It is that time of year again and 60 cars are ready for the 86th 24 Hours of Le Mans. This year sees the LMP1 class grow to ten entries with twenty cars entered in LMP2. There are seven new entries in LMP1. This is the most LMP1 entries since 2015. This year's race is the second round of the 2018-19 FIA World Endurance Championship season.
This preview looks at the two prototype classes. After winning three consecutive years at Le Mans, Porsche has withdrawn and all five manufactures in LMP1 will be going for their first overall victory in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. German teams have won overall eight consecutive years at Le Mans and 11 of the last 12 years. This preview goes entry-by-entry and gives you each driver with their number of Le Mans appearances, including this year in parentheses, followed by that entry's result on the Le Mans Test Day and a little additional information on each entry.
LMP1
#1 Rebellion Racing Rebellion R13-Gibson
Drivers: André Lotterer (10th), Neel Jani (10th), Bruno Senna (6th)
Test Day Result: 4th
About This Team: Lotterer and Jani are past Le Mans winners. Lotterer is going for his fourth Le Mans victory and Jani for this second. Only eight drivers have won Le Mans four times. This is Senna's first time competing in the LMP1 class since his Le Mans debut in 2009 driving an Oreca 01-AIM for Team Oreca Matmut AIM. Senna has never finished better than sixth in class at Le Mans. Senna could become the first Brazilian to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans overall. This car was disqualified from third at Spa-Francorchamps for a skid block worn beyond the allowable limits. Rebellion Racing could become the first Swiss team to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
#3 Rebellion Racing Rebellion R13-Gibson
Drivers: Mathias Beche (6th), Gustavo Menezes (3rd), Thomas Laurent (2nd)
Test Day Result: 2nd
About This Team: This will be the LMP1 class debuts at Le Mans for Menezes and Laurent. Menezes won in LMP2 on debut two years ago and he finished eighth in class and tenth overall last year. Laurent won in LMP2 last year and finished second overall driving for Jackie Chan DC Racing. Laurent is one of two drivers in LMP1 who could become the youngest overall winner in Le Mans history. Laurent will be 20 years, two months and 12 days old when the race finishes. Alexander Wurz is currently the youngest winner at 22 years, three months and one day old when he won in 1996. Menezes could be the first American to win Le Mans overall since Davy Jones in 1996. He won the Asian Le Mans Series championship earlier this year. Beche is back in LMP1 for the first time since 2015. He won the LMP1-L class in 2014, which featured two cars, both from Rebellion.
#4 ByKolles Racing Team ENSO CLM P1/01-Nismo
Drivers: Oliver Webb (6th), Dominik Kraihamer (8th), Tom Dillman (1st)
Test Day Result: 7th
About This Team: Webb has retired from four consecutive 24 Hours of Le Mans with his only finish being in 2014 when he finished third in LMP2 driving for Signatech-Alpine. Kraihamer has retired from six of his previous seven Le Mans starts. His only finish was in 2015 driving for Rebellion and he finished 18th overall. Dillman won on his WEC debut in LMP2 at Shanghai in 2015. His last WEC race was the 2016 season finale at Bahrain with Extreme Speed Motorsports. This team finished fourth overall at Spa-Francorchamps. ByKolles Racing Team could become the first Austrian team to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans since 1970 when Porsche KG Salzburg took victory.
#5 CEFC TRSM Racing Ginetta G60-LT-P1-Mecachrome
Drivers: Charlie Robertson (1st), Mike Simpson (1st), Léo Roussel (4th)
Test Day Result: 10th
About This Team: Robertson and Simpson both make Le Mans debuts after both competed in LMP3 racing. Robertson won the inaugural European Le Mans Series LMP3 class championship in 2015 with Sir Chris Hoy. Simpson also won a race that year. This is Roussel's first Le Mans appearance since 2016 and his first time in LMP1. CEFC TRSM Racing could become the first Chinese team to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Neither CEFEC TRSM Racing Ginetta participated in the Spa-Francorchamps after the team withdrew due to financial concerns.
#6 CEFC TRSM Racing Ginetta G60-LT-P1-Mecachrome
Drivers: Alex Brundle (5th), Oliver Turvey (5th), Oliver Rowland (1st)
Test Day Result: 9th
About This Team: Turvey returns to Le Mans for the first time since 2015. He won in LMP2 in 2014 with Jota Sport. Brundle finished third overall last year and second in LMP2 with Jackie Chan DC Racing. Both are making their first start in LMP1. Rowland was third in the Formula Two championship last year with victories at Monaco and Hungary. The last time an all-British lineup won at Le Mans was 1957 with Ron Flockhart and Ivor Bueb driving for Ecurie Ecosse in a Jaguar D-Type.
#7 Toyota Gazoo Racing Toyota TS050 Hybrid
Drivers: Mike Conway (5th), Kamui Kobayashi (4th), José María López (2nd)
Test Day Result: 3rd
About This Team: This will be the fourth consecutive year Conway and Kobayashi have been co-drivers. López did not finish last year at Le Mans sharing a car with Nicolas Lapierre and Yuji Kunimoto. Conway and Kobayashi finished runner-up two years ago and this car did not finish last year's race. The team finished second at Spa-Francorchamps after being stripped of pole position. López could become the second Argentine to win Le Mans and first since José Frolián González in 1954.
#8 Toyota Gazoo Racing Toyota TS050 Hybrid
Drivers: Sébastien Buemi (7th), Kazuki Nakajima (7th), Fernando Alonso (1st)
Test Day Result: 1st
About This Team: This team won the 2018-19 FIA World Endurance Championship season opener at Spa-Francorchamps. Buemi and Nakajima finished second in class last year but eighth overall. Buemi has not stood on the overall podium since 2014 and Nakajima has never finish on the overall podium. Alonso is attempting to complete the Triple Crown of Motorsports. He won the Monaco Grand Prix in 2006 and 2007 and he led 27 laps in last year's Indianapolis 500 before an engine failure ended his race early. Alonso finished 13th in the Prototype class in this year's 24 Hours of Daytona. Alonso could be the second Spaniard to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans joining Marc Gené, who won in 2009.
#10 DragonSpeed BR Engineering BR1-Gibson
Drivers: Henrik Hedman (2nd), Ben Hanley (2nd), Renger van der Zande (1st)
Test Day Result: 8th
About This Team: Hedman and Hanley made their Le Mans debut together last year in LMP2 and finished 12th in class, 14th overall. This car did not compete at Spa-Francorchamps after a qualifying accident totaled the car broke Pietro Fittipaldi's legs. Van der Zande had IMSA duty the weekend of Spa-Francorchamps. The Dutchman drives for Wayne Taylor Racing in the Prototype class and he is fourth in the championship. Hedman can become the third Swedish driver to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans and first since Stefan Johansson. Van der Zande could become the third Dutchman to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans and first since Jan Lammers in 1988.
#11 SMP Racing BR Engineering BR1-AER
Drivers: Mikhail Aleshin (4th), Vitaly Petrov (4th), Jenson Button (1st)
Test Day Result: 5th
About This Team: This will be Aleshin's fourth consecutive Le Mans appearance and first in LMP1. He has finished 33rd overall twice. Petrov finished third in LMP2 in 2016 driving for SMP Racing. He has twice failed to finish this race. Button is racing full-time in Super GT. Through three races, Button and co-driver Naoki Yamamoto have finished second, ninth and second and lead the GT500 championship. SMP Racing could become the first Russian team to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Button could earn his second leg of the Triple Crown of Motorsports. He won the 2009 Monaco Grand Prix.
#17 SMP Racing BR Engineering BR1-AER
Drivers: Matevos Isaakyan (1st), Egor Orudzhev (1st), Stéphane Sarrazin (17th)
Test Day Result: 6th
About This Team: Isaakyan and Orudzhev competed last year in Formula V8 3.5 World Series and European Le Mans Series with the duo winning the ELMS race at Circuit Paul Ricard. Isaakyan finished second in the Formula V8 3.5 World Series championship and Orduzhev was sixth. Both drivers won two races. Isaakyan is one of two drivers in LMP1 who could become the youngest overall winner in Le Mans history. Isaakyan will be 20 years and two months old when the race finishes. Alexander Wurz is currently the youngest winner at 22 years, three months and one day old when he won in 1996. Sarrazin has finished second overall four times but has yet to win at Le Mans. This is Sarrazin's 12th consecutive year competing at Le Mans in the LMP1 class.
LMP2
#22 United Autosport Ligier JS P217-Gibson
Drivers: Phil Hanson (2nd), Filipe Albuquerque (5th), Paul di Resta (1st)
Test Day Result: 6th
About This Team: Hanson and Albuquerque finished 10th in the ELMS round at Monza and Hanson made his 24 Hours of Daytona debut with Fernando Alonso and Lando Norris in January. Hanson finished 11th overall last year with Tockwith Motorsports. Albuquerque won the 24 Hours of Daytona overall earlier this year and he scored his career-best Le Mans finish in fifth overall. Di Resta won at the Hungaroring in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters and he has scored points in every DTM race this season.
#23 Panis Barthez Competition Ligier JS P217-Gibson
Drivers: Timothé Buret (3rd), Julien Canal (9th), Will Stevens (3rd)
Test Day Result: 13th
About This Team: This is Canal's fifth consecutive year at Le Mans in the LMP2 class but his first time with a French team since he drove for Larbre Compétition in GTE-Am. Stevens has finished on a class podium each year he has been to Le Mans. He was second in LMP2 in 2016 with G-Drive Racing and he won in GTE-Am last year with JMW Motorsport. All three of Buret's Le Mans appearances have been with Panis Barthez Competition.
#25 Algarve Pro Racing Ligier JS P217-Gibson
Drivers: Mark Patterson (6th), Ate de Jong (1st), Tacksung Kim (1st)
Test Day Result: 17th
About This Team: Patterson makes his sixth consecutive Le Mans appearance. His best finish overall was 12th on debut with Brendon Hartley and Karun Chandhok as co-drivers with Murphy Prototypes. Kim is a veteran of the Asian Le Mans Series and de Jong ran in the LMP3 class in ALMS last year. This team competes full-time in ELMS this season.
#26 G-Drive Racing Oreca 07-Gibson
Drivers: Roman Rusinov (8th), Jean-Éric Vergne (2nd), Andrea Pizzitola (2nd)
Test Day Result: 3rd
About This Team: This team is coming off victories at Monza in ELMS and at Spa-Francorchamps in the WEC. Rusinov has finished third and second in LMP2 in 2015 and 2016 respectively. Vergne finished sixth in class, seventh overall driving for CEFC Manor TRS Racing. Pizzitola made his Le Mans debut in 2016 driving for Algarve Pro Racing.
#28 TDS Racing Oreca 07-Gibson
Drivers: François Perrodo (6th), Matthieu Vaxivière (2nd), Loïc Duval (8th)
Test Day Result: 4th
About This Team: After making four starts in GTE-Am, last year Perrodo stepped up to LMP2. Vaxivière made his Le Mans debut last year as Perrodo's co-driver. Duval replaces Emmanuel Collard in this lineup. Duval missed last year's Le Mans. This is Duval's first time at Le Mans not in the LMP1 class.
