Points title would give Castroneves last laugh
His fellow Team Penske drivers and others around the Verizon IndyCar Series paddock love to tease Helio Castroneves about his age. And the 42-year-old star, in return, loves to talk about how much fun it is to put youngsters such as Josef Newgarden and Graham Rahal in their place.
While Castroneves has enjoyed plenty of success in recent times, it has been more than three years since he had been able to rib his young challengers from atop a podium. So it must have felt pretty sweet Sunday night to be climbing fences and spraying champagne.
But his win in the Iowa Corn 300 means so much more than just giving him an upper hand the next time someone teases him about seeing a few gray hairs. With the victory, Castroneves made a strong statement that if this is indeed his final IndyCar season — as has been rumored — he’s not going away without one heck of a fight.
The Iowa Speedway win demonstrated that he’s going to do everything he can to give the paddock, the fans and the whole racing world something special to remember him by: his first series championship. The threetime Indianapolis 500 winner sits second in the standings, eight points behind four-time series champ Scott Dixon.
It would make for a great story, one Castroneves surely would enjoy telling for years: In my 20th and final IndyCar season, I did the one thing I had never done. I won a title and showed those young punks what’s what.
Other weekend takeaways:
Never count out Rahal:
With his fifth-place run at Iowa, make that three races this season in which Rahal has maneuvered into a top-six finish after starting the race 10th or worse.
Rahal seems to have a pen- chant for posting solid comefrom-behind results. He battled up to sixth in the Indy Grand Prix after starting 20th at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and a month later claimed a fourthplace finish after starting 11th at Texas Motor Speedway. That never-say-die attitude was on full display Sunday. He started 10th but immediately moved up as he battled within the top five all race. In his postrace comments, Rahal said he felt he had a car as good as the one that pulled into victory lane.
“I wanted to win today, so I’m disappointed with fifth, which is a good thing,” Rahal said. “We had a good day and got solid points. We would have liked to have gained on Will (Power) and Helio (in the point standings), though. I actually felt I had a car that was equally as good as theirs, but the track position became hard.
“As I said during the broadcast under the red flag, the guys just kept moving up (on the high line), which is fine — that’s their right to choose a lane — but that was where I was comfortable running, so we lost some space.”
As for never counting Rahal out, that applies to the championship, too. He’s tied for sixth in the standings, 66 points behind Dixon, and maybe sixth is where he’ll finish. Or maybe he’ll push past one of — or even a couple of — Team Penske’s powerhouse four. Or perhaps he’ll win the whole thing.
Whatever happens, know that Rahal isn’t going to let the leader too far out of his sight. With five consecutive finishes in the top eight, he is on a roll and thinks there’s even more success on the horizon.
“We’re going to Toronto (street race) now, and after what happened in Detroit (two wins in two days in the doubleheader street race), hopefully that setup will translate well and we’ll have a great race there, too,” Rahal said.
A modest proposal:
Here’s Ryan Hunter-Reay’s summation of the weekend at Iowa: Great track, great fans. Can we do this at night next time, please?
It’s the middle of July in Iowa, so it’s going to be hot. That can’t be avoided. But a night race would help mitigate the heat a bit and make for a better viewing experience for fans and a better racing experience for drivers.
According to IndyCar, at the start of the race it was 91 degrees outside with 50% humidity. That is tough on fans, no matter how many beers they have imbibed.
As for the drivers, IndyCar said the track temperature was 123 degrees when the race began. Not only is that sweltering, but it makes for a high degree of difficulty for drivers just trying to stay on track.
Hunter-Reay explained it like this: “When you’re on newer tires, maybe lap 1 to 20, (staying on track) was manageable. You could put the car wherever you wanted. You could come up on a car that was … slower than you on older tires, and it was very difficult to get by, and you were very susceptible to the washout.
“It was fun out there today, but these races used to be a lot better, I think. The downforce is a bit light for how hot it was. It was light.
“I mean, you got halfway into a tire stint, and even the fast cars couldn’t go anywhere. We saw Helio, Will, even (runner-up J.R. Hildebrand) was stuck behind cars that were much slower.
“I’d love to come back here at night. I think I’ve said that about 35 times.”