We’re through one round in the 2016 Stanley Cup playoffs, and, as we get set for some very intriguing semi-final contests, here are the big talking points from the conference quarter finals:
Washington
For mine, the Caps are the best remaining team in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and have launched into what promises to be a titanic struggle with Pittsburgh for a berth in the Eastern Conference Finals. TJ Oshie, who had just one goal coming into Game One of the Penguins series scored a hat-trick including the overtime game winner to give Washington an early advantage in a series that is so much more than Ovechkin vs. Crosby.
Finally, Washington’s passionate fans have a team that won’t promise so much in the regular season and flame out spectacularly and brutally in the playoffs (see my thoughts on the Anaheim Ducks below for further context) and finally Barry Trotz, long a great coach with a mediocre-at-best roster in Nashville, has a hockey team that can take him all the way.
The Capitals were perhaps guilty of taking their foot off the pedal a little after going up three games against Philadelphia, but managed to right the ship and oust the Flyers, earning themselves a nice break before the Pittsburgh series. From Braden Holtby in net, through their strong defensive corps (anchored so well by Brooks Orpik and John Carlson) to the big-name forwards like Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom, there’s an awful lot to like about the 2015-16 Washington Capitals, and I believe that this might just be their year. Not, however, without a six- or seven-game series against Crosby and the Penguins.
Anaheim
Fresh off a Game Seven loss to Nashville in a series where Anaheim talisman Corey Perry couldn’t find the net to save his life, the Ducks fired Bruce Boudreau despite the former Washington head man having delivered four straight Pacific Division titles in his tenure at the Honda Centre. That isn’t enough, of course, and Boudreau’s teams in Anaheim resembled his teams in Washington: very good in the regular season, and putrid in the playoffs.
Let’s be honest here: Boudreau deserved to be fired. A team with the likes of Corey Perry, Ryan Getzlaf, Cam Fowler and Ryan Kessler should be better than they are. Not to take anything away from Nashville, but the Ducks are too good a team – on paper, at least – to be exiting so often in the early rounds of the playoffs.
Worse is how it happened. The Ducks were up 3-2 in the series and managed to lose the sixth and seventh games. That’s exactly how things went the previous three years, too. In 2013, 2014 and 2015, the Ducks held a 3-2 series lead entering the sixth game, poised to advance, and instead mailed it in, and were bundled out. Coach killing material, that.
So, another coaching change in Anaheim, and a long summer during which the front office will probably make some moves in order to get what is, at it’s core, a team that should be challenging for Stanley Cup championships regularly, out of the first round. Hard to see Boudreau getting a top-flight coaching opportunity anytime soon, either.
Chicago
When Brent Seabrook’s presumptive game leveler bounced off both upright pipes and somehow remained outside the St Louis goal, you knew the Blackhawks weren’t going to win Game Seven and advance. Finally, the playoff survivors, experts at clawing back from seemingly impossible positions to win games and series, have suffered a first-round exit, and, given the astronomically high expectations in Chicago, 2015-16 will be seen as a failed campaign.
Ultimately, there will be a new Stanley Cup champion this year – which can only be a good thing for the NHL as a whole – and the Blackhawks will have a summer to retool, and it will be interesting to see where the front office decides it needs assistance, and what sort of free agency acquisitions are made to plug those gaps. I expect the ‘Hawks will be right back amongst it next year. With the core of Toews, Kane, Hossa, Seabrook, Keith and Crawford returning, you’d be crazy to bet against them.
San Jose
Another team famous for great regular seasons and terrible playoff campaigns looked really good in their comprehensive series win over the Los Angeles Kings. Everyone is playing well, the power play is incredibly lethal at the moment, and there’s a real chance that the Sharks, if things progress the way they did in the first round, will be Western Conference champions.
You know all those guys who get maligned for going missing in playoffs? Thornton, Pavelski, Marleau and co? Well, they’re all producing. The two Joe’s have been immense, and it’s grat to see a good guy in Patrick Marleau finally living up to his regular season form. Brent Burns, the bearded defenceman, had eight goals in five games against the Kings, and suddenly looms as a massive offensive threat from the blue line.
