Parity reigns in IndyCar and at Long Beach race
The name might be different, but the legacy remains the same. On the eve of its 45th running, the newly minted Acura Grand Prix on the streets of Long Beach, California, remains one of IndyCar’s grandest traditions, a jewel on the calendar every driver looks forward to. Even the new ones.
“I’m a big fan of street-course racing, and I’d be lying if I told you that Long Beach wasn’t one of the races I was most looking forward to after stepping up to IndyCar this year,” Chip Ganassi Racing rookie Felix Rosenqvist said.
As teams prepare to tackle the 1.968mile, 11-turn temporary street circuit, the biggest storylines heading into Sunday’s NTT IndyCar Series race.
I think Long Beach is a perfect place to talk about IndyCar’s increasingly tight competition. Parity. That’s the word IndyCar’s die-hards would choose to describe why they love this series above all others. On any given weekend, any team can win.
Yes, drivers at Team Penske, Chip Ganassi Racing and Andretti Autosport will always be among the favorites and will almost certainly win the majority of the races, but that doesn’t mean they’ll run the table. Far from it.
If Takuma Sato’s win last weekend at Barber Motorsports Park wasn’t evidence enough of IndyCar’s growing parity, perhaps Long Beach’s utter lack of consistency demonstrates it better.
In the series’ past six visits to Long Beach, six different teams and drivers have taken the checkered flag.
Meanwhile, we’ve already seen three different winners this season (Josef Newgarden, Colton Herta and Sato) from three different teams. And dating to last season, eight drivers from six teams have won the past 10 races (James Hinchcliffe, Scott Dixon, Alexander Rossi, Will Power, Sato, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Newgarden and Herta).
After Graham Rahal helped teammate and pole-sitter Sato lock out the front row in Alabama, the veteran driver was asked whether he was surprised no one from Penske or Andretti was joining him and Sato in the first three rows.
“Look, it’s tough out there,” Rahal said, referring to how close the competition is. “I mean, I looked yesterday, if I just told somebody, ‘I’m P16,’ they’d be like, ‘You guys suck.’ But then you look, you’re four-and-a-half tenths off. It’s brutal.”
Such is the state of IndyCar these days: brutal for the teams and drivers desperately hunting for an edge — fascinating for the fans watching them do it.
I think Scott Dixon is quietly off to a fast start, and that’s bad news for everyone else. Through the first three races, the reigning champion has racked up two runner-up finishes and was on pace for another good day at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, before an untimely yellow. He also is the lone driver to have qualified for the Fast 6 Shootout at all three events.
But wait a minute. Isn’t the Ice Man supposed to be a slow starter?
Throughout the course of an illustrious career, Dixon has garnered a reputation as a driver whose starts slow — by his own legendary standards — ramps up midseason and is in the thick of the championship hunt at the series finale.
Going back through his race resume, the reputation holds (some) water. Dixon doesn’t usually hit midseason form until, well, midseason.
Consider his results in the first three races of his five championship years:
❚ 2003: 1st-20th-15th
❚ 2008: 1st-22nd-3rd
❚ 2013: 3rd-2nd-11th
❚ 2015: 15th-11th-1st
❚ 2018: 6th-4th-11th
And now this year: 2nd-12th-2nd His 2019 average finishing position of 5.33 exceeds all of his championship seasons, save for 2013 (also 5.33). While AFP is not a be-all-end-all metric, it sends a pretty clear message that Dixon and Chip Ganassi Racing have been on it from the start. What that means for his prospects to repeat as champion remains to be seen, but I can tell you this: The rest of the paddock cannot be happy Dixon seems to still be getting better.
I think Ryan Hunter-Reay wins the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach. I’m sticking with my guns from before the season and going with Hunter-Reay on Sunday. Of his 10 races at Long Beach, the Andretti Autosport veteran has qualified on the first two rows a whopping six times. He knows what it takes to be quick there. And that’s critical. Sebastien Bourdais said this year that sometimes a long history with a track can be an advantage. Sometimes, he said, it doesn’t matter how different the cars are from year to year; it’s just about knowing where the comfort level is at a certain track and being able to recognize when you’ve found it.
Hunter-Reas knows how to do that, and as a former Long Beach champion, he knows what it takes to win there.
And don’t forget just how dominant Hunter-Reay’s teammate, Alexander Rossi, was last year. He paced the final three practice sessions, sat on the pole and cruised to an easy victory. Andretti Autosport surely will have a good car rolling off the trucks, and I expect Hunter-Reay to take advantage.