Can RLL Score The Win?

In May, RLL qualified 1-4-8. On Friday, they went 1-2 in the second round and Jack Harvey was 8th. He however has a grid penalty dropping him down to 14th, but still it was another great round for them.

In practice earlier, the went 1-3-12. In qualifying, 1-2-8. Can they win from the front row?

8 of the 14 races were won from the front row here including 2 of the last 4 at that. In fact, all 4 races here in the return trip were won from the front row.

Which is why I’m curious if RLL can back that up on Saturday?

I’m also curious to what strategy that they’ll use. This event has been a strategy race. Do they start them on opposite tire compounds to cover anyone else’s strategy from behind?

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Points

Alex Palou qualified 9th but starts 8th on Saturday due to Jack Harvey’s grid penalty. He’s not worried because those chasing him in points, didn’t make up the 7 spots ahead.

Josef Newgarden rolls off 19th. Also, Scott Dixon (16th), Scott McLaughlin (11th) and Marcus Ericsson (18th) all start from far behind too.

Can either catch Palou on Saturday or is this going to be the dagger in the championship?

Palou made mention leading up to Nashville that he was hopeful to grow his 80 point lead over the next two races. He knows that Gateway was looming and Newgarden not only has won the last three races there, but is a perfect 4-for-4 on ovals this season. So, with a potential to lose out on points that race weekend, why not grow it bigger leading in? That’s what he’s done by gaining four points in Nashville. 

Can it grow even bigger on Saturday?

Josef Newgarden has won the last three races at Gateway, the site of the next race and is 4-for-4 on ovals this season. If Palou’s lead grows even more this weekend, then it may not matter what Newgarden does in two weeks. However, if Palou has problems, then watch out.

Palou was 3rd in May 2021, had a fast car in May 2022 before going off course in the rain, had a podium going before his engine blew in Aug. 2021 and won by 16.8-seconds this past May.

Newgarden has just 1 podium in 13 Indy road course tries too. Out of his last five Indy road course races, he’s led just two laps. He was seventh in May. On natural road courses this season, he’s finished 15th, 7th and 2nd respectively.

54 points is a max points day. That means as we sit, over the next 3 races, Newgarden has to make up 30 points on Palou or this race is o-v-e-r.

Palou has finished 5th, 5th, 1st, 4th, 1st, 1st, 1st, 2nd, 8th, 3rd, 3rd over the last 11 races. Newgarden has finished 9th, 15th, 7th, 1st, 10th, 2nd, 12th, 5th, 1st, 1st, 4th himself.

Which Penske Shows Up

Team Penske has the most Indy road course wins (8) and has the second most wins (9) on natural road courses during the Aeroscreen era. Penske also has the most podiums scored here with 14. They had 8 in the pre Aeroscreen era and 6 since (2020 and beyond). 

However, they’re also 1-for-5 over the last two years here and haven’t won the May particular event since 2019. At that time, this was their 5th straight win in the race. They’re 0-for-4 since.

It’s this race weekend to where they’ve been the best at. However, they’ve struggle this weekend in being P6-P20-P24 in Practice 1, P3-P14-P23 in practice 2 and qualifying P11-P17-P19. Can they strategize their ways to the front?

Josef Newgarden led 34 of 85 laps in his win during the first doubleheader race of the Harvest Grand Prix race weekend in 2020. A day later, Will Power led all 75 laps in victory.

In August 2021, Power led 56 of 85 laps in another win. Last year, he finished third while Scott McLaughlin was fourth and Josef Newgarden in that summer race. 

Will they be the ones to beat this time around too?

They had 2 of the top 3 finishers in Barber. They were 7-12-16 here in May, 2-8-13 in Road America and 3-5-12 in Mid-Ohio.

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Can McLaren Get 1 Step Better?

It’s hard enough to get one Top-5 finish for a car in an organization in INDYCAR, let alone putting three. That’s exactly what Arrow McLaren Racing did this past May by finishing second, third and fifth respectively. That’s a feat in and of itself.