Nashville will be a sturdy test for the Sharks squad, who appear to have bought completely into what head coach Peter DeBoer is selling. One question for me is goaltending: we’ll see whether Martin Jones, who didn’t have much to do against the Kings, can stand up to a sustained playoff run, but signs are good – and I wouldn’t want to be catching the Sharks at the moment.
Pittsburgh
After firing their coach early in the year, the Penguins have stormed back into contention, led by the guys you knew would eventually catch fire – Crosby, Malkin, Kessel – and wasted little time in ousting the New York Rangers, doing so behind two back-up goalies, and managing to chase Henrik Lundqvist from his net three times. That’s basically unheard of in recent times.
The question is whether the Pens can continue this run. Obviously, relying on back-up goalies whilst Marc-Andre Fleury recovers from concussion issues, is dicey in the playoffs, and their second-round opponents, Washington, aren’t as offensively anaemic as the Rangers were, but, even so, the turnaround from early-season disasters to second-round playoff combatants has been nothing short of impressive.
New York Islanders
John Tavares is officially the (hockey) king of New York City after a scintillating first-round performance against the Florida Panthers. Is there anything the captain of the oft-maligned Islanders franchise can’t do? Not based on the first round series victory – or the Isles’ dominating win over Tampa Bay in the first game of their second-round match-up.
It’s a good time to be an Islander fan. As a Rangers fan, it pains me to say it, but the Isles have a very good team, with depth and talent at all levels, beginning with Thomas Greiss in goals. Their defensive stocks haven’t been this high in a decade, with Johnny Boychuk, Travis Hamonic and Nick Leddy all arguably matching career-best form. And, up front, the Isles have Tavares, Strome and Okposo playing well.
Ominously for Tampa fans, the Islanders have chased goalie Ben Bishop from his net in both of their last two meetings, including the first game of their semi-final series. Bishop let in four goals on thirteen shots in the 5-3 loss, and is 1-3 in four starts against Jack Capuano’s men in 2015-16. With, importantly, a 5.00 goals against average. For whatever reason, the Isles have his number.
I really think we’ll be seeing a Washington/New York Islanders match-up in the Eastern Conference Finals.
Enjoy the second round, hockey fans!
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Monday, April 18, 2016
2016 IndyCar Series: Grand Prix of Long Beach Talking Points
Long Beach – it’s IndyCar’s version of Monaco, except it’s about twenty times as rough as the Formula One circuit around the streets of Monte Carlo, and you can actually make legitimate on-track passes. Aside from the Indianapolis 500, the Grand Prix of Long Beach, forty-two years old in 2016, is the race drivers want to win.
All the legends of the sport have triumphed on the streets of Long Beach: Al Unser Junior, Mario Andretti, Michael Andretti, Alex Zanardi, Juan Pablo Montoya and, most recently, Scott Dixon. It’s rarefied company, and for one weekend every April, twenty-one hungry IndyCar drivers try to add their name to the record books.
It was a big weekend in sunny southern California, and here’s all you need to know from the 2016 Grand Prix of Long Beach:
The Race
For the first time since Mid-Ohio in 2013, an IndyCar race went flag to flag without any yellow flag interruption, and when the dust settled, it was Frenchman Simon Pagenaud who triumphed, earning his first win in his second season with Roger Penske’s squad, and giving Penske his sixth Long Beach victory.
Pagenaud’s victory was not without a tinge of controversy – it wouldn’t be an IndyCar race without some controversy – as he left the pits after his final stuff, edging ahead of New Zealander Scott Dixon only after crossing over the blend line with three wheels.
That’s a no-no, and Pagenaud was in the hands of IndyCar’s notoriously random Race Control. Anything was possible: a warning, a pit lane pass through, a stop-go penalty or even a stop and hold. In the end, and to the dismay of many in the paddock, and particularly the second-placed Dixon (not to mention his strategist, Mike Hull), Pagenaud was given only a warning.