#29 Racing Team Nederland Dallara P217-Gibson
Drivers: Frits van Eerd (2nd), Giedo van der Garde (2nd), Jan Lammers (24th)
Test Day Result: 16th
About This Team: Van Eerd made his Le Mans debut last year with Lammers and Rubens Barrichello as co-drivers. It has been 22 years since Lammers last stood on a class podium at Le Mans. Lammers will set the record for most races between first and last start at 36 years. Van der Garde returns to Le Mans for the first time since 2016. After winning the 2016 European Le Mans Series LMP2 championship with G-Drive Racing, van der Garde only raced one round of the Audi Sport TT Cup last year at Zandvoort. He finished 12th and seventh in those races as a guest driver.
#31 DragonSpeed Oreca 07-Gibson
Drivers: Roberto González (2nd), Pastor Maldonado (1st), Nathanaël Berthon (5th)
Test Day Result: 1st
About This Team: González ran the entire WEC season with CEFC Manor TRS Racing last year and he scored 46 points. Maldonado spent the last two years being Pirelli's test driver in Formula One. This will be Berthon's fourth different team he has competed with at Le Mans. This team finished sixth in the WEC season opener at Spa-Francorchamps.
#32 United Autosport Ligier JS P217-Gibson
Drivers: Hugo de Sadeleer (2nd), Will Owen (2nd), Juan Pablo Montoya (1st)
Test Day Result: 14th
About This Team: Owen and de Sadeleer finished fourth in class, fifth overall last year in their Le Mans debuts. They won twice and finished second in the ELMS LMP2 championship last year and they finished fourth overall this year at the 24 Hours of Daytona. Unfortunately for these two they have finished ninth and 11th in the first two ELMS races this season. Montoya could complete the Triple Crown of Motorsports this year. He won the Indianapolis 500 in 2000 and 2015 and he won the Monaco Grand Prix in 2003.
#33 Jackie Chan DC Racing Ligier JS P217-Gibson
Drivers: David Cheng (5th), Nicholas Boulle (1st), Pierre Nicolet (2nd)
Test Day Result: 19th
About This Team: Cheng finished third overall last year at Le Mans but he has two new co-drivers this year. Nicolet made his Le Mans debut last year with Eurasia Motorsport and finished 15th overall. Boulle has made six starts in IMSA since 2016. He won the in Prototype Challenge class in the 2017 24 Hours of Daytona with Performance Tech Motorsports.
#34 Jackie Chan DC Racing Ligier JS P217-Gibson
Drivers: Ricky Taylor (5th), Côme Ledogar (1st), David Heinemeier Hansson (67h)
Test Day Result: 18th
About This Team: Taylor will make his third Le Mans start in the LMP2 class. Taylor won at Mid-Ohio in IMSA driving for Team Penske Acura and he finished second in the most recent round at Belle Isle. Ledogar won the 2016 Blancpain Endurance Series championship. Heinemeier Hansson has finished on a class podium three times at Le Mans. He finished third overall last year with Rebellion Racing before the car was disqualified for intentionally modified bodywork.
#35 SMP Racing Dallara P217-Gibson
Drivers: Viktor Shaitar (5th), Harrison Newey (1st), Norman Nato (1st)
Test Day Result: 12th
About This Team: Shaitar has two class podiums at Le Mans and this is his first time he does not have at least one Russian co-driver. Newey won the Asian Le Mans Series LMP2 championship this year. Nato won the ELMS season opener at Circuit Paul Ricard with Racing Engineering. Nato won three races between GP2/Formula Two.
#36 Signatech Alpine Matmut Alpine A470-Gibson
Drivers: Nicolas Lapierre (11th), André Negrão (2nd), Pierre Thiriet (8th)
Test Day Result: 5th
About This Team: Lapierre had won two consecutive years in LMP2 before driving for Toyota last year. Negrão finished third in class last year on debut. Thiriet has twice finished second in LMP2. This team finished third at Spa-Francorchamps last month.
#37 Jackie Chan DC Racing Oreca 07-Gibson
Drivers: Jazeman Jaafar (1st), Nabil Jeffri (1st), Weiron Tan (1st)
Test Day Result: 11th
About This Team: All three drivers make their Le Mans debut and they finished fourth at Spa-Francorchamps last month.
#38 Jackie Chan DC Racing Oreca 07-Gibson
Drivers: Ho-Pin Tung (6th), Gabriel Aubry (1st), Stéphane Richelmi (2nd)
Test Day Result: 10th
About This Team: Tung was victorious last year with in LMP2 and finished second overall. His previous best class finish was seventh and his previous best overall finish was 11th. Aubry is also competing in GP3 Series this year with Arden International. Richelmi did not race at Le Mans last year after he won in LMP2 with Signatech Alpine in 2016. This team finished second in LMP2 at the WEC season opener at Spa-Francorchamps but was the top WEC eligible team.
#39 Graff-SO24 Oreca 07-Gibson
Drivers: Vincent Capillaire (5th), Jonathan Hirschi (6th), Tristan Gommendy (9th)
Test Day Result: 7th
About This Team: Capillaire has finished 32nd overall the last two years at Le Mans. Hirschi score his best career class finish last year at Le Mans when he finished sixth with CEFC Manor TRS Racing. Gommendy was apart of the Jackie Chan DC Racing entry that finished third overall last year.
#40 G-Drive Racing Oreca 07-Gibson
Drivers: James Allen (2nd), Enzo Guibbert (2nd), Jose Gutiérrez (2nd)
Test Day Result: 9th
About This Team: All three drivers made their Le Mans debut last year with Allen scoring the best finish of the three coming home sixth overall. Gutiérrez finished 39th overall with G-Drive Racing and Guibbert finished 43rd overall. This team competes in ELMS and they finished sixth in the season opener at Circuit Paul Ricard.
#44 Eurasia Motorsport Ligier JS P217-Gibson
Drivers: Andrea Bertolini (7th), Niclas Jönsson (13th), Tracy Krohn (13th)
Test Day Result: 15th
About This Team: Bertolini won in the LMP2 class at Le Mans in 2015 driving for SMP Racing. This is the 13th consecutive year Jönsson and Krohn have been co-drivers together and the third time they have driven together in LMP2. They finished second in GT2 in 2007 with Colin Braun as their third driver.
#47 Cetilar Villorba Corsa Dallara P217-Gibson
Drivers: Roberto Lacorte (2nd), Giorgio Sernagiotto (2nd), Felipe Nasr (1st)
Test Day Result: 8th
About This Team: Lacorte and Sernagiotto finished ninth overall last year in their Le Mans debuts and they finished ninth at Monza last month in ELMS with Nasr. Nasr picked up his first career IMSA victory at Belle Isle with Eric Curran and Action Express Racing.
#48 IDEC Sport Racing Oreca 07-Gibson
Drivers: Paul Lafargue (2nd), Paul-Loup Chatin (4th), Memo Rojas (3rd)
Test Day Result: 2nd
About This Team: Rojas makes his third consecutive Le Mans appearance. Chatin returns for the first time since 2016 and he finished third in LMP2 in 2014. This team finished third at Monza in ELMS last month. Lafargue finished 12th overall last year.
#50 Larbre Compétition Ligier JS P217-Gibson
Drivers: Erwin Creed (1st), Roman Ricci (2nd), Thomas Dagoneau (2nd)
Test Day Result: 20th
About This Team: Ricci last contested the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2000 with his brother Jean-Louis Ricci and Thierry Perrier in a Porsche 911 GT3-R and they finished 23rd overall. Dagoneau returns to Le Mans for the first time since 2013. Creed won in LMP3 at Monza last year in ELMS. He and Ricci finished seventh in the WEC Spa-Francorchamps season opener.
Practice begins at 10:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday June 13th with a four-hour session. The first qualifying session is set for 4:00 p.m. ET and will be two hours long. Thursday will see a two-hour qualifying session at 1:00 p.m. ET with the final qualifying session that night at 4:00 p.m. ET. The morning warm-up will be held at 3:00 a.m. ET on Saturday. The race starts at 9:00 a.m. ET.
Covering All Motorsports. From Indianapolis to Le Mans, Daytona to Monaco.
Tuesday, June 12, 2018
Monday, June 11, 2018
Musings From the Weekend: We Are Killing Motorsports
Jonathan Rea became the most successful rider in World Superbike history when he picked up his 60th victory at Brno in the first race of the weekend on Saturday. Unfortunately, race two did not go Rea's way but another Brit did the nation proud. Scott Dixon picked up his second victory in eight days in IndyCar and now he heads to Le Mans as the IndyCar championship leader. Romain Grosjean obliterated a groundhog. The checkered flag came prematurely in Montreal. NASCAR played cat-and-mouse with the rain in Michigan. Circuit racing returned to Switzerland and it was Formula E. The World Rally Championship had a Mediterranean weekend. Here is a run down of what got me thinking.
We Are Killing Motorsports
There has been a lot of racing in the last few weeks and it is no different from other years. May brings high profile events, most racing series are now in full swing after long offseasons and it continues into June as summer approaches. With the increase of races comes the increase of noise and I am not talking about from what is on racetracks.
Voices drown out engines, squealing tires and the sounds of a pit stop. People love letting you know what they think about the race that just happened. More importantly, people like to let you know what was wrong with the race that just happened and this time of year sees many major events come into play.
This year's Indianapolis 500 had 30 lead changes; the seventh-most in event history and that wasn't good enough. Kyle Busch dominated the Coca-Cola 600 and of course people were livid. The Monaco Grand Prix was no different from any other Monaco Grand Prix but this was the year people decided enough was enough despite the exceptional drive from Daniel Ricciardo, who nursed a car to the victory after an MGU-K failure.
Talk about a tough room. And it has continued you the last few weeks as motorsports has put itself on this impossible quest for constantly improving the on-track product. It is the only sport that does it. Those around motorsports expect to have a great finish. Eddie Gossage said prior to Saturday night's IndyCar race, "I would expect IndyCar to have perfected the aero package for Texas to ensure a race that offers another classic photo finish."
Forget vaguely saying it would be a great race but doubling down and saying the race would end in another photo finish with fans unsure of the winner in the seconds after the checkered flag. Imagine having to live up to those standards of not providing a great race but a photo finish, something that should be an infrequent occurrence.
We have to have a conversation of what is realistic to expect in a race because the idea that an IndyCar oval race should have passes every lap or a pass at the end of every straightaway every lap isn't practical. NASCAR is experimenting with new aero packages with increased drag and downforce and using restrictor plates at 1.5-mile tracks and even Michigan and Pocono in hopes of providing more close races but not every race should be close. Not every race should have a blanket thrown over the top fifteen cars. There is one thing to want to have a package that allows a race to be competitive but it is entirely different to create a package where every race is going to feature 50 lead changes.
There is a lost understanding that a race without constant passing can be exciting. There is a lost understanding that strategy is a good thing and teams need to employ it at times in hopes of winning. Sometimes teams need to something entirely different to have a shot of winning and we saw that at Belle Isle with Ryan Hunter-Reay. A two-stop strategy wasn't going to win him the race but he went to a three-stop strategy and fortunately he avoided getting stuck behind slower cars and a caution never came and his strategy worked. The same thing was being worked at Texas the other night. Some teams saw they could potentially make it a three-stop race, others were going for a four-stopper and thought speed would beat efficiency. A few caution periods cancelled that out but while Texas wasn't twenty cars side-by-side for 600 kilometers, it was an interesting race and we saw drivers coming and going.
