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A WINE COUNTRY MYSTERY
With official testing at Fontana and RACER‘s coverage for the season finale kicking off just three days after Sunday’s GoPro Grand Prix of Sonoma, I’ll keep our Rewind column somewhat brief.
Here’s what I started writing around lap 35 at Sonoma: “Team Penske’s Will Power earned pole and dominated the race with ease as his closest championship rivals found new and inventive ways to impale their title hopes with misfortune or ineptitude.”
DJ Willy P was crushing the field in the same way he owned the field a week earlier at Milwaukee. His lap times were staggering – often between 0.5 and 0.9 seconds faster than second-place man Josef Newgarden. Power’s lead hit 9.8 seconds after 16 laps and the rout appeared to be on while his teammate Helio Castroneves – his closest championship rival – sat buried at the bottom of the field thanks to a messy opening lap.
Simon Pagenaud – third in the standings – was holding a rather quiet P9 on lap 35, and while Ryan Hunter-Reay was holding strong in P4 at the time, he, Helio and Simon all needed to be vying for the lead to keep their championship hopes alive.
Then…we got to lap 39 where Power took what should have been on a pressure-free cruise to a win, maybe a second-place finish, or worst case, a run to third, and capitalized on the bad day his pursuers were having. Minus the spin and subsequent fall to the bottom of the running order, Power’s lead to Helio could have been closer to 80 points – almost a mortal lock with 103 total points available at Fontana Saturday night.
Yet with Power’s drop to P20 on lap 40 and eventual fight back to P10, he managed to extend the gap from 39 points after Milwaukee to 51 leaving Sonoma. For a guy whose IndyCar career has rarely been visited by Lady Luck, she was definitely riding shotgun in Sonoma after he looped his car on cold tires (ABOVE). If making his way back to P10 wasn’t a clear sign of her presence, think of all the dicey situations he faced while carving through the field over the final 45 laps. He would have ended up P9, if not for a pass under a local yellow at the final corner on the last lap, and rather than receive a stiff penalty for the infraction, he was simply moved back to P10.
Power’s unforced error in Turn 7 could have been incredibly damaging to his quest for a title, but in a year where his mistakes rarely come with significant championship penalties, he found a way to cross the finish line with an advantage.
Power and Castroneves have combined to finish second in the last four IndyCar championships – something the pair will likely overcome under the lights in Fontana. Castroneves can certainly erase that 51-point lead on the 2.0-mile SoCal oval, but it will take a fairly epic “Help me Tom Cruise” meltdown on Power’s part, or the cartoon anvil falling square on his No. 12 Verizon Wireless Chevy, to derail the momentum that has the 31-year-old headed toward his first IndyCar crown.
Pagenaud and RHR are still in the mathematical mix, but the odds would say Divine Intervention would be required for either man to come out ahead of the internecine duel among Penske drivers as explained here:
Here’s another note I made around lap 35: Where’s Conway? (I should make another note – stop taking notes during the race…they’re obviously wrong more than right…)
Conweezy started P17, was a big beneficiary of the opening-lap scrap in Turn 2, vaulted to P8, fell back after his Ed Carpenter Racing team took him off strategy by pitting on lap 16, shot to the front when most of the field pitted under the caution on lap 37, and looked like he was going to score another opportunistic win as he and Graham Rahal shared the lead through lap 82.
Conway made his final stop on lap 60, meaning he needed to make it through lap 85 on a tank of ethanol with his Chevy-powered ECR Indy car. Eventual race winner Scott Dixon made his final stop one lap after Conway in his Chevy-powered No. 9 Target entry.
Taking a next-level look at how Dixon won and Conway lost, Conweezy was at a 1-lap fuel deficit, yet had to start a fairly significant fuel-saving effort in the final laps. Dixon had one extra lap of fuel at his disposal, yet raced hard, passed Conway, and led the last three laps. In theory, and had Conway been able to match Dixon’s fuel-saving efforts, the lead change would have taken place on with one lap remaining, but with Dixon’s best-in-class skills at stretching fuel mileage, he gassed his way to the lead much earlier than Conway expected.
Conway turned a 1:24.173 on lap 82, his final lap in the lead, before he went into fuel crisis mode. As if he was trying to send a message, Dixie took the lead on lap 83 and turned a 1:23.173 – one full second faster than Conway – followed by a 1:23.328 on lap 84 and a nasty 1:23.082 on the final lap.