That, as they say, was all she wrote, and Pagenaud, a Frenchman who had impressed for years on smaller teams and was decidedly underwhelming in 2015, his first go-around with the powerhouse Team Penske, held off Dixon by 0.3 seconds – the closest finish in Long Beach Grand Prix history. Pagenaud increases his hold on top spot in the championship heading to Barber Motorsports Park in seven days’ time. Their duel over the last twenty laps of the race was one for the ages. Dixon very nearly got Pagenaud on the last circuit, in what was a grandstand finish worthy of the event.
IndyCar released a statement after the race, indicating that Pagenaud had indeed broken the rules (Rule 7.10.1.1. regarding "Lane Usage") and Race Control was well in their rights to hand down any penalty from a warning to the stop-and-hold. IndyCar did what they thought was correct, and there will doubtless be plenty of discussion in the coming days.
Brazilian Helio Castroneves, who led more than half the race (47 of the 80 laps), was a distant third, finishing ten seconds back, giving Roger Penske a 1-3 finish in the sport’s second-biggest race. Australia’s Will Power, a two-time winner at Long Beach, finished seventh.
For the first time since 2011, every car completed the race distance and made it to the finish in only the fourth caution-free Long Beach Grand Prix in history.
Honda’s Struggles Continue
Another weekend, another horror story for Honda – and this narrative is fast becoming the big story of 2016. There were must two Honda-powered teams in the top twelve (Japan’s Takuma Sato in fifth, and Canadian James Hinchcliffe, who finished eighth) and even perennial Long Beach contender Ryan Hunter-Reay had a race to forget, finishing way back in eighteenth.
Exactly how bad are Honda runners? Well, there’ve been 440 laps of racing so far in the 2016 IndyCar Series season, and Chevrolet teams have absolutely and completely dominated, leading 422 of those laps. Honda teams have led a combined 18. Miserable reading if your name is Michael Andretti, whose cars finished 12th, 18th, 19th and 20th, spectacularly off the pace.
Andretti Autosport, you might remember, is Honda’s top team and the fact that they have consistently been out-performed by smaller Honda teams like Bobby Rahal’s Rahal-Letterman-Lanigan Racing and Schmidt Peterson Motorsports, (and, this weekend, even AJ Foyt’s squad), is nothing short of flabbergasting. They should, as a multi-car squad with close ties to the Honda factory, be significantly better than they are.
One thing is for certain: if there isn’t some sort of rapid improvement, both the 100th Indianapolis 500 and the rest of the 2016 season are going to be incredibly bleak for Honda, who had a chance to close the gap to Chevrolet after being spanked last year, but inexplicably failed to do so. It's plain embarrassing now.
Strong Finishes
A good day for Takuma Sato, driving for A.J. Foyt, in what is surely the strangest owner-driver combination anywhere in motorsports. The 2013 Long Beach winner came home a strong fifth – his best result in some time. And the afore-mentioned Hinchliffe brought his SPM Honda home in eighth.
Another Amazing Long Beach Weekend
The Grand Prix of Long Beach doesn’t announce crowd totals, but those in the know say the turnout for the 2016 race was the best it’s been in years, somewhere around the 180,000 mark, including a packed Friday, which is basically unheard of.
It’s not hard to see why: beautiful weather – it hasn’t once rained on race day at Long Beach! – forty-odd years of tradition, close racing and a packed schedule that includes IMSA sports car racing and the very popular celebrity race, plus loads of off-track entertainment. It’s a perfect mix.
In the current IndyCar climate, were events come and go with startling regularity, promoters of new races, especially on temporary street circuits, should use the Long Beach weekend as a model for their own event. Jim Michaelian and his crew do a sensational job.
Short Turnaround For Teams
There’s only seven days’ between races, with the series heading south to the picturesque Barber Motorsports Park near Birmingham, Alabama next weekend. This current three-race stretch – the short oval at Phoenix, the streets at Long Beach and then a natural terrain road course at Barber – is what’s so great and challenging about IndyCar racing, and what sets the series apart from all others in global motorsports.
