Rossi wins on Indy road course to end drought
Alexander Rossi snapped a 49-race losing streak that dated all the way back to the 2019 IndyCar season by winning at one of his favorite tracks — ensuring he ends his Andretti Autosport career on a high note.
Rossi won Saturday on the road course at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where his 2016 victory in the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 jumpstarted his American motorsports career. Rossi’s last victory was at Road America in the 10th race of the 2019 season.
“It’s a relief,” Rossi sighed on the victory podium. “There’s been support for me for so long. Shoutout to Andretti Autosport in their continued belief. We’ve still got some more to go, but this was a really great track for us to do it at — back at home in Indianapolis. That was really amazing.”
The long slump led him to seek a fresh start and the California native will leave Andretti at the end of his seventh season to drive next year for Arrow McLaren SP. It was Michael Andretti who gave Rossi a shot in IndyCar when he’d washed out of Formula One and returned to the United
States seeking to continue his career.
Rossi’s surprise victory as a rookie in the celebrated 100th running of the Indy 500 made him a star and earned him loyal sponsorship that has weathered his long drought. Some of his issues the last three seasons have been team inflicted — errors, mechanical failures and a full Andretti team meltdown earlier this month at Mid-Ohio — and Saturday was hardly a perfect day for the organization.
Colton Herta controlled the early part of the race but slowed from the lead right before the halfway mark.
“Nothing I can do,” he radioed as he tried to cruise his underpowered Honda back to pit lane.
He later walked alone down pit lane back to the paddock as the race continued without him.
Meanwhile, Andretti rookie Devlin DeFrancesco drew the ire of
Conor Daly as tempers flared when DeFrancesco ran Daly off the track.
“Devlin needs to be kicked out of this racing series! He’s an idiot!”
Daly screamed over his radio.
There’s been speculation that Michael Andretti is reconsidering bringing DeFrancesco back for a sophomore season.
Christian Lundgaard, a rookie from Denmark who made his IndyCar debut in this race a year ago, finished second to give Rahal Letterman Lanigan its first podium of the season. It also gave Honda-powered drivers a 1-2 finish.
Will Power finished third for Team Penske and the Chevrolet driver cycled back to the top of the IndyCar standings for the third time this season. He now holds a nine-point lead over Indianapolis
500 winner Marcus Ericsson, who started last and finished 11th.
Scott McLaughlin finished fourth and was followed by Josef Newgarden as the Penske drivers worked together to cross the finish line in a row. Newgarden was only cleared to race on Saturday by IndyCar’s medical staff after collapsing and hitting his head last Sunday at Iowa Speedway.
The race started with six drivers separated by 44 points with five races remaining in the IndyCar season. The six drivers are now separated by 52 points, with a 10th-place finish by reigning series champion Alex Palou costing him ground.
NASCAR CUP
Kyle Busch started his Saturday by joining past winners at the hallowed Indianapolis Motor Speedway for a class photo on the Yard of Bricks.
He was seated next to Arie Luyendyk, in front of Ericsson, Rossi and Helio Castroneves —a combined eight Indy 500 titles flanking NASCAR’s only active driver with multiple Cup championships.
And yet Busch still doesn’t have a contract for next season. His longtime sponsor is pulling out of NASCAR at the end of the season, and if Joe Gibbs Racing doesn’t find a deep-pocketed replacement for M&M’s and Mars Inc., Busch will have to find a job elsewhere.
It’s an unfathomable predicament for Busch, the 2015 and 2019 NASCAR champion and winner of 60 career Cup races, with all but four won since joining JGR in 2008. He wants to stay in the
No. 18 Toyota, but the clock is ticking.
“It’d be like Dale Earnhardt in 1998, three or four years after winning his last championship, being on the free agency market and not having a ride. That just sounds crazy,” Busch said. “I don’t know what to do, how to fix that.”
Despite his credentials, Busch knows he’s going to have to take a pay cut. The motorsports business model relies on corporate funding, and the market is radically different than it was when he signed his first deal with Gibbs in 2007 and even when he signed his last extension in 2019.
“You talk about what you want, and I think you are insinuating that I’m asking for the sky on salary or something like that, and I’ve already admitted I’m willing to take concessions,” Busch said. “I feel like the market is different than what it was years ago, and I’m willing to race for under my market value.
“You gotta have sponsorship in this sport to go forward. It’s not as simple as being a basketball player and being Michael Jordan or LeBron James and being a really good player, and then the team losing a sponsor and then saying ‘OK, Michael, LeBron, we gotta let you go. We can’t afford you.’”
Rival driver Kevin Harvick said he’d welcome
Busch at Stewart-Haas Racing.
“There’s no way Kyle Busch doesn’t have a lot of options,” Harvick said. “Kyle is still one of the best that’s ever come through this garage. There’s a lot of teams that can say that they’ve never had one of those types of drivers. He literally could rebuild an organization if somebody took a chance that hasn’t had one of those types of drivers.”
Busch acknowledged that the stress has made for “a lot of sleepless nights” as NASCAR heads into Sunday’s race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. NASCAR will race the road course for the second consecutive year; Busch finished 20th last year, but won back-to-back Brickyard 400s on the oval in 2015 and 2016.
Busch has one victory this season and is playoff eligible. But his current organization, JGB, was rocked when Denny Hamlin and Busch were stripped of their 1-2 finish Sunday at Pocono Raceway because their Toyotas failed inspection — an escalation because the series won’t tolerate any nonsense with its new Next Gen car.
XFINITY SERIES
AJ Allmendinger continued his dominance of NASCAR road course racing and set himself up for a sweep at Indianapolis Motor Speedway with a win in the Xfinity Series. Allmendinger has won six of the last 11 road course races and nine in his NASCAR career. His latest victory is his third of the Xfinity season and gives him road wins this year at Circuit of the Americas in Texas, Portland and now the hallowed Brickyard.