“I think we were about seven seconds behind Conway, in somewhat conservation mode, and gaining about a half-second per lap,” Chip Ganassi Racing Managing Director Mike Hull told RACER. “[Conway] was obviously saving fuel big time, and we were also saving, but we were also gaining on him. There were guys ahead of us, then they peeled off into the pits, and then we were following Conway and we slowed down to match his pace.
“We knew by doing that we’d save a lot more fuel, which we did, and we’d also have enough fuel to use the Push-to-Pass, which Scott used to get by into the lead. And I read later Conway used his Push-to-Pass to try and stay ahead, but I don’t think he had as much fuel saved to get away with it.”
Conway’s car stumbled and coughed on the final lap, crawling to a stop just shy of the finish line. It was a sad end to his day, and he definitely deserved better than a finish of P14. Rahal’s moment in the sun also went awry due to a fuel strategy that had the No. 15 Honda driver pitting three laps before Conway. It was a refreshing sight to see Graham leading and looking at ease, and despite staying up front for 18 laps, a late stop for fuel and an extra trip down pit lane to pay the price for speeding left the Rahal Letterman Lanigan driver a distant P20 at the checkered flag.
Dixon, on the other hand, dropped the hammer and never looked back. Pagenaud, who must have shot through a ripple in time, improved 14 positions to claim third and RHR, who qualified a disappointing 10th, was another big winner on the opening lap and turned the gift into a stellar run to third.
All of Dixon’s hard motoring over the final few laps came at a price, and according to Hull, the team’s fuel calculations were put to the test. In the end, the Kiwi and his Ganassi engineers aced the Grand Prix of Sonoma exam.
“When he crossed the finish line, we had approximately 4/10th of a gallon left!” Hull admitted. “Scotty drove up to Turn 7, did his victory donuts in front of our tent full of Target guests, drove the rest of the lap, and pulled into Victory Lane. After the race, the tech inspectors went to pull a fuel sample from our car and all they could get was about a half-cup…
“I don’t know if you read a lot of [Lotus founder] Colin Chapman’s views on racing, but his big thing was the car should disintegrate when you cross the finish line. There should be nothing left to consume. So why do you want to give fuel a free ride? If you have enough fuel to do the cool-down lap and have a gallon left, that’s seven extra pounds you’re carrying around for no reason. Needless to say, we were quite pleased there was so little left for IndyCar to gather…”
FORGET F1 AT SPA…
If you lost your mind over the squabble between championship rivals Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg at Spa last weekend, trust me, it had NOTHING on the fierce duel that decided the 2014 Pro Mazda title at Sonoma Raceway.
Race 1 on Friday saw contact between Florida’s Spencer Pigot and Canada’s Scott Hargrove leave Pigot on the sidelines and Hargrove with a tasty lead going into Saturday’s finale. Hargrove took the lead into Turn 2, Pigot was spun from behind by Hargrove’s teammate Neil Alberico (Neil was spinning and collected his good friend Spencer), dropping Pigot to the back of the field. Pigot proceeded to scythe through 10 drivers in short order and, despite posting incredible lap times, Hargrove matched his pace while leading – there was no way for Pigot to make up all of the ground he lost by the end of the race.
Pigot’s teammate Kyle Kaiser then experienced a mysterious problem that resulted in stopping his car atop the Carousel – in a frighteningly dangerous spot. A full-course caution immediately followed…and moments later, Kaiser’s stalled car miraculously refired…
With the field packed up behind the pace car, Pigot’s gap to Hargrove was tantalizingly small, and once the race resumed, he continued carving his way forward. Thanks to the unintentional (Alberico) and intentional (Kaiser) acts by their respective teammates, the disadvantage Pigot suffered on lap 1 was erased, and unfortunately for Hargrove, the restart triggered a gearbox issue which slowed his car. He vigorously – and dangerously – defended from Pigot heading into the wicked-fast Turn 8/8a complex, forcing Pigot onto the dirt, where he nearly crashed.
Pigot (LEFT, IMS photo) managed to hold on, pass Hargrove, and soldiered home to take fifth – enough to overtake Hargrove in the standings and earn the championship. If it had been a Saturday night dirt track race, both teams would have been throwing punches in Victory Lane until the sun came up.
Instead, we had an American badass earn the title, an equally impressive Canadian youngster demonstrate he was a broken gearbox away from becoming champion, and the Pro Mazda series stake its claim as the wildest rung on the Mazda Road To Indy.
