1. Will Power should probably send Agustín Canapino a bottle of wine, because without Canapino's spin exiting the pit lane in the middle of the second Iowa race, Power does not win.
Power went longer than anyone on the first stint, over 100 laps, and at that time, the only other car on the lead lap was Álex Palou, who was on pit lane as the caution came out. Power's fuel conservation put him into the picture and on the second stint, Power went a lap longer than Palou. A faster pit stop led to Power leapfrogging Palou and holding on for his second victory of the season.
You would think 22nd to first is an incredible performance, but this one was more about timing. Power does deserve credit because he has probably found a new way to use the hybrid system on an oval that helps save fuel. I noticed during the opening stint, Power was using the hybrid on corner exit. That is a brilliant time to use it as it gets the car up to speed while using the electricity and not fuel or at least not as much fuel as full throttle would. That likely played into Power being able to go as long as he did in the first stint while others stopped a few laps before Power.
Without that caution, Power probably finishes just outside the top ten, possibly he cracks the top ten, but he would not have won the race.
2. Álex Palou kind of eases the pain from yesterday's accident with a runner-up finish today. Palou might have finished second anyway as he did catch a break with the Canapino caution. Without it there is a chance Scott McLaughlin remains ahead of Palou through the first pit cycle. Palou was fit for second. Maybe he should have won, but he remains the championship leader. There are still six races left, but does it feel like anyone can be better than Palou for majority of those six races?
It feels like one or two drivers can beat Palou in a given race, but it is always a different driver or two. Today, it was Power. At Mid-Ohio, it was Patricio O'Ward. It could be Scott Dixon at Toronto. There isn't one consistent challenger for Palou. Everyone takes their turn and then in the next race Palou finishes three spots ahead of them and gets the advantage back in points and then some. There are four oval races remaining, but Palou can do enough to hold onto the championship.
If Palou loses the title, it is because one driver goes on a tear that currently no driver looks capable of achieving.
3. Scott McLaughlin had the best weekend that is for sure, though third is a bit of a tough pill to swallow after how McLaughlin looked in the opening stint. This was a track position race. If McLaughlin stayed in the front, he was going to lead 245 of 250 laps. He got shuffled back and never fell lower than third. He is creeping back into the championship picture, and he should be thrilled there are four oval races remaining.
4. Nobody really did anything today. For the most part, everyone finished where they ran all day. Scott Dixon was fourth and spent the entire race in fourth. Double fourths for Dixon. Not much more he could do.
5. Fifth is better than yesterday for Colton Herta. Herta and the Andretti Global team had a better weekend than the team has had in recent years at Iowa. I think this bodes well for Andretti for the remaining ovals as they are all short ovals. It feels like Herta's oval breakthrough is bound to happen.
6. Patricio O'Ward started seventh and I think he spent about 246 of 250 laps in either sixth or seventh. Not a bad day but when Palou is second these are points lost for O'Ward. It just means more work to do in the remaining events.
7. There was an accident on the final lap as Alexander Rossi appeared to run out of fuel exiting turn two on the final lap. Sting Ray Robb had nowhere to go but drive over Rossi's car, which sent Robb flipping through the air. Ed Carpenter and Kyle Kirkwood both spun in reaction to the accident.
Rossi, Carpenter and Kirkwood got out of their cars under their own power. Robb was put on a stretcher but gave two thumbs up as he was being put into the ambulance.
Rossi was seventh and Kirkwood was eighth at the time of the accident. Both guys had better days that were lost due to this incident.
I am surprised Rossi ran out of fuel considering his final stint was 48 laps. It does seem like Rossi's crew puts Rossi in a corner more frequently than others. Considering everyone was doing 90 to 100 laps in the first two stints, there is really no excuse why a car couldn't do 48 laps. That is a half tank of fuel. That is on the crew.
It sucks for Kirkwood because he had a good run and his top ten streak is over. He gets 15th, which is his worst result of the season. Rossi is 16th.
8. The final lap incident lifted a number of drivers up the finishing order. Josef Newgarden got seventh. This wasn't a typical Newgarden Iowa weekend. He wasn't going to win every Iowa race from now until the end of time. Even Scott Dixon hasn't won at Mid-Ohio in five years. Considering how this weekend started, third and eighth is a good weekend for Newgarden, especially since he has more finishes outside the top fifteen than inside the top ten this season. Newgarden needed two good days even if neither was a victory.
9. While Newgarden got up to seventh, Graham Rahal jumped up to eighth. Rahal was in the top ten the entire race after starting eighth. Again, if you didn't do anything wrong, never got off the bottom, had clean pit stops, you were likely going to finish where you started. Rahal needed this day, as did the entire Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing organization. It isn't a great weekend for the Hy-Vee sponsored team, but it is better than last year.