Oh, and the Month of May, including the 100th Indianapolis 500, is barely a month away!
All the legends of the sport have triumphed on the streets of Long Beach: Al Unser Junior, Mario Andretti, Michael Andretti, Alex Zanardi, Juan Pablo Montoya and, most recently, Scott Dixon. It’s rarefied company, and for one weekend every April, twenty-one hungry IndyCar drivers try to add their name to the record books.
It was a big weekend in sunny southern California, and here’s all you need to know from the 2016 Grand Prix of Long Beach:
The Race
For the first time since Mid-Ohio in 2013, an IndyCar race went flag to flag without any yellow flag interruption, and when the dust settled, it was Frenchman Simon Pagenaud who triumphed, earning his first win in his second season with Roger Penske’s squad, and giving Penske his sixth Long Beach victory.
Pagenaud’s victory was not without a tinge of controversy – it wouldn’t be an IndyCar race without some controversy – as he left the pits after his final stuff, edging ahead of New Zealander Scott Dixon only after crossing over the blend line with three wheels.
That’s a no-no, and Pagenaud was in the hands of IndyCar’s notoriously random Race Control. Anything was possible: a warning, a pit lane pass through, a stop-go penalty or even a stop and hold. In the end, and to the dismay of many in the paddock, and particularly the second-placed Dixon (not to mention his strategist, Mike Hull), Pagenaud was given only a warning.
That, as they say, was all she wrote, and Pagenaud, a Frenchman who had impressed for years on smaller teams and was decidedly underwhelming in 2015, his first go-around with the powerhouse Team Penske, held off Dixon by 0.3 seconds – the closest finish in Long Beach Grand Prix history. Pagenaud increases his hold on top spot in the championship heading to Barber Motorsports Park in seven days’ time. Their duel over the last twenty laps of the race was one for the ages. Dixon very nearly got Pagenaud on the last circuit, in what was a grandstand finish worthy of the event.
IndyCar released a statement after the race, indicating that Pagenaud had indeed broken the rules (Rule 7.10.1.1. regarding "Lane Usage") and Race Control was well in their rights to hand down any penalty from a warning to the stop-and-hold. IndyCar did what they thought was correct, and there will doubtless be plenty of discussion in the coming days.
Brazilian Helio Castroneves, who led more than half the race (47 of the 80 laps), was a distant third, finishing ten seconds back, giving Roger Penske a 1-3 finish in the sport’s second-biggest race. Australia’s Will Power, a two-time winner at Long Beach, finished seventh.
For the first time since 2011, every car completed the race distance and made it to the finish in only the fourth caution-free Long Beach Grand Prix in history.
Honda’s Struggles Continue
Another weekend, another horror story for Honda – and this narrative is fast becoming the big story of 2016. There were must two Honda-powered teams in the top twelve (Japan’s Takuma Sato in fifth, and Canadian James Hinchcliffe, who finished eighth) and even perennial Long Beach contender Ryan Hunter-Reay had a race to forget, finishing way back in eighteenth.
Exactly how bad are Honda runners? Well, there’ve been 440 laps of racing so far in the 2016 IndyCar Series season, and Chevrolet teams have absolutely and completely dominated, leading 422 of those laps. Honda teams have led a combined 18. Miserable reading if your name is Michael Andretti, whose cars finished 12th, 18th, 19th and 20th, spectacularly off the pace.
Andretti Autosport, you might remember, is Honda’s top team and the fact that they have consistently been out-performed by smaller Honda teams like Bobby Rahal’s Rahal-Letterman-Lanigan Racing and Schmidt Peterson Motorsports, (and, this weekend, even AJ Foyt’s squad), is nothing short of flabbergasting. They should, as a multi-car squad with close ties to the Honda factory, be significantly better than they are.
One thing is for certain: if there isn’t some sort of rapid improvement, both the 100th Indianapolis 500 and the rest of the 2016 season are going to be incredibly bleak for Honda, who had a chance to close the gap to Chevrolet after being spanked last year, but inexplicably failed to do so. It's plain embarrassing now.
