Indianapolis, Charlotte, And A Racing Renaissance

The 2018 Indianapolis 500 and World 600 capped a month of May that brought out a genuine sense that racing, a sport struggling for years, has begun a turnaround.

Indianapolis has seen a renaissance of the 500 the last several seasons, most notably in 2016 with the 100th running.   The explosion in lead changes in the 500 in the 2012-17 period - the period of the Wheldon-12 racecar - began the renaissance, and the surge of darkhorse winners added immeasurably to the race's renaissance.    It thus has truly reclaimed the title as Greatest Spectacle In Racing.

Indycar debuted a lower downforce body in 2018, and the loss of 300 pounds of downforce has been credited in some circles to an increase in passing - but in the 500 the loss of downforce was a manifest mistake with a weak drafting effect, cars running poorly in dirty air, and numerous spinouts.   There was some very tense racing nonetheless, but clearly the 2012-17 package is far more raceable for superspeedways, and Indycar would be well advised to add downforce and thus drafting effect for the bigger ovals.

The 500 was the story of three teams - Ed Carpenter's self-owned #20, AJ Foyt's team with former 500 winner Antoine "Tony" Kanaan and rookie Matheus Leist, and of course Penske Racing.    Carpenter stole Penske's thunder by grabbing the pole, but in the end it was Will Power grabbing the win after the upset bids of Oriol Servia and Stefan Wilson - adding a poignancy to the race is that Wilson is brother of Justin Wilson, killed at Pocono in 2015 - ran dry in the final five laps.   Power led 59 laps to Carpenter's 65 but in the end Power had too much of a lead for Carpenter's bid.   Kanaan was the big wildcard bidder, posting the fastest practice at least once and leading nineteen laps, but his bid was first frustrated by a cut tire near halfway, then as he'd clawed back into some contention the car spun out and hit the wall with thirteen to go.   His rookie teammate Leist soldiered home 13th.

Those were the dominant angles of the 102nd 500, but of course there are others - Schmidt Peterson Motorsports had a solid if mind-boggling week as James Hinchcliffe somehow missed the 500, due in part to a forlorn qualifying effort by Pippa Mann, who also didn't make the race; the botched qualifying effort is the most bizarre since Jigger Sirois blew his chance to make the 1969 500.   

Carpenter entered two cars, and Danica Patrick ran his second car - why anyone thought she warranted any ride remains perplexing, especially as she ended her racing career the same way she personified it - she wrecked.    

Other notable contenders were Alexander Rossi - fourth in this 500 - Ryan Hunter-Reay - fifth - top race rookie Robert Wickens in another Schmidt Peterson car, Graham Rahal after leading twelve laps from 30th and finishing tenth, and Marco Andretti, finishing a respectable 12th in the Curb #98, still looking for his first win since 2011 and first since losing his ride with his dad's team.

With the 500's drama wrapped up, the racing focus switched to Charlotte and the Coca-Cola 600, and there seems a palpable sense of renewed love of racing in the sport, shown in a consensus of positive fan reaction on the postrace shows on satellite radio.   While the 600 was hardly all that competitive -  the 600 saw fewer lead changes (23, official and otherwise) than the All-Star Race and All-Star Open (38, official and otherwise) - and Kyle Busch, among the most hated drivers in recent NASCAR history, led 377 laps - there was surprising attention paid to intense racing outside the top five.

There seems to be several reasons for this positivity -


- the biggest angle may be that people's perspective changed when Kevin Harvick crashed, for the expected blitz to yet another Harvick win disintegrated and suddenly the race became radically different.

- the All-Star Race's competitiveness may have provided drivers an unconscious motivation to race harder.

- having seen such exciting racing in the All-Star Race, fans may have come into this 600 with a generally more sated attitude and greater sense of gratitude for the effort by drivers.

- Dave Moody noted on Sirius Radio a subtle shift by the FOX telecast in its broadcast focus; long has been the complaint that TV ignores racing in the back and doesn't scan the field to better promote all the racers, and the focus on the leader certainly seemed noticeably lower this time around.