The same way the Indianapolis 500 wasn't a passing free-for-all, Texas saw a few drivers provide wondrous performances. Scott Dixon nailed it. Robert Wickens made runs to the front late in stints. Alexander Rossi worked his way to the front and he had to drive hard to overcome slow pit stops. Other drivers struggled. The Penske cars held their own but then faded. What we thought was going to be another Chevrolet/Team Penske oval ass kicking turned into a Honda counterattack that in the end could not be matched. It wasn't immediate, overwhelming action but if you gave it time the race developed into an intriguing battle.
After the race, responses were mixed. Some were happy. Others were upset it wasn't the pack racing everyone got hooked on when bleached blond hair and tribal armband tattoos were permissible style choices. This isn't an IndyCar-only problem. It is the problem for every motorsports series as series have to balance the increasing expectations from race fans that every race will be the greatest ever with the reality that 99 times out of 100 that will not be the case.
Race fans do not set reasonable expectations and to be fair, series and promoters aren't helping when acting like hype men instead of educators. Think about what Gossage said. You didn't hear NBA commissioner Adam Silver say before the NBA Finals that Golden State-Cleveland would provide seven games that would go to double overtime and each one would end with a buzzer beater. We ended up with a four-game sweep in favor of Golden State and a beat down in game four. The NBA wasn't bullshitting anyone. It gave the world basketball and sometimes basketball will be one team that fires on all cylinders every night and cannot be beaten. And guess what? People are going to show up next year even though the finals and the playoffs in general were a dud. If anything, the ratings might actually go up again.
What motorsports series need aren't the Eddie Gossages of the world. We don't need bullshitters because bullshitters have created this mess that the only acceptable form of races involve spectacular crashes, passing on top of passing and eight-wide finishes across the finish line. We need people to tell us what a race is going to be, how it will develop and what to look for. We need more people like Jon Beekhuis, Marshall Pruett, Mike Hull, Steve Matchett and J.R. Hildebrand to be the vocal leaders who look at the details of a race and not take a race at surface value. Those educators are better for the fan base and are better for new people testing the motorsports waters and seeing if it is for them.
The death of motorsports very well may come when fan expectations become impossible to meet and we may be getting much closer to having a funeral than we think. We are killing motorsports expecting each race to be better than the one prior and not expecting anything but that. We are similar to sex addicts and it is becoming increasingly harder to achieve the level of stimulation necessary for pleasure. We need more but we are hurting ourselves in the pursuit.
We are killing the sport with the inability to accept what is in front of us.
Other sports don't die when the games aren't better than what happened the week before or the year before. Why is motorsports that way? Why is there a lack of understanding of how races can be different?
There will be races with constant action and slingshot passes and when everyone is on edge but there will also be the slow burns where passing is more methodical and it will come down to the final stint and there will be fuel mileage races where a handful of drivers roll the dice on making a number while other will focus on speed and sacrifice time for an extra pit stop.
Why is it that motorsports fan are the only fans that can't accept races are going to be different and can't all be the same thing? This impossible standard is one of the things that are killing the sport. It isn't keeping people from viewing but what keeps people from entering is when they hear from everyone who is already inside why this race sucked 95% of the time. Who wants to be a part of this consistent judgment? It isn't a healthy environment.
We need to stop living and dying on whether a race was good or bad and making sure it hits certain numbers to qualify as good. It doesn't work that way. This isn't how it works. It isn't a test. There isn't an answer key. You can't hit a number and get graded as great. Each race exists individually and will stand on its own never to be repeated. There isn't one form of a great race and we need people to realize that great races come in many different forms.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Scott Dixon and Jonathan Rea but did you know...
Sebastian Vettel won the Canadian Grand Prix.
Clint Bowyer won a rain-shortened NASCAR Cup race at Michigan. Austin Dillon won a rain-shortened Grand National Series race. Johnny Sauter won the Truck race at Texas, his fourth victory of the season.
Lucas di Grassi won the Zürich ePrix.
Alex Lowes won the second Superbike race of the Brno weekend.
Thierry Neuville won Rally Italia Sardgena, his second consecutive victory and it extends his championship lead in the World Rally Championship.
Coming Up This Weekend
The 86th 24 Hours of Le Mans.
MotoGP is in Barcelona.
Supercars are at Hidden Valley Raceway.
NASCAR's Grand National Series and Truck series are at Iowa and the Cup series is off.
We Are Killing Motorsports
There has been a lot of racing in the last few weeks and it is no different from other years. May brings high profile events, most racing series are now in full swing after long offseasons and it continues into June as summer approaches. With the increase of races comes the increase of noise and I am not talking about from what is on racetracks.
Voices drown out engines, squealing tires and the sounds of a pit stop. People love letting you know what they think about the race that just happened. More importantly, people like to let you know what was wrong with the race that just happened and this time of year sees many major events come into play.
This year's Indianapolis 500 had 30 lead changes; the seventh-most in event history and that wasn't good enough. Kyle Busch dominated the Coca-Cola 600 and of course people were livid. The Monaco Grand Prix was no different from any other Monaco Grand Prix but this was the year people decided enough was enough despite the exceptional drive from Daniel Ricciardo, who nursed a car to the victory after an MGU-K failure.
Talk about a tough room. And it has continued you the last few weeks as motorsports has put itself on this impossible quest for constantly improving the on-track product. It is the only sport that does it. Those around motorsports expect to have a great finish. Eddie Gossage said prior to Saturday night's IndyCar race, "I would expect IndyCar to have perfected the aero package for Texas to ensure a race that offers another classic photo finish."
Forget vaguely saying it would be a great race but doubling down and saying the race would end in another photo finish with fans unsure of the winner in the seconds after the checkered flag. Imagine having to live up to those standards of not providing a great race but a photo finish, something that should be an infrequent occurrence.
We have to have a conversation of what is realistic to expect in a race because the idea that an IndyCar oval race should have passes every lap or a pass at the end of every straightaway every lap isn't practical. NASCAR is experimenting with new aero packages with increased drag and downforce and using restrictor plates at 1.5-mile tracks and even Michigan and Pocono in hopes of providing more close races but not every race should be close. Not every race should have a blanket thrown over the top fifteen cars. There is one thing to want to have a package that allows a race to be competitive but it is entirely different to create a package where every race is going to feature 50 lead changes.
There is a lost understanding that a race without constant passing can be exciting. There is a lost understanding that strategy is a good thing and teams need to employ it at times in hopes of winning. Sometimes teams need to something entirely different to have a shot of winning and we saw that at Belle Isle with Ryan Hunter-Reay. A two-stop strategy wasn't going to win him the race but he went to a three-stop strategy and fortunately he avoided getting stuck behind slower cars and a caution never came and his strategy worked. The same thing was being worked at Texas the other night. Some teams saw they could potentially make it a three-stop race, others were going for a four-stopper and thought speed would beat efficiency. A few caution periods cancelled that out but while Texas wasn't twenty cars side-by-side for 600 kilometers, it was an interesting race and we saw drivers coming and going.
The same way the Indianapolis 500 wasn't a passing free-for-all, Texas saw a few drivers provide wondrous performances. Scott Dixon nailed it. Robert Wickens made runs to the front late in stints. Alexander Rossi worked his way to the front and he had to drive hard to overcome slow pit stops. Other drivers struggled. The Penske cars held their own but then faded. What we thought was going to be another Chevrolet/Team Penske oval ass kicking turned into a Honda counterattack that in the end could not be matched. It wasn't immediate, overwhelming action but if you gave it time the race developed into an intriguing battle.
After the race, responses were mixed. Some were happy. Others were upset it wasn't the pack racing everyone got hooked on when bleached blond hair and tribal armband tattoos were permissible style choices. This isn't an IndyCar-only problem. It is the problem for every motorsports series as series have to balance the increasing expectations from race fans that every race will be the greatest ever with the reality that 99 times out of 100 that will not be the case.
Race fans do not set reasonable expectations and to be fair, series and promoters aren't helping when acting like hype men instead of educators. Think about what Gossage said. You didn't hear NBA commissioner Adam Silver say before the NBA Finals that Golden State-Cleveland would provide seven games that would go to double overtime and each one would end with a buzzer beater. We ended up with a four-game sweep in favor of Golden State and a beat down in game four. The NBA wasn't bullshitting anyone. It gave the world basketball and sometimes basketball will be one team that fires on all cylinders every night and cannot be beaten. And guess what? People are going to show up next year even though the finals and the playoffs in general were a dud. If anything, the ratings might actually go up again.
What motorsports series need aren't the Eddie Gossages of the world. We don't need bullshitters because bullshitters have created this mess that the only acceptable form of races involve spectacular crashes, passing on top of passing and eight-wide finishes across the finish line. We need people to tell us what a race is going to be, how it will develop and what to look for. We need more people like Jon Beekhuis, Marshall Pruett, Mike Hull, Steve Matchett and J.R. Hildebrand to be the vocal leaders who look at the details of a race and not take a race at surface value. Those educators are better for the fan base and are better for new people testing the motorsports waters and seeing if it is for them.
The death of motorsports very well may come when fan expectations become impossible to meet and we may be getting much closer to having a funeral than we think. We are killing motorsports expecting each race to be better than the one prior and not expecting anything but that. We are similar to sex addicts and it is becoming increasingly harder to achieve the level of stimulation necessary for pleasure. We need more but we are hurting ourselves in the pursuit.
We are killing the sport with the inability to accept what is in front of us.
Other sports don't die when the games aren't better than what happened the week before or the year before. Why is motorsports that way? Why is there a lack of understanding of how races can be different?
There will be races with constant action and slingshot passes and when everyone is on edge but there will also be the slow burns where passing is more methodical and it will come down to the final stint and there will be fuel mileage races where a handful of drivers roll the dice on making a number while other will focus on speed and sacrifice time for an extra pit stop.
Why is it that motorsports fan are the only fans that can't accept races are going to be different and can't all be the same thing? This impossible standard is one of the things that are killing the sport. It isn't keeping people from viewing but what keeps people from entering is when they hear from everyone who is already inside why this race sucked 95% of the time. Who wants to be a part of this consistent judgment? It isn't a healthy environment.
We need to stop living and dying on whether a race was good or bad and making sure it hits certain numbers to qualify as good. It doesn't work that way. This isn't how it works. It isn't a test. There isn't an answer key. You can't hit a number and get graded as great. Each race exists individually and will stand on its own never to be repeated. There isn't one form of a great race and we need people to realize that great races come in many different forms.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Scott Dixon and Jonathan Rea but did you know...
Sebastian Vettel won the Canadian Grand Prix.
Clint Bowyer won a rain-shortened NASCAR Cup race at Michigan. Austin Dillon won a rain-shortened Grand National Series race. Johnny Sauter won the Truck race at Texas, his fourth victory of the season.
Lucas di Grassi won the Zürich ePrix.
Alex Lowes won the second Superbike race of the Brno weekend.
Thierry Neuville won Rally Italia Sardgena, his second consecutive victory and it extends his championship lead in the World Rally Championship.
Coming Up This Weekend
The 86th 24 Hours of Le Mans.