Strong Finishes
A good day for Takuma Sato, driving for A.J. Foyt, in what is surely the strangest owner-driver combination anywhere in motorsports. The 2013 Long Beach winner came home a strong fifth – his best result in some time. And the afore-mentioned Hinchliffe brought his SPM Honda home in eighth.
Another Amazing Long Beach Weekend
The Grand Prix of Long Beach doesn’t announce crowd totals, but those in the know say the turnout for the 2016 race was the best it’s been in years, somewhere around the 180,000 mark, including a packed Friday, which is basically unheard of.
It’s not hard to see why: beautiful weather – it hasn’t once rained on race day at Long Beach! – forty-odd years of tradition, close racing and a packed schedule that includes IMSA sports car racing and the very popular celebrity race, plus loads of off-track entertainment. It’s a perfect mix.
In the current IndyCar climate, were events come and go with startling regularity, promoters of new races, especially on temporary street circuits, should use the Long Beach weekend as a model for their own event. Jim Michaelian and his crew do a sensational job.
Short Turnaround For Teams
There’s only seven days’ between races, with the series heading south to the picturesque Barber Motorsports Park near Birmingham, Alabama next weekend. This current three-race stretch – the short oval at Phoenix, the streets at Long Beach and then a natural terrain road course at Barber – is what’s so great and challenging about IndyCar racing, and what sets the series apart from all others in global motorsports.
Oh, and the Month of May, including the 100th Indianapolis 500, is barely a month away!
Sunday, April 3, 2016
2016 IndyCar Series: Phoenix Grand Prix Talking Points
The second weekend of racing in the 2016 IndyCar Series season took us to the Phoenix International Raceway, the fast one mile bullring that hasn’t seen an IndyCar Series race in more than a decade. Here’s what you need to know from a record-setting weekend in the desert:
The Race
A common complaint from everyone watching on television and tweeting was the lack of passing after the first half-lap following a restart. Everyone from NASCAR superstar Jimmie Johnson to retired and respected champion Dario Franchitti through to yours truly made the point, and it’s a good one. Less downforce and more horsepower is the way to go. Observations to that affect were made by a bunch of drivers but IndyCar took no notice, so the show wasn’t as good as it could have been.
The cars already rocket around the track, banking laps fifty miles faster than the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series cars were able to produce in their race on the same track earlier in the year. Make an impressive spectacle even more so: let the cars actually slice and dice. We’ve seen tremendous races on a similarly fast and short oval at Iowa, and Phoenix could be a similar type of event. Decreased downforce is likely for next year, but more horsepower appears a pipe dream.
Given passing was, at best, difficult all night, New Zealand’s Scott Dixon brought the famous Target thunderbolt scheme back to Victory Lane, giving Target Chip Ganassi Racing it’s maiden win of the season.
Once again, Dixon’s drive was cool, calm and collected. Aided by punctures to chief rivals Juan Pablo Montoya and Helio Castroneves, IndyCar’s Ice Man didn’t thaw out any in the desert, but with teammate Tony Kanaan absolutely flying in the closing stages, you wonder what might’ve happened had the race been 300 laps rather than 250. TK finished fourth, behind Dixon, Simon Pagenaud and Will Power, but was clearly the fastest driver late in the race.
The race finished under caution, and whilst there will be some people inevitably upset with that, and calling for a NASCAR-style Green-White-Checker finish, I’m no fan of that gimmick, and prefer a race that ends naturally rather than with artificial assistance.
The Crowd
Saturday night marked the first time an IndyCar race had been staged at Phoenix since Sam Hornish Jr. – remember him? – won in front of about twelve spectators back in 2005, so the reported attendance of around 17,000 is a good start. By all accounts, the racetrack was big on promotion, going all-out to let people in the Phoenix area know that the IndyCar Series was coming to town. Where IndyCar is concerned, that isn’t always a given.
