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Tag: Grand Prix of St Petersburg

  • Team Penske favorites to win IndyCar opener at St. Petersburg

    Team Penske favorites to win IndyCar opener at St. Petersburg

    With the Team Penske Chevrolet camp in the NTT IndyCar Series looking to dominate yet again in the 2020 season, there’s no better place to begin than Sunday’s upcoming Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. Penske driver Josef Newgarden won last year’s season opener on the way to winning three more times and his second series championship, having won the 2017 title with Penske as well.

    Along with Newgarden, Penske driver Will Power is a two-time event winner (2010, 2014) and holds five podiums at St. Petersburg, three of which came after starting from the pole. While Newgarden has shown more promise on the mile-and-a-half speedways, Power has excelled on the street/road courses in the IndyCar series with 26 of his 35 career wins coming on those types of tracks.

    Fellow Team Penske driver Simon Pagenaud is also a two-time St. Petersburg winner (2016-17), with 12 of his 14 career wins coming on street/road courses showing that he too has a prediliction toward those types of races. His strengths are more similar to Power’s than Newgarden’s, but with all three of the Team Penske drivers former winners at St. Pete’s, it’s a clear bet that they’re the safest bets to win come Sunday.

    That isn’t to say there won’t be challenges elsewhere during the 100-lap event. Ganassi Racing’s all-time champion Scott Dixon has 24 of his 45 wins on street/road courses despite being winless at St. Pete’s, while former series champion Ryan Hunter-Reay has eight wins on street/road courses. Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing driver Graham Rahal has six wins in the series but is a former St. Pete’s winner, having won there in 2008.

    Five of Andretti Autosport’s Alexander Rossi’s wins come on street/road courses including a huge defeat in the 2018 edition of St. Pete’s, where a late-race incident ended his chances while running up front. He’s Andretti Autosport’s strongest driver and he knows how to get around St. Pete’s, but in the end he’s yet to be as successful as the Team Penske camp.

    With that said, the odds are in favor for the Penske Chevrolets, all of whom are not only St. Pete champions but series champions as well. With five victories in the event among three drivers, it’s not a matter of if they’ll win, but which one will win. This is coming on the heels of former Penske IndyCar drivers Juan Pablo Montoya and Helio Castroneves and their winning pedigree at St. Petes, as both drivers have a combined five wins among themselves while driving for Penske.

    The race will begin at 3:30 p.m. EST, and will air on NBCSN live and on radio network affiliates, Sirius 211, XM 205, indycar.com, indycarradio.com and the INDYCAR Mobile app.

  • INDYCAR: What’s Missing at St Pete’s Season Opener

    INDYCAR: What’s Missing at St Pete’s Season Opener

    The Stephen Cox Blog is Presented by McGunegill Engine Performance

    Qualifying for an Indycar race is no longer considered an accomplishment of any value in the auto racing world. Of course, qualifying well is still valued. But qualifying itself is not, because every team that shows up automatically makes the race.

    This is one of the unspoken differences between Indycar racing today and Indycar racing of the past. Once upon a time, simply putting the car in the field was a noteworthy accomplishment in motorsports because there were more teams, cars and drivers than available entry positions in America’s highest open wheel series.

    Of course, there has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth over Indycar’s failure to produce bumping on Bump Day at Indianapolis, but that is only part of the story. The meaningful excitement of time trials has collapsed not only at Indy but across the board.

    The opening race of the 2017 Indycar campaign at St. Pete drew twenty-one entries. Everyone who showed up with a pulse and a car made the show. Today this is considered normal. But for much of Indycar’s past, it wasn’t.

    Compare that to 1970 when the Indycar season opener at Phoenix drew twenty-seven entries, all of them fighting over twenty-four available starting spots. Qualifications were exciting and unpredictable. Teams weren’t just worried about a getting good starting position; many of them were concerned about starting at all. When time trials were done, Roger McCluskey, Larry Cannon and Bentley Warren loaded up and went home. They weren’t fast enough to make the show.

    Fast forward to 1998. Thirty-one car and drive combinations showed up for the Indycar season opener at Orlando. Twenty-eight cars started the show. Time trials were again of genuine interest because the previous year’s upset winner at Phoenix, Jim Guthrie, was among three drivers who didn’t make the race.

    For much of its history, Indycars provided a race before the race. Getting into the show at all was considered an accomplishment. That excitement is lost on today’s racing audiences.

    Instead of a real, substantive contest among drivers scrambling to make the race, we are given the “Fast Six” qualifying gimmick that attempts to generate interest over who qualifies in what position, rather than who qualifies and who does not. And the public isn’t taking the bait. It’s obvious to even the casual racing fan that if there was any real drama during qualifications, the “Fast Six” program wouldn’t exist.

    Indycar needs more teams, more cars and more drivers. But the financial barriers to entry remain so high that few can overcome them. Mandated engine programs did not solve the problem. Spec chassis, spec aero kits and spec tires did not solve the problem. Indycar barely fills its own starting fields and has not been able to muster any real interest in qualifications. Worse yet, Indycar’s leadership shows little interest in bringing in new drivers from other disciplines.

    I’m looking forward to this year’s season opener at St. Petersburg. But we’re all still waiting for the day when earning a starting spot in the field at an Indycar race is once again considered a significant accomplishment in worldwide motorsports.

    Stephen Cox

    Sopwith Motorsports Television Productions

    Driver, FIA EPCS sportscars & Super Cup Stock Car Series

    Co-host, Mecum Auctions on NBCSN