IndyCar Series
Round 1
Grand Prix of Saint Petersburg
Sunday, 13 March 2016
The season opener at St. Pete was a welcome beginning to this year in motorsport. 'Twas not the first race of the year, that honor belongs to the Dakar Rally, & 'twas not even the first race in Florida, that honor belongs to the I.M.S.A. SportsCar Championship's 24 Hours of Daytona, but with Daytona a bore since N.A.S.C.A.R. (as "I.M.S.A.") merged the American Le Mans Series & its own Grand-Am Sports Car Series into a combined championship that is less than the sum of its parts, worse than either of the old series, St. Pete was the first worthwhile on-track action of the year. This year's grand prix featured far fewer collisions & yellow-flag caution periods than did the previous year's visit to the temporary street circuit near the Tampa Bay, but had the same result: victory for double Indy 500 winner Juan Pablo Montoya ('00, '15), the most nonchalant driver in the paddock.
1st Place: Juan Pablo Montoya, Penske (Chevrolet)
2nd Place: Simon Pagenaud, Penske (Chevrolet)
3rd Place: Ryan Hunter-Reay, Andretti (Honda)
Round 2
Phoenix Grand Prix
Saturday, 2 April 2016
Despite the name of the race, the Phoenix Grand Prix was run on an oval, marking IndyCar's return to the Phoenix International Raceway for the first time since '05. I've never been a fan of oval-track racing; it pales in comparison with the splendor of road-course racing. The random nature of crashes on oval tracks is deeply unsettling. On a road course, one can usually piece together how a certain shunt came to happen; on an oval, more often than not for no discernible reason, race cars suddenly turn & crash into the outer walls. Justin Wilson's death at the Pocono 500 last year made up my mind (Wayback Machine): with the exception of this year one hundredth running of the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race, the world-famous Indy 500, I will never again watch an oval race. Phoenix was the first opportunity to see if I had the courage of my convictions, which I did, so I didn't see the results I now report.
1st Place: Scott Dixon, Ganassi (Chevrolet)
2nd Place: Simon Pagenaud, Penske (Chevrolet)
3rd Place: Will Power, Penske (Chevrolet)
Round 3
Grand Prix of Long Beach
Sunday, 17 April 2016
I prefer permanent road courses such as Road America & Laguna Seca to temporary streets circuits such as those at St. Pete & Long Beach, but only a hardened cynic wouldn't like the Long Beach Grand Prix, with its perpetual chamber-of-commerce weather & four-decade history that includes F5000, Formula One, & three decades of the several guises of Indy car racing (C.A.R.T., Champ Car, & the current IndyCar). I don't really buy the hyperbolic ephitet "America's Monaco," but I don't disagree with the compliment intended. In any event, the race itself was nigh-miraculous, clean, green-flag running from start to finish, all but impossible inside the concrete canyons of a street circuit. The biggest problem with IndyCar is that the rules are set up in such a way that most of the time the winner of a race is determined by neither merit nor qualifying position, but by the luck of the draw, how a driver & his car happen to be positioned when the inevitable yellow flags throw a monkeywrench into the proceedings. To see an IndyCar race, especially a street race, without a yellow flag is a rare & marvelous thing.
There was controversy, with eventual winner Simon Pagenaud of Team Penske cutting across a forbidden line during his exit from the pit lane after this final pit stop. The move put him ahead of quadruple & reigning series champion ('03, '08, '13, & '15) & '08 Indy 500 winner Scott Dixon of Ganassi Racing. Dixon's crew screamed bloody murder when Pagenaud was given a warning instead of an actual penalty, but photographic evidence emerged after the race showing that Dixon had cut across the forbidden line in the exact same way on one of his pit stops. So, you know, those hypocrites can shut their filthy mouths. I wish that IndyCar would enforce its rules more strictly, but the teams & the drivers always say that all they ask from the stewards is consistency. In not penalizing Pagenaud for the exact same foul for which they'd also not penalized Dixon, the stewards were entirely consistent in their lax rule enforcement.