- the racing outside the top five - and some of the racing within it - featured a plethora of darkhorses and productive finishes as a result.   Alex Bowman in particular showed a very respectable effort a week - finishing a solid ninth - after criticism of his racing during All-Star weekend.   Ricky Stenhouse - tenth at the end - also showed noticeable improvement with veteran Matt Kenseth replacing Trevor Bayne as a Roush teammate.    Veterans Jamie McMurray - the target of some running social media abuse of late - and Kurt Busch, both largely lost in the shuffle of the season, salvaged top-ten finishes.   Bubba Wallace clawed from the back of the field - result of a post-qualifying change and resultant penalty - and ran in the top-15 for awhile, then passed several cars late to salvage 16th.   Michael McDowell had a respectable night as well salvaging 18th.

- Chevrolet has taken it on the chin all season, but this time around put four cars in the top nine, including Jimmie Johnson, who reached his fifth top-ten finish of a season where he and the entire Hendrick fleet have been outclassed by the SHR Fords and the Toyotas.   Certainly this 600 was a race of progress for the Chevrolets after so poor a beginning of the season.


Hovering over the 600 of course is the success of the All-Star Race restrictor plate-draft duct package, and monitoring the scuttlebutt the consensus seems to be the package will be used at Indianapolis in September, with one curious sub-rumor being that New Hampshire will also use this package come July.   Certainly there is no credible reason not to begin integrating this package into NASCAR's varied fendered classes at the most propitious possible moment.

It all added up to a racing weekend where a genuine sense of renewed love of the sport can be felt, in a sport where positivity isn't so easy to detect.

Boffo Brickyard And Bizarre Charlotte

Memorial Weekend 2017 is racing's late-spring Mecca and Indianapolis and Charlotte stunned the racing observer in both.

For the seventh straight running the Indianapolis 500 exploded past 34 official lead changes and pre-race favorites took a back seat to defending champ Alexander Rossi, rookie Fernando Alonso (who was one week old when Ron Bouchard won the 1981 Talladega 500),  Briton Max Chilton, three-time champ Helio Castroneves, and on the 40th anniversary of AJ Foyt's record-setting fourth 500 win his former driver Takuma Sato stormed to the win (while AJ's team salvaged tenth with Carlos Munoz, this after Conor Daly fell out and rookie Zach Veach had a miserable 500, this after running earlier this season in an Ed Carpenter car).  

The first big subplot of the race going in involved Alonso, driving a Michael Andretti car backed by McLaren; he is the first active F1 guy to run the 500 since Teo Fabi in 1984.  Alonso has a strikingly lengthy rap sheet accusing him of brake-checking rivals and also of blocking.   This may explain F1 ace Lewis Hamilton's tirade about the quality of drivers in the 500 after Alonso timed fifth for the 500 - though the obvious self-serving quality of Hamilton's gripe becomes all the more laughable given Hamilton's "racing" never sees him challenged to actually pass, let alone repass, anyone - something Alonso handled with a respectable level of aplomb. 

The other story of the 500 was when Jay Howard smacked the wall and slid into pole-sitter Scott Dixon's path, and the result was the nastiest melee Indycars have seen in some time.   

Sato was four months old when AJ Foyt won the 500 for the fourth time, and in 2013 he stunned Indycar by winning the Long Beach GP in AJ's #14 during his four-season stint with Super Tex.   He also led 31 laps in 2015's mind-blowing MAVTV Cal Indy 500 at Fontana, so as far as being able to race other cars Sato long ago proved his mettle.  

Lost amid everything was a superb third-place by Dubai-born British rookie Ed Jones in the Dale Coyne racecar, this a year after Jones got blipped by Dean Stoneman in a photo finish in the Freedom 100.

