First Impressions: Mid-Ohio 2018

1. After a rough spell at the start of summer, Alexander Rossi ended July with a master class performance from pole position and it has Rossi feasibly back in the championship conversation. June started with a two-stop strategy that did not work out at Belle Isle, as Ryan Hunter-Reay caught him but Rossi gave it away with a lock up on his own. Today, Rossi was the lone driver to use a two-stop strategy and nobody came close to beating him. I can't help but think Rossi shouldn't be in IndyCar and he should be in Formula One. I am not sure there has been an American driver in the last 25 years as talented as Rossi. That seems like a hyperbolic statement but Scott Speed had a longer stint in Formula One and Rossi is miles better than Speed. Rossi was second in the GP2 championship to Stoffel Vandoorne and while McLaren hasn't been a great team who would you rather have right now, Rossi or Vandoorne?

Eye-rolling statements aside, Rossi turned the ship around at the right time. He needed a positive result before the summer break and he heads to Pocono and another 500-mile race something Rossi has excelled at ever since he entered the series. He will be contending in that race and will be looking to take another couple dozen points out of the gap in the championship.

2. Robert Wickens wasn't going fast enough for the three-stop strategy to work. Nobody was going fast enough and that is what allowed Rossi to run away with this one while driving at a leisurely pace. While not quick enough, Wickens again had an outstanding performance and the rookie has his fourth podium finish of the season. He is going to win races and they might not come this year but next year will be the year where he could light the world on fire and I think Schmidt Peterson Motorsports can be the team to take him to the top.

3. Will Power was the latest of the three-stoppers and it got him third in this race. Power led a freight train of drivers from third to ninth. Any one of those drivers could have finished third and you would have said that was a well-earned result. I think it is fitting Power's 200th start was just another solid day. He started second and finished third. There are plenty of podium finishes and victories in Power's future.

4. Can fourth be disappointing for Josef Newgarden because it kind of is when you consider the great moves he made today. Newgarden was aggressive and it paid off more times than not and yet he finished where he started. It was a solid day but it felt like it should have been more. In other news, Team Penske has its first double top five of the season! It only took 13 races. IndyCar boys and girls, simply IndyCar.

5. Scott Dixon finished fifth and now he is second all-time in top five finishes in IndyCar with 150. This was his 300th start! Fifty-percent! One out of every two of his starts is a top five finish. Cherish him boys and girls. Simply cherish him. It may be a very long time before someone of his magnitude comes around again and Dixon isn't going anywhere anytime soon. But do not take him for granted.

6. The drive of the day has to be Sébastien Bourdais. To go from 24th to sixth in a race with no cautions takes skill. He started the race slow and I noticed the lack of positions he made up but he was running at a pace where the early of the three-stoppers were outside the delta window by the time he made his first stop and Bourdais kept going. He mirrored what Daniel Ricciardo did earlier today at Hungary. It felt like this was going to be another weekend where things weren't going to pan out but he had the second best performance of the day behind Rossi.

7. This was another good day for Ryan Hunter-Reay but he didn't have the long-term speed. Bourdais outmaneuvered him. Hunter-Reay was leapfrogged it seemed on every pit cycle. He didn't have a bad day but in the current state of IndyCar if you are a microscopic amount off you are going to lose significant ground. This is the series where 0.0009 seconds is the different between advancing from round one in qualifying and not advancing. It is easy to get behind the eight ball and it is a monumental task to get back on the front foot.

8. If Rossi and Bourdais were the top two performers today then Simon Pagenaud was third best because he went from 17th to eighth and he was all over Hunter-Reay late. I have talked about how odd a year this has been for Pagenaud but he looked great today. Unfortunately, he has yet to put together a great weekend where Pagenaud is the class of the field from Friday through Sunday. Let's not act like Pagenaud has forgotten how to be a great driver but it is like I said with Hunter-Reay, if you are off that little bit you are miles from the front.

9. Graham Rahal is having the most disappointing excellent season in a long time. Rahal has as many top ten finishes as Scott Dixon and yet Dixon leads the championship and Rahal is eighth and Rahal could win the final four races and that probably would not be enough to win the championship. Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing is there but is that little bit off. There it is again! That little bit. That is the difference between a champion and a solid driver and Rahal has been close to being a champion. He is right there and yet so far away.

