World of Sport: Indycar; Spa 24 Hours; Super GT; Formula Renault Eurocup; Motogp
Both title contenders knew what they had to do coming into the Indycar season finale and, unfortunately for the race winner, they both delivered exactly what was required
Scott Dixon is now a six-time Indycar champion and his status is well deserved. But had last weekend’s race winner Josef Newgarden clinched the crown, an objective viewer would have found that, too, a satisfying result. While Chip Ganassi Racing star Dixon won the first three races of the year, his Team Penske rival – the two-time and reigning champion – was the most consistent frontrunner in the final six.
After round eight in this 14-race championship, Newgarden was 117 points adrift of Dixon. Yet by beating him in all of the remaining rounds, and winning three of them, Newgarden slashed that deficit to just 16 in the final standings.
In this season finale on the 1.8-mile streets-and-runway course of St Petersburg, both drivers did everything that was necessary and within their power to control. Newgarden needed to win and did so, but he also needed Dixon to finish outside the top nine, and this the Kiwi was disinclined to do. He grabbed third place and is now just one step away from matching AJ Foyt’s all-time Indycar record of seven series titles.
Neither driver’s results looked too predictable on Saturday following qualifying. Newgarden’s Penske team-mate Will Power had racked up his fifth pole position of the season, and his ninth at St Pete, edging aside the resurgent Andretti Autosport Dallara-hondas that lined up second, third and fourth in the hands of
Alexander Rossi, Colton Herta and James Hinchcliffe. Jack Harvey in the Meyer Shank Racing entry (which has a technical partnership with Andretti) was fifth,
Arrow Mclaren SP’S Patricio O’ward was sixth, and AJ Foyt Racing’s newest recruit Sebastien Bourdais was driving the #14 faster than it had been on a street course for many years.
Only then would you find Newgarden, on the fourth row, yet still further back, in 11th, was Dixon, who had grappled with rear brake issues throughout practice and qualifying, prompting the Ganassi crew to replace the entire system on Saturday night.
Yet these grid slots weren’t a disaster, for drivers have won this race from almost every part of the grid thanks to clashes and
subsequent caution periods shuffling the deck. St Pete’s bumps try to bounce cars off the racing line at crucial points in several turns, and there they encounter rubber marbles caused by the rough track surface shaving off layers of Firestone. Scuffed sidewalls, scraped wheels, broken toe links and bent suspension arms are par for the course here, even when the cars aren’t in direct competition. In race day conditions, with heavy braking zones allowing passing opportunities, cars tend to magnetise to one another, leading to yellow flags.
With the race reduced from 110 to 100 laps this year, the majority of frontrunners believed it would require two pitstops, so long as Firestone’s red alternate (softer) tyres could withstand a stint of 30 laps. After qualifying most decided it was feasible and, of the main runners, Power, O’ward and Dixon elected to start on the alternate compound.
Power led away from Rossi, Herta, Hinchcliffe, O’ward and Harvey, with Newgarden and Dixon holding station in eighth and 11th. But on lap five, approaching the sharp left Turn 10, Power’s gearbox briefly got stuck in fourth and, as he bogged down on exit, he lost his lead to Rossi. Herta also moved onto his tail and passed down the long front straight. When Power tried to retaliate by outbraking the youngster on the dirtier inside line, he slid wide again, which allowed Hinchcliffe through into third.
Contrary to his pre-race belief, Power’s softer alternates were no match for an Andretti car on primaries, and so he and the similarly encumbered O’ward lost huge chunks of time to the trio ahead. On lap 20, Rossi was leading by only 0.8 seconds from Herta, who had 3.7s on Hinchcliffe, but Power and O’ward were over a dozen seconds further back.
Newgarden stopped on lap 28 to switch from primaries to alternates, while Dixon, shadowing his rival’s every move, pulled in on the next lap to get off the reds and onto a new set of black tyres. Two laps later, Power did the same as Dixon, but on cold rubber he couldn’t hold back the charging Newgarden on warm reds, and he accidentally squeezed his team-mate onto the kerb having not been made aware of his proximity. The loss of momentum as Power swerved into the marbles would also allow Harvey to emerge from his pitstop ahead of the Australian.
Two laps later, it was academic: the #12 Penske Dallara slid wide and into the wall at Turn 3 before limping to a halt in the Turn 4 escape road. The car’s retrieval necessitated the first caution of the day.
