NASHVILLE – For the second consecutive year, Scott McLaughlin will lead the field to green for Sunday’s Big Machine Music City Grand Prix (12 p.m. ET, NBC, INDYCAR Radio Network) on the streets of Nashville.

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Here’s what’s at stake for the 13th event of the 2023 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season.

• Palou’s Points Lead – Josef Newgarden cut a large chunk out of Palou’s lead by sweeping the weekend the last time out in Iowa. However, Palou maintained his advantage by finishing on the podium in the second race too. That’s exactly where the Spaniard was the last time out here to go along with being 1st and 2nd respectively in the last 2 street races on the season. With an 80-point lead coming into Sunday’s race, can he leave Music City with a sizeable gap on Newgarden? Since 2008, the driver leading the INDYCAR points with 5 races to go has won the title 8 times including 3 of the last 4 years. Palou is 1-for-1 in doing this feat as he led the points with 5 races remaining in 2021 too. He starts 4th to where Newgarden, Dixon and Ericsson are behind him in points and roll off 9th, 12th and 20th respectively.
• Honda’s Perfection – Honda is a perfect 4-for-4 on street courses this season with taking 9 of the 15 podiums too. It went Ganassi-McLaren-Ganassi in St. Pete, Andretti-Andretti-Ganassi in Long Beach, Ganassi-Penske-McLaren in Detroit and RLL-Ganassi-Andretti in Toronto. Can they go 5-for-5 in 2023? In the inaugural race here, they went 1-2-3-4 with a year ago going 1-3-4-5. In saying that, Chevrolet swept the front row in qualifying on Saturday. Honda has the next 4 starting spots though.
• Dixon’s Start Streak – Sunday will mark Scott Dixon 318th straight INDYCAR start which ties Tony Kanaan for most all-time. Dixon will hope to reach victory lane in his milestone start with finishes of 2nd and 1st respectively here.
• Carnage – The two races were also messy ones. Out of the 160 combined race laps turned, 43% of them were under caution periods with 38% of the cars being loaded back on the haulers early after crashes.
  • The inaugural race saw 9 cautions for 33 laps.
  • Last year’s was one less yellow (8) but more caution laps (36).
• Rain Race? – There’s a chance for precipitation on Sunday which could make this race even more wild than it typically is. We’ve had just 1 wet weather race with the Aeroscreen as that came in the 2022 GMR Grand Prix.
  • Coming into that race, there were 34 races with the Aeroscreen and none were affected by wet weather. There’s been 23 races since and no other rain races. Does the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix join it on Sunday?