Rivalries

This has been a great season in regards to drama. We’ve saw plenty of on track fireworks between drivers. From Scott McLaughlin vs. Romain Grosjean (3 parts), Grosjean vs. Will Power, Power vs. Scott Dixon, Power vs. Road America, Pato O’Ward vs. Dixon and O’Ward vs. Marcus Ericsson, McLaughlin vs. David Malukas, the 2023 season has had plenty to talk about.

McLaughlin and Grosjean are friends off the track. On the track, the respect is mutual as well. However, three times this season they had some intense on track battles. The first coming in the season opener on the streets of St. Pete. McLaughlin exited the pits for the final time on Lap 71. Grosjean was charging hard to catch him and get by for the lead as he had already pit for his final time.

The two met in the middle and with Grosjean looking for the lead on McLaughlin, neither gave an inch and both collided with 29 laps-to-go effectively ending their chances on the spot.

The second battle came after the final stop in Barber a month later for which McLaughlin went hard on Grosjean for the top spot. Both were on opposite pit strategies and both were 1-2 coming to the final stint.

Luckily this time, crises was averted but it has sparked a new rivalry.

In Detroit, McLaughlin blamed Grosjean for running into him on track and could have potentially ended his day.

O’Ward vs. Dixon sparked in Long Beach with the two clashing on track. They disagreed on the blame. Dixon felt O’Ward’s maneuver was never going to work. O’Ward feels like it did and called Dixon, a “baby,” in the process.

A month later, O’Ward had a run-in with Dixon’s Chip Ganassi Racing teammate of Ericsson with eight laps remaining in the Indy 500. O’Ward felt Ericsson squeezed him and said the next time he’s in that situation, Ericsson is coming with him into the wall.

Then you have the spat in Road America to where Will Power was pissed at everyone.

Power used both hands to show his displeasure with Scott Dixon following a frightening practice crash on qualifying morning. He later lambasted Dixon after failing to make it out of the first round of qualifying that afternoon. Dixon was just the tip of the iceberg in Power’s rough day in Road America.

“Just pissed for what (Scott) Dixon did this morning. It’s ruined our weekend,” Power said after qualifying a disappointing 22nd.

Power’s No. 12 Dallara-Chevrolet for Team Penske was rebuilt between the two sessions, but due to just a brief break between them, they just didn’t have enough time to dial the car in the way that it needed to be to advance out of the first round.

“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.”

Then, he took issue with Romain Grosjean.

Just prior to he and Dixon tangling in Turn 12, Power was riding behind Grosjean on track. Grosjean, moved to his right to block Power who had a run on him entering Canada Corner.

“And Grosjean is a piece of crap,” he proclaimed. “He needs a punch in the face.”

Prior to Gateway, I asked David Malukas about how he’d race the drivers up front on Sunday should be in a position like he was in last year of going for the win. More than likely, it would be against the guys going for this year’s championship.

If he finds himself in a similar situation this year as last, how does he races those drivers going for the championship?

“I mean, in some ways you could say so, yeah, but recently the Bus Bros actually kind of did a dis on me on their racing video, so if anything, I’m more motivated to block them and hold them off and be very much of an annoyance on track,” he told me.

He of course was joking saying that the joke was all in good fun, but did say if he’s in that position late, you can’t go overboard.

“No, it’s all fun and games,” he continued. “I think they just picked like certain drivers that would obviously take the joke. I wanted to have a little bit of beef with him on Twitter, but he didn’t respond. I wanted to kind of have a little back-and-forth, create some kind of attention. But he never did it. He never went for it.

“It’s all fun and games. If they do come, yeah, there’s always kind of a sense of respect if you’re not really fighting into it, you know you’re not going to do anything crazy.

“But at the same time, if it’s 20 laps to go and I’m actually fighting with them for a top-3 position, then I think it’s all going to be fair game at that point because I would very much like a proper result at Gateway.”

INDYCAR took it and ran with it trying to promote some drama. Malukas quickly squashed it not wanting any problems.

Well, now he has problems. Fast forward to Sunday. Not quite 20 to go but it was the closing laps. Malukas, battling for a spot on the top 3, had an incident with Scott McLaughlin to where it looked like according to the Penske driver, a hip check gone wrong.

They had a run-in on track for which they made contact with Malukas on the inside of McLaughlin late in the race in Turn 3. It sent McLaughlin high off line and nearly crashing. McLaughlin wasn’t pleased with his friends move.