10. With the final lap accident, Rinus VeeKay and Romain Grosjean were elevated to top ten finishes. This race wasn't nearly as good as yesterday for VeeKay. He spent most of the race outside the top ten, same for Grosjean. Nothing special for either but they benefit from other's misfortune.
11. If it wasn't for a slow second pit stop, Santino Ferrucci would have finished in the top ten. Instead, one bad stop dropped Ferrucci from eighth to 14th as the race entered its final stage. For the second consecutive race, Ferrucci was the one driver making moves. That is a common theme in some oval races. Ferrucci takes chances and makes them work. For all the risks he takes, he never goes over the limit.
12. The remaining lead lap finishers were Linus Lundqvist, David Malukas and Nolan Siegel. Yeah. That is about where all three of those guys ran for the entire race. None of them should feel hard done with this results.
13. We covered Kirkwood and Rossi. Christian Lundgaard was caught a lap down after the Canapino caution. Lundgaard basically ran 17th the entire race. Kyffin Simpson and Marcus Armstrong started at the back and cracking the top twenty was as good as it was going to be. Pietro Fittipaldi was 20th. That is about as good as it gets for Fittipaldi at the moment.
14. Sting Ray Robb and Ed Carpenter take 21st and 22nd after that final lap accident.
15. On Marcus Ericsson's first pit stop, one of his tire changer had his air gun fail on him and that ruined Ericsson's race right then and there. He spent the final 150 laps a lap down, but he was mostly two laps down in this race.
Katherine Legge was 24th. That is all you could ask from her in a race like this with Dale Coyne Racing. She did finish ahead of Conor Daly, who substituted for Jack Harvey, as Daly's car had a mechanical failure and was last. Dale Coyne Racing is solidly in the cellar this year in IndyCar.
Agustín Canapino had a lazy spin on cold tires. Canapino didn't hit anything but it took some time to restart him. He ultimately ended his race 29 laps early.
Felix Rosenqvist had his right rear suspension break while running 13th. This wasn't a great day for Rosenqvist as he was letting another top five starting spot go to waste, but 13th is more fair than 26th, where the Swede will be classified.
16. This was a rough weekend in Iowa, and it was not an ideal situation for IndyCar. I don't think anyone knew about the Iowa re-pave until it happened and we saw the NASCAR test in May. Then IndyCar was left to scramble, organize a test and get Firestone to produce a tire compound for the new surface.
Unfortunately, IndyCar and Firestone didn't like the results of that test and we went into this weekend with Firestone bringing an untested right side compound and IndyCar regulating lower downforce levels in hopes of less cornering speed.
The bad thing is we got a product like this, which were two rather pathetic races. But it was a lose-lose situation. If Iowa had announced a proper re-pave schedule instead of something spur of the moment, we could have avoided this situation.
Eventually, every race track will need to be re-paved. Iowa had not been touched since it hosted its first races in 2006. If it was due then Iowa could have decided after last year's IndyCar race to rip up the track, re-pave the entire place instead of only the lower lanes in the corners, and IndyCar could have probably gotten a test in last autumn before having another test this spring.
There was not much the series, but it still feels like it made the wrong choices across the board.
17. That is harsh to say but the decisions made in the days leading up to the Iowa race to mandate lower downforce levels, which were not tested, and bring a right side compound that was not tested look more like panicked decision in response to the test after a few tire failures.
That is understandable, but this does feel like a decision made that was too focused on safety. Firestone has an incredible reputation building safe tires, but it brought a softer right side compound today in hopes of more tire degradation and we didn't really see that. I don't think it was expected for the tires to fall off like they did last year, but cars did 100 laps easily and probably could have gone longer before experiencing any significant fall off.
It is great we didn't have any tire failures that could have led to drivers being hurt, but stepping back and considering that IndyCar is a racing series and it needs to provide good races that give people a reason to watch, it didn't do that over two days this weekend. It never made an attempt to put on a decent race.
Prior to this weekend, the average number of passes in an Iowa race since 2017 was 807.667. If you just take since 2018 when the universal aero kit was introduced, that number increases to an average of 861.375 passes.
Saturday night's race had 192 total passes. Today's race had 204 total passes. There were 100 passes for positions on Saturday and 95 passes for positions on Sunday. The average number of passes for position since 2017 was 276.888. Last year's races had 319 and 379 passes for positions respectively.
IndyCar couldn't even have the total number of passes in this year's races match what was the average number of passes for positions over the previous nine Iowa races.
That is not great. That is actually dreadful. Actually, it is an embarrassment.
It is understandable if this year's races were not going to match the 1,502 passes and the 1,168 passes that we saw last year. It is understandable if it didn't quite hit that 807 average, but there is a wide margin between 807 and what we saw in these two races. Hell, even the 2017 race had 378 passes and that was an ok Iowa race.
