1. This is how you shake off a slump, if that is what you want to call Josef Newgarden's 2018 season. With Scott Dixon coming off his fifth championship, Will Power coming off the Indianapolis 500 victory and another pole position, Alexander Rossi placing himself as the next champion in waiting and a handful of rookies that make you giddy, we kind of forgot Newgarden was still around, two years off a championship and he won three races last year. Everyone else was considered for the role of poster boy but Newgarden's name was a bit of an afterthought.
Today, however, Newgarden reminded us he is still around and he isn't going anywhere. He was toward the front all weekend and while he didn't surge straight to the front, he and Tim Cindric hung on and while other were caught in lapped traffic, Newgarden pulled away, went from cycling back to third or fourth during a pit cycle to leading and from there he ran away with it.
The pressure is always on at Team Penske and Newgarden bought some time with that championship but you are always looking to buy more. He did that today and he will look for a greater purchase in May.
2. Scott Dixon was another driver who benefited from others being caught in traffic but this was a Scott Dixon-type day. He laid in the weeds and struck when necessary. It come him ahead of the likes of Will Power and Felix Rosenqvist, unfortunately for him Newgarden got a way. He might not be leading the championship after race one but the title defense is in a good position.
3. Will Power got stuck behind Spencer Pigot and Marco Andretti and that might have been the difference between him walking away with this one and leading 95 laps on the way to victory and his third place finish. It is still a solid start to the year for a driver who has had poor starts the last few seasons.
4. For about a quarter of this race it appeared Felix Rosenqvist was going to win on debut but Power leapfrogged him on one round of green flag pit stops and then he too was stuck in traffic. It is not a day to hang his head about. He looked great and he is going to win a race this season.
5. Alexander Rossi was the fifth best driver today and the top five were head-and-shoulders above the field. He never really got in position to break into the contenders and days like these were rare for Rossi in 2018. He usually found a way through and was in conversations for at least a podium finish. That wasn't the case today but this is a great start to the season and something he can build on.
6. It seems like seven out of ten races the driver that finishes sixth isn't that flashy and that was James Hinchcliffe today. He just ran a solid race and got a solid result. The problem for Hinchcliffe is he does this almost every year, piles up top ten finishes at the start but these finishes are nowhere to be found at the end of the year.
7. Simon Pagenaud was a mover early but this wasn't a race where he could get into the top five. Seventh is still a good result and his unfortunate break of not being able to put down a flyer in the first round of qualifying bit him. I think he will be fine and there is no reason to panic.
8. Colton Herta had an encouraging second race of his IndyCar career. He started 11th, which is good for most drivers but he knew he could have started in the top six. The race was a bit shaky at the start and he lost a few positions but he chipped away at it and finished eighth. That is pretty good for an 18-year-old. Many young drivers would keep free falling through the field. Herta was on fire at Austin during testing and he should be excited to return there in two weeks.
9. After teammate leader Sebastien Bourdais lost his engine early, everything fell onto Santino Ferrucci's shoulders and he got the result. I think the cautions went into his favor but he didn't put a wheel wrong after he went off in qualifying. It was a good weekend for him and I think better weekends are ahead of his this season.
10. This was Jack Harvey and Meyer Shank Racing's best day in IndyCar but the team has a lot to learn. They were running in the top six on speed at the start but a slow pit stop and some traffic pinned him back. This is one area that separate the likes of Penske, Ganassi, Andretti, Schmidt Petersen and even Coyne from the new teams likes Shank but Shank can get there. It will take some time and patience and Shank has both when it comes to this program. They deserved a top ten finish today and got it.
11. A look at some Americans: Spencer Pigot was out there and he doesn't deserve blame for Power not being able to get by him, they were both on the lead lap. Graham Rahal and Marco Andretti both made questionable strategy choices and neither worked out. Andretti was fighting from behind from the start. This could have been worse for the both of them but they made the most of today. Zach Veach hasn't been great at any street circuit yet but this weekend was probably the best of his brief IndyCar career.
12. At one point, it appeared the cautions were going Tony Kanaan's way and he might finish in the top five but definitely in the top ten and that wasn't the case. He didn't have the pace and he had a few bad pit stops and the slump continues. Add on top of that Matheus Leist clipped Ed Jones and that ruined his day early. It is another bad start for the Foyt team.