“Yeah, I was foul,” McLaughlin told me if the move was fair of foul. “I mean like, it’s got to be a point where you’ve got to give up the spot. You can’t put it like, well maybe that’s what he think so that’s fine.

“He didn’t want beef but now he’s got beef, yeah.”

Malukas didn’t see eye to eye about that incident.

“Yeah, I followed the car in front on the inside. Obviously for position he squeezed down,” he said. “I was right on the curb. It’s not like I washed up into him. It’s more that he cut into me. We had a tap. I managed to save it. I guess he did, as well.

“He came to me at podium and said something about it. I don’t know if he’s, like, oppressed by it. I don’t know, I think he got beef from that.

“From my standpoint, if you squeeze somebody down on the inside, what else are you going to expect? I can only go on the curb so much.”

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Wild Crashes

That’s something that’s never good. We witnessed two airborne crashes in the season opener on the streets of St. Pete. A first lap crash saw the track blocked but rookie Benjamin Pedersen didn’t get the memo of that and came barreling into the fray. He t-boned Devlin DeFrancesco for which saw DeFrancesco’s No. 29 Dallara-Honda raised airborne. Later on in the race, Jack Harvey found the tire barriers and Kyle Kirkwood had no where to go but over the top launching his car as well.

Then, at Indy, Kirkwood hit Felix Rosenqvist after the Swede got into the Turn 1 wall and was skating out of control at the south end of the track. Kirkwood again, had no where to go and his left rear tire hit Rosenqvist’s right front. That launched Kirkwood upside down and his tire over the catch fencing.

Luckily, the tire hit a car in the parking lot and didn’t get into the stands.

A week later, Kirkwood was ran over by Callum Ilott at the start of the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix which sent Ilott’s car airborne.

We saw Will Power and Scott Dixon have a frightening crash in Road America, then Simon Pagenaud barrel rolling in practice at Mid-Ohio and a day later Marcus Ericsson going over the top of Felix Rosenqvist at the start.

Fortunately, no serious injures were suffered in any of these incidents. While Pagenaud missed the rest of the season, he was able to walk away.

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Rahal Bumped From ‘500, Wins Pole In Return Trip A Few Months Later

The picture last month says it all. Graham Rahal happily kissing his youngest child. A few months ago, in this same spot, in fact, just a few yards from where he was smiling from ear to ear and basking in being the man of the hour on these hallowed grounds, Rahal had a different befuddlement of emotions.

On May 21, Rahal was bumped by a teammate as the final qualifier in May’s Indy 500. On August 11, Rahal, the final qualifier across the timing line in Friday’s Firestone Fast Six, bumped a teammate from the pole.

In a span of 82 days, Rahal experienced the lowest of lows to one of the highest of highs. With the same family watching on, Rahal delivered a lap of 1:10.1132-seconds taking him from fourth on the grid to the pole for last month’s Gallagher Grand Prix.

Talk about delivering in the biggest of moments. It’s not an Indy 500 win. It’s not even an NTT INDYCAR SERIES race win in general. But, for this second-generation driver who’s been through it all, this pole is something.

“Yeah, I mean, you move on from May as best you can,” Rahal said after earning his first pole since June 2017. “There’s a lot of frequent reminders what happened there, not only in qualifying, but the car not running at the start of the race, things like that.

“Those are things that build character. I haven’t told many people this, but when I got back to my phone after May, after qualifying, the very first voice mail I had was from Al Unser Jr. Guys like that, you see somebody like him who’s been here, who’s won here, but he’s also seen the lows of the low. The best have went through it.

“I definitely seeing his name on my phone lifted my spirits a lot. You come back here, this is a totally different rodeo, but it still means a lot.”

It’s just another example on how this place, this lore, you can’t script it. From Penske winning the 1994 Indy 500 to missing out on the race completely a year later. To Rahal’s dad, Bobby Rahal, the reigning PPG Cart champion bumped out in 1993 to his own son being bumped out 30 years later. To James Hinchcliffe nearly dying in 2015 in a Turn 3 practice crash to winning the pole a year later in dramatic fashion for the 100th Running of the big event.

Indy always delivers.

“These things happen around here, which is a little bit abnormal,” Rahal said. “A little different from the oval to the road course.

“I don’t know what it is about Indy, but we all talk about it as a living being, that it kind of writes its own story. I say it every year: in this large book that’s gone on a hundred-plus years now, a lot of people have had the chance to have their chapter. Some people like Helio have several in the book. You just hope it’s your time.

“The mystique of Indy and the things that happen and all of that are alive and well. I think Indy is very different.”