“Super stoked for the team,” said O’Ward then. “We put three cars in the top five. Fricking hard to do in this series with how competitive it is. Just stoked for everybody in the organization, for our 5 crew.”

O’Ward says that it’s not only good as a team, but to also do so at a track that they’ve traditionally struggled at was big. They always qualify well here, they just don’t finish.

Felix Rosenqvist started 6th and 1st respectively here last year but didn’t have a top five to show for it. Pato O’Ward qualified fifth and third but didn’t even have a top 10 to show for it. In fact, he finished fifth from his 2021 pole in the summer race here. What’s baffling is, O’Ward had four top 5 starting spots in his previous five starts here, but three of his last four finishes had been 12th or worse. Rosenqvist had one top 5 in 8 tries.

They came out this year firing. O’Ward started fifth and finished runner-up. Rossi came from 10th to finish third. Rosenqvist went from second back to only fifth.

“Historically this hasn’t been the best of tracks for us. So this is awesome to see just the massive step forward we’ve taken here in race pace. Super happy to see that,” O’Ward notes.

On natural road courses this season, O’Ward was fourth in Barber, runner-up in Indy, third in Road America and 8th at Mid-Ohi for which I think he will be a threat. Rossi has finished eighth, third, 10th and 10th respectively on the same tracks. He won the last time out here in July, was third after starting 10th this past May and has 6 top 7 finishes in his last 7 tries here including 5 of which in the top 4.

At that point, McLaren was rolling. Pato O’Ward had 3 runner-up finishes in the first 5 races. Felix Rosenqvist had three straight top 10’s while Alexander Rossi had 3 top 8 finishes in the first 5 races himself.

Since?

Rossi has 2 top 8’s over the last 8 races, Rosenqvist has 3 top 10’s in the same span while O’Ward has just 2 top 5’s, both 3rd place finishes, since as well.

Can they turn it back on this weekend?

“Over the past few races, we’ve experienced a few struggles,” admitted Rossi. “But motorsport is never a straightforward journey; it’s a test of resilience. As we return to the site of our last podium, it reminds us that every race is an opportunity to learn and grow. We’re going to harness that past success.”

“Back in May, we had the best performance we’ve ever had on the Indy road course,” O’Ward quipped. “It will be awesome to go back to try and repeat that podium.”

Rosenqvist agreed.

“I’m happy to be back at our home track,” he says. “We had a great race here in May with all three cars. I love this track, and we’ll do everything we can to have that same success and get that first win for the team.”

They’ve been strong thus far.

In qualifying, they put all 3 cars in the top 10 with 2 cars in Row 2 (Rossi-O’Ward) and one in 10th (Rosenqvist). Similar to their starting spots in May in going 2-5-10.

In Practice 1, they went 2-4-8.

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Which Tire Will Be The Preferred One?

The INDYCAR race on the IMS road course is honestly a big strategy play. The 2022 race in May was purely a display of strategy among wet tires and slicks. That was an anomaly in a sense that was the first pure rain race here. The others are down to tire choice and when to use them on stints.

If you can make it past the opening lap, the cautions usually are few and far between (12 of last 13 races here have seen 2 or fewer) and the tire strategy in turn becomes the main focus.

Then there’s the tire strategy. The disparity between the two tire compounds is typically large meaning the blacks are slower initially but remain consistent over the course of a full fuel run while the reds have a great burst of initial speed but fall off more of the same period.

In Indy however, the reds didn’t typically fall off as much. So, the strategy was on which stints do you run the reds vs. the blacks.

This past May however, it swapped.

At that time when eventual race winner, Alex Palou, strapped into his No. 10 Dallara-Honda for the morning warmup practice session on race day, the race plan was already tentatively in place. They were just going to use this 30-minute session to confirm it.

However, what they quickly learned swayed them another direction.

“Well, we were going to do a bigger gamble before warmup, which was starting on used reds,” Palou said.