Whilst it wasn’t the most entertaining race I’ve ever seen from the IndyCar Series, it was still plenty more exciting than the recent NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race, and there’s nothing like watching these cars at speed under lights. All in all, a good foundation for an event with multiple years remaining on it’s contract. It should be bigger and better in 2016 – and hopefully the series will bring the correct aero package with them.
Graham Rahal
The Honda-powered cars had a shocking qualifying on Friday, with Chevrolet teams locking out the first ten grid positions. Rahal, driving for the team his father co-owns with David Letterman, qualified a dismal nineteenth, but recovered incredibly well during the race to bring home a fifth place finish.
Rahal’s weekend mirrored many of his weekends from the 2015 IndyCar Series season, where poor qualifying runs – thanks largely to the fact that Honda runners just don’t have the power they need to post competitive lap times under qualifying conditions – were turned into solid finishes and, in some cases, race victories.
Considering the obvious disadvantage Honda runners had during qualifying, Rahal will be completely stoked with his run. Imagine what he could do if he started from inside the top ten. Honda has work to do.
It’s worth noting that Rahal was, once again, the highest finishing Honda runner, beating out the factory-supported effort of Andretti Autosport. Rahal-Letterman Racing is punching way above it’s weight, and it’s great to see!
Scott Dixon
The Queensland-born New Zealander keeps on keeping on. His Phoenix victory is the thirty-ninth of his IndyCar career, which sees him pull level with the legendary Al Unser Jr. on the list of all-time IndyCar Series winners.
Dixon is fast becoming one of the great drivers the sport has ever known. The great shame is that, because of the IndyCar/CART split and the way open-wheel racing has dropped off the map in America – except for the Indianapolis 500 – Dixon will likely never be as fondly remembered and celebrated as the likes of Rick Mears, Johnny Rutherford and others. He really should be.
Simon Pagenaud
Coming into the season, there was a feeling that Pagenaud, a big-name Penske recruit last year, needed to do big things to keep his seat from warming up. The Captain, Roger Penkse, loves winners, after all, and doesn’t suffer losing, either. Well, after two races, Pagenaud, courtesy of a second-place finish, leads the IndyCar Series championship as we head for Long Beach. The Frenchman is four points ahead of Dixon, in the early season Penske vs. Ganassi battle.
Will Power
After missing the season-opening Grand Prix of St Petersburg due to concussion symptoms, the Australian bounced back with a solid third place finish, and the nice chunk of points that comes along with that. A double-points haul – and, of course, the win – at Indianapolis in a few weeks would be great for Power’s championship aspirations.
Rookies
Max Chilton and Alexander Rossi, both running an IndyCar Series oval race for the first time, finished seventh and fourteenth respectively. Chilton, for all the social media hubbub that he was a kid from a rich family who couldn’t actually drove, proved a few doubters wrong with his composed run. Rossi, running a car mostly devoid of sponsorship, might’ve finished higher, but was penalised late. Still, a good run for the two guys at the head of IndyCar’s 2016 rookie class.
The IndyCar Series returns to action in two weekends’ time with the prestigious Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.
The Race
A common complaint from everyone watching on television and tweeting was the lack of passing after the first half-lap following a restart. Everyone from NASCAR superstar Jimmie Johnson to retired and respected champion Dario Franchitti through to yours truly made the point, and it’s a good one. Less downforce and more horsepower is the way to go. Observations to that affect were made by a bunch of drivers but IndyCar took no notice, so the show wasn’t as good as it could have been.
The cars already rocket around the track, banking laps fifty miles faster than the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series cars were able to produce in their race on the same track earlier in the year. Make an impressive spectacle even more so: let the cars actually slice and dice. We’ve seen tremendous races on a similarly fast and short oval at Iowa, and Phoenix could be a similar type of event. Decreased downforce is likely for next year, but more horsepower appears a pipe dream.
Given passing was, at best, difficult all night, New Zealand’s Scott Dixon brought the famous Target thunderbolt scheme back to Victory Lane, giving Target Chip Ganassi Racing it’s maiden win of the season.