MotoGP is in Barcelona.
Supercars are at Hidden Valley Raceway.
NASCAR's Grand National Series and Truck series are at Iowa and the Cup series is off.
Saturday, June 9, 2018
First Impressions: Texas 2018
1. Scott Dixon did it again and now the only men ahead of him in IndyCar victories are A.J. Foyt and Mario Andretti. While the Team Penske cars appeared to get it wrong and struggle with blistering tires and fuel mileage, Dixon led the Honda train. Just like last week at Belle Isle, while other cars were quick, Dixon was quicker and while other had bobbles with fuel nozzles and tires, Dixon's crew was spotless and Dixon went from stalking his prey to jack rabbit on the run only tonight he would not be caught. It would have been interesting to see if Dixon could have won this race had it stayed green while some tried to make it on three stops and it appeared Dixon was set on a four-stop race. Heading into the Indianapolis 500 he had yet to lead a lap let alone win a race. Two weeks later he has two victories and leads the championship by 23 points before spring has burned into summer. Watch out boys and girls.
2. Simon Pagenaud gets his first podium finish of the season and his first top five finish of the season and this was a terrible night for him. The tires blistered the least for him of the Penske drivers but he was nowhere near the pace of Dixon and the other Hondas in the second and third stints of this race. However, cautions fell his way and he was able to hold off Alexander Rossi in the closing stages. He had nothing for Dixon but he got all that he could tonight and that is a big boost for the Frenchman considering how frustrating the first half of the season has been. The championship isn't out of his reach but he is miles back and needs to go on a tear.
3. This was a frustrating night for Alexander Rossi and he finished third. He was fast and once again might have been the fastest car tonight but he kept losing time on pit lane and it erased everything he did and he had to start over again. He may have been in Dixon's shoes had it not be for those delays. It is hard to be angry at a victory, five podium finishes and seven top five finishes through nine races but he probably should have three victories and he tossed a runner-up finish out the window at Belle Isle and more importantly 21 points. He trails Dixon by 23 points in the championship. He is quick but he needs to be smart in the second half of the season.
4. James Hinchcliffe gets off the snide with a fourth place finish. It is amazing what missing the Indianapolis 500 can do to you. He had five top ten finishes through the first five races and this is his sixth top ten finish in nine races. For most guys that is great but missing the Indianapolis 500 kind of drowns out that success. In one blow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports went from a Penske/Andretti challenger for middle of the field and it is odd to see. I am not sure what to make of Hinchcliffe at this point of the season.
5. Ryan Hunter-Reay finished fifth and I think it is unfortunate we had to last few cautions because Hunter-Reay stopped for a splash of fuel before the restart with 63 laps to go and he was running really conservative lap times to make it to the end. I am not sure it would have worked but Hunter-Reay did well tonight.
6. If Graham Rahal can start a race in the top ten he will win. He went from 20th to sixth tonight and through nine races he has eight top ten finishes and he has started outside the top ten for six of those top ten finishes. Rahal has been solid but he needs to step up another level to be a championship contender.
7. Takuma Sato made it a stellar night for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing with a double top ten finish as he finished seventh. This is his fourth top ten finish of the year. He has been good, kind of what you would expect of Sato but he hasn't torn up equipment.
8. Sébastien Bourdais was always on the four-stop strategy but he was in the top ten for most of this race. I think eighth was the best he could have done though and that isn't bad when you consider the rough few weeks he had at Indianapolis and Belle Isle.
9. Ed Jones was at the back at the start and kept the car on the lead lap and finished ninth. This is his first top ten finish on an oval since he finished third last year at the Indianapolis 500. He has picked up some ground in the championship the last two weekends but he has been too bipolar to know if this everything starting to click or if a rough patch is in his near future.
10. You may hate Charlie Kimball but he finished 10th again and he is responsible for all three of Carlin's top ten finishes. Carlin just needs to eek out results. It has been rough and the team has yet to have a great day but these are building blocks.
11. Spencer Pigot did nothing and finished 11th. I don't think he was mentioned once tonight but it is a good result for him,
12. Max Chilton was dead fucking last for a lot of this race and he finished 12th. Once again, building blocks for Carlin.
13. Josef Newgarden was in prime position for a top ten finish but he jumped the final restart, was penalized and finished four laps down in 13th. You kind of forget he started on pole position. He suffered the worst blisters of the Penske drivers and that hurt his night but the mortal wound was self-inflicted. He has lost a lot of ground and this is his first bit of adversity with Team Penske. Can he turn it around?
14. Quickly through the field: Marco Andretti might have been able to challenge Dixon, Pagenaud and Rossi had it not been for a clutch issue on one of his pit stops. He was running well. Gabby Chaves got a blocking penalty and finished 15th. Zach Veach was the stud of the first stint and a half then brushed the wall, had to stop and finished 16th. Zachary Claman De Melo was quick and aggressive but may have pushed the envelope a bit too much tonight but his incident with Will Power was a racing deal in my eyes and an unfortunate coming together when one car drifted slightly up the track. Power has had these seasons where he wins a bunch but his bad results are really bad and it has hurt him the last two seasons. Robert Wickens was another guy caught in lapped traffic and contact with Ed Carpenter ended what could have been a top five finish. Wickens was brilliant again. He is going to win a race. A.J. Foyt Racing. Matheus Leist went up in smoke after five laps and Tony Kanaan brushed the wall, damaged the right rear suspension and he completed only 31 laps. Not the homecoming the team was hoping for.
15. Let's start with the blue flag and I am going to say that if you can get a penalty for blocking a driver should get a penalty for consistently ignoring the blue flag. Granted, it may be hard to observe on an oval with cars constantly buzzing around you but it seemed lapped traffic played a big role in the middle of this race during the long green flag run. Claman De Melo was one of the notable violators and he wasn't the only one but he was the one brought to light.
The lead lap is not a right. It is a privilege. No one is guaranteed the lead lap. You need to be fast enough to earn it and some times you will not be fast enough. But the whole idea that a lapped driver has the right to hold up lead lap cars is preposterous. Think about it for a second. If you don't want drivers blocking and racing out their mirrors what you are saying is you want drivers focused on what is ahead of them. If a car is a lap down in 15th the car that driver should focused on is the car in 14th, not the car behind which might be third or fourth or fifth. That lapped car has the right to race but that driver needs to know he or she isn't racing the cars immediately behind him or her on track.
Cars are going to be a lap down or two or three some nights and that is ok. We saw tonight that you could finish a lap down and still end up in the top ten but we have to stop acting like someone has the right to the lead lap and has the right to hold up lead lap cars. Going a lap down doesn't mean your race is over and you should pull off the racetrack but you aren't racing the leaders, you are racing the car directly ahead of you.
Part of this stems from cautions and the wave-arounds and maybe that should be changed as well. After the second caution the leaders stopped but the wave around cars didn't stop until five laps later and when there were 64 laps to go, right on the cusp of making it on fuel. A lapped car should not get an advantage for being a lap down and you may hate to hear this but NASCAR had it right when it introduced the wave around. If you get waved around, you can't pit. There are flaws to that method, there is a major flaw with the concept of waving cars around in general, but maybe this should be looked into. We shouldn't have a car that is ninth catch and break, get back on the lead lap and then be able to stop and be able to make it to the end on fuel while the leaders will have to stop one more time and effectively handing a race victory to a car that just so happened to be a lap down at the right place at the right time. There should be no reward for being a lap down. There should be a reward for being able to stay on the lead lap. We can table this discussion for a rainy day but I think you can see what I am getting at.
16. I thought the racing was fine. I said this a few years ago but this is different from what we knew Texas for being. Different isn't better and it isn't worse. It is different. I thought it was interesting to see who got the tire wear right and it evolved into who could make it on three stops and who would be forced to four. If anything, I would like to see the tires degrade more next year. I want drivers to be scrambling 30 laps into a stint.
As for the aero package, I think part of the fear stemmed from when practice was held. Everyone was nervous after a practice session held at 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. local time and another session at 6:15 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. local time. Green flag for this race was 7:45 p.m. local time. These cars are temperature sensitive and we have seen it time and time before. We saw it two weeks ago at the Indianapolis 500. It was over 90º F for the race but when practice began the temperatures were in the mid-70s. The temperature dropped and this race wasn't single-file. There wasn't a pass at the end of every straightaway every lap but that isn't realistic and I think we need to have a conversation for what is realistic to expect from a race and we can have that conversation on Monday. More importantly, I think the drivers need to experience race conditions before deciding what the race is going to be after a pair of practice sessions.
An issue with this weekend is IndyCar can't practice during race time the day before because of the NASCAR Truck race. My solution would be practice for two-and-a-half or three hours starting at 8:00 p.m. local time on Thursday, allow the drivers to experience race conditions and then qualify Friday night and race Saturday. That would be a brutal schedule for the teams considering they have been non-stop at a racetrack since the Grand Prix of Indianapolis and just had a doubleheader last week. I don't want the teams to have an even more grueling schedule but I am trying to come up with another solution to help this race. You can't move this race deeper into summer. That is crazy. You can't move it up either. I am not sure what else IndyCar and Texas Motor Speedway can do.
17. Now we get a nice two-week break. Some drivers are going to Le Mans while others are staying home. Some teams are testing at Road America next week, which doesn't help with the schedule these teams have but hey, the teams are partly doing it to themselves. Enjoy the break; enjoy Le Mans; Road America and the second half the season will be here shortly.
2. Simon Pagenaud gets his first podium finish of the season and his first top five finish of the season and this was a terrible night for him. The tires blistered the least for him of the Penske drivers but he was nowhere near the pace of Dixon and the other Hondas in the second and third stints of this race. However, cautions fell his way and he was able to hold off Alexander Rossi in the closing stages. He had nothing for Dixon but he got all that he could tonight and that is a big boost for the Frenchman considering how frustrating the first half of the season has been. The championship isn't out of his reach but he is miles back and needs to go on a tear.
3. This was a frustrating night for Alexander Rossi and he finished third. He was fast and once again might have been the fastest car tonight but he kept losing time on pit lane and it erased everything he did and he had to start over again. He may have been in Dixon's shoes had it not be for those delays. It is hard to be angry at a victory, five podium finishes and seven top five finishes through nine races but he probably should have three victories and he tossed a runner-up finish out the window at Belle Isle and more importantly 21 points. He trails Dixon by 23 points in the championship. He is quick but he needs to be smart in the second half of the season.
4. James Hinchcliffe gets off the snide with a fourth place finish. It is amazing what missing the Indianapolis 500 can do to you. He had five top ten finishes through the first five races and this is his sixth top ten finish in nine races. For most guys that is great but missing the Indianapolis 500 kind of drowns out that success. In one blow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports went from a Penske/Andretti challenger for middle of the field and it is odd to see. I am not sure what to make of Hinchcliffe at this point of the season.
5. Ryan Hunter-Reay finished fifth and I think it is unfortunate we had to last few cautions because Hunter-Reay stopped for a splash of fuel before the restart with 63 laps to go and he was running really conservative lap times to make it to the end. I am not sure it would have worked but Hunter-Reay did well tonight.
6. If Graham Rahal can start a race in the top ten he will win. He went from 20th to sixth tonight and through nine races he has eight top ten finishes and he has started outside the top ten for six of those top ten finishes. Rahal has been solid but he needs to step up another level to be a championship contender.
