Rosenqvist at last at Road America
The Swede’s first Indycar victory took a while coming, but when the pass came it was well worth the wait. With Dixon winning on Saturday, the Ganassi team is still unbeaten
Plenty of heroes, angst-ridden stories of what might have been, a hero-turned-villain, an old winner and a new winner – the two Indycar Series races last weekend at Road America had it all. Heck, they even had spectators although, in these pandemicblighted times, they weren’t allowed access to the paddock.
One thread of the season remains unbroken, however, because the Honda-powered Chip Ganassi Racing remains unbeaten. Scott Dixon took the Saturday victory to score three in a row – something he hadn’t achieved since mid-2013 – while one of his team-mates, Swedish sophomore Felix Rosenqvist, earned the second after an exhilarating chase down of surprise polewinner Patricio O’ward.
With the event being a double-header, but with Thursday and Friday given over to Road to Indy’s Indy Pro 2000 and USF2000 events in order to reduce the number of people in the paddock at any given time, time was very much of the essence, and the schedule was quickfire. Between practice and qualifying on Saturday there were just two hours, and barely more than that between qualifying and the race on both days. While reigning champion Josef Newgarden made the best of the format on Saturday to take pole position, his Team Penske stablemate Will Power – quickest in practice – blew his fastest lap and was third in his qualifying group, fifth on the grid. Newgarden led this race increasingly comfortably from Ryan Hunter-reay, who eventually had to relinquish positions to Graham Rahal and a flying Santino Ferrucci. Meanwhile, Jack Harvey, on the front row for the second successive weekend, was trying to recover from a tardy start, and Power fell to 10th, having been tripped up by Harvey on the opening lap and finding the team had installed the wrong second-gear ratio, crippling his acceleration out of the final turn onto the long uphill front straight.
The #12 Penske crew had investigated the rate of tyre
degradation during practice, and pitted Power early to switch from the alternate (softer) rubber to primaries. After strong in and out-laps, he was flying. By the time the others pulled in,
Power was up to third, behind only Newgarden and the Dale
Coyne Racing car of Ferrucci, and being pursued by another early stopper, rookie Alex Palou in the other Coyne machine.
These four had also benefited from Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing struggling to get fuel into the car of the unfortunate
Rahal, who emerged 11th.
The Ganassi team had observed what early-stopping had done for Power and, since Dixon is probably the only driver able to match Power for fuel-saving – sooner or later the early stoppers were going to have to do a fuel-save stint – pulled in the five-time champion early for his second stop. He had been in seventh place but, thanks to Newgarden stalling in the pits and thereafter falling out of contention, Dixon’s undercut took him almost into the lead.
Power, who stopped two laps later on this occasion, emerged right in front of his long-time rival and, cold tyres be damned, on his out-lap he resolutely held off Dixon with some scarylate braking into Turns 5 and 6, the Chevrolet-powered Penske machine quivering as it danced on its front brakes. Job done
– or so it seemed.
Then Harvey lost his brakes and spun off at Turn 3, the field bunched up while the pits were closed, and then everyone filed into the pitlane for their third and final stops. Power’s right-rear changer was slightly slow, so too was his jackman in dropping the car back down, and he could only watch in frustration as Dixon pulled out ahead of him. Without an accelerative second gear, he couldn’t hope to pass Dixon on the restart – or on the next one (the yellow caused by Marco Andretti’s car stopping on track), or on the final one (caused by Dalton Kellett dumping his AJ Foyt Racing entry in a sandtrap).
In fact, Power would spend the remainder of the race watching his mirrors for Palou. The sensational young Spaniard had withstood the intimidation squeeze tactics of a defensive Hunter-reay to grab third on the run to Turn 1, before Andretti’s mishap brought out the caution and forced Palou to drop back behind the 2012 champion, as the field reverted to the order of the previous timing line. On the re-restart, Hunter-reay assiduously hugged the inside line, and this time Palou simply passed him around the outside instead, and dogged Power, who’d finish 2.5 seconds behind Dixon, all the way to the chequered flag. Hunter-reay held onto fourth to beat Andretti Autosport team-mate Colton Herta and Ferrucci, who had lost time in his final stop while avoiding Kellett’s car in the pitlane. Rahal did well to recover and claim seventh.
O’ward and Herta were the talk of Sunday morning, as the former Indy Lights rivals and team-mates topped their respective groups in qualifying for race two. O’ward earned Arrow Mclaren SP its first pole since the sensational Robert Wickens did the same on his Indycar debut for the squad then known as
Schmidt Peterson Motorsports.
O’ward launched into the lead without problem at the start of this second race, but there was chaos behind when Power tried to follow
Dixon around the outside of Hunter-reay into Turn 1, and his right-front wheel made hard enough contact with the Andretti Autosport car to fire it off the road and into a tyre wall. Down to
Turn 3, Power dived late down the inside of Rahal to snatch fifth, but the pass put Rahal on the exit kerb and he lost control, bouncing off the following Rosenqvist and rebounding into the end of a concrete wall. Power was sent to the back of the field for the restart, and at the end of the next green-flag lap he got his braking all wrong for Turn 13, bounced and spun over the grass, collected an advertising hoarding and then stalled. Out came the caution once more, as the safety team got the #12 car bump-started. Power headed into the pits for a new front wing, and was able to resume without losing a lap.
O’ward resumed unruffled in the lead as Herta was passed by Palou, but at first no one could make any real impression on the 21-year-old Mexican. Newgarden had started midfield and continued to run there, Dixon was finding he was burning off his rear tyres too quickly, and Palou couldn’t keep pace with the leader.
But Rosenqvist was on a tear, his car strong on Firestone’s alternate compound and sensational on the primaries. He kept whittling away at O’ward’s lead through the second stint, cutting the advantage to 5s by the time O’ward stopped for a second time. Rosenqvist’s right-front changer was slow due to bent wheel studs from the impact with Rahal, so the Ganassi car emerged from the pits 8s adrift. Eight laps later, Rosenqvist’s deficit was under 5s. After their final stops it had only extended to 5.5s and the chase was on. Rosenqvist was on blacks, O’ward on scrubbed softer reds and, having stopped a lap earlier than his rival, he was having to keep an eye on his fuel too. That meant he had to let the light-fuelled, freshtyred Conor Daly – with whom he’d collided the previous day! – unlap himself, and the dirty air hastened his tyre degradation.
O’ward’s car was getting very tail happy on fast turns so that Rosenqvist closed in on him. On the run down to the tight left-hander at Turn 5 on the penultimate lap, O’ward had to protect the inside line. Rosenqvist on the outside exquisitely timed his move at the apex to tuck back behind his rival’s car, get back on the throttle sooner and draw alongside up the hill to Turn 6. O’ward tried to tough it out but had run out of weapons. Rosenqvist sprinted away to win by 2.9s, with O’ward a resigned second.
Alexander Rossi at last got a decent finish on the board to claim third for Andretti Autosport, ahead of the third Ganassi car, that of Marcus Ericsson, who turned in arguably the best race of his young Indycar career. Fifth went to Herta, who is now second in the championship – yet 54 points behind
Dixon, despite the Kiwi claiming only 12th on this day.