Team Penske Dominates Detroit IndyCar Weekend

No matter how you care to slice it, the weekend’s IndyCar Grand Prix of Detroit was a roaring success for Roger Penske. Not only did his star drivers Will Power (Saturday) and Helio Castroneves (Sunday) drive to victory in the weekend’s two feature races, but Penske, promoter of the Motor City street circuit event, saw perfect weather, big crowds and better racing than perhaps ever before on the bumpy course on Belle Isle, the picturesque island that sits in the Detroit River, halfway between the United States and Canada.

You know things are going well when the title sponsor of your event announces midway through that they’re renewing their commitment to an event that, quite frankly, wasn’t exactly guaranteed to be a slam-bam success when Roger Penske, not a man accustomed to failure in business or on the racetrack, resurrected it in 2012.

Fast-forward three years, and IndyCar fans, media and drivers alike are just about falling over themselves in hailing the Detroit as one of the best events on the Verizon IndyCar Series calendar. 

Not for the first time, Roger Penske has pulled a rabbit out of the hat. The Detroit metro Chevrolet dealers play a big part in putting on a successful event, which has done wonders to revitalise the beleaguered city, and to bring in plenty of tourist dollars. Most importantly, the Detroit GP’s success proves that there are still many IndyCar fans in Michigan. This event can only get bigger.

Following on from a dramatic finish to the Tudor United Sports Car Championship race on Saturday, it was the turn of the IndyCar Series to put on a show of it’s own. By the end of the day, Roger Penske would have yet another reason to smile. His driver, Power, stormed from the eighth row of the grid, no mean feat on the tight confines of the Belle Isle circuit, where those car-destroying concrete walls are never far away, to the front.

Ironically, Power, mixing speed with a good (alternate) strategy and the timely intervention of caution flags, took the lead from fellow Australian Ryan Briscoe on Lap 60. It’s worth noting that Briscoe and Power, despite being countrymen, haven’t been particularly good friends, stemming from an incident late in last week’s Indianapolis 500.

The last ten laps were Power’s to dominate, though it wasn’t an easy run to the checkers, not with Graham Rahal’s National Guard machine just a few car lengths behind. Rahal, enjoying by far the best run of his to-date frustrating 2014 season, kept Power honest over the closing laps, and finished an encouraging second place after an uneven beginning to his National Guard sponsorship.

Ultimately on Saturday, the driver who dominated almost from the drop of the green, Indianapolis 500 runner-up Castroneves – he led thirty of the seventy laps – came home a disappointing fifth, victory snatched away by ill-timed caution flags, the same ones that aided Power. The personable Brazilian would have to wait twenty-four hours for redemption.

And how sweet it was. Castroneves led thirty five of the seventy laps, stretching his lead to more than thirteen seconds at one point – it was a case of Helio first, daylight second – before a series of late-race cautions brought him back to the field. Even so, Castroneves took the win, his nineteenth IndyCar Series, which is good enough to tie him with the great Rick Mears, still a Team Penske employee, on the all-time win list.

The way Helio is driving at the moment, there’s no reason to think that he won’t climb much higher before his career comes to an end. He came incredibly close to winning at Indianapolis last weekend, barely a nose-cone behind Ryan Hunter-Reay (whose Detroit weekend was a miserable one, finishing 16^th and 19^th respectively), probably should have won on Saturday, and was the dominant man on Sunday. Not bad for a thirty-nine-year-old.

After rising American star Rahal finished second on Saturday, there was good news for another one of the home-grown IndyCar drivers, with Charlie Kimball finishing third on Sunday, the best of the powerhouse Chip Ganassi Racing squad. IndyCar needs big American stars to combat so many in NASCAR. A week after Ryan Hunter-Reay won the Indianapolis 500, local drivers seem to be enjoying a resurgence. That is music to IndyCar's ears.

Incredibly, New Zealander Scott Dixon, driving the Target car for Ganassi, started dead last, twenty-second on the grid, and powered home for a fourth-place finish, and vital championship points. Coming from so far back on the tight Detroit circuit, which will lose it’s famous and brutal bumps during a re-pave of Belle Isle in time for next year’s event.

Despite drawing a penalty for an opening-lap collision with Josef Newgarden, Power managed to rebound and finish in second. That preserves his slim Verizon IndyCar Series points lead, narrowly ahead of Castroneves, as the championship switches gears and heads for the lightning-fast 1.5-mile Texas Motor Speedway for the Firestone 600, a night race on the high-banked speedway outside of Fort Worth that is, usually, one of the highlights of the year in front of a big crowd.

A win on the big oval in Texas would be a giant step forward for Power’s championship aspirations.