Max Chilton meanwhile became the loudest darkhorse in years after leading 50 laps - the most laps in the race.   Added to teammate Tony Kanaan's twenty-two laps led and Chip Ganassi's team had a boffo day, while Penske had the runner-up and a quiet sixth by the normally-loud Juan Montoya, but otherwise didn't have much to write home about Simon Pagenaud and Josef Newgarden weren't up front...............

...........and Will Power ended up with yet another wrecked racecar.

From Indianapolis we got the most bizarre World 600 in years - first the most bizarre wreck in years as Chase Elliott, who is disturbingly building a reputation that doesn't seem compatible with winning, and Brad Keselowski hammered each other out of the race.   Next we got a lengthy rain delay - doubly ironic as NASCAR's Sirius radio channel replayed the rain-plagued 1980 World 600 the night before.  

In the race itself Martin Truex picked up pretty much where he left off after annihilating the 600 field the year before, while his Visser Racing teammate Erik Jones had a running issue with Jimmie Johnson during the race.    Danica Patrick crashed twice, by now something to expect of her.  

But then came the most preposterous upset in racing in years - Martin Truex pitted with 34 to go and Johnson stayed out - so did Austin Dillon, who had posted some thirteen top-tens in 2016 but had only one so far in 2017 and who was coming under fire in fan circles, especially after his crew chief Richard Labbe left after the Kansas race.   Dillon closed on Johnson and Johnson shockingly ran out of gas with two to go, and Austin Dillon - his team mocked as RCR aka Rich Children Racing - had the win.  

Coming after Ryan Newman's win after the fast cars pitted and he didn't at Phoenix, RCR now has two wins, their first since Kevin Harvick won four times in 2013.    Even more astonishing is RCR presently has as many wins as Rick Hendrick - and JGR is still winless.   It stands as an interesting commentary on what more and more is becoming the most eye-popping NASCAR season in years.

The subplot of the finish was Kyle Busch's surly reaction in the postrace presser - while it shows his sanctimony yet again, I suspect it goes beyond just that, that it reflects real contempt for Austin Dillon in the garage area; it certainly reflects the curious inability of JGR to finish the job.  

One subplot that was overlooked was Regan Smith's debut in Richard Petty's #43 with Aric Almirola out presumably for the year; Smith ran decently but fell back late to finish a lap down in 22nd, a discouraging start for his time in the #43.  


Thus does Indycar head for Detroit and NASCAR to Dover next week.

Indianapolis Once Again Highlights Boffo Racing Weekend

The 100th Indianapolis 500


The 100th Indianapolis 500 showcased what makes Indianapolis The Greatest Spectacle In Racing and was the highlight of another boffo Memorial Day weekend of racing.   The full joy of the racing weekend was well spread among varied venues.

Friday night short tracking kicked things off in many areas and for one of the nation's most famous bullrings Friday Night was a trio of eye-popping showdowns.   Stafford Motor Speedway in CT saw a three-wide photo finish in SK Lights - Joey Ferrigno appeared to have won but a lengthy review of the finish showed Daniel Wesson was the winner.   It's been a very long time any race saw a finish so reminiscent of Tim Richmond over Ricky Rudd and Geoff Bodine at Pocono in 1986.    The SK Mods were won by Woody Pitkat over Keith Rocco, then Pitkat stole the win in the Late Model race after Tom Fearn got sent to the rear after taking out leader Tom Butler.   Fearn still stormed to finish second.

The Hisense 300 on Saturday began as a good race, turned into a Kyle Larson-Joey Logano showdown, then exploded to the biggest upset of the weekend until the Indianapolis 500


The Hisense 300 almost topped the weekend as Denny Hamlin stole what looked like a certain Kyle Larson-Joey Logano showdown, and it also suggested another JGR runaway for the Charlotte weekend despite Penske Racing's 1-2 finish in the All-Star Race.


But it was Indianapolis that seized the headlines from the amazing Freedom 100 to Alexander Rossi's stunning upset on fumes, becoming the first Indy rookie since 2001 to win the 500 and the first true Indycar rookie to win the 500 in far longer than that.  The win gave Michael Andretti a car owner win he had to share with Curb Motorsports; it doesn't matter that Andretti and Curb share the win, because the win is what matters.

