Ericsson climbed over the back of Sébastien Bourdais on the first restart of the race and 9,999 times out of 10,000 that is day over. Either the damage is too much or the penalty is too severe. This was the one time out of 10,000.
The inaugural Music City Grand Prix was full of cautions and red flags, and the flurry of stoppages prevented Ericsson from falling that far behind. It is one of those cases where the chaos of the race lent itself to a stricken driver and it turned a disastrous day into something special.
Ericsson's only choice was to go off strategy and every caution went his way, putting him in position to lead and lead late. He had an immense challenge from Colton Herta, who had the fastest car all weekend, but Herta overdrove it late and smacked the turn nine wall on exit with seven laps to go. Ericsson was going to be close on fuel, but Herta made the mistake and again the Swede benefitted.
It is one of those odd victories. They happen every now and then in IndyCar. I said after Ericsson's Belle Isle victory he really has never had a dominant race in his IndyCar career. He led nearly half of this race and that still feels to be true. Ericsson won from 18th, but strategy and cautions put him to the front. That's not his fault and the crew deserve credit for positioning him for victory. Ericsson made the most of it. We have seen drivers been put up front through circumstances and then fall back. Ericsson didn't do that and now he has two victories and a reasonable championship hope with five races to go.
2. Scott Dixon pulled out a runner-up result on an identical strategy as Ericsson. Dixon needed a good day to keep him in the championship fight. A victory would have been better but a podium is a fair outcome. The crazy thing is we are 11 races into 2021 season, two Ganassi drivers have multiple victories and neither is Dixon. Ganassi's three full-time drivers are all championship contenders.
3. James Hinchclifffe and Andretti Autosport had a solid day top to bottom. The bad news is only two of the Andretti drivers got the result. Hinchcliffe ended up third, his first podium finish in over two years. Hinchcliffe was a top ten car, but the Andretti team split the strategy in the first quarter of the race. It worked as Colton Herta stayed at the front despite stopped late, and the three other cars were at the front after stopping early under caution. When Herta faltered, Hinchcliffe was there to get a car on the podium. It could have been better for Andretti Autosport, but they must find some solace from today's race.
4. Ryan Hunter-Reay was fourth, his first top five finish since the St. Petersburg season finale last year. All the Andretti cars were going to be in the top ten today. Hunter-Reay might have been able to challenge for the top five, but there were a few times it just felt like Hunter-Reay didn't have that bite. There was one move entering turn four where he had a chance to go to the outside of Dixon and backed out of it. I don't know if he was conscious of needing a result or didn't have the confidence to try it. Fourth is still good, but it could have been better.
5. I must talk about Colton Herta before we go any further because this was a signature drive from him only for the result not to come. Herta was blindingly fast all weekend, but when the cautions kept falling in the first half of the race, he had to stop under yellow. He kept hoping to get a green flag run long enough for him to gap the field before his first pit stop, but it never came.
Despite this, Herta was advantageous using the quirky blend line placement and Nashville's pit lane set up to pit under yellow and come out in third after his first pit stop and then to come out in ninth instead of outside the top fifteen after his second. After his second stop, Herta performed one of the most methodical drives we have seen and it looked like he was going to run down Ericsson and win this race.
Herta made two errors in turn nine. The first was a lock up and it cost him about a second and a half. The second put him in the barrier. Ericsson was close on fuel and after the lock up Herta had recovered and was pressuring the Swede again. It felt like Herta was going to pass Ericsson or run Ericsson out of fuel. I don't want to say it was foolishness or aggressiveness, but there were still just over six laps to go when Herta hit the barrier. If he gets that one corner right, I think he wins this race.
6. Graham Rahal gets another overlooked top five finish. This was Rahal's sixth top five finish this season. He has only one podium result. This is classic Graham Rahal. Phenomenally good but frustratingly never quite transitioning into great. He will take it, but one of these days it has to line up for him.
7. Ed Jones was sixth and made a daring move on Felix Rosenqvist to get that position late. Jones definitely benefitted from the cautions and a number of drivers getting knocked out of the race. He started this race spinning Scott McLaughlin in turn four. I think this result is about ten positions better than Jones actually was, but when put at the front, Jones held on and got more out of it. Credit to him.
8. Álex Palou really could have blown all his toes off this weekend. First, Palou had the six-spot grid penalty, but he qualified third meaning he only dropped to ninth. Then he doesn't get a great start and is stuck in the middle of the field and hits his teammate Jimmie Johnson when the field piles up due to Simon Pagenaud getting into the turn 11 barrier. This shuffled Palou back again and yet he still finishes in seventh.