Once again, Dixon’s drive was cool, calm and collected. Aided by punctures to chief rivals Juan Pablo Montoya and Helio Castroneves, IndyCar’s Ice Man didn’t thaw out any in the desert, but with teammate Tony Kanaan absolutely flying in the closing stages, you wonder what might’ve happened had the race been 300 laps rather than 250. TK finished fourth, behind Dixon, Simon Pagenaud and Will Power, but was clearly the fastest driver late in the race.
The race finished under caution, and whilst there will be some people inevitably upset with that, and calling for a NASCAR-style Green-White-Checker finish, I’m no fan of that gimmick, and prefer a race that ends naturally rather than with artificial assistance.
The Crowd
Saturday night marked the first time an IndyCar race had been staged at Phoenix since Sam Hornish Jr. – remember him? – won in front of about twelve spectators back in 2005, so the reported attendance of around 17,000 is a good start. By all accounts, the racetrack was big on promotion, going all-out to let people in the Phoenix area know that the IndyCar Series was coming to town. Where IndyCar is concerned, that isn’t always a given.
Whilst it wasn’t the most entertaining race I’ve ever seen from the IndyCar Series, it was still plenty more exciting than the recent NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race, and there’s nothing like watching these cars at speed under lights. All in all, a good foundation for an event with multiple years remaining on it’s contract. It should be bigger and better in 2016 – and hopefully the series will bring the correct aero package with them.
Graham Rahal
The Honda-powered cars had a shocking qualifying on Friday, with Chevrolet teams locking out the first ten grid positions. Rahal, driving for the team his father co-owns with David Letterman, qualified a dismal nineteenth, but recovered incredibly well during the race to bring home a fifth place finish.
Rahal’s weekend mirrored many of his weekends from the 2015 IndyCar Series season, where poor qualifying runs – thanks largely to the fact that Honda runners just don’t have the power they need to post competitive lap times under qualifying conditions – were turned into solid finishes and, in some cases, race victories.
Considering the obvious disadvantage Honda runners had during qualifying, Rahal will be completely stoked with his run. Imagine what he could do if he started from inside the top ten. Honda has work to do.
It’s worth noting that Rahal was, once again, the highest finishing Honda runner, beating out the factory-supported effort of Andretti Autosport. Rahal-Letterman Racing is punching way above it’s weight, and it’s great to see!
Scott Dixon
The Queensland-born New Zealander keeps on keeping on. His Phoenix victory is the thirty-ninth of his IndyCar career, which sees him pull level with the legendary Al Unser Jr. on the list of all-time IndyCar Series winners.
Dixon is fast becoming one of the great drivers the sport has ever known. The great shame is that, because of the IndyCar/CART split and the way open-wheel racing has dropped off the map in America – except for the Indianapolis 500 – Dixon will likely never be as fondly remembered and celebrated as the likes of Rick Mears, Johnny Rutherford and others. He really should be.
Simon Pagenaud
Coming into the season, there was a feeling that Pagenaud, a big-name Penske recruit last year, needed to do big things to keep his seat from warming up. The Captain, Roger Penkse, loves winners, after all, and doesn’t suffer losing, either. Well, after two races, Pagenaud, courtesy of a second-place finish, leads the IndyCar Series championship as we head for Long Beach. The Frenchman is four points ahead of Dixon, in the early season Penske vs. Ganassi battle.
Will Power
After missing the season-opening Grand Prix of St Petersburg due to concussion symptoms, the Australian bounced back with a solid third place finish, and the nice chunk of points that comes along with that. A double-points haul – and, of course, the win – at Indianapolis in a few weeks would be great for Power’s championship aspirations.
Rookies
Max Chilton and Alexander Rossi, both running an IndyCar Series oval race for the first time, finished seventh and fourteenth respectively. Chilton, for all the social media hubbub that he was a kid from a rich family who couldn’t actually drove, proved a few doubters wrong with his composed run. Rossi, running a car mostly devoid of sponsorship, might’ve finished higher, but was penalised late. Still, a good run for the two guys at the head of IndyCar’s 2016 rookie class.
The IndyCar Series returns to action in two weekends’ time with the prestigious Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.
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