Congratulations are also due to Frenchman Florian Latorre who had a monster weekend at Sonoma to take the USF2000 crown, and to Gabby Chaves, who won the Indy Lights title. Years of Indy Lights dominance by Sam Schmidt’s team was derailed by Gabby’s Belardi Racing outfit – another point worth celebrating.
Finally, Schmidt’s Jack Harvey (ABOVE, IMS photo) went from an Indy Lights rookie in March to tying second-year Lights driver Chaves in the points by the end of the weekend in Sonoma. Chaves and Harvey finished with 547 points, yet the young Colombian took the title due to more second-place finishes. Chaves won four times this season, with the last one coming at Pocono at the beginning of July. Harvey also won four races this year – all within a 22-day span, including both rounds at Mid-Ohio and both at Sonoma.
It’s hard not to feel excited for Gabby and Jack, and based on his late-season performances, I have to believe Harvey piqued the interest of a few IndyCar team owners. He didn’t win the championship, or earn the advancement prize, but he did make the guys who came into 2014 as the favorites look rather ordinary once he found his groove.
MISCELLANEOUS
• Takuma Sato’s fourth-place finish felt like a win to the A.J. Foyt Racing team. The Japanese driver was surrounded by his enthusiastic crew after the race and something akin to a mini celebration broke out for a few seconds. Taku’s haul from 20th to fourth was one of many surprising results on a day where very little went according to expectation.
• Helio Castroneves says he and a few others received an apology from Sebastien Bourdais for triggering the lap 1 crash at Turn 2 – a cool and unexpected gesture.
• He also described the earthquake that nearly destroyed the hotel he and Will Power stayed at as the scariest event of his life. I felt bad after learning how shocking the ordeal was for so many of the teams visiting California because, and as blasé as it probably sounds, the quake was an afterthought for me and many other locals. Unless you’re thrown out of bed or hear big things crashing down around you, the ground shaking isn’t something that automatically triggers a huge response. Again, that’s not said to sound cool or disaffected, but after your 100th quake, the 101st isn’t a shocker. Having grown up about a mile from the San Andreas fault line, my childhood home was always rocking and rolling, and while Sunday morning’s quake did manage to wake me up, it only served as a reminder to get up off of the couch and go to bed. Arriving at the track a few hours later, the magnitude of the damage in nearby Napa was a genuine surprise, and the accounts from the drivers who had glass flying and breaking in their rooms was alarming. It’s a normal part of life on the West Coast and I’m sure the members of the IndyCar Series and all of the support races last weekend will count their blessings when they fly home.
• In a move that typified his season, Chip Ganassi Racing’s Ryan Briscoe had one of his best weekends of the year – through qualifying – turn into another fruitless result. Hit on the opening lap, the front of his car took flight – at least partially – in the lap 1 contact and again later in the race in Turn 7 when he had nowhere to go other than over the front of Sebastian Saavedra’s spun car. The two liftoffs only added to his misery – the Aussie ended up finishing 17th to complete a genuinely crappy day. If the race itself was forgettable, Briscoe’s tone-on-tone dark blue/light blue NTT Data livery was a winner.
• With Bryan Herta Autosport’s former energy drink sponsor joining the pantheon of turds who failed to deliver what they promised, it was great to see the team’s former primary sponsor Barracuda Networks back for their home race at Sonoma.
• If you believe in karma…Scott Dixon had last year’s Sonoma race firmly in hand until the unsightly pit lane contact took place with Will Power’s right-rear tire man Travis Law. Dixon was assessed a drive-through penalty, giving Power an easy win, and as Power noted after Sunday’s race, Dixie’s victory was a richly deserved payback after Sonoma 2013. Power made this observation while ruing his own misfortune, revealing a rather interesting element of his personality: Although he was distraught over turning a pole into a P10 result, he had the presence of mind to consider Dixon’s win, run the numbers, and arrive at the conclusion Dixie was owed the victory. Impressive.
• Of course James Hinchcliffe was the driver who suffered the most in Turn 2 on lap 1 (BELOW). He qualified fourth – best among the four-car Andretti Autosport team – and saw his horrible year continue as he sat stalled in the middle of the road after being hit up the backside. Forget the exorcists – Hinch just needs the 2014 season to end so he can take his driving gear, result sheets, luggage, clothing, and everything else he used this year, toss it in the backyard, and set it on fire. Hopefully that will free him from the grips of whatever has turned him into the No. 1 Andretti punching bag. Those three wins last season must feel like they happened an awfully long time ago, and with the Canadian in a contract year, bad luck is the last thing he needs. A win at Fontana would be a wonderful present to one of IndyCar’s most valuable assets.
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