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Newgarden Goes Into The Stands Following Indy Win

For Josef Newgarden, his victory in the 107th Running of the Indianapolis 500 was a long time coming. It was one that almost seemed like it would never come. As the years clocked by, another winless Month of May would ensue.

For the next American hero, the one thing missing was an Indy 500 win.

“I’ll be honest, it’s annoying,” Newgarden said of showing up every year and answering questions about not winning this race. “It’s been terrible. It is mentally draining to be here for three weeks and just to know that you really only have one opportunity, and it comes down to today, and that’s the day you’ve got to be perfect and great and everything has got to work out.

“So you spend all this time and effort, and it’s really just a mental grind to work through that. The more you’ve been here, the more it’s not worked out, the more that grind really starts to gnaw at you.

“I don’t necessarily subscribe to the fact that if you don’t win the 500 your career is a failure, but I think a lot of people really view this race and this championship with that lens, that the 500 stands alone, and that if you’re not able to capture one, then the career really is a failure in a lot of ways.

“It’s impossible to not recognize that or to absorb that from people when you’re here, and I just didn’t know if circumstance would ever work out where it would really come to be where we could win the race.

“I just said — especially after ’19, where I did have an opportunity to win the race and we fell short, I said, if I’m ever in a position again to win this race, I’m not coming back with a top-5 result. I just don’t care what happens. You come here to win the race, and we’re going to do that.”

Two series championships and 26 wins entering this season. The only thing missing to keeping Newgarden from becoming that next breakout mainstream star was Indy success.

In 12 prior starts, he had just three top five finishes. None of which were truly ones to where he was a legitimate threat to win.

However, being a Team Penske driver, eventually it was going to come, right?

He was eighth in 2018, fourth in 2019 and fifth in 2020.

The problem is, after Will Power won in 2018 and Simon Pagenaud in 2019, Penske’s Indy success faltered. They had been passed up by not only Ed Carpenter Racing here, but Arrow McLaren Racing too.

Newgarden finished 12th from a 21st starting spot in 2021. He was only 13th after starting 14th last year. It wasn’t just him that was off. So were his teammates.

Power started 22nd and finished 14th in 2020, started 32nd and finished 30th in 2021 and 11th to 15th last year. Two total laps led.

Scott McLaughlin’s two starts saw him qualify 17th and 26th and finish 20th and 29th. Zero laps led. .

When Pagenaud was with the team in 2020 and 2021, he qualified 25th and 26th respectively and finished 22nd and third. 17 total laps led.

Coming into this year though. This was supposed to be different. No more failures here. Roger Penske got the keys to this place in 2020 and they’ve led 19 laps since. This could stay that way another year, right?

After a decent week of practice, qualifying went awry.

Power qualified 12th. McLaughlin was in 14th and Newgarden 17th. Nothing appeared to be changing. With all four McLaren’s up front and Rinus VeeKay scoring his fourth straight top four starting spot, Penske’s looked to be slumping.

Heck, even AJ Foyt Racing had both cars starting in front of the three Penske’s on Sunday.

If Newgarden was ever going to win. This had to be the year. Sam Hanks and Tony Kanaan each won in their 12th Indy 500 starts. No one else has gone winless longer before taking a trip to victory lane.

Penske now though, I’d say has figured it out. It was a day that you could pass here if you had a good car. Penske’s said all along they had good race cars and boy did they ever. With great fuel mileage, Power and Newgarden were both in the top 10 after the initial stint. After the second stint, they were knocking on the door of a top five.

In the second half, there they were. Newgarden was in the top five and going to be a force from this point forward.

He was aggressive at the right times and gave Penske his 19th Indy 500 win but most importantly, his first. This is a massive win for INDYCAR. This is what they needed. They have been waiting for someone like Newgarden to win this race and now they got him.

“Obviously I’ve never had the honor of winning this race. I was in awe of sitting next to my boss Roger Penske and realizing this is his 19th. So it was very special,” says Newgarden.

“To win this race is indescribable. I think being at this event is indescribable. Someone has to come and see it and be a part of it to understand what it is really all about, and I’ve always wanted the honor to win this race because I wanted to go in the crowd if it was ever possible because I know what the energy is like here in Indianapolis.

“So to me, it was an unbelievable finish to be able to be here with the team and do that.

“I’m a little out of words. I apologize that I’m running out of steam here. It’s been a lot.”

Newgarden stopped his car on the front stretch, hopped out and ran under the fence and into the stands to celebrate with the fans. It’s something that he had planned for years and was finally able to do so.