Palou's championship lead is reduced but he is still 42 points ahead of Scott Dixon and 48 points ahead of Patricio O'Ward. He lost some ground but it could have been much worse.
9. Felix Rosenqvist should take eighth, but this should have been a top five finish for him. He drove strong all race and lost a handful of spots late. I bet it was his tires. This is still a weekend he needed and with the confirmation Arrow McLaren SP will keep Rosenqvist in 2022, hopefully this result springboards his final third of 2021 into something wonderful.
10. Hélio Castroneves was ninth in his first IndyCar street race in over four years! Like Jones, this result is probably better than Castroneves actually was, but I don't think this is ten spots better, probably four or five spots better. Castroneves kept his nose clean and got a ninth-place finish. After he won the Indianapolis 500, this is a respectable follow up.
11. That dream hometown weekend did not occur for Josef Newgarden, but I bet he is thankful for tenth after how things went from about 5:00 pm on Saturday through about 6:00 pm Sunday. Starting with Newgarden's accident in qualifying, preventing him from advancing to the Fast Six, he was stuck in the middle of the pack at the start, got squeezed at the start and lost some spots, was stuck behind Ericsson after the Swede ran over Bourdais, and all of a sudden he was down to 20th.
Newgarden did go off strategy and at one point was in a podium position, though pit stops were always going to knock him down the order. He should be happy with tenth, even though he lost ground in the championship. He is still 75 points behind Palou with five races to go. It will be tough to overcome but I would not rule it out.
12. Santino Ferrucci's top ten finish streak ended, but he was 11th and like many drivers in this race, that was about six to eight spots better than Ferrucci's actual day. I don't recall seeing Ferrucci once.
13. Conor Daly went off strategy and at one point was in a podium position, but he was never a threat and things did not fall Daly's way. He gets 12th but Daly still does not have a top ten finish with Ed Carpenter Racing and this was his 18th start with the organization.
14. Patricio O'Ward and Will Power both made a lot of contact today. O'Ward blew turn four and took Alexander Rossi wide. That led to a penalty and that was O'Ward second penalty of the day after he had a reprimand for unsafe driving around a safety vehicle.
Power made a move up the inside of Pagenaud into turn 11, which is how Pagenaud got into the barrier. It is hard to fault Power. I thought it was a clean move. Power was far alongside Pagenaud into that corner. The problem is the width of the corner. The limitations of city streets prevent it from become wider, but we cannot penalize drivers for trying to make passes into tight corners or even pulling off passes into tight corners, especially at a street course. Of course, the contact between these two made it so every Team Penske car had contact before the completion of lap 20.
Of course, Power then spun McLaughlin in turn nine, which ended McLaughlin's race because Dalton Kellett would then run over the New Zealander's car. This was a penalty for Power and two teammates taken out. I think there is going to be a meeting this week.
15. Let's breeze through the field:
Jack Harvey was taken off strategy early again and it did not work out. I don't think the team anticipated the short pit lane would keep the car for leaping forward when all these cautions happened. At a normal circuit, Harvey likely would have ended up restarting first or at least in the top five once because of his strategy. That didn't play out and he never got a sniff of the top ten after that first stop. Fifteen will have to do.
Romain Grosjean tapped Pagenaud into the turn four wall and that earned Grosjean a penalty. This could have been a top ten result for Grosjean. He led four laps before his own teammate Cody Ware spun out. Street courses have not been kind of Grosjean this year.
Alexander Rossi... aargh! He probably had the second best car to Herta and yet he is 17th. Granted, Herta is 19th after his incident, but Rossi could not have been more unfortunate with O'Ward blowing the corner. Rossi didn't receive much contact, but he was pushed wide, O'Ward blocked off the corner and Rossi had to back up to get around. Once you have to do all that, you have lost ten spots. He cannot catch a break this season.
16. Cody Ware shouldn't be in an IndyCar. I know he finished 20th, but I watched him lose a car exiting turn three that is just too much for him to control. He should be in Indy Lights if he wants to drive an open-wheel car. He needs to learn the technique and he needs to learn how to prevent the car from stalling. I know that is not something you learn overnight, but that caution was preventable if he had enough practice at lower levels.
But I don't think IndyCar will put its foot down and say he needs more experience in the junior series. That's not how 21st century IndyCar or 21st century motorsports work.
