Power and Herta share Indycar spoils
The Australian veteran finally broke his 2020 duck last Saturday to lead home a 1-2 for Penske, but no one could live with the Andretti Autosport machines on Sunday
Two well-established star names in Indycar racing enjoyed redemption at Mid-ohio last weekend.
The first was Will Power, who scored his first win of a season that had hitherto been beset – almost as we’ve come to expect – by pitcrew errors, tactical miscues, misfortune regarding the timing of full-course cautions, and yes, a couple of his own mistakes too. On Saturday, Power scored the 60th pole position of his career – he’s now just seven away from Mario Andretti’s all-time record – and simply left his opposition behind to score his 38th victory. Perhaps most significantly, it was his first ever at Mid-ohio, a place where he’s now started from pole five times but
where he had previously encountered various tales of woe. In true Power boom-and-bust fashion, the #12 Team Penske Dallara-chevrolet had a spin in Sunday’s wet qualifying session, which brought out the red flag and consigned him to almost the back of the grid, thereby allowing Andretti Autosport to rise to prominence. For only the second time this season, Michael Andretti’s squad looked like victory contenders. The previous occasion had been the Indianapolis 500, where most of that potential had been stymied by pitlane mishaps. This time there was no such issue. Alexander Rossi and Ryan Hunter-reay finished third and fifth on Saturday, while on Sunday their 20-year-old team-mate Colton Herta took pole and led this same pair in a podium sweep, the Andretti team’s first in 15 years.
Race one
After the second race of the season, the Grand Prix of Indianapolis, Power admitted to Autosport that he and race engineer Dave Faustino were coming to the conclusion that they should maybe stop trying to hedge their bets between different pitstop strategies and instead just go flat-out from the start of races. That would oblige most others to follow that lead so that, if a badly timed caution period fell, Power would be less likely to find himself stuck behind strong rivals on alternative strategies. With the Mid-ohio races being reduced from 90 laps to 75 this year, on account of there being two of them,
this was the perfect opportunity for Power and Faustino to put their theory to the test, because one, it was going to be a clear two-stopping race for everyone, and two, Mid-ohio has seen shockingly few full-course cautions in recent years.
From pole, Power burst into the lead when the green flag waved between Turn 2 and the Turn 3 kink, where Mid-ohio Indycar races start on account of the run down to Turn 4 being much longer than the pitstraight. Fellow front-row starter Hunter-reay was jumped by second-row man Josef Newgarden, Penske’s reigning champion eager to exploit the fact that runaway championship leader Scott Dixon had been puzzlingly slow in qualifying, and was starting 17th in his Honda-powered Chip Ganassi Racing car.
Hunter-reay was also jumped by Conor Daly, one of the surprises of qualifying driving the Ed Carpenter Racing Chevyengined machine, but by the end of lap four the yellow DHL car of Hunter-reay was back ahead. Behind Daly ran Rossi, who had elected to start the race on the hardercompound ‘black’ Firestones, and who therefore had his hands full holding off the red-tyred Felix Rosenqvist (Ganassi).
Power inched away from Newgarden throughout that opening stint so that when they and other red-tyred runners stopped around the lap 20 mark, the 2014 champion had a near four-second margin over Newgarden. This reduced to 3s when Power got caught up with a battle between Santino Ferrucci and Rinus Veekay, who were running fourth and fifth behind Rossi, Graham Rahal and Herta. All five were trying to exploit the extended life of the harder Firestones in their first stint, but by lap 27 they had all pitted.
At this point, Daly fell out of podium contention, so now Rossi emerged from the pits in fourth and with the grippier red tyres, while team-mate Hunter-reay was on blacks. Right behind this pair a similar battle was under way, for Rosenqvist was on blacks and battling to hold off Rahal. Up front, Power looked relatively serene, with a 6s lead over Newgarden at half distance.
As soon as the second and final pit window opened on lap 45, Rossi pulled his car’s nose out from under Hunter-reay’s gearbox and ducked into the pitlane for fuel and a set of fresh blacks. Overcoming the disadvantage of a full fuel load by use of his push-to-pass boost and applying aggressive steering inputs to get the harder compound up to temperature quickly, Rossi nailed his out-lap. Hunter-reay stopped next time by but, although he emerged onto the track ahead of his team-mate, Rossi had the momentum and swooped past to claim what would eventually be the final podium spot. RHR’S irritation increased still further when he realised that Rahal had gone the opposite way to Rossi in terms of strategy, going three laps longer in his Rahal Letterman Lanigan car and nailing his extra laps on a light fuel load to also emerge ahead.
Having at one point led by over 9s, Power eased off a little in the closing stages, while Newgarden did just enough to keep Rossi
at arm’s length in the final stint. He held on to score his second podium of the season, ahead of Rahal, Hunter-reay and Rosenqvist.