It was also a 1-2 finish for Michael's organization, and among the semi-surprises was the depth of Ed Carpenter's team,  as Josef Newgarden finished tbird and J.R. Hildebrand sixth.   Sam Schmidt's team had a boffo month of May even though James Hinchcliffe could only finish seventh.   

For Andretti, though, the big frustration came when his cars driven by Townsend Bell and Ryan Hunter-Reay, who may have been the strongest of all, crashed on pit road in a shunt past halfway with Helio Castroneves; this left them crowding the leaders trying to get back on the lead lap and may have helped Rossi put enough gap to withstand running out of gas.   It was also a fitting development for a mediocre May for Penske.

You think Penske at Indianapolis, you also think AJ Foyt and Takuma Sato's promising day ended whacking the wall off Four; teammates Alex Tagliani and Jack Hawksworth didn't wind up with finishes to write home about even though Tags led eleven laps.


*****


The Indianapolis 500 saw 54 lead changes among eleven drivers, and it once again presented a graphic contrast with NASCAR and the World 600.   NASCAR has made 2016 a virtual year-long referendum on low downforce aerodynamics and the contrast of the 600 with Indianapolis - low downforce, too much power, and a curiously unresponsive tire after encouraging races at Dover and in the All-Star Race vs. Indy's super downforce, ample tire, and relative underpower making the draft everything and passing almost unstoppable - made the referendum turn against NASCAR yet again.

Not that aero packages were relevant to anything at Charlotte this time - the way Martin Truex beat the field into submission it didn't matter what downforce anyone was generating.   It did come, though, after a set of tweaks to fans and chassis "skew" before the All-Star Race and postrace chatter suggested it hurt JGR more than anyone else.  

Truex's win was the most lopsided on a big track since Kyle Petty mopped the American 500 at Rockingham in 1992 leading 484 laps and easily crushed Jim Paschal's 600 record of 335 laps led in 1967, a race where Paschal's three-lap lead was killed by a crash yet he still won easily.   It was also the first win in the 600 for a one-car team since, irony of ironies, his team godfather Joe Gibbs Racing won the 600 with Bobby Labonte in 1995 - one of the most competitive 600s ever, another irony of ironies after the lead only changed nine times in this 2016 600. 

Now we see if Truex can turn this massacre into a sustained victory rampage as NASCAR hits Pocono, site of Truex's previous win.  

That fifteen cars finished on the lead lap is the one eye-popper of this race; the blunt reality is almost no one outside of Truex can feel good about this 600 because basically Truex was alone out there and everyone else was just a bystander.   There's been talk that the Roush guys are slowly getting better - they may be slowly getting better except everyone else is getting father away.   It was basically Penske and no one else for Ford.

It also wasn't much for Kyle Larson after superb efforts at Dover and in Charlotte preliminaries - his last-lap crash in the Hisense 300 got his 600 weekend off to what proved to be the worst possible start, as he never really got anything going for the 600.  

So it went.   The rest of the field need to put this to bed and hope Pocono can offer someone else the upset or quasi-upset surge the 600 provided for Truex.

Indianapolis/Charlotte Post-Mortems

And so Memorial Day motorsports blast off and leave plenty of subplots to contemplate as the Indianapolis 500 exploded to one of its most exciting finishes while the World 600 saw a late challenge for Jimmie Johnson but in the end it was a challenge Johnson wasn't going to lose.

Ryan Hunter-Reay is one of those drivers who has been largely overlooked as far as Mainstream Media attention - such as it is nowadays - toward Indycar racing goes.   He nonetheless has been around for over ten years and has put together quite a number of wins from his days in the old CART series, winning with Stefan Johansson in Australia and also with the old Herdez team leading wire to wire at Milwaukee.   Signing on with Rahal-Letterman's team, he won at Watkins Glen before that team dissolved.  Michael Andretti's Indycar team now sought his services and Hunter-Reay has assembled a nice collection of victory trophies -  Milwaukee and the Birmingham road course have been almost his personal playground in Indycars.