That session showed he and his team that reds were going to react a lot differently this year compared to the past. See, in most years, the reds had minimal fall off. They were the preferred tires. This year, they weren’t.

So, they decided to start on fresh reds and then go blacks the rest of the way. They were the only ones up front that decided to start on the alternates. That confused them. Among the top seven starters, they all went with the primary tire option. Palou didn’t.

“We knew that since practice, honestly, that we wanted to start on reds. I was surprised that not other people at the front started on reds,” he admitted.

“For us it was clear. We were struggling a little bit more than some of the guys on used reds in the warmup. But still it’s not like they were amazing. We knew that we didn’t want to use used reds. That’s why we started on new alternates, try to get the lead, try to get a big gap, like two, three, four, seconds, then work on our pace on blacks.

“Once I saw the starting grid with the tires, we were like, Okay, we’re in a good place. Still, you have to do it. We knew we were on the right strategy for the 10 car, but you still had to do it on track.”

Pole sitter Christian Lundgaard went primary to start, then red, red, black to the finish. Pato O’Ward, who finished second, went primary at the start, red, black, red to finish. Alexander Rossi started on the alternates in 10th and went reds, then reds again, then blacks, then reds.

Lundgaard went with the safe play by doing that strategy. With this track typically being a Firestone alternate race, he could go all out the rest of the way. Unfortunately, that just wasn’t the case for how his car was handling.

“Yeah, I mean, it was strange because that way that the reds were falling off,” he said. “So I didn’t really understand how we got to balance so so wrong. But again, it’s things we need to learn from now. Of course, that’s not one of the best things and we’re not in the past. So these are the things that we need to learn.

“I don’t think we got it right today. I don’t think that call was the setup of the car was optimal for today’s race conditions and the tires. I think we struggled a lot with balance today the car was from one one run to another run. It was a different balance. So it’s very, very difficult to to just understand the car. There was a point to where I didn’t really think I was gonna make it through just on balance that the car was so difficult to drive, but it’s here we’re in the top five. So that’s the positive nature of the race.”

Now, what happens this weekend?

If you go back to 2021, Conor Daly brought out the opening lap caution, but the rest of the way went green. From Lap 4 to Lap 85, it was all green flag racing. In turn, that meant this was a three-stop strategy race like we all thought it would be. The difference would come down to tire selections.

The pole sitter that year, Romain Grosjean, started off on the Firestone Alternate tires. They were the quickest and lasted as long as the Firestone primaries, so the guys that started on the Blacks pit early to get on the Reds. Well, Grosjean went with two straight stints on the Reds. The second one on scuffed reds.

Eventual race winner, Rinus VeeKay, started off on the primary tires and pit for the Reds on Lap 12. Grosjean, didn’t pit for his first stop until Lap 25. VeeKay, would pit again on Lap 36 for scuffed reds. Grosjean pit on Lap 43 but had to go to Blacks.

That was the difference.

VeeKay got him and made his move for the lead among their sequence. He’d be able to go with Reds the final time but already hold the lead while Grosjean was too far back before he could do anything about it.

Third place finisher that day, Alex Palou, went on the Reds until Lap 25 then put on Blacks on Lap 40. He’d go Blacks again on Lap 62 as he was one of three guys to finish the race on the primary tires.

That’s just a prime example on how this race played out on strategy and I expect a similar debate again this time around.

Plus, you have stock cars on track with Goodyear tire rubber to throw a wrench into things too. Friday will be purely INDYCAR and Indy NXT. Saturday morning you have Xfinity Series practice and qualifying followed by the Cup Series. All that rubber will be on the track to start the Gallagher Grand Prix after.

“It’s an interesting weekend and in the back of everyone’s minds that there will be NASCAR rubber on the track as well. Luckily, I don’t think it’s something that hurts us as a team,” Lundgaard said.

The alternate tire this weekend is the same as that 2021 weekend too.