What a difference a week makes. That was probably what Scott Dixon was thinking as the Queensland-born New Zealander drove his Target Chip Ganassi Chevrolet into Victory Lane at the Texas Motor Speedway after 600 kilometres of racing around the 1.5-mile high-banked oval. Dixon’s second win of the season (he also took the checkers at the prestigious Grand Prix of Long Beach back on April) was a dominating one, and his greatest competition was in the form of his teammate, Tony Kanaan.
Saturday night’s Firestone 600, run on a hot and humid Texas evening at a near-record pace, was a Ganassi Racing benefit, with Dixon leading Kanaan home after a wheel-to-wheel battle for most of the race’s final third. It was also a chance for the big drivers and Big Three teams in IndyCar – Ganassi’s squad, Team Penske and Andretti Autosport – to really flex their muscles. The top seven finishers were from those three powerhouse teams, all of whom sent fairly ominous message.
Seven days earlier, in the first of two water-logged races around the unforgiving Belle Isle street circuit in downtown Detroit, the story was completely different. Yes, an Andretti Autosport driver won, but the breakthrough IndyCar win for Carlos Munoz came more thanks to a good strategy call than outright speed, with the race called due to extreme weather in the area, with Munoz still at the pointy end. It was one of those races where all hell seemed to break loose. Someone described it as a bruising encounter post-race, and it’s hard to disagree.
Detroit has a history of providing interesting races, even considering the tight confines of the street circuit on Belle Isle, an island sitting in the river, about halfway between Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario – but in America – and the Sunday race was no exception.
With weather in the area again, all kinds of craziness happened. Dixon was punted by his teammate, Charlie Kimball, Power was touched by Tristan Vautier, and then collided with his Penske colleague, Helio Castroneves, scratching two of The Captain’s cars, and surely bringing tears to Roger’s eyes. He doesn’t mind his guys racing, but when they wreck and take each other out, that’s a different story altogether,
Wet weather is always the great equaliser in racing, changing the entire tenor of an event, from both a speed and a strategy standpoint, and it’s particularly the case when drivers from smaller teams, who don’t have the same money or manufacturer support to fight with the Penske’s and Ganassi’s of the world, get up and take a win. It’s great seeing the underdogs pop up and win these races..
A final five-minute sprint in a race that became a timed event because of so much rain-induced carnage saw Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais, a veteran of all kinds of wet-weather racing, grab the win, with A.J. Foyt’s Takuma Sato in second. American Graham Rahal, himself from a one-car team, was third, and Dale Coyne Racing’s Tristan Vautier fourth. Coyne’s operation is the epitome of an under-funded team, basically announcing their driver line-up on the morning of the first practice day of the season.
The IndyCar Series has passed it’s halfway mark, the points championship now seems an exclusive battle between Penske’s Juan Pablo Montoya and Australian Will Power and Ganassi’s Dixon. We’ve long been accustomed to seeing these two squads engaged in thrilling championship duels, and 2015 should be no different.
The stretch run to the IndyCar championship begins this weekend on the streets of Toronto, Canada.
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