13. This weekend was better for Carlin than the results show. Charlie Kimball was running in the top ten when he had to make an unscheduled pit stop and Max Chilton had a bad qualifying run put him at the back. They were better than 16th and 17th. I think the results will come with the introduction of Patricio O'Ward.
14. Ben Hanley kept his nose clean and he was not a roadblock from 12th on the grid but he and DragonSpeed have a long way to go and making the Indianapolis 500 could be a massive achievement for this team.
15. It appeared at the start Honda was going to be in trouble when both Bourdais and Ryan Hunter-Reay lost engines within the first 30 laps. Add to that Marcus Ericsson had some engine issues and Takuma Sato pulled off due to some mechanical issues. Honda didn't pull off the victory but the Ganassi cars and Rossi stayed at the front and kept the pressure on the Penskes. The mechanical issues might be something we need to keep an eye on throughout the season.
16. Honda aside, can Hunter-Reay get a break? Every year he seems to be the one with the engine failure while in the top five. He is going to have good days but his bad days are dreadful and are more frequent than most other drivers at his level. Ericsson's debut was going well and it sucks he wasn't able to show off more. Practice went well and he was strong at the start. This rookie class is good, it is only going to get better when Patricio O'Ward arrives and I would not be surprised if there is a race with four rookies in the top ten at some point in 2019. Hell, we had three rookies in the top ten today!
17. NBCSN has been doing races since 2012 and, dating back to the days of Versus, since 2009, but this race was different. A few different things were tried and the Peacock Pit Box was there. Nothing was different with the booth but with Marty Snider and Kelli Stavast on pit lane, Jon Beekhuis and Robin Miller on the pit box. I love Beekhuis and he is good everywhere. He and Miller balanced each other out and they had great rapport.
I think NBCSN is going to try things. Miller should be mainstay on the pit box but I think we could see a rotation with Snider, Stavast and Lee on the pit box. The pit box isn't going to be at every race and it will be interesting to see how the broadcast changes when the NASCAR season starts. Snider and Stavast will likely go back to NASCAR and maybe one or two return for Laguna Seca or one of the other network races. The broadcast is going to feel familiar but there will be differences as experimentation happens.
The network caught a bad break with technical difficulties but that will not be the standard.
Many pinned this directly on IndyCar but IndyCar isn't the only party involved. The networks make a choice where IndyCar goes when it comes to broadcasting and how much time it deserves. It is no secret that IndyCar is niche and if the audience was substantial in Canada, a size large enough that made it the second-most watched sporting event in the country when each race was on then Sportsnet would make it more readily available. Instead, it is a property that Sportsnet has deemed requires an additional cost to view.
When it comes to Australia, it is peculiar that a country where IndyCar is trying to get a race will have no live races and only one-hour highlights. If IndyCar was hoping to return to the Surfers Paradise, especially for 2020, it would make sure people could watch the races live. There is quite a time difference between North America and Australia, so maybe the Australian broadcaster made the decision it is not worth showing the races live, an unfortunate choice and one that should not be made in 2019 because there is always someone who wants to watch it live and expects such but again it could have been something out of IndyCar's hands and IndyCar had to get a deal done.
Is it on IndyCar to make sure its races are most readily available in each country? To an extent but it also has to get a deal done and one that makes the most sense in terms of business. The one call from this kerfuffle is IndyCar to have its own streaming service internationally but I don't think people realize how that devalues every international television deal and could end up costing IndyCar money. While it seems like a slam dunk, IndyCar needs to maximize the value of every television deal and if providing a streaming service significantly hurts television ratings than it will get less for broadcasting rights and that total cannot be made up through subscriptions.
The lateness of these deals was concerning and it wasn't a secret that these deals had to be tied up. With the length of IndyCar's offseason it is disappointing it took until the 11th hour for many countries to finalize agreements. We don't know the lengths of these deals but they seem set for 2019. You are not going to like to hear this but 2019 might have to be chalked as a loss and attention has to turn to making improvements for 2020.
19. Another race is two weeks away and it is the first visit to Circuit of the Americas. I think it will be a thrilling race with the long straightaways. Robin Miller keeps saying if IndyCar puts on great races at Barber than Austin should be fine and I agree with that statement.
