Indianapolis road course next as series continues
While Formula 1 has been champing at the bit to get going, Indycar rolled out at Texas Motor Speedway four weeks ago for its season start. But it’s only this weekend at the Indianapolis road course – the first of three planned visits to the venue this year – that the meat of the season begins.
You’d be forgiven for anticipating that Team Penske will dominate the season’s first non-oval race. After all, it’s unbeaten over the past five races on the Indy road course, with
Will Power taking three wins and Simon Pagenaud two.
But with this peculiarly-shaped 2020 season rendering the event as only the second round, and in the absence of any testing, perhaps the squad’s undoubted muscle cannot flex with the same effect and the field will have gotten more compact.
“Nice theory, but… no,” said a rival engineer last week. “The top teams stay top even in these weird, constricted circumstances. It’s not like any of us have been allowed to do anything Penske and Ganassi hasn’t done over the past nine months. The only way someone beats them on speed is by making a step that no one else has thought of – which is bloody hard in a spec formula. And anyway, right now you’ve gotta be pretty brave to do anything radical because outside of the sim, we’ve had no data to base it on since February in testing.
“Look at it this way: we disappeared for eight months, went to Texas and we were given minimal track time and also minimal time between sessions to fix anything we want to do, and, boom, there’s Ganassi and Penske kicking our ass…”
Fair point. At TMS, Penske had the best set-up for ultimate pace, resulting in Josef Newgarden, Pagenaud and Power qualifying 1-3-5. But due to Firestone’s shutdown during the pandemic, the teams were running 2019spec tyres with the new-for-2020 aeroscreens that have altered centre of gravity and weight distribution. Consequently, at a track that can be harsh on tyres, Indycar played it cautious and imposed a 35-lap stint length for each set – barely more than half of what was achievable in 2019.
Newgarden and eventually Pagenaud picked up tyre vibrations that sapped their confidence and speed. Power, running a tick slower, had no such problems but had one disastrous pitstop.
Chip Ganassi Racing had no such issues. Five-time champion Scott Dixon stalked Newgarden in the early stages of the race, moved past when the reigning champ’s tyres went off, and pulled away at will to score the 47th win of his Indycar career. Team-mate Felix Rosenqvist ran second until crashing in the closing laps, allowing Pagenaud and Newgarden into second and third.