It’s a moment that will be discussed for decades to come.

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Dixon Keeps Streak Alive In Most Scott Dixon Of Ways…Wins Again Next Race In Similar Fashion..Wins Finale In Similar Fashion..

Death. Taxes. Scott Dixon doing Scott Dixon things. On a sun filled Saturday afternoon last month at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Dixon came from behind to score his 54th career NTT INDYCAR SERIES victory.

Dixon overcame being collected in that Lap 1 incident when Marcus Armstrong and Alex Palou made contact in Turn 1 causing Armstrong to spin. Dixon then spun from behind to avoid the incident while Romain Grosjean then Josef Newgarden piled in.

Dixon was able to continue on without falling a lap down. He pit on Lap 5 to top off and to go to the Firestone alternates. That proved to be ironically enough, the race winning sequence.

Dixon would pit on Lap 32 next then for the final time on Lap 59. By doing so, he cycled to the front and despite a late race dash with Graham Rahal, was able to hold the pole sitter off .4779-seconds for the closest finish in Gallagher Grand Prix history.

Dixon broke the ironman record that day too topping an iron man himself in Tony Kanaan. This was his 319th straight start which is a new record. It was also extending a previous record of most consecutive seasons with at least one trip to victory lane at 19. He’s won at least one race every year since 2005.

Two weeks later, he did it again.

 Dixon’s team elected to take the engine swap prior to this weekend’s race and while his No. 9 Dallara-Honda would be fresh, it would cost him nine spots at the start of Sunday’s Bommarito Automotive Group 500. So, despite qualifying 7th, he would drop to 16th once the green flag dropped.

For a track that rewards track position and having seen 8 of the last 9 winners come from the top five of the starting lineup, just getting into the top five would have felt like a win for Dixon.

But, this is Scott Dixon that we’re talking about here. While the task was a tall one in order to remain in the championship conversation leaving here, his bid for a record tying seventh championship still remains intact via a masterful drive and strategy employed by the Chip Ganassi Racing bunch.

By running the first stint longer than anyone else, Dixon pit for the first time on Lap 65. It was that moment that he’d go on the Firestone alternate tires.

Josef Newgarden led the first 62 laps before he pit. Pato O’Ward would pit one lap prior. The duo had a commanding strangle hold on the top two spots. The second stop, they flip flopped.

O’Ward this time blinked first on Lap 102. Newgarden followed one lap later. They’d have an intense battle for what they thought would be the lead when it cycled back. Dixon had other thoughts in mind.

They were going to run this stint long too. It was a worry for him, but they tried it out anyhow.

“Yeah, there was definitely some tense moments,” Dixon admitted. “I think probably the hardest part was the restart where we were leading, having to get a pretty high fuel number. We weren’t getting it. We were a ways off.

“But I knew we could kind of stress that kind of second through fifth pack, get them into a pretty vulnerable situation. I knew once we caught the back markers we’d be able to save and get beyond the fuel mileage that we needed to. It actually worked out perfectly. We were able to go further and beyond where we needed to.”

Dixon credited Honda for that fuel mileage while doing so.

“To get the car in the zone, obviously the pace was still good, we could maintain almost a flat-out pace, but get almost, I don’t know, one mpg higher than you would regularly,” Dixon continued.

“It was pretty special. Obviously a team effort. There were definitely times, especially when we got to the red tire as well, I don’t think it’s going to last. We kind of got stuck with a couple back markers there and lost touch with the 28 car at that point. Was feeling a little bit miserable.

“But we were still the only ones that were going to the windows that we needed to.”

Then, the caution flag for Takuma Sato finding the Turn 2 wall occurred and now Dixon was in control. Even so, Dixon felt like they were going to outsmart the field whether the caution flew or not.

“Luckily that caution helped us a little bit. It probably didn’t really matter,” he said. “I don’t think it mattered if we had that or not. I think the race would have continued on fine otherwise anyway.”

That’s because he was saving enough fuel to still make a 3 stopper work. Everyone else was on the 4 stop strategy and then with the caution, they were now on the same cycle as Dixon. They all hit pit road on Lap 126.

Dixon was still saving fuel. O’Ward and Newgarden didn’t feel like they’d make it on one more stop so they cut the final half of the race in half.

O’Ward would pit on Lap 164 then with 54 to go. Dixon only pit one more time on Lap 196.

“Yeah, Scott Dixon decided to do a Dixon today,” O’Ward said. “Whenever they told me, He’s going to try to make it without stopping again, the guy’s going to do it for sure. He just does it. He’s just Scott Dixon, you know? I feel like that’s what he’s best known for.

