TEXTBOOK

Team Penske’s Will Power took control of the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg on lap31 and never let go, holding firm at the point until the checkered flag waved on lap110. Polesitter Takuma Sato was mighty on Firestone’s alternative Red compound during his opening stint, but once Power delivered a Senna-esque ultimatum to the A.J. Foyt Racing driver, the Aussie was never seriously challenged.

For a driver who carries a reputation as an enfant terrible in the cockpit, there was something smooth and surprisingly unhurried about Power’s win on Sunday. Standing toward pit exit after the first round of stops, I watched as Power hunted down Sato, passed him convincingly and then led with remarkable poise.

He was saving fuel for much of that second stint, lifting off the throttle more than a car length earlier than those who were chasing him, yet he was never rushed, going about his job in a clinical manner. It was a textbook performance, free from drama and self-induced pressure.

When he was done, Power sealed his third consecutive win dating back to Houston Round 2, and four of the last six IndyCar events since Sonoma. If that has the look of a wave of momentum that’s been ridden from October to March, you’re seeing what I’m seeing. It also marked the first weekend where Power put his new let’s-just-go-out-and-drive-and-the-championship-will-sort-itself-out mindset to the test and won convincingly.

“I just kept trying to improve each session, kept relaxed the whole time, and it just seemed like a very straightforward, easy weekend,” Power told RACER. “All of our testing felt like that, all pre-season, no hassles.”

As we wrote last week, Power’s tried many different things to get the best out of himself, yet has always come up short in his quest for an IndyCar championship. The one path he shied away from – the path of least resistance – is what he’s now following, and if St. Pete is any indication of what this new Will Power is capable of, 2014 could be the year he gets the job done.  

“We know that [things being easy] won’t last all season long, and some days will be very, very hard,” added Power, who knows his odds of earning a championship will increase if he maximizes the bad days. “I’d love it if they were all going to be like St. Pete but you know it won’t happen, so you have to be prepared for adversity and just deal with it the best you can. You can’t control it, so you just deal with it and don’t dig yourself any holes.”

Power’s philosophical take on the season contrasts his Ivan Drago I-must-break-you approach that has defined so much of his time at Team Penske. I’d even argue the manner he won at St. Pete – a somewhat modest 1.9-second margin of victory over Ryan Hunter-Reay – ranks as one of his most mature victories to date.

“I just controlled my gap and hung out,” he surmised. “Winning by a big margin – you do yourself no favors. You make everyone else work harder, you stress your engine, burn more fuel. You only need to win by enough.”

THE PASS

If you love racing, Power’s outside pass on Sato was everything you look for. It was cold as ice, ballsy, and allowed Power to get some retribution on the racing gods by pulling off the same maneuver Dario Franchitti used on him to such great effect in 2011.

Power, like Franchitti, who borrowed the move from Senna, forced Sato’s hand, leaving the ex-F1 pilot to choose between fighting for the lead as the right-side wall approached, or surrendering the point and keeping his right-front corner attached, and opted self-preservation. Back in 2011, Power did the opposite, fighting Franchitti every step of the way. He’d slither into the marbles and glance off the wall, ruining his chances at victory as the Scot went on to win by 7.1 seconds.

Sato, with an off-season filled full of constant DON’T CRASH messages from the Foyt team, barely fought back as Power made the pass. The exchange might have been different if it was a Tony Kanaan or Scott Dixon, but with finishing the race as his top priority, Taku conceded the lead and focused on achieving the best result possible.

“I was obviously happy to get in front of him, but after the race I was thinking how nice it was to finally use that pass to win a race,” Power said with a laugh. “It was awesome.”

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SEASON OF DIMINISHING RETURNS

High winds and a wet/dry qualifying session made Friday and Saturday’s running at St. Pete rather hard to use for determining how teams progressed over winter, but when it came time to go racing on Sunday, a few markers stood out.