7. Takuma Sato made it a stellar night for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing with a double top ten finish as he finished seventh. This is his fourth top ten finish of the year. He has been good, kind of what you would expect of Sato but he hasn't torn up equipment.
8. Sébastien Bourdais was always on the four-stop strategy but he was in the top ten for most of this race. I think eighth was the best he could have done though and that isn't bad when you consider the rough few weeks he had at Indianapolis and Belle Isle.
9. Ed Jones was at the back at the start and kept the car on the lead lap and finished ninth. This is his first top ten finish on an oval since he finished third last year at the Indianapolis 500. He has picked up some ground in the championship the last two weekends but he has been too bipolar to know if this everything starting to click or if a rough patch is in his near future.
10. You may hate Charlie Kimball but he finished 10th again and he is responsible for all three of Carlin's top ten finishes. Carlin just needs to eek out results. It has been rough and the team has yet to have a great day but these are building blocks.
11. Spencer Pigot did nothing and finished 11th. I don't think he was mentioned once tonight but it is a good result for him,
12. Max Chilton was dead fucking last for a lot of this race and he finished 12th. Once again, building blocks for Carlin.
13. Josef Newgarden was in prime position for a top ten finish but he jumped the final restart, was penalized and finished four laps down in 13th. You kind of forget he started on pole position. He suffered the worst blisters of the Penske drivers and that hurt his night but the mortal wound was self-inflicted. He has lost a lot of ground and this is his first bit of adversity with Team Penske. Can he turn it around?
14. Quickly through the field: Marco Andretti might have been able to challenge Dixon, Pagenaud and Rossi had it not been for a clutch issue on one of his pit stops. He was running well. Gabby Chaves got a blocking penalty and finished 15th. Zach Veach was the stud of the first stint and a half then brushed the wall, had to stop and finished 16th. Zachary Claman De Melo was quick and aggressive but may have pushed the envelope a bit too much tonight but his incident with Will Power was a racing deal in my eyes and an unfortunate coming together when one car drifted slightly up the track. Power has had these seasons where he wins a bunch but his bad results are really bad and it has hurt him the last two seasons. Robert Wickens was another guy caught in lapped traffic and contact with Ed Carpenter ended what could have been a top five finish. Wickens was brilliant again. He is going to win a race. A.J. Foyt Racing. Matheus Leist went up in smoke after five laps and Tony Kanaan brushed the wall, damaged the right rear suspension and he completed only 31 laps. Not the homecoming the team was hoping for.
15. Let's start with the blue flag and I am going to say that if you can get a penalty for blocking a driver should get a penalty for consistently ignoring the blue flag. Granted, it may be hard to observe on an oval with cars constantly buzzing around you but it seemed lapped traffic played a big role in the middle of this race during the long green flag run. Claman De Melo was one of the notable violators and he wasn't the only one but he was the one brought to light.
The lead lap is not a right. It is a privilege. No one is guaranteed the lead lap. You need to be fast enough to earn it and some times you will not be fast enough. But the whole idea that a lapped driver has the right to hold up lead lap cars is preposterous. Think about it for a second. If you don't want drivers blocking and racing out their mirrors what you are saying is you want drivers focused on what is ahead of them. If a car is a lap down in 15th the car that driver should focused on is the car in 14th, not the car behind which might be third or fourth or fifth. That lapped car has the right to race but that driver needs to know he or she isn't racing the cars immediately behind him or her on track.
Cars are going to be a lap down or two or three some nights and that is ok. We saw tonight that you could finish a lap down and still end up in the top ten but we have to stop acting like someone has the right to the lead lap and has the right to hold up lead lap cars. Going a lap down doesn't mean your race is over and you should pull off the racetrack but you aren't racing the leaders, you are racing the car directly ahead of you.
Part of this stems from cautions and the wave-arounds and maybe that should be changed as well. After the second caution the leaders stopped but the wave around cars didn't stop until five laps later and when there were 64 laps to go, right on the cusp of making it on fuel. A lapped car should not get an advantage for being a lap down and you may hate to hear this but NASCAR had it right when it introduced the wave around. If you get waved around, you can't pit. There are flaws to that method, there is a major flaw with the concept of waving cars around in general, but maybe this should be looked into. We shouldn't have a car that is ninth catch and break, get back on the lead lap and then be able to stop and be able to make it to the end on fuel while the leaders will have to stop one more time and effectively handing a race victory to a car that just so happened to be a lap down at the right place at the right time. There should be no reward for being a lap down. There should be a reward for being able to stay on the lead lap. We can table this discussion for a rainy day but I think you can see what I am getting at.
16. I thought the racing was fine. I said this a few years ago but this is different from what we knew Texas for being. Different isn't better and it isn't worse. It is different. I thought it was interesting to see who got the tire wear right and it evolved into who could make it on three stops and who would be forced to four. If anything, I would like to see the tires degrade more next year. I want drivers to be scrambling 30 laps into a stint.
As for the aero package, I think part of the fear stemmed from when practice was held. Everyone was nervous after a practice session held at 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. local time and another session at 6:15 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. local time. Green flag for this race was 7:45 p.m. local time. These cars are temperature sensitive and we have seen it time and time before. We saw it two weeks ago at the Indianapolis 500. It was over 90º F for the race but when practice began the temperatures were in the mid-70s. The temperature dropped and this race wasn't single-file. There wasn't a pass at the end of every straightaway every lap but that isn't realistic and I think we need to have a conversation for what is realistic to expect from a race and we can have that conversation on Monday. More importantly, I think the drivers need to experience race conditions before deciding what the race is going to be after a pair of practice sessions.
An issue with this weekend is IndyCar can't practice during race time the day before because of the NASCAR Truck race. My solution would be practice for two-and-a-half or three hours starting at 8:00 p.m. local time on Thursday, allow the drivers to experience race conditions and then qualify Friday night and race Saturday. That would be a brutal schedule for the teams considering they have been non-stop at a racetrack since the Grand Prix of Indianapolis and just had a doubleheader last week. I don't want the teams to have an even more grueling schedule but I am trying to come up with another solution to help this race. You can't move this race deeper into summer. That is crazy. You can't move it up either. I am not sure what else IndyCar and Texas Motor Speedway can do.
17. Now we get a nice two-week break. Some drivers are going to Le Mans while others are staying home. Some teams are testing at Road America next week, which doesn't help with the schedule these teams have but hey, the teams are partly doing it to themselves. Enjoy the break; enjoy Le Mans; Road America and the second half the season will be here shortly.
Morning Warm-Up: Texas 2018
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| Josef Newgarden looks to retake championship lead from pole position at Texas |
Will Power swept the top three positions on the grid for Team Penske. With a two-lap average of 220.194 MPH, the three Penske cars were the only three cars to average over 220 MPH in qualifying. Power won from third position at Texas in the second race of the 2011 doubleheader. Power also won from third two weeks ago in the Indianapolis 500. Robert Wickens will start fourth in his Texas debut. He was the fastest Honda in qualifying. Only once has a Texas winner started fourth and that was Hélio Castroneves in 2009. Sébastien Bourdais rounded out the top five in qualifying. This is Bourdais' best starting position at Texas by ten positions. This is Bourdais' fifth top five start of the season, the most he has had in season since 2007. Bourdais had five top five starts over the previous three seasons combined. Tony Kanaan joins Bourdais on row six. This is Kanaan's best starting position of the season and best starting position since he started fourth at Pocono last year.
Second and third in the championship will start on row four with Scott Dixon and Alexander Rossi next to one another. This is the fifth time Dixon has started seventh at Texas. He won from seventh at Texas in 2015. Dixon's next podium finish will be the 100th of his career, tying him with Michael Andretti for third all-time. Rossi has started in the top ten in all three of his Texas starts. He is still looking for his first top ten finish at this track. Takuma Sato will start ninth. This is Sato's third consecutive top ten start at Texas. This is the first time Sato has started ninth since Pocono 2015. In the five previous times he has started ninth he has finished fourth, sixth, ninth and 18th twice. Ryan Hunter-Reay starts tenth for the second consecutive race and he won from tenth on the grid last week at Belle Isle. The last driver to win consecutive races from the same starting position was Simon Pagenaud in 2016 when he won from pole position at Barber and the Grand Prix of Indianapolis. The last driver to win consecutive races from the same starting position that wasn't pole position was Paul Tracy in 2003, who won the first three races of the CART season at St. Petersburg, Monterrey and Long Beach from second on the grid.
Marco Andretti starts 11th and this is fifth consecutive Texas race starting outside the top ten. Andretti has finished in the top ten five times from 11th on the grid in eight starts from 11th. Arie Luyendyk won the inaugural Texas race from 11th on the grid. Charlie Kimball qualified 12th, the best starting position for Carlin on an oval. This is only the third time Kimball has been the best Carlin qualifier this season. Ed Jones will start 13th for the fourth time in his career. Two of Jones' starts from 13th have occurred at Long Beach and both ended in top ten finishes, including a third place finish this year. Since finishing third in last year's Indianapolis 500, Jones' average finish on ovals is 19.333. Ed Carpenter will start 14th, his third consecutive year starting 14th at Texas. Ninety of Carpenter's 92 laps led at Texas came in his 2014 victory.
James Hinchcliffe starts 15th and this is the first time has started outside the top ten this season. Hinchcliffe has not finished in the top ten when starting outside the top ten since he started 22nd and finished ninth at Iowa in 2016. He started outside the top ten in eight races since that Iowa race. Zach Veach joins Hinchcliffe on row eight. This is the third time Veach has started 16th this season. The last oval race won from 16th was Dario Franchitti in the 2012 in the Indianapolis 500. The last time an American won from 16th on the grid was Al Unser at Pocono in 1976. Gabby Chaves will start 17th. This is the first time Chaves has started 17th since he started 17th in three consecutive races at NOLA, Long Beach and Barber in 2015, three of his first four starts in IndyCar. The furthest back a Texas winner has started was 17th by Justin Wilson in 2012. Spencer Pigot joins his fellow past Indy Lights champion on row nine. Pigot is still looking for his first career top ten finish on an oval.
Matheus Leist and Graham Rahal will start on row ten. Leist has finished on the lead lap in six consecutive races while Rahal has seven top ten finishes this season. Rahal's average starting position this season is 15.555. He is on track for his third-worst season in terms of starting position. Rahal has led in both oval races this season. Leist has yet to lead a lap in his IndyCar career. Zachary Claman De Melo will start 21st in his first Texas start. Claman De Melo led seven laps in the Indianapolis 500 before he finished one lap down in 19th. Max Chilton rounds out the grid in 22nd. Despite having started three more races than Claman De Melo, Chilton is only one position and 31 points ahead of the Canadian in the championship. This is the first time Chilton has started dead last in his IndyCar career.
NBCSN's coverage of the DXC Technology 600 starts at 8:00 p.m. ET with green flag scheduled for 8:45 p.m. ET. The race is scheduled for 248 laps.
Thursday, June 7, 2018
Track Walk: Texas 2018
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| Texas marks the halfway point of the season |
Coverage:
Time: Coverage begins at 8:00 p.m. ET on Saturday June 8th with green flag scheduled for 8:45 p.m. ET.
