As season openers go, the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg was a sloppy, disjointed 100-lap contest on the streets of St Petersburg, FL, a 1.8-mile, 14-corner circuit that encompasses the city’s municipal Albert Whitted Airport together with concrete-and-tire-lined city streets.
It began with a red flag on the first lap, had flying cars in two of the five caution periods, saw leaders take one another out and some impressive races by those that are either normally at the rear or midfield. With a bunch of “musical chairs” over the long off-season, too long in this writer’s opinion, with drivers, team members and engineering talent changing squads, it made telling one from the other (there were a pile of sponsor changes as well) a bit more of a challenge.
INDYCAR really doesn’t give teams and drivers much of a chance to practice these days. The series’ “spring training” took place the first Thursday and Friday of February, while teams were allowed protracted testing on their own. This is tough for rookies, of course, but also for those that have changed teams, as cited above. At St Petersburg, there was a single practice on Friday afternoon, a Saturday morning practice, qualifying that afternoon, a half-hour warm-up on Sunday morning and a 12:30PM ET start to the 100-lap season starter.
Was everyone anxious to get started? It sure looked that way with a massive pileup in the third turn after a green-flag start, a popular place to crash over the weekend. The multi-car crash, with Andretti Autosport’s Devlin DeFrancesco flying over some of the others collected in this melee – both Meyer Shank Racing Hondas for Simon Pagenaud (making his 200th start) and four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Hello Castroneves, Santino Ferrucci in A.J. Foyt’s Chevy-powered Dallara, rookie Sting Ray Robb driving for Dale Coyne Racing with Rick Ware Racing (Honda) and the second Foyt entry for rookie Benjamin Pedersen – unfortunately set the tone for this race. INDYCAR wisely threw a red flag to clean up this mess.
Pole man Romain Grosjean of Andretti Autosport led from the green flags and was hounded by Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin, who won this race from pole last year. Those two would lead the most laps (McLaughlin led 37 while Grosjean was at the front for 31), with Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward the next highest lap leader. O’Ward drove a tidy race for the most part and showed that he is the nominal leader of this reconstituted team, which added Alexander Rossi, moving over to Chevy power from Andretti Autosport, where he’s driven Honda cars since he arrived in the series in 2016, earning the 100th Indianapolis 500 win but never truly excelling with Andretti’s outfit. Felix Rosenqvist in the third Arrow McLaren racer had a tough day that ended after the race’s halfway point.
The second caution occurred when Ed Carpenter Racing’s Conor Daly was punted into the ninth turn wall, requiring a four-lap clean-up, while the third yellow came out when Rinus Veejay (Ed Carpenter Racing Chevy), Kyle Kirkwood (Andretti Autosport Honda) and Jack Harvey (Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing – RLLR – Honda) tangled in the fourth turn. Kirkwood vaulted Harvey and the Briton was taken to hospital in “an abundance of caution” to make sure he was okay – he was. Because of Harvey’s problems, that yellow period was extended to seven laps.
Two laps after the third caution ended, another one occurred when Team Penske’s reigning champ Will Power pushed Colton Herta into the eighth-turn wall, a four-lap cleanup. The most egregious caution was the final one when the two leaders of the 27-car pack – McLaughlin and Grosjean – got together after the fourth turn, both going into the tires there. McLaughlin had just exited the pits after making his final scheduled pit stop and came out ahead of the Frenchman. Neither driver was willing to give way but it was Grosjean who stayed parked in the fourth turn tires while McLaughlin was able to return to the pits and would finish as the first of two cars a lap down in 13th place.
Their contretemps gave the lead to O’Ward and he was running well and putting space between himself and Chip Ganassi Racing’s Marcus Ericsson and Scott Dixon. Then on the 97th lap, the Mexican driver had a brief fire in the plenum, he said, and the Swede swung past to take the lead and, eventually the race, his fourth series victory and third on a street course. Ericsson won the 106th Indianapolis 500 last May and helped Ganassi’s team to its 124th INDYCAR victory this time around. O’Ward would be a dejected second while Dixon would finish on the podium, his 132nd time appearing in Victory Lane, tying Mario Andretti for the most top-five results in series history.
Behind this trio, who finished less than three seconds apart after 100 laps, came Rossi’s debut for Arrow McLaren,k Callum Ilott in Juncos Hollinger’s Chevy, Graham Rahal in RLLR’s Honda-powered car, Will Power for Team Penske, Alex Palou in the third Ganassi car, Christian Lundgaard in the third RLLR entry and David Malukas for Dale Coyne Racing with HMD Racing’s Honda-powered car. The first rookie to complete this race was Marcus Armstrong of New Zealand, driving for Chip Ganassi Racing on road/street courses, while Juncos Hollinger’s Agustin Canapino, making his first open-wheel start was the final driver to complete the full distance.
Every single race that Ericsson has won with Ganassi has been marred by a red flag, but the driver doesn’t think that really had anything to do with his success on Sunday. He was pleased with the result, of course and believes the team’s success “shows all the hard work we put in this off-season as a team. I’ve been focusing a lot on qualifying (he started fourth after making the Firestone Fast Six shootout) trying to be better there and improve our qualifying form. This is a great start to that and to the season,” Ericsson said.
“I feel bad for Pato, for having the issue, but that’s racing. You need to get there to the finish line. We were having such a good weekend; the car was fantastic all the way through. We were hunting him down, putting the pressure on, and that’s when things happen. It was a great start to the season,” he confirmed.
O’Ward spent much of the post-race press conference with his head in his hands, not believing the turn of events that cost him the first race win of the 17-contest campaign. “We did everything right today,” he said. “It’s just always something. The team deserved that… compared to where we were last year here, we took a massive step. We gave that one away. We can’t have the happen anymore,” the disappointed driver said from his runner-up slot.
Six-time INDYCAR champ Dixon confirmed the view that this was, in his opinion, “A wild race and glad everybody’s okay. I think how the cautions fell played to us, until the untimely one where we clearly would have got the lead and I think it would have been smooth sailing, Third place is fantastic here, considering how the day was. Huge credit to the team and congrats to Marcus, they did a hell of a job. We’ll take the points and move on to Texas.”
The NTT INDYCAR SERIES has the balance of the month to lick wounds, do some testing (Meyer Shank was at Barber Motorsports Park the day after St Petersburg and then goes to Sebring for the IMSA 12-hour contest) and get ready for the first oval race of the season, the PPG 375 on Sunday, April 2nd, taking place on the banked, 1.5-mile oval at Texas Motor Speedway.
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