Team Penske, just as it did late last year at Baltimore and Houston, appears to have maintained an advantage on street courses, stealing the march from Ganassi Racing. The Ganassi cars weren’t bad at St. Pete, but they weren’t great, and from what I saw trackside during the race, they were especially harsh over the bumps compared to the Penske cars.

Now entering its third season of service, the Dallara DW12 has been developed to within an inch of its life mechanically and aerodynamically, making the differences between winning and losing a frustrating – and sometimes fruitless – pursuit of miniscule gains.

“The series has become so competitive and so much is known about these cars by every team that if you’re in 20th place, you’re doing a great job,” said defending series champion Scott Dixon. “Everybody knows so much about these cars now and everyone’s looking for the same things, so it’s not like you’re going to make some giant discovery to give yourself an advantage. I think that’s a lot of what you’re seeing now and it’s only getting closer. The smaller teams are really fast; the entire field is fast, so it’s just going to be like this until things change up a bit next year with aero kits and stuff. It’s tough.”

Clearly, Team Penske has found something as Power and teammate Helio Castroneves were quick all weekend, finishing 1-3. The margin wasn’t anything like what we witnessed at St. Pete last year when the Ganassi team was hit with a double whammy – an off-season damper development plan that went down the wrong path and soft Honda engines – but Dixon and Kanaan lacked that extra tenth of a second to worry Will and Helio. It’s a tiny amount of time, but you can’t count on the Ganassi team to work a lot of extra hours leading up to Long Beach as they look for what they’re missing.

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HONDA IDLE

If you were anywhere near pit lane at St. Pete and heard IndyCar engines being warmed up, you likely asked yourself what was wrong with the fleet of Hondas. The 2.2-liter twin-turbo V6s sound like they have the world’s worst misfire, running on something like three cylinders, but it’s not by accident.

So why would Honda have its engines running on less than six cylinders when idling? Asking members of the Honda Performance Development team only led to non-answers and feigned ignorance. The odd, staccato sounds disappear the moment the slightest amount of throttle is applied, which hints at the true goal behind the funky exhaust note.

Going from a two-cycle tractor to a purebred racing engine in an instant, HPD engineers have come up with a crafty workaround to IndyCar’s ban on turbo anti-lag technology. If you’re unfamiliar with anti-lag, listen to a turbocharged WRC or Global Rally Cross car pop and crackle when the driver’s off throttle, and that’s the sound of the ECU working the anti-lag system to keep the turbo spooled up and spinning while minimal exhaust gasses are flowing through the engine.

In basic terms, anti-lag uses raw fuel dumped into the exhaust to burn and spin the turbine wheel, but with the technology disallowed in IndyCar, Honda, through the very detectable sounds emanating from its exhausts, uses an unspecified number of cylinders to maintain a higher volume of flow through the exhaust and turbo when their drivers are off throttle. I’m confident Chevy is doing something very similar, but without the telltale sounds. Interesting stuff.

Take a listen to a Honda idling before pulling away and note the misfiring tractor sound that gives way to full fury once the throttle is mashed:

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JHAWK LIGHTS NO LIKE

I reckon almost everybody at St. Pete, with the likely exception of Marco Andretti, was suitably impressed with young Jack Hawksworth on his Verizon IndyCar Series debut.

Quick in the practice sessions, J-Hawk nearly made the Firestone Fast 6, only to be knocked out on the final lap of the Fast 12 session. Fellow rookie Carlos Munoz, with three IndyCar starts, was just as impressive as the fourth member of the Andretti Autosport team, but I’d say Hawksworth, driving for the single-car Bryan Herta Autosport outfit, was the real surprise of the weekend.

He obliterated the Pro Mazda field on his North American debut in 2012, and went on to win three Firestone Indy Lights races for Sam Schmidt Motorsports, but only showed glimpses of his Pro Mazda form in 2013.
Looking at how composed and confident he was at St. Pete in a Indy car which needs to be driven like a bigger version of the Pro Mazda chassis, I wondered if Hawksworth’s good (but not great) year of Indy Lights was due to a slight mismatch between his driving style and the natural tendencies of the Lights car.