IndyCar must consider what Iowa is and what IndyCar is as a series. It is selling racing. It wants people to be race fan, but if you have a 250-lap race around Iowa Speedway and cannot average a pass per lap, you are in big trouble. No one is going to come out and see that, especially when all the drivers are anonymous and have zero cachet even with the regular followers of the series.
There is going to be another year at Iowa in 2025, but this year definitely did not sell the people on the racing. The concern is IndyCar does not have a great track record of turning around the on-track product at ovals. There were three bland years at Phoenix where nothing changed year-to-year despite it being obvious from year one that the racing was bad. Gateway has never been breathtaking racing, and there is extra legroom in those grandstands than when IndyCar returned in 2017, if you catch my drift.
It is going to be immensely difficult to get people sold on attending again because of the racing. Unless IndyCar does a complete 180, those musical acts better be dynamite next year.
18. How about we end the experiment of starting races at 11:30 a.m. local time? That is one of the reasons the Texas race is no longer on the schedule. Last night looked good. Today looked like most of the crowd decided to wait until about 2:00 p.m. to show up, just before the first musical act took the stage.
IndyCar wanted a network television window. I get that, but this was the window available and it makes the series look amateur. Until the average rating at least doubles (probably more like triples), IndyCar isn't going to get to pick its start time if it wants network races.
This could have been a late-afternoon race or a night race, but then it would not have been on NBC. Considering what the crowd looked like today, what would have been better?
An NBC race that started at 11:30 a.m. local or a USA race that started at 6:00 p.m. local that followed the NASCAR Cup Series race?
Especially considering IndyCar raced last night and there was about 14 hours between the checkered flag Saturday night and the green flag Sunday morning. All we heard was how little sleep the teams got and how much work they did and how unfair it was.
One, wait until they find out about the 24-hour endurance racing. Two, you cannot clutch your pearls and say, "think of the crews" but at the same time demand...
An Iowa night race...
On network television...
During a doubleheader weekend.
At some point, a compromise must be made.
If you want an Iowa night race, great, but if you want both races to be on network television then the Sunday race is starting at 11:30 a.m. local. We could have had two afternoon races, but that would not have been acceptable to an entitled fanbase. We could have had two night/evening races but then at least one would not be on network television and that is also seen as not good enough for IndyCar.
The world is not black-and-white. There is success that can be found in the grey. When it comes to scheduling, IndyCar must be smart, but it should know by now when to trade a run for an out. It is almost illogical to think the only way IndyCar can succeed is if every race is on network television. It is smart to have a network-heavy component, but there must be some recognition that a few races on cable or streaming can also be beneficial for the series.
I guess it doesn't matter anyway. Someone is always going to be indignant.
19. Things can be two things. IndyCar was put in a bad spot and it was going to be tough to find the right package, but it also didn't do enough to at least ensure a race was suitable for presentation to the masses. I don't know how close every IndyCar race is from verging on a debacle, but it feels like Iowa was either going to be what we saw this weekend or what happened at the test and the series was worried that would be a black-eye.
I got bad news for the series. That face isn't that pretty to begin with. It could probably take a few more punches if it is for the sake of something compelling.
No one is tuning into IndyCar or any motorsports series for its safety record.
NASCAR's best race this season is arguably a race where the tires weren't working at Bristol and the teams had to be given an extra set during the race. The tire issues didn't look good as neither NASCAR nor Goodyear could figure out why the tires that were run at the track the previous August with no issues all of a sudden could barely make it 50 laps, but the racing was good. There were passes, drivers chasing down other drivers and making moves. That is why people tune in.
We can forgive a little ineptitude from a series if the racing is at least good. It is a bold strategy but perhaps IndyCar should have tried it.
20. Maybe we should just have a three-hour high line practice and not allow anyone to run the bottom until their qualifying run. I think that is what it would have taken to have the high line be functional this weekend. But it shouldn't take that much far a track like Iowa to have two functional lanes.
21. It didn't help that because the tire could last forever that it made it advantageous to just save the tire and make this a two-stop race. If this was a 300-lap race, like Iowa was for a good period of time, it would have at least opened it up to teams trying to save and do it on two stops or run hard and make it a three-stop race.
Today's race was an hour and 26 minutes and 38 seconds. It would have taken about 15 to 18 minutes for 50 more laps to be run at this pace. It still would have been completed in under two hours. Last night's race with all the cautions would have likely gone a little over two hours if it was 300 laps, but it still would have been done within two hours and ten minutes.
I know this is a physical weekend and two races alone is a lot on the drivers, but 300-lap races would likely be better in terms of strategy and likely would have forced the drivers to drive harder than they did this weekend. That wouldn't have entirely saved the racing, but it would have helped a little bit.
22. We are going to pick more at the Iowa weekend over the next few days, weeks, months, and probably until next year's Iowa weekend. We got one more race in Toronto before the Olympic break. That break is much needed.
