IndyCar Does Texas and Survives
The NTT IndyCar Series has been out of the public’s eye for nearly nine months, after ending the 2019 season on the WeatherTech Laguna Seca Raceway road course last September 22. The Indy cars were finally back on-track June 6 on one of its most challenging tracks: Texas Motor Speedway.
Originally scheduled to be the second contest following May’s 104th Indianapolis 500, the Genesys 300-mile race now served as a season starter, due to the preponderance of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus that has upended the world as we’ve known it.
A lot was on the line for the Indy cars in its network NBC debut on a Saturday night, a night after folks nationwide were enjoined in heart-felt protests over the death of unarmed George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis’ police department. By earning an overnight audience estimate of more than 1.4-million viewers, it would seem the idea of putting this race on free-to-air television was one of the smarter things INDYCAR and NBC have done.
Even though the event was a single-day affair, had zero fans in official attendance (condo owners had their own watch parties from the safety of their trackside homes), only 20 team members per car were in attendance, a dearth of media – there were four reporters onsite – aside from the series’ own PR/photography staff and PR for teams (who were included in that 20-member count), and a new set of aerodynamic and safety measures that were untested in competition, they put on a good show.
There were mishaps that occurred before and after the green flags, but this was pretty darn good competition. Granted it was a race-craft lesson taught by winner Scott Dixon, the five-time INDYCAR champion, 47-race winner and continual thorn in every other competitor’s hide. The New Zealander showed the way for everyone, leading 157 laps, and would have run away with the contest – as he did throughout the 200-lap race – had his Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Felix Rosenqvist not crashed with 10 to go.
While two of Team Penske’s trio found the podium in this race, it wasn’t a stellar run for them, as both second-placed Simon Pagenaud and Josef Newgarden, on the third step of the podium, spoke throughout about vibrations in their car. It makes one wonder whether the addition of the Red Bull Advanced Technologies (RBAT) Aeroscreen’s weight really changed the handling of the cars that much, or whether the lack of new Firestone rubber assisted in their difficulties. There was very little discussion about vibrations from other teams.
INDYCAR did allow pit stop practice, as they usually do, after the single practice session, but it appeared a lot of teams felt the layoff, as there were quite a few right-rear problems during pit stop exchanges.
As this was the first race of the year, the wisdom of having only a single practice, qualifying and a 200-lap race in a single day is questionable policy. Ovals are not very forgiving and, for that reason we didn’t get to watch the always-exciting 2018 Indy 500 winner Takuma Sato in action on Saturday night. He had a big smacker in qualifying and the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLLR) team was unable to get the car repaired and through tech in time to start engines and race.
The Genesys 300 was an impound race, which didn’t allow mechanics to touch the cars from the end of qualifying until it was time to start engines. Sato’s teammate Graham Rahal, Alexander Rossi and former Indy and series champ Ryan Hunter-Reay of Andretti Autosport had non-starting cars on the grid and lost laps before they could join the balance of what became a 23-car field. Rahal finished 17th, two laps down, while both Rossi (15th) and Hunter-Reay in eighth place clawed back from their issues.
Again, we get no Indy cars until the July 4th weekend, when the first road-course race on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) property takes place just past noon on Independence Day. The race will be held without fans in attendance, too, even though IMS can handle at least 100,000 with social distancing. As INDYCAR and NASCAR top-tier series are sharing the track for this weekend – for the first time in either circuit’s history – it would have been best to have fans in attendance.
Chalk that lack of fan attendance up to Indianapolis’ Mayor Joe Hogsett, even though the track resides in the town of Speedway. Neither the track nor the two sanctioning bodies is challenging his edict but, in my opinion a challenge would be a good idea.
By Anne Proffit