TV Channel: NBCSN
Announcers: Leigh Diffey, Townsend Bell and Paul Tracy will be in the booth. Kevin Lee, Marty Snider, Katie Hargitt and Robin Miller will work pit lane.
IndyCar Weekend Schedule
Friday:
First Practice: 12:30 p.m. ET (90-minute session)
Qualifying: 4:00 p.m. ET (NBCSN will have live coverage of this session)
Second Practice: 7:15 p.m. ET (60-minute session)
Saturday:
Race: 8:45 p.m. ET (248 laps)
Last year saw a repave and reconfiguration to Texas Motor Speedway that increased speeds and also caused havoc for Firestone. The race saw 23 lead changes, the most for a Texas race since the autumn 2001 race but it also had nine cautions, the most for a Texas race and 66 caution laps, the third-most at the track.
Despite the abundance of lead changes, Will Power led 180 of 248 laps on his way to victory and passing was much more difficult than prior Texas races during the DW12-era despite the cars being bunched closer together. The bottom groove had a major advantage to the top line where it was difficult for a car to get a run and complete the pass on the outside.
Two big accidents left only six cars finishing on the lead lap and since the introduction of the DW12 chassis in 2012 every Texas race has either had five cars or six cars finish on the lead lap. The number of cautions made last year's race the fourth-slowest Texas race out of 29 IndyCar races held at the venue since 1997. The last two Texas races have averaged under 145 MPH after 22 consecutive races average over 150 MPH and six consecutive averaging over 160 MPH including the two fastest IndyCar races held at Texas Motor Speedway. Five of six Texas races during the DW12-era have had a driver lead over 100 laps with the one exception being 2015 where race winner Scott Dixon led 97 laps. In the DW12-era, the best starting position for a Texas winner is fifth in 2014 by Ed Carpenter.
IndyCar and Firestone had scheduled a tire test at Texas in March but that was hampered by high winds. An extra set of tires will be provided to the teams for this weekend. The teams will also be allowed to run a maximum rear wing angle of negative six degrees after only being allowed to run negative three degrees at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Will Chevrolet Hold Serve?
Honda's sweep at Belle Isle has the Japanese manufacture unbeaten on street courses but Chevrolet has won the two oval and two road course races held this season. Chevrolet has won six consecutive oval races with Honda's most recent oval victory being the 101st Indianapolis 500 with Takuma Sato.
Team Penske is responsible for all six of Chevrolet's oval victories dating back to last year with Will Power responsible for three of those victories and Josef Newgarden accounting for two of those victories. The other victory was at the hands of Hélio Castroneves at Iowa. Power has two victories at Texas, four top five finishes and seven top ten finishes in ten starts with three pole positions. He has an average finish of seventh and he has led 432 laps at Texas, the third-most all-time at Texas. If Power leads 75 laps on Saturday night he will be the all-time IndyCar lap leader at Texas Motor Speedway.
While Newgarden has won on the short ovals of Gateway and Phoenix in the last year, Texas has not be friendly to the defending champion. In six starts, Newgarden has never finished on the lead lap and his only top ten finish was eighth in 2013. Newgarden has retired from the last three Texas races including the last two years because of accidents. His 2016 accident with Conor Daly left him with injuries to his right hand and right shoulder.
Texas might be one of Newgarden's worst tracks but Simon Pagenaud has done excellent at the mile-and-a-half-ish oval. The Frenchman has three top five finishes and four top ten finishes in six starts and he has completed 1,444 of a possible 1,448 laps. However, Pagenaud's only laps led came in 2015 when he led 59 laps after starting second but he faded and finished two laps down in 11th. Pagenaud needs to get off the snide as the Frenchman does not have a top five finish through the first eight races and he sits tenth in the championship.
Team Penske is Chevrolet's flagship team but Ed Carpenter Racing has put together a strong fight when it comes to the ovals and to no one's surprise Ed Carpenter is leading the charge. The American's runner-up finish to Power in the Indianapolis 500 was his first top five finish since a third at Fontana in 2014. He led a race-high 65 laps at the Indianapolis 500 but since his Texas victory in 2014 outside of Indianapolis Carpenter has only led eight laps. He won the 2014 Texas race but has finished outside the top ten the last three years and his average finish is 14.4.
Spencer Pigot qualified sixth for the Indianapolis 500, his career-best starting position but a pit lane speeding penalty cost him any shot of a top ten finish. Pigot will make his Texas debut this weekend and it will only be his second oval start at a track that wasn't Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Pigot finished 14th at Phoenix in April and that is his career-best oval finish.
As crazy as it may sound, A.J. Foyt Racing has been the second-best Chevrolet team this season. Tony Kanaan has three top ten finishes, including a seventh in the second Belle Isle race after starting 22nd. Matheus Leist might not have a top ten finish this season but the rookie has six consecutive lead lap finish. Statistically, Kanaan is the best driver in IndyCar at Texas with at least three starts. He has an average finish of 5.2 with 11 top five finishes, including three consecutive podium finishes and 15 top ten finishes but surprisingly he has only one victory at the track, which came in his third Texas start in June 2004. Kanaan has been running at the finish of all 18 of his Texas starts and he has completed 3,780 of 3,783 laps.
Carlin and Harding Racing are the unlikely Chevrolet teams to get a victory but both teams will be in the field. Gabby Chaves finished fifth last year at Texas in Harding Racing's second race as a team but the team's best finish since that night is 14th on two separate occasions. Charlie Kimball started on pole position last year at Texas but an oil leak ended his night after the first pit stop. Kimball had three consecutive top ten finishes at Texas entering last year's race. Max Chilton finished 8th at Texas last year despite finishing three laps down after being a part of the final caution of the night.
Who Can Breakthrough?
With only one street course race remaining on the schedule if any of the Honda teams want to win the championship they will have to breakthrough on the four remaining ovals and four remaining road courses. Entering Texas, Honda drivers take up seven of the top ten in the championship representing five different teams.
Scott Dixon picked up a ninth place finish last year despite late contact with Takuma Sato while the two drivers were trying to pass Will Power. While he has won at Texas in recent years, Dixon has been hit-or-miss in the DW12-era at this track. He led 133 laps in the 2012 race before a spin all on his own took him out of contention. The year after that, an oil line failure ended his race before the quarter-post. Dixon has four retirements in his last six Texas starts.
Andretti Autosport has three drivers in the top ten and none of them have great Texas track records. Alexander Rossi has not scored a top ten in either of his first two starts and a tire failure ended his race prematurely last year. The Texas-born Ryan Hunter-Reay has an average finish of 14.8 and an average starting position of 13.7 at this track and he has finished 19th or worse in six of 11 starts. He has finished outside the top ten in four consecutive Texas races. Since 2010, Marco Andretti has alternated between top ten finish and non-top ten finish in every other Texas start and he finished sixth last year. Andretti Autosport's only Texas victory was with Tony Kanaan in June 2004.
Robert Wickens will make his third oval start this weekend and so far he has done well with a runner-up finish at Phoenix and ninth in the Indianapolis 500. He has started inside the top ten for all but one race this season and in every race he was running at the finish of he finished on the lead lap. His teammate James Hinchcliffe finished second and led 188 laps two years at Texas. After finishing in the top ten in the first five races of the season Hinchcliffe did not qualify for the Indianapolis 500 and finished outside the top ten in both Belle Isle races.
Graham Rahal has finished in the top ten of seven of the first eight races and he is coming off two consecutive top five finishes at Texas after he won in 2016 and finished fourth last year. Rahal has finished in the top ten in both oval races this season and a top ten finish at Texas would be the first time Rahal has finished in the top ten in the first three oval races of a season.
Sébastien Bourdais fell to ninth in the championship after entering the Indianapolis 500 in third. He has finished outside the top ten in the last three races with two of those results being finishes outside the top twenty. This is the first time Bourdais has not had a top ten finish in three consecutive races since he had four consecutive finishes outside the top ten spread over the final three races of 2015 and the 2016 season opener. Bourdais picked up his first career top ten finish at Texas in 2016 when he finished tenth but Bourdais has started 18th in three consecutive Texas starts and his career-best starting position at this track is 15th.
Who Is Out?
We are through eight races and Texas marks the halfway point of the season. The championship picture is becoming clearer. We are seeing who the contenders are and we know who is already racing for pride but a few drivers lay in the middle and this weekend is where they have to decide what camp they fall in.
After Barber, I pronounced dead the championship hopes for five drivers and I think it is time to add a few more tombstones to the graveyard.
Since 1946, no champion has failed to score a podium finish within the first six races of the season and the only new podium finisher between race five and race six was Ed Carpenter, who is not competing full-time. Of the drivers who remained on life support after Barber those still without a podium finish are Andretti, Pagenaud, Kanaan, Sato and Veach. Andretti and Pagenaud are the only two of those drivers in the top ten of championship.
It is nothing personal but Kanaan, Sato and Veach are not going to win the championship this year. I will leave the door open for Andretti and Pagenaud but both drivers need a massive performance this weekend.
With eight drivers eliminated and two on deathbeds that leaves ten drivers kicking but there are two we should look at, both outside the top ten of the championship. Hinchcliffe and Jones both have podium finishes this season with Jones picking up his second podium finish of the season at Belle Isle. Hinchcliffe's rotten three weeks have been well documented and missing a double points event is a massive blow but there are nine races remaining and if he were to go nine-for-nine he would probably win the championship. Missing the Indianapolis 500 doesn't kill your championship hopes but it makes it very clear the only way back in is through winning each week out. Jones has four top ten finishes through eight races but all on street circuits and his other four finishes are 20th or worse.
I will keep Hinchcliffe and Jones alive for now but like Andretti and Pagenaud both need a great night at Texas and we will have a better idea of the title hopes for these two drivers after Road America.
Of the eight drivers we can say are still kicking, Wickens and Rahal are the only two without a victory. There have been a few champions that have waited longer than this to get their first victory of the season but it is rare. Since 1946, four champions won their first race after the eighth race of the season. Those champions are Joe Leonard in 1971, who won in his tenth race; Al Unser in 1985, who won in the 14th race; Gil de Ferran in 2001, who won in the 17th race; and Scott Dixon in 2013, who won in the 11th race.
There have also been three winless champions, Tony Bettenhausen in 1958, Tom Sneva in 1978 and Scott Sharp in the inaugural IRL season in 1996. It isn't unprecedented but it is highly unlikely this year's champion will do it without a victory.
Fast Facts
This will be the 16th IndyCar race to take place on June 9th. The most recent race was in 2012 at Texas where Justin Wilson took the victory.
This will be the 30th IndyCar race at Texas Motor Speedway.
There has never been a repeat winner at Texas.
Four different teams have won the last four Texas races.
Six different drivers have won the six Texas races during the DW12-era.
Three drivers have picked up their first career IndyCar victory at Texas. Those drivers are Billy Boat, Mark Dismore and Jeff Ward. It was the only IndyCar victory for those three drivers.
Only one Texas race has not reach full distance. That was the autumn 2003 race where Gil de Ferran took the victory after the Kenny Bräck-Tomas Scheckter accident ended the race five laps early.
Five nationalities have won the last 13 Texas races. Those nationalities are American, Australian Brazilian, British and New Zealander.
Honda has won ten Texas races while Chevrolet has won seven Texas races.
