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Tag: Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg

  • The White Zone: Yeah, this race wasn’t good

    The White Zone: Yeah, this race wasn’t good

    EDITOR’S NOTE: A previous version of this story used the headline “The White Zone: Yeah, this race sucked.” After discussing it with Tucker, he understood this was too mean-spirited of a title. Furthermore, he rewrote several paragraphs for the same reason.

    ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Even IndyCar puts on lackluster races.

    I’ve worked enough NTT INDYCAR SERIES races to know what makes a good race. You won’t see bumping and banging, and multiple on-track lead changes like NASCAR. And if you understand and accept that, there’s a lot of fun to have with IndyCar. Which, in my opinion, is more strategy-heavy than NASCAR.

    But just like NASCAR, INDYCAR has doldrum days.

    All weekend, I heard beat writers and even NBC take potshots at Formula 1 for how stale and boring its product is (and rightfully so). Now by no means was Sunday’s Firestone Grand Prix of St. Pete near the level of the Max Verstappen Invitational.

    But it had some elements of it.

    Josef Newgarden led 92 of 100 laps and won by a margin of roughly eight seconds. All the lead changes happened during pit stops. Three times, a driver braked wrong, overran a corner and a caution flew. In one case, Romain Grosjean clipped Linus Lundqvist in Turn 10 and put him in the tire barrier (for which, he served a pass-through penalty).

    Outside of that, Sunday’s race didn’t give me much to discuss.

    Look, there was a lot of good from this weekend. This race drew an insanely huge crowd, which crowded pit road, pre-race. I found it more difficult than normal to move my way through the sea of people. Furthermore, St. Pete is an amazingly intimate venue. Everything’s centralized to an excellent walking distance radius of the deadline room and once you figure out the basic layout, it’s insanely easy to navigate.

    Would I come here to cover a race, again? ABSOLUTELY!

    Moreover, this race was probably an outlier.

    For now, however, the kickoff to the 2024 season could’ve been better.

    That’s my view, for what it’s worth.

  • Newgarden takes pole at St. Pete

    Newgarden takes pole at St. Pete

    ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Josef Newgarden told NBC’s Marty Snider, Friday, in the Mahaffey Theater that despite his Indianapolis 500 victory and wins on all but one oval, he was bummed to not win a pole in 2023.

    He rectified that in Race No. 1 of 2024.

    “Crazy proud,” he said. “I’m always proud of my team and even more so today. They deserve it. They’ve done a great job all off-season. They’ve done a great job in 2023 (sic), and I feel like we fell short in a lot of areas that we didn’t need to.”

    The two-time NTT INDYCAR Series champion scored his 17th career pole with a Firestone Fast Six time of 59.5714 (108.777 mph). He jumped to the top of the charts with just 15 seconds left in the final round. Besting Felix Rosenqvist, who broke Will Power’s track record in the second round.

    All of which came after a less than stellar performance in first practice, Friday. Newgarden’s team didn’t change much on the car after first practice.

    “We were sort of same car,” he said. “Just really putting it together better, and I think (second practice) was representative more so for where we were as a team.”

    Rounding out the top-six are Pato O’Ward, Colton Herta (who ran his fastest time in the final round on Firestone black tires, while the rest used greens*), Romain Grosjean and defending race winner Marcus Ericsson.

    Aside from Rinus VeeKay kissing the wall off Turn 10, nothing out of the ordinary happened during qualifying. Gusts of wind dragged debris onto the track, but that wound up a non-factor.

    * The green-banded Firestone tires are the same compound as the reds of years past, but with a different construction. How differently it performed was “hard to say.”

    “I felt like it was probably more of a lap two, lap three tire than the past,” Rosenqvist said. “I think here last time we were here it was like a lap one tire. It changes all the time kind of depending on the weather and the wind and what not.”

  • Dixon vs. father time

    Dixon vs. father time

    ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Scott Dixon took his seat at the podium inside the deadline room of the Mahaffey Theater. The six-time NTT INDYCAR SERIES champion starts his 22nd season, Sunday.

    In most sports, an athlete’s performance peaks in their mid to late 20s. Whereas in auto racing, many drivers race well into their 40s. Mario Andretti raced full-time in IndyCar until 1994, at the age of 54. AJ Foyt ran his final race in 1996, at 61, in a 28th-place finish in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

    Furthermore, winning races isn’t just for the youth. Dixon, 43, capped off the 2023 season with three wins in the last four races.

    With that said, however, father time waits for nobody.

    “I think it’s different for everybody, depending on when they feel like they should be done with a sport,” Dixon said.