“Balance wise, that’s true, and I much prefer to drive the Indy car,” he said. “The Lights car, no matter what you do, it’s got a lot of understeer. You’re usually fighting understeer and have to drive around it. The Mazda’s the other way; you’re always fighting [corner] entry instability and it’s a little bit loose. The Dallara DW12 is more neutral, but closer to the Mazda in that it’s more lively to drive.”

As I wrote in my 2014 IndyCar Series Preview of Hawksworth, he came out of 2013 looking like he needed at least another year of learning in Lights before making the leap to IndyCar, but based on what I saw at St. Pete, my assessment was wrong.

“Lights last year, when you look into it, it was quite different than what was seen from the outside,” he explained. “There were some weekends where I was more dominant than in Pro Mazda, but other weekends where I was right at the back. I guess I was much more hit and miss in Lights. In Mazda, it was more consistent.

“One of the things that has helped is I’m so confident in Bryan’s team and so comfortable in his environment, which I don’t think I was last year and that affected my performance as well. If you’re not happy where you are, I don’t think you can get the most out of yourself, and mentally, where I am today, I’m much happier.”

Another item about Hawksworth stood out at noteworthy last weekend. He was walking down pit lane after just missing the Fast 6 and, as we passed each other, I offered a simple “Nice job.” He looked up, was said a polite, “Thank you” but was visibly upset with himself. Having qualified eighth for his first IndyCar race – directly ahead of Ganassi’s Ryan Briscoe and Penske’s Castroneves – the young Briton wasn’t impressed with himself.

As I mentioned to his team owner later that day, it’s exactly what you’d want to see from a rookie in that situation.

“There was an element of disappointment there. Looking from the outside in, a rookie running inside the top-6 for a lot of the session might have been good, but I made a few mistakes toward the end of the session that put us down the leader board,” he said. “I know there was more potential there than we showed, so regardless of what we showed on paper, I know there was more there and I didn’t maximize the session. You always want to start a little bit farther up.”

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SINGLE-FILE RESTARTS SUCK

I’m not sure if I need to explain things any more than that. After a few years of genuinely exciting double-file restarts, the return to the single-file routine at St. Pete was lame, lacked in every way, and needs to be abandoned immediately.

Doubling the length of the field leads to the kinds of mistakes that took place in the back of the pack as the first half is waiting to go and the second half is antsy and jumping the gun because they’re afraid they’ll be left in the dust.

If the series was going back to Baltimore, which was too narrow for safe double-file restarts, I’d be fine with making the occasional single-file exception, and the same goes for Detroit’s narrowing front straight, but there’s no need to adopt this as a blanket rule for road and street courses.

St. Pete had one double-file run to start the race and, thanks to Graham Rahal, it was the most exciting start of the day. Double-file restarts were not a problem at the majority of tracks where they were used and, provided IndyCar wants to give the fans a better show, we’ll return to double-file at Long Beach.

MAKE IT OFFICIAL

The Pirelli World Challenge series needs to become an official part of IndyCar road and street course events. I’ve said it before, and I’ll continue saying it: PWC’s sprint race format is perfectly suited for an IndyCar weekend, and with road racing fans tending to follow open-wheel and sports cars, or to have at least some interest in both, serving up a hot plate of thundering Caddys, McLarens, Lambos, Ferraris, Porsches, Camaros, Mustangs and various other marques is a no-brainer.

Running dual events with the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship is a great thing, and will happen a few times this year – starting at Long Beach, where they headline Saturday with a two-hour race – but with the outlaw PWC cars, IndyCar has a phenomenal turnkey product that can fit in on any road and street course, doesn’t demand a lot of time on the schedule, and appeals to every ticket-buying car lover.

Just like IndyCar, there’s nothing like PWC in North America. This needs to become more than a relationship of convenience.

