bottom to top of the track pathway into the slowing Scheckter, who had cleared the crash and was driving on, perhaps to quickly. Fernandez, who had started 16th, had raced to as high as 6th at the start of the race. Earlier Scheckter and Sam Hornish Jr. had made wheel to wheel contact that resulted in Sam spinning into the infield wall, doing front wing damage that was repaired. Scheckter was attempting an inside pass that wasn’t going to happen, and a faster Hornish had his left rear tire clipped by the right front tire of Scheckter. As in the Franchitti/Taylor contact, it is up to the overtaking driver to execute the safe pass, Tomas didn’t. RIR so confined and so fast those things happen too quickly to rely on a spotters warning to avoid trouble.
Through most of the race Hornish, Castroneves and a trailing Scheckter put on a dazzling display of short track driving and daring. While Scheckter never led the race, he was always “there,” always a factor, always a contender. Hornish and Castroneves were at each other constantly, side by side in a display of tight racing for the lead never seen before in the 4-year history of this event.
Unfortunately, there were too many instances of careless driving by back markers and others that marred the race. Kosuke Matsuura provided a precursor to later contact by Scheckter/Hornish and Franchitti/Taylor when he made wheel to wheel contact with Alex Barron on lap 11, Barron crashed. Matsuura got away with another one, and this was at least the 3rd example of this kind of contact that Kosuke has survived to race on. During the entire race, if you saw a pack of cars bunched up behind slower cars, it was likely that one or both of them were Greg Ray and Tora Takagi. Ray would end up in contact with Ed Carpenter on lap 246, causing the final caution and resulting race ending confusion. Unfortunately the IndyCar reports page is unexpectedly incomplete and behaving poorly, so the last working reporting lap is lap 200; and it shows Carpenter on the lead lap and Ray 2 laps down (some say as many as five, which I doubt).
IndyCar officials rushed to restart the race and avoid finishing under the yellow flag and things didn’t quite work out. The starter is charged with waving the green flag and turning of the caution lights as well, and the rush and impending excitement of a one-lap race to the finish made multi-tasking unworkable and the caution lights remained on. Helio Castroneves managed a last lap pass on 2nd place Vitor Meira and Tony Kanaan passed Bryan Herta for 4th position in what could have been a team ordered points-related wave by, but it was all for naught as league VP Brian Barnhart, in a usual display of decisiveness, negated the passes and the finish reverted to the running order at the end of lap 249. Barnhart would later state that since he has often warned the drivers that any indication of caution, whether flag, in-car lights or the track caution lights means they should not race, and since the yellow lights were on, there could be no racing/passing. These are the kind of decisions that can only come when there is a one-man-in-charge policy, Brian met with representatives from MTP, AGR and Rahal Letterman, and if anyone was unhappy with the decision, they have had nothing to say.
What has happened to the dominance of the short track events by TCGR/Scott Dixon? Recently Dixon has even been unable to keep pace with teammate Daren Manning (before he either takes himself or others out). Granted there are Toyota and sometimes G Force issues, but RIR is where Dixon kicked butt last year and should have done as well this year, Manning was well ahead of Dixon and moving to the front when his car pushed into the turn 4 wall one lap after a restart. Dixon hasn’t had a good result since crashing hard in a Motegi practice crash, I wonder…
Here are some STIC fast facts; Sam Hornish turned the fastest race lap at 169 mph, which was faster than the previous track record… Earlier Dario Franchitti led that category at 167 mph…
Honda engines powered six of the first seven cars in the finishing order… AGR Cars finished 1st,4th and 5th after I discounted their chances in the race, but I did say that “they could stand the wings up and the Honda horsepower would support it”… Proving the victory was no fluke, Dan Wheldon had the fastest “leader” lap of the race @ 165-something, when you are the leader, you don’t have to run fast, just first… Kudos to AJ Foyt IV on an 11th place finish, he didn’t hit anything and was less in the way then those that should have known better. Anthony was only 2 laps down at the finish… I wonder if Honda will re-think their support of Greg Ray after he has gone 2 for 3 in race mistakes… I wonder how much longer Pat Patrick/Al Unser Jr. will tolerate the dismal performance of the Derrick Walker led crew… I wonder if RBTC will ever run out of cars, they could only take one car for two drivers to the test at the Milwaukee Mile… Ed Carpenter ran as high as second to Dario Franchitti at Richmond, no wonder he was mad at Greg Ray…
Next race, Kansas Speedway, next Sunday, I will preview the event Thursday. This will be our next chance to look at “rolling dyno” results to see if Toyota and Chevy are closing the horsepower gap on Honda.
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