Carnage?

For the first time in nearly three decades, the 4.014-mile Road America racing surface was recently repaved this offseason. The thing is, it wasn’t ready however until the first week of May to even be used. So, this track was truly a green one coming into Sunday’s race.

As a result, Road America has been a tough one to figure out thus far. As usual, the repair has caused Road America to become a one groove track and if you get outside of the racing line, you’ve become a passenger.

“This track’s terrible; when you go off, they do a terrible job here so they need to pick up their game,” Power said. “You go off, you break your back every time; done it a couple of times this weekend so they need a kick in the butt.”

Part of the reason for this weekend’s incidents was with this being qualifying day and the margin between advancing to the next round and not coming down to the slimmest of times, you have to get everything out of your car each lap. That’s why in Saturday morning’s practice and again qualifying this afternoon, you have to push the limits for which is also why we saw so many drivers getting wide in the corners.

With a new surface, the cars are traveling at a faster rate of speed. Because of that, you’ll be carrying more speed into the entry of corners. If you miss the mark doing so, you better find a way to spin it around before you make contact with the wall or tire barriers.

“It’s just a very strange feeling, at least for me, inside the car,” said Sunday’s Sonsio Grand Prix at Road America (1 p.m. ET, USA, INDYCAR Radio Network) pole sitter, Colton Herta. “I’m sure it’s different team to team and whatnot. For me it’s a very strange feeling at the wheel. I think it shows by how many guys have been kind of trickling off the track, just having weird spins.

“For me, it’s been one of the tougher tracks to get ahold of. It’s almost like there’s very little feedback from the wheel, so you’re seeing guys spin, just don’t really know it’s going to happen, which was the way it was for me a few times.”

Herta spun multiple times on Saturday including in the second round. He did so on purpose he said because he knew he got in too hot in Turn 1 and had to do something.

“Because it’s a lot tougher when you hit something,” said Herta on the spin. “When you just spin, go off, have a spin, it’s really not that big of a deal.”

As far as why, it’s because in last week’s test and all the practice and qualifying thus far, everyone is using the same line and building rubber up in those spots. As a result, there’s no rubber or grip away from the racing line and it’s creating chaos.

“I think obviously the following will be different to what it’s been in the last few years just because offline, the balance, the car just turns upside down if you go offline,” second place starter, Pato O’Ward, said on if he expected chaos for Sunday’s 55 lap race.

“I think that’s obviously going to make passing tricky. It will make guys trying to get a bit of cleaner air on at least half of their wing. There is a penalty to pay for that. It doesn’t seem to pay off yet.

“Yeah, I see it being there’s maybe a lane and a half of, like, very high grip. But you go off of that, and it’s like ice. I think that’s also why there’s just been a lot of excursions. You miss it by just a tad, and it’s like, What happened to the car?

“To extract the lap time, especially now with the new pavement, like there is so much more grip, but it’s only in the line. You have to commit so much into the corners where a lot of the times it kind of bites once you’re already committed. I think that’s why you see a lot of spins, a lot of guys going off, just a lot of random snaps. It makes you feel like there’s unlimited amounts of grip, but there’s obviously limits to everything.”

Herta agreed.

“It’s very treacherous off the line,” he said. “It’s going to make it interesting to see if guys are going to defend into five or if guys are going to try to pass and it’s going to happen.

“We’re braking so late now at all those corners, braking is probably 175 feet before turn feet, 180 to 60 miles an hour. The grip is insane right now that the track is producing.

“But like Pato said, it’s only the line. Once you get half a tire width off of it, you can’t recover it because you’re going so fast.”

In saying that, everyone expected chaos in Detroit and it never materialized. Herta mentioned that the more laps that they run, the more they get used to it as well.

“But, yeah, it’s a feeling that seems to be going away the more and more we run. Obviously the speed is there in the track. They did a great job with the repaving. Super smooth. Obviously the more rubber that goes down, we’re just going quicker and quicker and quicker.”

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Tires

For whatever reason, the Firestone primary tires have been just as quick, if not at times, faster than the alternates this weekend. Which is why I’m watching tire life and tire strategy. The alternates will still fall off quicker than the primary tires, but if the primary tires aren’t falling off much and are also quicker, they’re clearly the preferred tire for the race itself.

So, who uses what tires and on what stint will make or break this race, especially if it’s going to be difficult to pass.

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Big Names Coming From The Back

2 of the last 3 NTT INDYCAR SERIES champions were eliminated in the opening round of qualifying. So were the top two finishers in Barber this spring.

Saturday was a wild day that saw not only Alex Palou, Scott Dixon and Will Power crashing during the morning practice, but also later saw Dixon and Power join the likes of Romain Grosjean, Scott McLaughlin, Simon Pagenaud, Helio Castroneves, Ryan Hunter-Reay and Felix Rosenqvist all eliminated in the opening round of qualifying on Saturday afternoon too.

For Dixon and Power, they missed the boat because of their crash during practice a few hours prior.

Dixon spun in Canada Corner all by himself and was able to get back going right in front of both Grosjean and Power. Dixon knew Grosjean was coming so he allowed him to pass to Dixon’s inside. Afterwards, Dixon veered to his right to get out of the way. Unfortunately, Power was already there and the two locked wheels and skated into the concrete wall.