10. The good news for Ohio is it had two native sons in the top ten with Zach Veach rounding out the top ten. Veach is building. He hasn't been terrible this year and while Wickens is clearly the best rookie, Veach has clearly been second best of the rookies, although somehow Matheus Leist is only 29 points behind Veach. If Veach can keep up this form then I think he could push for the top ten in the championship next year.

11. Marco Andretti ran 11th and that is about right. He was good but not great and he was stuck in the back of the field for a portion of this one. Had he advanced from round one of qualifying, had he found another 0.001 of a second, this day would have been entirely different.

12. Jordan King started strong going from 16th to eighth but he didn't have the pace to keep up that top ten run. Spencer Pigot did well going from 18th to 13th in this one. This wasn't a great day for Ed Carpenter Racing but both cars finished on the lead lap. You take what you can get.

13. James Hinchcliffe never had it in this one. And to think he nearly had the fastest time going into the Fast Six. That little bit. That is the difference in IndyCar and Hinchcliffe was 13th today.

14. Ed Jones didn't hit anything and was the final car on the lead lap in 15th. He has had good performances but it is days like these that make it easier for Chip Ganassi to cut him loose at the end of the season.

15. Quickly through the rest of the field: The dream turned into a nightmare quickly for Carlin. Max Chilton spun Takuma Sato on lap three, he was penalized on lap four and that top six starting position turned into a 24th place finish at the first pit stop when they had issues with the right front. It feels like Chilton's game plan should have been just to stay in the top ten. Don't attempt a pass, don't do anything stupid, just keep running. Charlie Kimball finished 15th and that was the best hew as going to do. Takuma Sato was 17th after the spin. A.J. Foyt Racing is still lost and Tony Kanaan and Matheus Leist were 18th and 19th. Jack Harvey finished 20th, which is a bit lackluster for Meyer Shank Racing but the team is still new and it will have two more races this season. René Binder was the only driver not to make a pass on track and he finished 21st. This might have been the last time we see him in IndyCar. Conor Daly ran out of fuel on the final lap but it wasn't an outstanding result lost.

16. Pietro Fittipaldi is still getting his feet back underneath him, literally. I don't want to knock the kid because he is out there less than three months after breaking both his legs but I am not sure he is fit enough to be in that car and I am not sure Fittipaldi driving is what is best for Dale Coyne Racing. I think Fittipaldi is talented and I think he deserves a fair crack at IndyCar but right now isn't the best time for him. It isn't going to happen but if Fittipaldi still needs a scooter to get around the paddock then I think another driver should be drafted in for Pocono. I want to see what Fittipaldi can do when fully healthy and right now he isn't.

17. Can we end the bullshit that Texas Motor Speedway is the second home to IndyCar? Because it isn't. Mid-Ohio is back to a CART-era crowd. Road America is in the same boat. Long Beach is as healthy as it has been in the last 25 years. We know about what Gateway drew last year. I wouldn't be surprised if the Pocono crowd is better than Texas. Eddie Gossage can run his mouth all he wants and celebrate that he has been there since the start of the Indy Racing League but IndyCar extends beyond 1996 and just because Mid-Ohio, Road America and others weren't on the second IRL schedule doesn't mean they haven't been there for IndyCar. The last 25 years for IndyCar have been confusing and cluttered and painful. Events died, the fan base shrunk, drivers left, sponsors left, it hasn't been great but when you have drivers strolling the campgrounds and playing corn hole with fans that event means something to the series and that is what happens at Mid-Ohio. We don't hear about that at Texas.

I try to look at the macro and while some are quick to say this is the greatest Mid-Ohio race IndyCar has ever had I am tentative because of recency bias but I will say that the cars were dancing today. There was a lot of side-by-side racing. This race was unlike most, if not all 33 previous Mid-Ohio races and I loved it. This race actually made me want to cry because of the beauty. It was a beat down and yet it was a thriller. The result was a given and yet it was unpredictable. The pole-sitter won and led the most laps and yet you had 188 passes and 114 of those were for position. The drivers were on top of each other and nobody was run off course or put into a gravel trap or tire barrier. The drivers were on the edge and everyone came through clean.

Next year, when we are thinking of best races of the decade this race will be on the list along with a handful of Indianapolis 500s, a Fontana race, a Pocono race and a São Paulo race to name a few early favorites.

18. Two weeks off and four races to go. This season ends so fast. While we will miss the races we should not miss the off time and while we love the races make the most of the down time. Do something great this weekend that isn't at a racetrack. Go for a hike, visit a museum, paint a picture, put your feet in a stream. Live these next two weeks.