    Sometimes, a driver leaves a sport on top. While he didn’t win a fifth NASCAR Cup Series championship, Jeff Gordon, at 44, raced his way into the Championship 4 in his final full-time season in 2015.

    More often than not, however, a driver exits with a whimper.

    While Jimmie Johnson won his seventh championship in 2016, at 41, his performance declined as well. He finished less than half the races in the top-10 for the first time in his career and didn’t lead the most laps in a single race. Moreover, his results fell sharply in his final four full-time seasons. He went winless in his final three and missed the playoffs in his final two.

    Dale Earnhardt Jr., at 43, finished his Cup Series career in 2017 with no wins in his last two seasons. That, and a concussion cost him half of his penultimate season.

    Sometimes, a driver gets no say on how they go out. A wreck in the penultimate round of the 2013 IndyCar season forced Dario Franchitti, at 40, into an early retirement.

    So how much longer Dixon has is “hard to answer.”

    “I think you go until you feel like you don’t want to or maybe you’re not winning as much,” he said.

    In 21 years in INDYCAR, Dixon won at least one race in all but one. Last season, in addition to his three wins, he finished top-10 in all but one race and top-five in 11 of 17.

    For now, the New Zealand native shows no sign of decline. Aside from clocking in 12th in first practice.

  • Harvey scheduled for 50th IndyCar career start at the Streets of St. Petersburg

    Harvey scheduled for 50th IndyCar career start at the Streets of St. Petersburg

    With a new season of NTT IndyCar Series competition four days away from commencing, Jack Harvey is set to achieve a milestone start in his third full-time season in America’s premier open-wheel series. By taking the green flag in this weekend’s Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg at the Streets of St. Petersburg, Florida, the newly named driver of the No 45 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Dallara-Honda will make his 50th career start in the IndyCar circuit.

    Harvey, a native of Bassingham, Lincolnshire, United Kingdom, who is a former champion of the British Formula 3 Championship series and a two-time runner-up in Indy Lights, made his inaugural presence in the IndyCar Series in the 101st running of the Indianapolis 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in May 2017. Driving the No. 50 Honda in a joint association with Michael Shank Racing and Andretti Autosport, he started 27th and finished 31st following an early accident with Conor Daly. He then returned for the final two events of the 2017 IndyCar season at Watkins Glen International and at Sonoma Raceway, where he replaced Sebastian Saavedra as driver of the No. 7 Honda for Schmidt Peterson Motorsports. During this span, he finished 14th at The Glen and 18th at Sonoma respectively.

    The following season, Harvey campaigned in six IndyCar events in the No. 60 Honda for Michael Shank Racing in a technical alliance with Schmidt Peterson Motorsports. Commencing the season with a 23rd-place result at the Streets of St. Petersburg, he recorded a season-best 12th-place result at the Streets of Long Beach, California. During the 102nd running of the Indianapolis 500 in May, Harvey was running in second place with five laps remaining until he was forced to pit for fuel along with initial leader Stefan Wilson and was relegated back to 16th place. 

    In 2019, Harvey’s IndyCar schedule increased to 10 as he remained with Meyer Shank Racing. After finishing in 10th place during the first two events of the season, he achieved his maiden podium result after finishing in third place at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course in May. Harvey went on to conclude the 2019 season in 21st place in the final standings and with an average-finishing result of 14.2.

    Following three part-time seasons, Harvey campaigned on a full-time basis in a shortened 2020 IndyCar season amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Remaining as a driver for Meyer Shank Racing, he achieved a season-best sixth-place result in the second of a Harvest Grand Prix doubleheader feature at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course in October. He went on to record a total of six top-10 results, two front row starts, a ninth-place result in the 104th running of the Indianapolis 500, an average-starting result of 14.4, an average-finishing result of 12.3 and a 15th-place result in the final standings.

    Commencing the 2021 IndyCar season with an 11th-place result at Barber Motorsports Park in April, Harvey achieved a strong weekend during the following event at the Streets of St. Petersburg, where he qualified on the front row and finished in fourth place. Twelve races and three additional top-10 results later, he recorded another fourth-place result at Portland International Raceway in September before wrapping up the season in a career-best 13th place in the final standings.

    The 2022 IndyCar season is set to mark a new beginning for Harvey, who is set to pilot the No. 45 Honda for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing for the first time as he continues to pursue his maiden victory and title in the IndyCar circuit.

    Through 49 previous IndyCar starts, Harvey has achieved one podium result, a total of seven laps led and an average-finishing result of 14.1.

    Harvey is scheduled to make his 50th career start in the NTT IndyCar Series in the 2022 season-opening Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg at the Streets of St. Petersburg on Sunday, February 27, with coverage to occur at noon ET on NBC.