What to Think After Long Beach?

Who would have thought Chevrolet would not only win at Long Beach but take 7 of the top 10 and beat Honda in a fuel mileage derby? Not only did Will Power answer the critics who were starting to think he could not win from mid pack again but Chevrolet has the edge in the engine battle. Honda had a great day and both Simon Pagenaud and Takuma Sato showed their strengths as Franchitti fell back and was a non-factor as was his teammates Dixon and Rahal who both had their days ruined but in two different forms. Also, Josef Newgarden showed his speed in qualifying and showed he has stones as he tried to pass Franchitti on the outside, turn one, lap one only to hit the tires (maybe with some help from a tap by Dario).

But Honda has to be scratching their head. How do you start with the top 9 and end with only 3 in the top 10? Maybe the engine changes gave Chevrolet the far superior hand but Honda and Chevrolet split the top 12 evenly at six apiece. Let's see how the teams perform at Sao Paulo but the ball seems to be in Chevrolet's court.

Overall, the racing was pretty good in my book. The mix of strategy saw a lot of moves late in the race. Pagenaud chased down Sato and was catching Power. Hunter-Reay and Hinchcliffe soon caught Sato as well. Barrichello pitted late and drove his way back into the top ten. Charlie Kimball had a great end when he ran out of fuel on the pit lane. The last lap incident at the hairpin dropped Helio Castroneves out of the top ten and gave Honda their third representative in Justin Wilson, who showed his speed by leading a fair amount of laps while pulling away from the field. His teammate James Jakes kept his nose clean and ran in the top ten for a good amount of the race and came home in the 11th position. Lotus had another hard day and Bourdais could not repeat his performance at Barber. Oriol Servia was the highest finishing Lotus with a 16th place finish.

IndyCar will be off next week before heading to Sao Paulo April 27-29. Normally release around this time of the year is the Indianapolis 500 entry list and I expect it to be made public midweek. Stay tuned for more information and opinions on IndyCar as well as other racing forms during the week.