“He knows how to do it better than anybody with a great combination that he has with his team and car and everything. It’s a bummer that we weren’t even close to kind of even race him.”

Dixon would beat O’Ward by 22.2256-seconds as just he and Malukas were the only three cars on the lead lap at the end.

He pit two less times in the 250 lap race than the others. With 3 stops on pit lane, O’Ward had 5.

Then, in the season finale, on a day that it seemed like no one wanted to win, Scott Dixon did Scott Dixon things once again and scored his 56th career NTT INDYCAR SERIES victory in Sunday’s Firestone Grand Prix of Monterey.

Dixon overcame a grid penalty for an engine problem suffered with mileage in the morning warmup, then an avoidable contact penalty from a first lap incident to come from behind to score his third win in the last four races of the season. He was winless in the first 13 races.

“Yeah, it was a wild day. I think as McLaughlin was commenting, I think he had a drive-through penalty as well. Race control was drive-through penalty, pretty happy today,” Dixon said.

“I think the morning kind of was tough, just to start off with a bit of a failure, then obviously getting a grip penalty wasn’t the way you wanted to start the day.

“I think we had done a good job in qualifying, which would have put us in a good spot to obviously fight for the lead on more of a straightforward race.

“As we had seen in the last kind of two or three days, even in the practice sessions, it’s been a lot of cars falling off track. I figured that the race was either going to go green to checkered or have a bunch of yellows. We had the yellows.

“The restarts were very tough. Kind of between 10 and 11 the way they would check up was difficult to get your space right. There were a lot of crashes in the last corner unfortunately with some restarts. I remember even being three-wide with Pedersen and Armstrong. I think that’s when Armstrong spun as well when he was on the outside.

“It was a tough race. But worked out for us. Strategy, we just tried to keep it simple, kind of working from the back end of the race. I was definitely shocked to see the 5 and the 28 pit when they did. I knew after that we had a really fast car, even with some of the damage we kind of had from the contact with the 21 on the start.

“All in all, great day. It’s nice to rebound like we did. Definitely some heated moments throughout the race. Pretty pissed off at times. It’s always nice to finish the year like that.”

Dixon’s pursuit to the win was a perfect path. He pit on Lap 7 for fuel only. Then he served his penalty on Lap 13. Four laps later, he pit for tires for the first time. He’d pit again on Lap 38 to go off strategy.

Meanwhile, it was looking like Alex Palou and Pato O’Ward was going to be the ones to beat. They ran 1-2 and had a commanding hold for the top two spots. That’s why Dixon elected to pit with others under the fourth caution of the day to do something different.

He lucked out with the Lap 57 caution for Devlin DeFrancesco and David Malukas in Turn 3. At the time, O’Ward was on pit road. Palou had yet to pit.

It was looking like it was a perfect storm for O’Ward. Palou would have to pit from the lead under caution and drop to 15th. O’Ward would cycle to the lead.

“Yeah, it was an interesting race,” said Palou. “Lots of action honestly. Started fifth. Knew that there was going to be some drama on the first couple of laps. I was lucky that I was out of the first lap incident in turn two.

“From there, honestly we just had a lot of pace. Was able to overtake Felix, just get a gap. The car was amazing. I thought our strategy was amazing, as well. It was also hard to judge the yellows. Like, we couldn’t really predict what was going to happen.

“That yellow hurt us, I think it was third or fourth yellow. It hurt us a lot. We had to drop back to like 15th. We were on a bad spot.”

That ended up being a detriment to O’Ward though too. They pit for reds knowing that they still needed 1 more stop to make it until the end. So did everyone else so they felt at that point like they were fine. He just needed to build a big enough gap on the restart to stay ahead.

He never got the chance.

Two straight cautions on restart negated his advantage. With needing to pit for the alternate tires still, even with fuel save, he’d have to pit.

On the second to last restart, Dixon sat in 9th. He’d move all the way up to third. Then, the final caution on Lap 75 for Helio Castroneves and Colton Herta in Turn 3 occurred.

O’Ward would have to pit then ruining his chances of a win. Ironically enough, if he was on the Firestone alternate tires by now, he’d have made it to the end.

Palou pit two laps later and did.

Dixon now up front and good on fuel, never looked back en route to the win. He held off Scott McLaughlin, Palou, Will Power and Callum Ilott on a wild incident filled day that saw so many caution laps the pace car needed refueling.