World of Sport: Indycar; Formula 2; GP3; Porsche Supercup; Suzuka 10H; Euro F3; DTM; Australian Supercars
INDYCAR GATEWAY (USA) AUGUST 25 ROUND 13/16 Victory at Gateway Motorsports Park left Team Penske’s Will Power convinced that he can, with the help of the double points on offer at the Sonoma finale, still win the 2018 Indycar Championship.
“We can absolutely do it,” said Power – currently 68 points adrift of Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon.
“When we turned up at Indy, it was a single points race [Indianapolis Grand Prix] and a double points race [Indy 500] and I was about the same amount of points behind [77], and I came out two points ahead with those two wins.”
His logic is undeniable. Yet the superlative display from him last Saturday night seemed unattainable by any Penske driver 24 hours earlier. Rain hit the 1.25-mile oval on Friday and kept first practice to 22 minutes, so Indycar canned qualifying and instead ran a 90-minute second practice in the evening. The grid would be set by championship points and Chevrolet-powered Penske could be grateful for that because Power, Josef Newgarden and Simon Pagenaud were only midfield in that second and final session – around 3mph off Dixon and Andretti Autosport’s Alexander Rossi. Given their positions in the points, Dixon and Rossi would start on the front row, ahead of Newgarden and Power, with Ryan Hunter-reay and – in the absence of Robert Wickens, injured at Pocono – Pagenaud on row three.
But Power and race engineer Dave Faustino then “changed everything” on the car in preparation for a steaming hot race evening. Their efforts paid off.
Rossi was slow to start, leaving Power and Newgarden to tuck into second behind Dixon. Rossi clung on to third but, when Sebastien Bourdais wrecked his Dale Coyne Racing, Newgarden slipped his Penske past at the restart – a situation Rossi couldn’t resolve until lap 49 of 248. Then the Andretti driver chipped away at his disadvantage to Dixon and Power until the trio ran nose to tail. But their pace was reduced as they followed backmarkers, albeit still comfortably ahead of Newgarden. Following the first pitstops, these four resumed in the same order, while Pagenaud moved ahead of Hunter-reay for fifth.
Through most of the second stint, the top three again elected to save fuel rather than risk getting up into the marbles by passing each other or backmarkers. Power tried to break that trend when he got a run on Dixon out of Turn 4 on lap 118. Dixon moved down to the pitwall along the straight to force Power to go to the outside, but then moved right to take a more conventional line through Turn 1. That ran Power into the grey and he only just kept it off the wall. That loss of momentum meant the closely following Rossi immediately zapped past. Newgarden tripped over his team-mate and lost pace himself and, when everyone stopped a lap later, Power found himself in fourth behind Pagenaud.
But on lap 143, the 2016 champion got it wrong through Turns 3 and 4 and slowed enough to allow Power to pass him along the pit straight, and his reduced pace for a whole circuit dropped him to ninth. Meanwhile, Power reeled in Rossi and dived down the inside into Turn 1 three laps later, causing Rossi to slide and make a brilliant save – although he lost another place to Hunter-reay. Four laps on, Power pulled a very similar pass on Dixon, and then stretched out a four-second lead.
That was reduced when yellow flags flew on lap 173 for the luckless Hunter-reay
– who needed to be towed to his pitbox after his engine cut out. The leaders made their stops as soon as the pitlane opened, while Indycar elongated the caution in order to clean the track.
At the restart, Power didn’t pull rapidly away from Dixon because Roger Penske was debating whether to try and make it to the flag without another stop. Power reduced his speed to 168mph, Dixon and Rossi did likewise, but others had different instructions. Andretti’s rookie Zach Veach and the second Ganassi car of Ed Jones charged from the lower reaches of the top 10 into the top five, Jones climbing to third behind team-mate Dixon while Veach passed Rossi for fourth.
Soon after, Penske decided to commit Power to running hard and making another stop. He swiftly pulled a seven-second lead over Dixon, who would also pit again. Only Rossi committed to the no-more-stops plan, and it worked. He dropped to eighth at his heavily reduced pace, then rose up the leader board as the others peeled in for a splash ’n dash. While he couldn’t resist the charging Power, Rossi retained second ahead of Dixon to reduce his points deficit to 26.
Pagenaud found his mojo in the final stints to take fourth, while Veach’s brave effort earned fifth ahead of hard-charging Spencer Pigot of Ed Carpenter Racing.