Oldsmobile has the second-most Texas victories for engine manufactures with nine.
Ryan Hunter-Reay set fastest lap in both Belle Isle races. The last driver to set fastest lap in three consecutive races was Sébastien Bourdais in 2007 when he set fastest lap in six consecutive races. Those races were Houston, Portland, Cleveland, Mont-Tremblant, Toronto and Edmonton.
Despite not finishing last year's race, Takuma Sato picked up his second career top ten finish at Texas with a tenth place finish.
Five drivers make their first career start at Texas. Those drivers are Matheus Leist, Robert Wickens, Zachary Claman De Melo, Spencer Pigot and Zach Veach. The only driver to win in their first Texas start was Arie Luyendyk in the inaugural Texas race in 1997.
Only twice has a driver won the race prior to Texas and a Texas race. The first was Luyendyk in 1997, who won the Indianapolis 500 and then the inaugural Texas race. The other was Sam Hornish, Jr. in 2002, who won at Chicagoland and then won the season finale at Texas.
The average starting position for a Texas winner is 5.172 with a median of three.
Twelve Texas races have been won from the front row but not since the first race of the 2011 doubleheader when Dario Franchitti won from second. Seventeen Texas races have been won from one of the first two rows but not since Will Power won from third in the second race of the 2011 doubleheader.
The pole-sitter has not won at Texas since Ryan Briscoe in 2010.
The average number of lead changes at Texas is 14.31 with a median of 14.
The average number of cautions at Texas is 4.48 with a median of four. The average number of caution laps is 35.379 with a median of 32.
Possible Milestones:
If Scott Dixon finishes on the podium it will be his 100th podium finishes and put him in a tie with Michael Andretti for third all-time.
Ryan Hunter-Reay needs to lead 145 laps to reach the 1,500 laps led milestone.
Simon Pagenaud needs to lead 91 laps to reach the 1,000 laps led milestone.
James Hinchcliffe needs to lead 89 laps to reach the 800 laps led milestone.
Takuma Sato needs to lead 33 laps to reach the 500 laps led milestone.
Graham Rahal needs to lead 26 laps to reach the 400 laps led milestone.
Predictions
Tony Kanaan stuns nobody and wins at Texas with another Chevrolet and one Honda on the podium. There will not be an accident that takes out more than five cars. There will be fewer lead changes than last year but more than a dozen. At least seven cars finish on the lead lap. At least two of the drivers in the top five of the championship finish outside the top fifteen. Spencer Pigot finishes in the top ten but behind Ed Carpenter. Only one rookie finishes in the top ten. The pole-sitter does not lead the most laps. Sleeper: Tony Kanaan.
Monday, June 4, 2018
Musings From the Weekend: The Unknown
Scott Dixon climbed another step forward in the history book, Ryan Hunter-Reay got off the snide but the most talked about thing from the IndyCar weekend in Detroit was a GM executive wrecking the pace car almost immediately after exiting the pit lane for the pace lap. In other news from Detroit, a few squirrels had a staring contest with death and lived to tell the tale. The Iberian Peninsula kept Italians from a joyous weekend at Mugello. Michael Shank is having a difficult time justifying not running two cars full-time in IMSA. DTM had a nightmare of a Sunday in Hungary. NASCAR had a pretty good race at Pocono. Fernando Alonso, Sébastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima led the Le Mans test day for Toyota. Here is a run down of what got me thinking.
The Unknown
Congratulations IndyCar fans! The divorce is final. ABC is gone. No more headaches from poor pre-race packages, no more hastily put together pre-race and post-race shows, no more catchphrases from Eddie Cheever and Scott Goodyear. It is time to move in with NBC. I hope you are ready and I hope you are prepared.
NBC Sports has been a great partner to IndyCar dating back to the days of Versus. It was an odd partnership and one that did not receive a lot of fanfare when it was first announced. The series became harder to find and it was a set back as many fans did not have the ability to follow the series. Nearly a decade later it is the place every IndyCar fan wanted to be. It just goes to show what a little bit of care can do.
The Versus days were promising but still rough because of how hidden IndyCar was within cable television. However, it was a year-by-year development that turned what is now NBC Sports' coverage of IndyCar into what it is today. The only remaining member of the original Versus broadcast team is Jon Beekhuis. The booth experienced a few shake-ups. The pit lane reporters experienced a few shake-ups. It took a few years to get it to click and get the right combination of people.
It is an odd deal. IndyCar has a new home but it has been living there for quite a while. All the pieces are in place for IndyCar. NBC Sports doesn't have to hire anybody. The booth is set, pit lane reporters are set and there are a few questions over who will fill auxiliary roles such as Indianapolis 500 broadcast host but that is a minor thing though for a major race. The full-time crew is set. It is a good thing but familiarity can get boring.
For a long time, majority of IndyCar fans have shared the displeasure with the ABC broadcast team but they are gone. The overused clichés are gone. IndyCar no longer has a disconnected booth of three minds working against one another. But just because IndyCar has a stable booth doesn't mean it will not be picked apart because that is what fans do. Even if it is something in its best form it is open for dissection and that can lead people to quickly get disenchanted with what they have and want something different because they think it is better.
Along with broadcasters, style is something to keep an eye on. NBC might want to try a few different things in the broadcast to keep it fresh and other NBC Sports personalities will likely be at some of the races, most notably the Indianapolis 500. For as big as the Indianapolis 500 is as a sporting event it has never been given that top tier broadcast we have come to expect in the 21st century. ABC had it stuck in the early-1990s. NBC is going to give it a modern take and while that sounds great I bet most IndyCar fans might not like what that will actually look like because it will go beyond the race. Let's say the race gets a two-hour pre-race show. That isn't going to be all about the drivers. It is going to talk about the Snake Pit and other cultural aspects of the race. Bob Costas and/or Mike Tirico will likely host that race. Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir might be there. The Today Show will likely be there. You may even get NASCAR personalities such as Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Rutledge Wood at the race and all of a sudden the IndyCar bubble will feel infiltrated by outsiders and reject the attention it so badly craved for years.
I do not think IndyCar's fan base is ready for what is about to happen. Some are but knowing this fan base it may get a shock in 2019, especially when it comes to the Indianapolis 500 and worse of all, if all the glitz and glamour is spent on the Indianapolis 500 the moment we return to the normal pomp and circumstance for Belle Isle, Texas and every other race on the IndyCar schedule people will say NBC Sports is not committed to the series. IndyCar fans, like all motorsports fans, are fickle and nothing is ever good enough but I am hopefully the changes are not met with backlash because they will be good for the series.
Don't think the rough patches are behind IndyCar. There will still be conflicts. There will still be hard outs when a race is preceding another major sporting event on network. There will still likely be sessions on CNBC. NBC Sports is still a crowded neighborhood and everyone needs to be pleased. IndyCar isn't going to run the neighborhood. The series will take a backseat to events you might not agree with. It is part of sports broadcasting. There are many major events and NBC's time is scarce. IndyCar will not always be priority.
Just like how no one driver is going to lift IndyCar to the heavens the switch to full-time coverage on NBC Sports isn't going to be the magic solution to get IndyCar back into the national sports discussion. We are all hopeful it will benefit the series, increase ratings and make the series more desirable to sponsors and in turn help out teams currently on the grid while also attracting a few more to the series but none of those are a guarantee especially in these changing times when it comes to viewing habits.
For a decade we knew what IndyCar was getting into. Now we have reached a black tunnel and we have no choice but to enter not knowing what is inside.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Scott Dixon and Ryan Hunter-Reay but did you know...
Jorge Lorenzo won MotoGP's Italian Grand Prix from Mugello, his first victory with Ducati. Miguel Oliveira won the Moto2 race. Jorge Martin won the Moto3 race, his third victory of the season.
Martin Truex, Jr. won the NASCAR Cup race from Pocono. Kyle Busch won the Grand National Series race.
The #31 Cadillac of Felipe Nasr and Eric Curran won the IMSA race from Belle Isle. The #86 Acura of Katherine Legge and Mario Farnbacher won in GTD.
Paul di Resta and Marco Wittmann split the DTM races from the Hungaroring.
The #14 Emil Frey Lexus Racing Lexus of Albert Costa, Christian Klien and Marco Seefried won the Circuit Paul Ricard 1000km.
Coming Up This Weekend
IndyCar has another night race as it reaches the midpoint of the season at Texas.
Formula One returns to Canada.
Switzerland has its first major motorsport race since 1954 with Formula E racing in the streets of Zürich.
NASCAR will be at Michigan.
World Superbike will be at Brno.
The World Rally Championship will be on the island of Sardinia.
The Unknown
Congratulations IndyCar fans! The divorce is final. ABC is gone. No more headaches from poor pre-race packages, no more hastily put together pre-race and post-race shows, no more catchphrases from Eddie Cheever and Scott Goodyear. It is time to move in with NBC. I hope you are ready and I hope you are prepared.
NBC Sports has been a great partner to IndyCar dating back to the days of Versus. It was an odd partnership and one that did not receive a lot of fanfare when it was first announced. The series became harder to find and it was a set back as many fans did not have the ability to follow the series. Nearly a decade later it is the place every IndyCar fan wanted to be. It just goes to show what a little bit of care can do.
The Versus days were promising but still rough because of how hidden IndyCar was within cable television. However, it was a year-by-year development that turned what is now NBC Sports' coverage of IndyCar into what it is today. The only remaining member of the original Versus broadcast team is Jon Beekhuis. The booth experienced a few shake-ups. The pit lane reporters experienced a few shake-ups. It took a few years to get it to click and get the right combination of people.
It is an odd deal. IndyCar has a new home but it has been living there for quite a while. All the pieces are in place for IndyCar. NBC Sports doesn't have to hire anybody. The booth is set, pit lane reporters are set and there are a few questions over who will fill auxiliary roles such as Indianapolis 500 broadcast host but that is a minor thing though for a major race. The full-time crew is set. It is a good thing but familiarity can get boring.
For a long time, majority of IndyCar fans have shared the displeasure with the ABC broadcast team but they are gone. The overused clichés are gone. IndyCar no longer has a disconnected booth of three minds working against one another. But just because IndyCar has a stable booth doesn't mean it will not be picked apart because that is what fans do. Even if it is something in its best form it is open for dissection and that can lead people to quickly get disenchanted with what they have and want something different because they think it is better.
Along with broadcasters, style is something to keep an eye on. NBC might want to try a few different things in the broadcast to keep it fresh and other NBC Sports personalities will likely be at some of the races, most notably the Indianapolis 500. For as big as the Indianapolis 500 is as a sporting event it has never been given that top tier broadcast we have come to expect in the 21st century. ABC had it stuck in the early-1990s. NBC is going to give it a modern take and while that sounds great I bet most IndyCar fans might not like what that will actually look like because it will go beyond the race. Let's say the race gets a two-hour pre-race show. That isn't going to be all about the drivers. It is going to talk about the Snake Pit and other cultural aspects of the race. Bob Costas and/or Mike Tirico will likely host that race. Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir might be there. The Today Show will likely be there. You may even get NASCAR personalities such as Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Rutledge Wood at the race and all of a sudden the IndyCar bubble will feel infiltrated by outsiders and reject the attention it so badly craved for years.
