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| Scott Dixon's drive into history continues today |
Will Power scored his first podium finish of 2020 with a runner-up result to Dixon. Power leaped to seventh in the championship, 83 points back. It is Power's second consecutive Road America race finishing runner-up, his third podium in his last five starts at the track and he has four top five finishes in his last five races. He started fifth in race one, his worst starting position since he started seventh in his first appearance at the track in 2006 in Champ Car.
Álex Palou stood on the podium for the first time in his IndyCar career with a third-place finish yesterday. The last driver to get a podium in his third career start was Colton Herta, who won at Austin last year. Palou became the seventh driver to score his first career podium finish at Road America. He joined Héctor Rebaque, Al Unser, Jr., Uncle Jacques Villeneuve, Alan Jones, Bruno Junqueira and Rodolfo Lavín as first-time IndyCar podium visitors at Road America.
Ryan Hunter-Reay's fourth place finish in race one was his first top five finish since finishing third at Mid-Ohio last year. He has scored five consecutive top five finishes in doubleheader races. Coincidentally, prior to yesterday, Hunter-Reay had never scored a top five finish in a doubleheader weekend not held at Belle Isle. In Texas 2011, he was 19th and ninth. At Toronto and Houston in 2013, he was outside the top fifteen in all four races. He improved at Houston in 2014 with finishes seventh and sixth but was 21st and 14th at Toronto.
Colton Herta moved up to third in the championship with his fifth-place finish yesterday, but he is 67 points behind Dixon. Herta has consecutive top five finishes for only the second time in his career. The other time was when he finished fourth at Portland and then won at Laguna Seca to close the 2019 season.
Santino Ferrucci scored his best finish on a road/street course with a sixth-place result in race one. Yesterday was also Ferrucci's best starting position on a road/street course. He started sixth, matching his best career starting position period, which came at Gateway last year. It was only the third time in his IndyCar career he had started in the top ten for a race. He started tenth at Barber last year.
Graham Rahal was seventh yesterday after a re-fueling issue cost him valuable time on his first pit stop. Rahal did get to lead two laps before entering pit lane. He has led in half of his six Road America starts, but he has never led more than two laps in a Road America race. He has never started worse than ninth at this track.
Patricio O'Ward matched his career best finish for the second consecutive race. O'Ward has four top ten finishes from 11 starts. He has only five top ten starts in his career and his only top five start was on debut at Sonoma in 2018. He has started outside the top ten in his last four starts.
Takuma Sato has finished in the top ten in his only two starts of 2020. This is the first time Sato has finished in the top ten of consecutive starts to begin a season. He had three consecutive top ten finishes last year with finishes of seventh, first and eighth at Austin, Barber and Long Beach respectively. Only once in Sato's career has he finished in the top ten of both races in a doubleheader. That was Belle Isle 2017 where he was eighth and fourth with Andretti Autosport. He started that second race on pole position.
Marcus Ericsson picked up his second consecutive top ten finish yesterday, but it could have been better than tenth. Ericsson had a half spin on the final lap while challenging for sixth in Canada Corner. He did lead two laps before his second pit stop. It is the second consecutive race Ericsson has led. In his IndyCar career, he has led nine laps in five races and has never led more than two laps in a race.
Charlie Kimball fell a position shy yesterday of getting A.J. Foyt Racing its first top ten finish at Road America since Mike Groff was eighth in 1991. In the first three races, Kimball's best finish is 11th. The only time Kimball has started a season with fourth consecutive finishes outside the top ten was in 2015 when he drove at Chip Ganassi Racing.
Simon Pagenaud slid to 62 points behind Dixon after finishing 12th in race one. That result snapped Pagenaud's 11 consecutive top ten finish streak dating back to Texas last season. He has not had consecutive finishes outside the top ten since 2017, when he was 13th at Indianapolis and 16th at Bell Isle.
Rinus VeeKay has finished better than his starting position in all three of his starts so far in his IndyCar career. Of course, VeeKay has never started better than 16th, but his starting position has improved at every race. This is VeeKay's fourth career start. The last driver to pick up a first career victory in the fourth start of a career was Sébastien Bourdais at Brands Hatch in 2003.
Josef Newgarden suffered his worst Road America finish yesterday when he crossed the line in 14th. It dropped Newgarden to fourth in the championship, 71 points behind Dixon. Three of Newgarden's 14 career victories have come after finishing outside the top ten in the race before. In 2015, he won a Toronto after finishing 21st at Texas. His 2018 Road America victory was after finishing 13th at Texas. Last year, he won at Texas after finishing 19th at Belle Isle. In his previous 11 doubleheader weekends, he has finished in the top ten of the second race of the weekend only twice and both were top five finishes.
Oliver Askew started at the back of the pack in race one and could only managed a 15th-place finish. After being the only rookie to finish the season opener at Texas and pick up a ninth-place finish in the process, Askew is now third of the rookies in the championship, 17th on 42 points.
Zach Veach is hanging onto ninth in the championship after finishing 14th and 16th in his last two raes. He is 91 points behind Dixon and only five points to the go of staying in the top ten. Sixteenth is Veach's best finish at Road America and his results have gradually improved from 22nd and 18th. However, Veach's starting position at this track continue to decline. He started 11th on his Road America debut and has since followed it with starts of 14th and 20th.
Max Chilton extended his streak to 32 consecutive races without a top ten finish with his 17th place result yesterday. In 17 of those races, Chilton has finished better than his starting position. He has finished 16th or 17th in his last three Road America starts.
For the first time in Felix Rosenqvist's IndyCar career he has finished outside the top ten in three consecutive races. The last Ganassi driver to open a season with four consecutive finishes outside the top ten was Max Chilton in 2017. Before Chilton was the aforementioned Charlie Kimball 2015 season and before Kimball it was Ryan Briscoe in 2005. Those are the only three times such a start has happened for a Ganassi driver.
Alexander Rossi's miserable 2020 season continued in race one from Road America. It is the first time since 2017 Rossi has had three consecutive finishes outside the top ten. He ended that slide with a runner-up finish at Toronto. In every doubleheader Rossi has participated in, he has picked up at least one top ten finish from the weekend. Rossi is 22nd in the championship on 31 points, the lowest of the drivers to start every race in 2020.
Dalton Kellett's second career start was not his greatest outing. Kellett went off in the final corner coming to the green flag for the lap 44 restart. This cost Kellett a lap and he finished 20th. On the bright side, it was his best finish in his IndyCar career.
Conor Daly hurt his shoulder in his accident in yesterday's race. Daly did get out of the car and said he would be ready to go for today's race. His accident did drop Daly out of the top ten in the championship. He sits in 13th. Daly's best Road America finish was 15th in 2017.
Marco Andretti's nightmare start continued at Road America, running off course and colliding with a sponsor board, forcing an extra pit stop and speeding on said stop ruined a tenth place starting position. It was the third time Andretti had started in the top ten at Road America. He has never finished in the top ten at the track. He did pick up fastest lap,
Jack Harvey rounded out the field in race one after losing his brakes going into turn three. It matches Harvey's worst finish on a road/street course. He was 23rd last year at St. Petersburg after an accident. The worst finish of his career was on debut in the 2017 Indianapolis 500 in 31st. With his front row start yesterday, Harvey picked up a point for topping his qualifying group in this doubleheader qualifying format.
Qualifying for race two will be at 10:00 a.m. ET. NBC's coverage of the REV Group Grand Prix at Road America Race Two will begin at noon ET with green flag scheduled for 12:42 p.m. ET. The race is scheduled for 55 laps.