Still, on a track that is admittedly tough to pass on and has always rewarded track position, how far can these big names make it forward?

All eight races since the series has been back have been won via a top 10 starter. 6 of the 8 from the top 5. 4 of those 6 were won from the front row at that. In fact, even before that, there was 25 races and 24 of them were won from a top 10 starter making them 32-for-33 in producing race winners. 27 of the 33 were won from the Fast Six at that.

It’s not just here that track position at the start is so key. It’s natural road courses in general.

Since 2020, the year the Aeroscreen debuted, 13 of the 23 races (59%) have been won via a front row starter including 9 of the last 13 (75%) and 5 of the 9 (63%) last year. 17 of the 23 (73.9%) were won from a Fast Six starter while 21 of the last 23 (91.3%) from the top 10.

Also, if you don’t make the Fast Six, you basically are playing for fifth place on back. 19 of the 24 podium spots since 2016 were taken via a Fast Six qualifier including each of the last two years.

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Alex Palou

Second in points, Marcus Ericsson starts ninth. Third in points, Josef Newgarden, may start fourth, but he was only 16th and 12th in the pair of practices. Fourth in points Scott Dixon starts 23rd. Seventh in points Scott McLaughlin starts 18th while defending series champion and eighth in points Will Power rolls off 22nd.

Points leader Alex Palou meanwhile, well he starts third.

He won from fifth in 2021. The last time he started third on the season, he won by nearly 20 seconds last month in Indy. He did start third last year here but finished 27th after a crash with Ericsson early.

However, I don’t see that happening now.

Palou has been untouchable. The Spaniard is on a string of races to where he’s started 3rd, 1st, 1st and finished 1st, 4th, 1st. He’s led 162 of the 385 laps in the process.

He went from nine points down entering the Month of May to 51 points up heading to Road America.

“Honestly, there’s a lot of races to go,” Palou admitted. “We got the lead two races ago, now suddenly we have this amazing lead.

“On the same way that we go up, there’s somebody that can go up as well, and we can go down. That’s INDYCAR. That’s the high competition that we have here. There’s a lot. I think in 15 weeks we can have 10 race weekends. It’s going to be tough to keep the energy up for everybody. But having that lead, it’s going to help us. Hopefully we can keep it going and getting bigger.”

Newgarden noted during the preseason test that his main goal this year outside of winning the Indy 500, which he did last Sunday, was to have the championship wrapped up early. He didn’t want to have to go into the season finale stressed like he has the last few years in which he’s finished runner-up in points in each of the last three years.

While he’s won twice in 2023, equaling Palou, he’s 70 points behind in third.

That’s how good Palou has been and it may be he, not Newgarden, having this thing wrapped up by September to score his second title in three years.

Palou is showing right now why Chip Ganassi fought so hard to keep him last season. It would have been just as easy for Ganassi to let Palou walk like most are expecting him to at the end of this season anyways. Why keep a dead-end driver one more season?

The last race in Detroit is why.

Palou led a race-high 74 of 100 laps from the pole en route to a dominating race on a dominating race weekend. It was his second straight pole after having 1 pole in his previous 52 starts and second win in the last three races.

“It feels amazing,” Palou said of this momentum.” You need to try to ride the wave while you have it. Yeah, happy that we have a wave and that we can ride it because we know the season is really long, you have some races that don’t go that well.”

So far, Palou hasn’t really had many races that didn’t go well.

He won by nearly 20-seconds in the GMR Grand Prix. He overcame Rinus VeeKay running into him on pit road in the Indy 500 to finish fourth. Prior to May, he was eighth in St. Pete, third in Texas and fifth in Long Beach and Barber respectively.

He led 22 laps in Texas, two in Long Beach, 52 in the GMR Grand Prix, 36 in the Indy 500 and now 76 more.

This dominance has him opening up a 51-point lead in the standings. It was 20 entering this weekend. For a series that has seen the championship not decided until the final race for 18 straight years now, Palou is on a pace to maybe wrap this up early.

He’s 70 points clear of third, 82 points clear of fifth. When going back to last year, he won the season finale by a half-a-minute in leading 67 of 95 laps in the process. It was that weekend he and Ganassi patched things up and off he’s went since with an average finish of 3.5 over the last eight races. He’s led 255 laps in that span with three wins.

Prior to last year’s season finale, Palou had just two podiums in 12 starts. That’s because of his battle with Ganassi to leave and go to McLaren. His access was cutoff and it cost him results.

Still, while in that battle, he did have eight top 10’s. It’s just the fact that he had three podiums in the four races to start last season before these issues arose.

He’s by far the top driver in this paddock right now.

In Road America, he was third in 2020 and won in 2021. After that is to Mid-Ohio to where he’s finished third and second the last two years. Then it’s to Toronto to where he was sixth as a rookie there a year ago but has finished fifth and first respectively in his last two street races.

His lead could be approaching 100 heading to Iowa if all goes well again on Sunday.