I do not think IndyCar's fan base is ready for what is about to happen. Some are but knowing this fan base it may get a shock in 2019, especially when it comes to the Indianapolis 500 and worse of all, if all the glitz and glamour is spent on the Indianapolis 500 the moment we return to the normal pomp and circumstance for Belle Isle, Texas and every other race on the IndyCar schedule people will say NBC Sports is not committed to the series. IndyCar fans, like all motorsports fans, are fickle and nothing is ever good enough but I am hopefully the changes are not met with backlash because they will be good for the series.
Don't think the rough patches are behind IndyCar. There will still be conflicts. There will still be hard outs when a race is preceding another major sporting event on network. There will still likely be sessions on CNBC. NBC Sports is still a crowded neighborhood and everyone needs to be pleased. IndyCar isn't going to run the neighborhood. The series will take a backseat to events you might not agree with. It is part of sports broadcasting. There are many major events and NBC's time is scarce. IndyCar will not always be priority.
Just like how no one driver is going to lift IndyCar to the heavens the switch to full-time coverage on NBC Sports isn't going to be the magic solution to get IndyCar back into the national sports discussion. We are all hopeful it will benefit the series, increase ratings and make the series more desirable to sponsors and in turn help out teams currently on the grid while also attracting a few more to the series but none of those are a guarantee especially in these changing times when it comes to viewing habits.
For a decade we knew what IndyCar was getting into. Now we have reached a black tunnel and we have no choice but to enter not knowing what is inside.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Scott Dixon and Ryan Hunter-Reay but did you know...
Jorge Lorenzo won MotoGP's Italian Grand Prix from Mugello, his first victory with Ducati. Miguel Oliveira won the Moto2 race. Jorge Martin won the Moto3 race, his third victory of the season.
Martin Truex, Jr. won the NASCAR Cup race from Pocono. Kyle Busch won the Grand National Series race.
The #31 Cadillac of Felipe Nasr and Eric Curran won the IMSA race from Belle Isle. The #86 Acura of Katherine Legge and Mario Farnbacher won in GTD.
Paul di Resta and Marco Wittmann split the DTM races from the Hungaroring.
The #14 Emil Frey Lexus Racing Lexus of Albert Costa, Christian Klien and Marco Seefried won the Circuit Paul Ricard 1000km.
Coming Up This Weekend
IndyCar has another night race as it reaches the midpoint of the season at Texas.
Formula One returns to Canada.
Switzerland has its first major motorsport race since 1954 with Formula E racing in the streets of Zürich.
NASCAR will be at Michigan.
World Superbike will be at Brno.
The World Rally Championship will be on the island of Sardinia.
Sunday, June 3, 2018
First Impressions: Belle Isle 2018 Race Two
1. It was about damn time for Ryan Hunter-Reay to get a victory and he got it with hustle. He knew from tenth on the grid he had to use the three-stop strategy and yesterday it worked for him, only he didn't get the victory. He did it again and everything fell in place. He set fastest lap after fastest lap and avoided getting caught in slower traffic. He erased an eight-second gap to Rossi before you knew it and Hunter-Reay was going to win this race even before Rossi out-braked himself going into turn three.
Hunter-Reay showed what is capable when you use the three-stop strategy and after his performance the last two days and Simon Pagenaud at Sonoma last year you have to wonder if this could be the new norm. Forget trying to make as few stops as you can; go like hell and open the gap. When you start up front it makes sense to try and make as few stops as possible and I doubt we will see things change but wouldn't it make as much sense to just set qualifying lap after qualifying lap and open a gap to the rest of the field and make the field match your pace? I know the fear of a caution negating the strategy looms but we have seen in IndyCar the last few seasons not many cautions flip a race. They still happen but it seems not as much as they once did.
Today was a great race because multiple strategies worked and the alternate tires could not last. You would get a few good laps but within the halfway point of a stint a driver was dying to get new tires and that is what we want. Hunter-Reay and his crew knew how it could win this race today and sure enough it worked.
I don't know if Hunter-Reay can be a championship contender. He seems to have thinks bite him out of nowhere and he hasn't been immune this season but through eight races he has a victory, three podium finishes and six top ten finishes. This is the best he has looked since 2012-2014.
2. It wasn't a great day for Will Power, it wasn't a great weekend, but he finished second today and exits Belle Isle with the championship lead after it appeared he wasn't going to have that honor. These are the days championships are built on. Power kept the nose clean, ran his race and got the result. Power has developed into this driver where he isn't reaching for a result. Today wasn't going to be his day but he didn't chase it and over step the line. Another driver overstepping the line is what got Power the championship lead today.
3. This was a solid weekend for Ed Jones as he picked up his third career podium finish. He wasn't mentioned much today but he didn't fade after qualifying fourth. He held off Scott Dixon today. It hasn't been a great year for Jones. He has had plenty of poor results, some of his own making. Jones has done well on street circuits and he has finished in the top ten in all four street course races this season. He is going to have to transfer this success over to road courses and ovals soon if he wants to take that next step forward.
4. Fourth isn't a bad day for Scott Dixon but his 100th podium finish will have to wait at least another six days. Dixon is five points out of the championship lead and he is in prime position. His worst finish is 11th and that was because of something that was out of his control. He has seven top ten finishes this season. He is going to be in the hunt all summer.
5. Graham Rahal recovered after an accident on Saturday to finish fifth today. He was quick once again but he wasn't close to Hunter-Reay and Rossi. The good news is you can afford one bad race but a second could be a much bigger blow to his championship hopes and he is going to need to start winning races.
6. Robert Wickens faded on the three-stop strategy. He started strong but he just lost a bit over the final two stints. It still got him a sixth place finish and he continues to runaway with Rookie of the Year, as he holds a 99-point gap over the next closest newbie. I think Wickens will win a race this season. He hasn't put a wheel wrong through eight races.
7. Tony Kanaan went from 22nd to seventh and was barely mentioned. I am not sure how he did it other than he went to the three-stop strategy early but good for him. It is a shame he was out of qualifying before he could set a lap but I do not think he would have started better than 14th or 15th and starting this far back forced his strategy and it was probably beneficial for him in a crazy way.
8. Charlie Kimball went from 21st to eighth and was barely mentioned. The good thing is he didn't run into any one today. I am glad Kimball is getting Carlin's result even though they are not coming easy. The team is building and these results will go a long way.
9. Marco Andretti was quick at the start and made up quite a bit of ground early but the two-stop strategy might not have been the right choice for him considering he started behind Hunter-Reay. I think if he had done that he might have gotten into the top five. This has been a good season for Andretti and it was a respectable weekend.
10. Simon Pagenaud finished tenth and through eight races this season he does not have a top five finish, which is on to say and for some reason worrying to me. It doesn't seem right that Pagenaud has not had a good day this year.
11. Shout out to Max Chilton who finished 11th today, his best finish of the season. He is still behind Ed Carpenter in the championship but it is baby steps with this new team.
12. And now onto Alexander Rossi. He was a sitting duck and locked up the left front on two consecutive laps into turn three. The second time it not only cost him the lead but he rejoined in fourth but the tire blew and he had to stop. He was able to get 12th out of today.
However, this is why team orders aren't a bad thing. Instead of being coy and saying "think big picture" the team has to be tough on the radio and lay it out for him by saying, "Hunter-Reay is nearly two seconds faster than you, on fresher tires and with less fuel. Let him got, sacrifice ten points but leave with 43 points and extend you championship lead." Tell him what is on the table. Don't bullshit him. Lose the battle but go for the war. Instead of sacrificing ten points he went coughed away 22 additional points and went from championship leader with a 16-point lead to third in the championship and trailing by 11 points.
He is still solidly in the conversation but the IndyCar season is a quick one and when you have a shot to extend the championship lead you better make you execute. Power and Dixon aren't going to cough up 22 points. Rossi now has to work from behind.
13. Zach Veach did well but really settled into the mid-pack and finished 13th and kind of gave Rossi 12th on the final lap. Matheus Leist had another good day, finished 14th and on the lead lap but I want to see if Leist can have a great day and he hasn't seemed close to it yet.
14. Josef Newgarden just didn't have things go his way today. This is the first time I remember him have a rough day from start to finish with Team Penske. He will bounce back but it was an uncharacteristic day for him.
15. Quickly through the rest of the field: James Hinchcliffe was not heard from the entire race. Neither was Takuma Sato. Jordan King finished 18th. Gabby Chaves continues to struggle but not struggle. It is weird. I don't have high expectations for a single-car team in year one but Chaves hasn't had even one inspiring day yet this season. Santino Ferrucci coughed up a possible top ten finish when he spun on cold tires exiting the pit lane but good on him for keeping the car running and nursing it home with a front wing dragging along. I like what I saw from Ferrucci even though the results weren't there. Sébastien Bourdais was going to finish in the top ten and maybe the top five had he not spun in turn one after a suspension issue with his left rear. René Binder's car broke on him after the pace car crashed and he finished four laps down. Spencer Pigot spun on his own on lap one, broke his suspension and he could never recover.
16. Let's get the pace car crash out of the way because it was ridiculous. It wasn't IndyCar's fault either. It was bad enough that Mark Reuss, Executive Vice President of Global Production Development, Purchasing and Supply Chain for General Motors spun the car literally 100 yards after exiting the pit lane for the first pace lap. It is even worse Chevrolet released a statement saying it was because of track conditions and weather! No, you bozo, you were too damn cocky with the gas pedal in a Corvette. At least IndyCar will get on SportsCenter. It takes wrecking the pace car and James Hinchcliffe pissing himself, not Ryan Hunter-Reay running qualifying laps for an hour and a half.
17. I want to give IndyCar kudos for letting this race play out when Ferrucci and Bourdais spun. In previous years I think we would have seen a caution and this race get jumbled up and strategies negated. There were two incidents, race control let the driver try and correct it because not many other drivers were endangered and the race was able to continue undisrupted and that is what we should want. We should want green flag racing and speed decide the race.
18. I am not going to shit on ABC as it heads out the door. I will say I was a bit sad with how the broadcast ended. ABC was IndyCar's home for decades and all we got was a quick goodbye, a simple "This is it for us." I hoped we would have had a passionate goodbye because a lot of great IndyCar moments happened on ABC and ESPN. So much of what we love and cherish is because of ABC and ESPN. Paul Page, Bobby Unser, Bob Jenkins, Delta Force, Side-by-Side, different on-board angles and other race introductions. ABC gave IndyCar its first prime time network broadcast! It wasn't pretty, especially at the end but ABC did a lot for IndyCar.
I guess you could say ABC said goodbye at the Indianapolis 500 with the feature narrated by Paul Page and in some ways that sums up ABC's relationship with IndyCar: It was all about the Indianapolis 500. And that is a shame because a lot of great IndyCar moments haven't occurred in the Indianapolis 500 and in some ways glossing over those and only focusing on what happened each Memorial Day weekend has held the series back.
My hope is this new voyage for IndyCar will allow the entire series, every race and championship battle to get the exposure it deserves as well as what happens in that great race that is oh so far away from occurring again.
19. On to Texas and it will be interesting to see if Chevrolet's big oval advantage carries over or if Honda's lack of pace was only at Indianapolis. It will also be interesting to see how the racing differs from last year and the early years of the DW12-era.
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