Meyer Shank Racing’s Jack Harvey had started a fine fifth, lost ground at the start but had held on to run a lonely seventh, while Veekay beat Herta to eighth.
Daly ran desperately low on fuel on the final lap, and slipped from 10th to 13th. Prime beneficiary was six-time Mid-ohio winner Dixon, who moved into 10th, surviving a brush with Herta exiting Turn 2 when the Andretti driver mistakenly hit the pit speed limiter.
Race two
It was Ferrucci who had a brush with Herta at the first turn of the second race. Ferruci had been sensationally fast in his Dale Coyne Racing with Vasser Sullivan car on the wet and treacherous track during Sunday qualifying and had topped his group, thereby guaranteeing himself a front-row grid slot, by 3.24s from team-mate Alex Palou. The second group would have much drier conditions, and session topper Herta thus took pole ahead of the Ganassi cars of Dixon and Rosenqvist.
Along with Power, others who started way down after causing red flags were Zach Veach, Pato O’ward and Harvey, who spun into the Turn 12 tyre wall, forcing the Meyer Shank team to rebuild the rear of his car in the 90 minutes before the grid formed.
Following the drop of the green flag, Herta arrived at Turn 4 with Ferrucci not quite fully alongside as they turned in, but the Andretti Harding Steinbrenner car needed almost all the road on exit, and Ferrucci found himself edged off into the wet grass. He did well to hold it, less well to rejoin the track in time to thump into team-mate Palou, who thus collided with Rosenqvist. The latter two sustained heavy enough damage to end their races, while Ferrucci was ordered to the back of the field for making avoidable contact.
At the restart, Herta held off Dixon, Hunter-reay, Rossi, Simon Pagenaud and Rahal, although on lap eight Rahal would have to cede sixth place to the impressive Marcus Ericsson in the third Ganassi car, who had taken full advantage of the firstlap chaos to rise from 15th.
Then on lap 15, Dalton Kellett spun into the Turn 1 sandtrap, and Indycar delayed throwing a yellow so as not to disadvantage anyone before closing the pits. All the frontrunners dived in, while Takuma Sato, enduring a dismal weekend, and Marco Andretti stayed out and moved up into first and second respectively.
Herta remained ahead of Dixon at the restart, but both had switched from reds to blacks for what would now have to be a long middle stint. Hunter-reay and Rossi, by contrast, had taken on a second set of reds and wanted to take advantage of the fact that the softer compound warms quicker. Down to Turn 4 on lap 20, Hunter-reay drew alongside Dixon on the outside but was knocked out to the edge of the track by the late-braking Kiwi, and they lost enough
“Ferrucci did well to hold it, less well to rejoin the track in time to thump into his team-mate”
momentum to allow Rossi past both of them.
An angry Hunter-reay must have regarded it as karma, therefore, when at Turn 1 Dixon’s car squirmed as he applied the push-to-pass boost at the apex, ran wide onto the outside kerb at the exit and spun to the back of the pack before pitting for a set of Firestones without flatspots.
Rossi drew close to Herta, who took until lap 26 to pass the off-strategy Andretti for second. While Rossi was wondering how long it would be before he got a chance to do the same, Andretti slid out to the Turn 1 sandtrap. Herta, Rossi and Hunter-reay moved into the top three spots once Sato finally stopped to give up his lead.
Sato’s team-mate Rahal had taken full advantage of his red tyres in this middle stint to pass Newgarden (who’d beaten him out of the pits), Ericsson and then Pagenaud to become the biggest threat to Andretti Autosport.
Herta, on blacks, had kept out of reach of Rossi and Hunter-reay, who were both running reds and, just as Rossi made his second and final stop, Herta had a 1.9s advantage. Herta and Hunter-reay would stop a lap later and resume the status quo, Rossi between them.
That’s how it played out to the end.
Herta looked after his reds in masterful fashion, Rossi didn’t quite have fuel enough to push-to-pass his way onto the #88 car’s tail, and Hunter-reay couldn’t find his way around Rossi. Indeed, RHR was more preoccupied with retaining third as Rahal made a late charge to finish less than a second behind.
Ericsson fully deserved his fifth place, having staved off Pagenaud apparently with ease. Power beat Newgarden off the pitroad in the final stop, but had lost radio communication with his team so didn’t know if he had fuel enough to challenge Pagenaud. He could only do mental maths based on Newgarden’s progress behind him, so that whenever the #1 car drew within a second of him, Power would respond with a fast lap to pull away again.
Penske didn’t maximise Newgarden’s points gain over Dixon by asking Pagenaud and Power to move aside for the two-time champion, despite Dixon climbing to 10th with a pass on Veekay on the final lap. Nonetheless, Newgarden cut his deficit to Dixon from 96 to 72 points at Mid-ohio, with three races to go.
“An angry Hunterreay must have regarded it as karma when Dixon’s car ran wide and spun”