AMERICA, F*** YEAH

If you’re craving for more American talent in IndyCar, St. Pete was a showcase for all that’s right about the Mazda Road to Indy. Florida’s Spencer Pigot clobbered the Pro Mazda field twice last weekend, opening the season with a handy pair of wins to open his account with Juncos Racing. Andretti Autosport’s Zach Veach did Pennsylvania proud by muscling his way to a stout 5.4-second win over Gabby Chaves in Indy Lights and Pigot’s fellow Floridian RC Enerson took the second USF2000 round for Team E Racing. Five Mazda Road To Indy races, four wins by Americans…and there were plenty of other homegrown drivers close behind.

And while the car counts weren’t ridiculously high, it was nice to see entries up with Indy Lights at 12, Pro Mazda at 20 and USF2000 at 20. Good things are happening.

MISCELLANEOUS

• Good old Charlie Murphy, aka Charlie Kimball, was 5-Cylinder Chuck on Sunday, thanks to an ignition problem of some sorts on his Ganassi Chevy. What should have been an instant ticket to the back of the field never materialized due to the Mid-Ohio race winner driving the wheels off his No. 83 Novo Nordisk entry to compensate for the lack of power. 5-Cyl would overshoot Turn 1 and nerf his way into the tires, bringing out the first caution of the race, but up until that point, Kimball put in a whale of a drive that went completely unnoticed.

• If IndyCar were to create a season-long Best Livery championship, Andretti Autosport has it on lockdown. Between Hinch’s white and blue, Munoz’s green and white and Marco’s Snapple motif, there’s always a stunner just around the corner.

• Scott Dixon’s engineer Eric Bretzman might be the only person in the IndyCar paddock rocking a pager on his hip. But why? “It’s my weather station,” said the championship winner as he showed me the up-to-the-minute conditions that streamed across the tiny screen.

• How impressive was Josef Newgarden and his new engineer Jeremy Milless after getting things completely wrong in qualifying? Newgarden was a force to be reckoned with in the race, hustling his way to ninth after making a number of eye-opening passes. More of that, J-New.

• IndyCar’s 2-seater crapped out on the grid, leading the grid to pull around the stalled car. I felt bad for whomever won the contest, was flown out and got to sit behind Mario Andretti for a brief while before the car was pushed behind the wall. Let’s hope the person gets a make-up invite at Long Beach.

• Simon Pagenaud had a quiet weekend, but as he often does, made a mild statement by working his way from 14th to fifth by the end of the race.

• His Schmidt Peterson Motorsports teammate Mikhail Aleshin had a genuinely quiet event, but rallied toward the end of the race, setting his best sector times before taking 12th, top among the rookies.

• It was a great weekend for Honda and Chevy, with the Japanese brand taking pole and Detroit’s finest scoring the win. There were no fiery explosions, the two brands fought for the win and both looked like victory was attainable across a few different teams. It’s hard to ask for much more than that.
• Pit miscue aside, Ed Carpenter Racing’s Mike Conway was mighty at St. Pete, and the team’s engineer Matt Barnes also showed how racy the team can be on every circuit.

• One of the saddest sights of the weekend belonged to Dale Coyne Racing rookie Carlos Huertas (ABOVE). I was on pit lane at the start of Saturday morning’s practice session, and with the field strapped in and ready to go, poor Huertas was standing in his pit box by himself, sans car and team, as the field pulled away. The No. 18 DCR team made their way out a few minutes later, but the sense of defeat in Huertas’ body language was obvious.
• Juan Montoya’s return to Indy car racing could be best described as educational.

• Carbon fiber visor extensions were prevalent at St. Pete. The adhesive-backed devices, which were created as an anti-intrusion device in the wake of Felipe Massa’s spring-to-the-helmet accident a few years ago in F1, have been mandated by IndyCar.
• Badass, aka Justin Wilson, and Steve Buscemi, aka Michael Cannon, his new engineer at Dale Coyne Racing, had an effective first weekend together. Recovering from a poor 16th-place starting position, Badass made up half the difference on his way to eighth.