17. Pagenaud and McLaughlin were 21st and 22nd respectively. I thought we should just get that down on the record.
A.J. Foyt Racing could not ask for a worse day. Dalton Kellett stalled out at the start and then Sébastien Bourdais is run over on the first restart and his race was over after five laps. Then Kellett ran over Scott McLaughlin's stationary vehicle on the exit of turn nine. Bourdais was a victim to a restart zone and spanned the final corner. That track layout looked good on paper, but it is not ideal.
18. Rinus VeeKay is making mistakes all the time now. Part of today was he was hit in the Pagenaud incident in turn 11, but he returns to the IMS road course in a much different place than where he was four months ago when he won the Grand Prix of Indianapolis. Surprisingly, VeeKay is still ninth in the championship. I think that points to how sluggish the middle of the field has been that VeeKay can have three consecutive bad races, miss one race and still be comfortably inside the top ten in the championship.
The same can be said for Takuma Sato, who is tenth in the championship. Sato was 25th today and he picked up damage in the Pagenaud incident. This was not shaping up to be a good weekend for Sato to begin with.
19. Jimmie Johnson's IndyCar experience keeps getting tougher and tougher. Between two practice accidents, and then being hit from behind in the race, trouble has been unavoidable for Johnson. He has a spin every weekend. He started the weekend well as far as practice speeds were concerned, but something always goes wrong. Next week will be a great measuring stick for Johnson's progress as he has run the IMS road course before. These should be warmer conditions, but his experience should take him up the order.
I do have a problem with Johnson's disqualification because a few years ago at Texas, Ed Carpenter and J.R. Hildebrand both had their cars repaired under a red flag and were only penalized two laps. Two years ago at Pocono, Alexander Rossi and company had their cars repaired under red flag and were penalized ten laps. IndyCar can increase the penalty, but this goes back to what I wrote after Belle Isle, maybe we need to revisit the red flag rules and maybe change them. Johnson was going to return to the race multiple laps, if not a third of the race down by the time the car was repaired. I could have lived with Johnson getting a penalty for the repairs and being allowed to continue. A straight disqualification after precedence showed teams could repair cars under a red flag and continue in a race is harsh.
20. Let's talk about the racetrack:
This course is tight, especially across the river from turns four through eight. I almost think for year two we should drop turns five through eight and just make turn four a hairpin at the end of the bridge and bring the cars back across the river. It would shorten the lap by at least two-tenths of a mile, but what is the point of having a single-lane racetrack? Though, Herta was using turn eight to perfection and making passes.
Then we had the starting area, turns 11, one and two. I think the start/finish line might have to permanently be ahead of what is turn nine. You cannot have a restart zone split by a corner, especially one as tight as turn 11. I know the promoters wanted its cake and to eat it as well with a thrilling high-speed start and then the finish alongside the football stadium, but the course isn't conducive to it. Either start/finish has to move or all restarts have to happen into turn nine.
And then we have the blend lines. I think IndyCar is either going to institute a rule or reconfigure that area of the racetrack because it was odd seeing a driver make a pit stop, 15 cars not make a pit stop and the driver coming out of pit lane emerge in fourth, three spots back from where he stopped. I don't know what IndyCar will do, but I expect a change.
Then there were the bumps. I was surprised we didn't see more cars thrown into the barriers in the race. For all the incidents today, I don't think any of them were because of bumps launching a car into the barrier. I am surprised the one on the inside of turn five didn't catch the field out. Some of the bumps were ground down after Friday but there is still a lot of work to do ahead of 2022.
21. This weekend did get off to a weird start as one grandstand was not complete. This is how street courses quickly die. There is some kind of infrastructural issue or oversight and it bites the spectators. People were upset Friday when they arrived and the grandstand was not complete. It also didn't look good for the event. It almost looked like they underestimate how long it would take to set up a racetrack.
Spectators continued to be upset Saturday when the grandstand was still unfinished. It was completed in time for Sunday, but it was a bad look for the race and people are going to complain even if they were refunded for those two lost days.
People were also complaining about the price of some luxury passes for this race. One went for $1,500, much higher than any other IndyCar race, but that is capitalism. If Nashville can charge $1,500 and get someone to pay it, then they are going to sell ticket packages at $1,500. It does not feel like this will last and the promoters will have some difficult decisions to make down the line, but they will have to cross that bridge in due time.
Year one looked to be a success, but there might be backlash over the weekend and it could make the second edition suffer. If a second year suffers, then it could be on red alert ahead of year three. Street courses are fickle and one or two inconveniences, even if they are minor, could doom an event in year one. We will have to see how the next few months play out.
22. This is a short week as IndyCar is back on track in six days time. It is a crucial part of the season. A lot of drivers need a bounce back after a rough return from the summer break.