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McLaren Racing

Chip Ganassi Racing and Team Penske have combined to have won each of the last four Road America races including 7 of the 8 since the 2016 return. They’ve also had the most podiums scored here with Penske having 9 and Ganassi 7 in that span as well.

Their dominance isn’t just dependent on this scenic Wisconsin road course either.

The two teams have combined to have won each of the last 10 series championships. They’ve also won 6 of the 7 races this year and 40 of the 54 (75.4%) of the races with the Aeroscreen. Furthermore, if you go back to the 2022 Indy 500, they’ve combined to have won 16 of the last 19 (84.2%) of the races.

Penske has won nine times in that span, Ganassi with seven. Andretti has won twice and McLaren once.

However, Ganassi looked good on Friday and qualified 3-8-9-23. Penske has been off though all weekend. McLaren, has picked up the slack for Chevrolet.

They went 1-5-8 in Practice 1, 1-3-7 in Practice 2 and qualified 2-5-16.

Can they capitalize on Sunday?

Arrow McLaren Racing is 0-for-7 this season in regards to victories. In fact, they’ve won just once in the last 20 races. However, among the 7 races this season, they’ve had the next best finisher in three of them. They’ve been on the podium in four of the seven races too.

The thing is, while Pato O’Ward has hit a lull recently, the overall momentum of McLaren in general is trending up.

They had two of the three podium spots in the GMR Grand Prix last month. All three cars finished in the top five that day. In Detroit, they had two of their three cars again in the top five.

Felix Rosenqvist (8th on Friday, 3rd on Saturday) now has four top 10 finishes over the last five races including a pair of top fives in the last three. He had three total top five finishes in 2022 and already has two in the first seven races in 2023.

In fact, the Swedish driver is really starting to find his groove. That all started in last year’s GMR Grand Prix.

Prior to that, he had no top five finishes, just two top 10’s and 14 laps led in his first 18 starts with McLaren. Over his last 20, he’s had 14 top 10 finishes, five top fives and 65 laps led.

“I think we needed it,” Rosenqvist said of this podium finish in Detroit. “We’ve been pretty much up there every weekend. We had three DNFs which hurt.

“It seems this year in the championship a lot of the top runners have had tough races as well. I think we can recover if we keep the momentum going.

“It’s nice. I think all the boys and girls on the 6 car, Arrow McLaren, really deserved it. We’ve been up there sniffing for a long time. Hasn’t worked out.”

The momentum is equally building for Alexander Rossi. He just scored his fifth top 10 finish of the season already including four of which being in the top five. He was third in the GMR Grand Prix, fifth in the last two races (Indy 500, Detroit).

By comparison, he had just three top five finishes with Andretti in 2021 and five each for the 2020 and 2022 seasons. He’s nearly had as many top fives in 7 starts with McLaren than he had in full seasons with Andretti.

With having momentum now, I was curious his thoughts on in a series as difficult as this one, is it harder to get momentum or keep it?

“That’s a good question. Probably keep, you know, I think I think every driver and team can like look back on weekends of like, you can pull positives out of anything, right?” he told me. “And so like internally, that can be good momentum, even if like the result doesn’t show it like take RLL for example. Like I think as a three car group, they probably have a lot of good momentum. So it’s definitely harder to keep you know, the series is so competitive and you can go one weekend from thinking you’ve got everything sorted out to the next beam. absolutely nowhere. So it’s challenging.”

Rossi entered Saturday’s knockout qualifying as the favorite to win the pole. After being quickest in both practice sessions this weekend and scoring the pole here a year ago, he was a disappointing fifth in the Fast Six round. In fact, he was slowest among the drivers because Kyle Kirkwood didn’t make a lap after having a mechanical problem at the end of the second round.

That’s got to be disappointing for Rossi to not back up that early speed with a pole, but he at least has to see the silver lining in the fact that he said all season that he would be excited for a top five starting spot.

He said that qualifying was their Achilles Heel.

“We’ve had a really strong pace on Sundays, we just haven’t gotten the results that we feel like we deserve. We’re missing a little bit on Saturdays,” he admitted. “I mean, it’s a very different car than I’m used to. I just haven’t quite found my happy spot for like the ultimate lap. It’s close. It seems like we’re permanently qualifying 10th, 11th or 12th. It’s not a disaster. We’re certainly much better in race pace, or have been so far this year.

“I mean, it’s not the end of the world. We’ll get there. It’s competitive, and you can’t be missing a 10th of a second. Ultimately that’s what we’re missing.”

Entering the weekend, Rossi had qualified between 10th-13th in 5 of the 7 races. The only two he didn’t were on the oval at Texas and Indianapolis to where he qualified 3rd and 5th respectively.

Now, he starts fifth and has a car capable of more. That’s a good sign for them even though they have to be somewhat disappointed to not be even further up.

For O’Ward, he starts on the front row in second. He’s finished runner-up in three of the first five races to the season. It’s just the fact that he pushed too hard in Long Beach and got into trouble (17th). He pushed too hard at the end of the Indy 500 (24th) and pushed too hard after a pit road problem in Detroit (26th).

That’s why he went from second to fifth in points. Can he rebound with a good car on Sunday?