Hunter-Reay's Indianapolis win will stand out, not only for being Indianapolis but for how hard he had to fight.  The last 43 laps were a drafting slugfest and the lead changed ten times in that span; the lead changed twice on Lap 199 alone, and nothing was going to stop him.


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Amid Hunter-Reay's spectacular day there were many subplots - none bigger than Ed Carpenter's spectacular run and then coming to near-blows with James Hinchcliffe on a Lap 175 restart where Carpenter got sandwiched and an unplanned attempt to race three abreast through Turn One went south quickly.   Though he's won twice and led 207 laps in Indycar racing, Carpenter has never really established himself as something other than Tony George's stepson, this even though he's continued showing he's for real as a racer.  

The big challenger to Hunter-Reay late was Helio Castroneves, now on a quest to win Indianapolis four times; he damn near pulled it off in Penske's retro-Johnny Rutherford Pennzoil paint scheme.   Between them Penske and Michael Andretti swept the top six finishing spots, while Ed Carpenter's team salvaged a tenth place by J.R. Hildebrand.

Curiously having an abysmal day was Ganassi Racing, who entered three cars and lost two of them to wrecks while lameduck 500 champ Tony Kanaan was nowhere other than 26th at the end.

The other big subplot was that Indycar's third-year racecar for some reason has been at its raciest at the 500.   For three straight 500s the draft has been the dominant characteristic of the racing and of this racecar, and the ferocity of the passing showed it.   It is odd that this car hasn't quite had the same effect at Pocono and other high-speed tracks where the draft should be everything - for Indycars as well as NASCAR.

**********


Disappointing was the lack of pre-race buzz, even with the connection between the 500 and the World 600.   Kurt Busch had entered the 500 in one of Michael Andretti's cars hoping to make the 500-600 double, the first such attempt by anyone in years.   Busch finished a quiet but nonetheless impressive sixth in the 500 before flying to Charlotte for the 600, and ran better than I suspect a lot of railbirds would have expected - yet in the end he lost power and finished 40th, and raised the question of whether the double was truly worth it.

Busch's effort took a back seat to teammate Kevin Harvick, who led 100 laps and tried to run down Jimmie Johnson at the end.   This is starting to become a pattern, as Harvick was the strongest yet a Hendrick car beat him at Kansas.  The rest of Stewart-Haas' effort was more mixed; Tony finished 13th - his first finish higher than 20th in a month - while 39th and 40th were the domain of Kurt Busch and Danica Patrick.  Little Miss Danica again earned media coverage beyond her talent level after a surprisingly good qualifying effort - but again once the race started she began to lose grip and then got waylaid in a crash.  

While Chip Ganassi didn't have anything to be proud of at The Brickyard he salvaged something in Bruton's Backyard via Jamie McMurray's fifth, coming after his All-Star Race win.   McMurray continues to be one of those guys who gets lost in the media shuffle yet will not go away on the track. 

Speaking of guys who won't go away, Brian Vickers continues to get into solid finishes, and lately has looked better than teammate Clint Bowyer, while another who won't go away even though he hasn't done much lately is Trevor Bayne, 20th in the 600 in the Wood Brothers #21 and now proud recipient of a full-time Roush Ford ride for 2015; an angle to watch is whether this is a fourth Roush car or a replacement for one of his established drivers, this amid burgeoning rumors of a split with Carl Edwards and also scuttlebutt that Ricky Stenhouse may not last the season - certainly he's making no case for himself on the racetrack.

A Ford that IS making a case for itself on the racetrack yet again is Richard Petty's #43, as Aric Almirola refuses to go away and continues to become a contender under Trent Owens.   11th is actually disappointing given Almirola clawed into contention and had to overcome stalling the car on a late stop.  


So with that, Indycar continues on while NASCAR heads to Dover for a date with Bristol on steroids.