A short-track Saturday night race in the American heartland delivered a dramatic race as the IndyCar Series enters the final four-event stretch to the championship. Here are the major talking points from a busy weekend in corn country:
Master of Iowa
Ryan Hunter-Reay, driving for Michael Andretti, ended a
winless streak stretching out towards twelve months, giving Honda it’s second
win in three races after Graham Rahal won two races back at Auto Club Speedway
in Fontana, California. RHR, an Indianapolis 500 winner and IndyCar Series
champion, won for the third time at Iowa Speedway and for the second straight
year, and I can’t remember a more timely victory for the Floridian.
Andretti Autosport have been behind the times as far as
developing their Honda engine this season, and Honda itself has lagged way
behind those teams running Chevrolet engines, and RHR’s triumph represents a
much-needed shot in the arm for team – Andretti Autosport has won six straight at
Iowa – and engine manufacturer, not to mention driver.
Will Power once labelled Hunter-Reay as the most rounded
driver in the IndyCar Series, and I definitely subscribe to that theory. The
sad thing is that RHR just hasn’t had the car to do his driving talent justice
this year, leading just three total laps coming in here. Hopefully Honda can improve
on their package for 2016, and the Andretti group, one of IndyCar’s Big Three
along with Penske and Ganassi, can be serious championship contenders again.
Championship Points
Race
We’ve marvelled at Juan Pablo Montoya’s consistency all
season. Even his bad days aren’t bad, but this Saturday night was a disaster
for the only man to sit atop the IndyCar Series points standings in 2015. Not
even twenty laps in, and the Colombian was hard into the wall and immediately
out of the race.
It was supposed to be good news for Helio Castroneves and
Scott Dixon, the two other drivers in the championship hunt, but late race restarts
doomed Castroneves, who came home in eleventh on a night when he needed much
more in order to peg JPM’s points lead back a little. For Dixon, a late-race
pit stop became terminal and he finished at the back of the field.
Graham Rahal, third place in points coming in, had a forgettable
night, stalling an engine on a pit stop and went down laps due to running over
crash debris. But the second-generation star drove like a man possessed late in
the race, took advantage of some timely caution periods, and roared back to
fourth.
This race was supposed to be an absolute disaster for Montoya,
but the upshot is that JPM has a forty-two point lead with three races left in
2015.
Great Racing
The aero package IndyCar has for the short ovals is
perfect. We saw a great race at Milwaukee six days ago and another at Iowa.
There was more side-by-side racing than you could poke a stick at but,
crucially, there was none of the dangerous pack racing that we saw a lot of at
Fontana. The last twenty laps tonight were as good as any we’ve seen all
season.
Ganassi Struggles
Other than rookie Sage Karam, who came home third, the
powerhouse Chip Ganassi squad had an uncharacteristically bad night. Scott
Dixon finished in eighteenth, Tony Kanaan in twenty-first and Charlie Kimball
in twenty-second. Expect a rebound from these guys at Mid-Ohio.
Even Field
Ryan Hunter-Reay became the ninth different winner in
thirteen races this season. He and Sage Karam become the seventeenth and
eighteenth drivers to stand on the podium. I can’t recall a better and more
even IndyCar Series field than we have in 2015. It’s such a shame that the
season has just three races left in it.
Stars and Stripes
Success
What a day for American drivers in the American heartland!
The Iowa Corn 300 saw a memorable 1-2-3-4 finish for local-born drivers, with Hunter-Reay
leading Josef Newgarden, Sage Karam and Graham Rahal home. Saturday night was easily
the best night for American IndyCar drivers in recent memory, and continues a season
in which we’ve seen Americans Newgarden, Rahal and now Hunter-Reay visit
victory lane.
Short Track, Short
Tempers
In something approaching a post-race NASCAR scuffle that
we see at Bristol or Martinsville, Ed Carpenter and Sage Karam were involved
heatedly on pit road. The two were involved in some close racing in the last
twenty laps, which Carpenter objected to – we saw him give a one-fingered
salute to Karam at one stage at about 150mph – and that boiled over after the
race, with Carpenter stalking pit road, looking for his fellow American.
Whilst we don’t want drivers coming to blows, a little
more aggro between drivers isn’t a bad thing. IndyCar drivers seem too nice to
each other most of the time. People like to see rivalry on the track, and,
certainly, the confrontation between Karam and Carpenter is going to make news
around the world, and IndyCar certainly won’t mind that!
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