On the lap 40 restart, Rossi continued to hold off Herta and Hinchcliffe, all three cars on reds, and their nearest pursuer was Ed Carpenter Racing’s Rookie of the Year Rinus Veekay, who was on a three-stop strategy and on primaries. Newgarden and Harvey muscled past the Dutchman before the yellows flew again for Santino Ferrucci hitting the Turn 2 wall. Veekay chose the
subsequent caution to pit, but that meant he was in the wrong place at the wrong time on the next restart, when he was caught up in a mistake by Penske’s Indycar debutant Scott Mclaughlin (see panel, p41). The
New Zealander spun at Turn 1 after contact with Marco Andretti’s Andretti Autosport car, and Veekay was left with nowhere to go. Cue a third caution. As Veekay was restarted and headed to the pits for a new nose wing, so too was he in company of his team-mate Conor Daly who, like Power, had struck the outside wall at Turn 3.
For the lap 52 restart, Rossi, Herta, Hinchcliffe, Newgarden, Harvey and Graham Rahal’s Honda-powered Rahal Letterman Lanigan machine ran top six on reds, pursued by O’ward, Dixon, Oliver Askew, Ryan Hunter-reay, Takuma Sato and Simon Pagenaud on primaries. At the drop of the green, Dixon made fine progress and, despite some heartstopping moments through the turns at the back of the circuit, he managed to depose both Harvey and
Rahal to move into sixth, behind O’ward in fifth and Newgarden in fourth. Not too far behind him, meanwhile, was Andretti, whose opportunism had seen him soar from 12th to eighth in one lap, and then pass Rahal for seventh.
For his father’s team, running 1-2-3, the race was about to turn to dust, however. On lap 63, Herta, running two seconds behind Rossi, outbraked himself into
Turn 4, and the time lost spin-turning his way back onto the track allowed Hinchcliffe and Newgarden to slip past and demote him to fourth.
Rossi’s crew, in response to Newgarden stopping on lap 65, pulled in the #27 Andretti Autosport car next time by and, upon emerging, Rossi escaped a knot of traffic to lay down a couple of fast laps. But on lap 70 Rossi lost the rear of the car exiting (you guessed it) Turn 3, ran out of steering lock to correct the slide and speared into the wall on the right.
The cars that had yet to stop were therefore doomed, as the pits were, as usual, closed under caution (although Alex Palou of Dale Coyne Racing stayed out, very off-sequence). Those who had made their last stop already were able to gather in line behind the frustrated few and, when these cars peeled off for service as the pitlane reopened, the early stoppers moved to the front. These were led by Herta, for in the six laps between his Turn 4 ‘moment’ and his final stop, he had laid down some super-fast laps and had also nailed his in-lap, so that he emerged ahead of Hinchcliffe and Newgarden once more and led the field to the green for a lap 74 restart.
On that restart, Sato’s front wing sliced open Andretti’s right-rear tyre at Turn 4, sending the third-generation driver skidding into the Turn 5 tyre wall and retirement, and prompting the fifth caution of the day.
Under that caution, second-placed Hinchcliffe somehow lost control at 30mph at the hairpin that leads onto the front straight – a brief rain shower was probably partly to blame – and he spun slowly to the grass on the inside. The former St Pete winner then rejoined the racing surface, where he struck semi-team-mate Harvey, ripping off his own front wing and sending the Meyer Shank car to the pits with a broken right-rear tie rod. Hinchcliffe had also missed the pit entrance and so trailed around the track with the broken wing tucked under the nose of his car, before pitting for repairs, and then again to serve a drivethrough penalty for avoidable contact.
At the next restart, Herta was outdragged from the final turn by Palou’s fuel-light Coyne car, and they both braked a tad too late at Turn 1, pushing out slightly wide.
Their lost momentum allowed Newgarden to pass both of them around the outside of Turn 2 to grab the lead, a beautifully judged manoeuvre. Herta managed to repass Palou for second but, almost immediately after that, a sixth full-course caution emerged when Sato sent Askew into the Turn 10 tyre barrier.
After the final restart on lap 84, Askew’s team-mate O’ward outbraked Dixon into Turn 1, and Herta into Turn 4, and two laps later Herta outbraked himself into Turn 4. With the field still tightly bunched from the previous caution period, he tumbled down to 13th, and could only claw back two positions by the chequered flag.
O’ward, meanwhile, had charged onto the tail of Newgarden, but only while the outgoing champion had some marble pick-up on his tyres. Once his Firestones were clean, Newgarden stretched out his lead, lap after lap, setting personal bests. He scored his fourth win of the year 4s ahead of the impressive O’ward, while Dixon held off his former Ford GT teammate Bourdais to claim third.
Hunter-reay came home fifth – having climbed from 19th on the grid – but it was hardly consolation for team boss Michael Andretti on a day when he woulda/ coulda/shoulda seen his squad score its second 1-2-3 in four races.
“Credit to Josef and Penske, they drove the last part of the season flawlessly, and scored so many points,” conceded Dixon.
“It was awesome to race them again. We needed a smooth race, and that’s what we did. We definitely had the speed when we needed to push.
“We know next year is going to be the same. Six is good, seven sounds better – that’s obviously going to be the goal.”