1st Place: Simon Pagenaud, Penske (Chevrolet)
2nd Place: Scott Dixon, Ganassi (Chevrolet)
3rd Place: Helio Castroneves, Penske (Chevrolet)
Round 4
Grand Prix of Alabama
Sunday, 24 April 2016
Pinch me, I must be dreaming: the ninety-lap race around the picturesque Barber Motorsports Park was run entirely under green-flag conditions, the second consecutive clean (more or less) race! In qualifying, Pagenaud pipped his teammate, ace qualifier & '14 series champion Will Power, for the pole, & never looked back. The fleet Frenchman effectively lead every lap, occasionally falling to second purely due to the pit-stop cycle. In the closing laps, stuck behind backmarkers trying desperately not to be lapped, he was caught by hated Buckeye Graham Rahal (who has raced in a helmet painted to resemble a T.O.S.U. football helmet), who rammed him from behind, sending Pagenaud careening halfway off track. Now in the lead, Rahal then rammed one of the backmarkers, smashing Rahal's car's front-wing into so much carbon-fiber debris. With the villainous Rahal now crippled by his own impatient hand, Pagenaud cruised back into the lead & an eventual ten-second victory. These are the salad days for Pagenaud, with four podiums in the first four races, twice the victor & twice the runner-up.
1st Place: Simon Pagenaud, Penske (Chevrolet)
2nd Place: Graham Rahal, R.L.L. (Honda)
3rd Place: Josef Newgarden, Carpenter (Chevrolet)
Next
The Grand Prix of Indianapolis, on Saturday, 14 May, run on the road course at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. May is all about Indy, first the G.P., then qualifying for the 100th Indy 500, then the "Greatest Spectacle in Racing" itself on 29 May, the Sunday before Memorial Day. (Also the date of F1's Monaco Grand Prix, as has been the case for all of the seven years I've been watching motorsport.) As mentioned above, this year's Indy 500 will be my last-ever oval race.
Indy Lights Series
The official feeder series into IndyCar & the second-to-last step on the "Road to Indy" ladder system is seeing significant growth, increasing from an approximate average of twelve cars per race in 2015 to sixteen this year. The number of "refugees" from European open-wheel racing, including GP2, the official feeder series to F1, continues to grow, as drivers confront the paucity of open sets in the pinnacle of motorsport. Max Chilton, veteran of thirty-five Formula One starts with Manor (originally Virgin, later Marussia), contested the 2015 Indy Lights season, gaining experience with both America's road & street circuits & oval racing. This year, Chilton made the jump to IndyCar, replacing reckless & immature teenager Sage Karam on the prestigious Ganassi Racing squad. I am certain his path is one many of this year's Indy Lights contenders desire to follow.
Round 1
Streets of St. Pete, Race 1
Saturday, 12 March 2016
1st Place: Felix Serralles, Carlin
2nd Place: Scott Hargrove, Pelfrey
3rd Place: Kyle Kaiser, Juncos
Round 2
Streets of St. Pete, Race 2
Sunday, 13 March 2016
1st Place: Felix Rosenqvist, Belardi
2nd Place: Kyle Kaiser, Juncos
3rd Place: Zach Veach, Belardi
Round 3
Phoenix International Raceway
Saturday, 2 April 1016
1st Place: Kyle Kaiser, Juncos
2nd Place: Ed Jones, Carlin
3rd Place: R. C. Enerson, Schmidt Peterson
Round 4
Barber Motorsports Park, Race 1
Saturday, 23 April 2016
1st Place: Ed Jones, Carlin
2nd Place: Felix Serralles, Carlin
3rd Place: Zach Veach, Belardi
Round 5
Barber Motorsports Park, Race 2
Sunday, 24 April 2016
1st Place: Santiago Urritia, Schmidt Peterson
2nd Place: Ed Jones, Carlin
3rd Place: Dean Stoneman, Andretti
As a driver-development series, Indy Lights is a "spec series," all the drivers piloting identical chassis with identical engines & identical tires. The current Indy Lights car, the Dallara IL-15 with a Mazda-badged A.E.R engine & Cooper tires, is a sweet little package. I personally love the snap, crackle, & pop of the turbochargers' waste gates.
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