Sunday, July 20, 2008

Race Report: All Penske performance at Mid Ohio

Ryan Briscoe managed to avoid Marco Andretti and Scott Dixon this week and won the Honda Indy 200. The Team Penske number two has been very good since the Indy 500 but has had some appaling luck in recent races. Briscoe was fast all weekend and was aided by some great strategy decisions from his strategist Roger Penske to romp away from the field after the last of too many safety car periods. He was followed home by teammate Helio Castroneves who was second for the fifth time this year (he has no wins) and Championship leader Scott Dixon, who stayed out of trouble to minimize the hit to his championship hopes. The KV crew of Will Power and Oriol Servia rounded out the top five to score some valuable points for the transition team, while behind them it was an overly eventful race with the usual gang of idiots getting into all sorts of trouble, sometimes taking frontrunners with them. The race started on a drying track and everyone started on wet tyres but switched to dries early, with the first to react being the benificiaries and those early leaders were Vitor Meira, Darren Manning, and Will Power running well, but as usual with some of the muppets at the back there will always be safety car periods to nix any sort of advantage. The most notable of the frontrunners who was bitten by the snake of bad driving backmarkers were the trio of Justin Wilson, Dan Wheldon, and Marco Andretti who ended up in a sticky mess at a restart when Wilson tried to go around the lapped Mario Dominguez only to be tagged by the Mexican (involved in his third incident of the day) and causing a traffic jam involving Wheldon, Andretti, and AJ Foyt IV who were all minding their own business (so was Wilson actually). Wilson, Wheldon, and Foyt ended up down a lap while Andretti retired, this incident happening shortly after the commentators pointed out that Andretti has a higher crash rate than Paul Tracy, not exactly high praise. In another race dictated by cautions and incidents I will do a quick rundown of the major red-face causing events. The first main incident happened when the usually talented Ryan Hunter-Reay tried a daft move down the inside of the usually crappy Enrique Bernoldi. Enrique was not exactly setting the world on fire at this point of the race, but he was unlucky to have been Kamikazeed in this way. To add insult to injury he retired while Hunter-Reay continued and ended up tenth. Then next incident involved Mario Dominguez, who went off and damaged his rear wing, this did not bring out the caution but he had to pit for repairs and the unfinished job resulted in the second caution when Mario's rear wing fell off at high speed and he was nerfed into a sandtrap. The caution came out and Mario was towed back to the pits where he was fixed up and sent on his way a few laps down where he was given the golden opportunity to screw things up for other people. He was fired by Gerry Forsythe for the same kind of antics a couple of years ago and these kind of shenanigans will not make his small, underfunded team very happy, although his sponsorship is the main reason this team is afloat. Things resumed as usual with the cautions resulting in a bevy of different drivers leading the race at some point as people ran different fuel strategy. Somewhere during the proceedings Marco Andretti dropped the ball and spun but could resume. The next yellow was a result of the incredibly incompetent Milka Duno spinning and not having the good sense not to park her car in the middle of the frickin' racing line!! She has been slow and bothersome all week and there will be many drivers relieved that she will not be in the 23 car next week in Edmonton. Duno was able to continue but the caution bunched up the field leading to the Dominguez and Wilson induced mess at the restart, which resulted in a fourth caution. That came and went and the race restarted on lap 48 at which point a light went on in the head of some of the IRL officials that maybe they don't need to bring out the safety car when someone is stranded a mile off course and both Graham Rahal and the other incompetent tool (after Duno) Marty Roth tested this policy. The fifth and final caution came when something happened to Mario Moraes and he was stuck near the Keyhole (which ABC announcer Marty Reid kept calling the carousel) and so the field was bunched up again with Briscoe leading Bruno Junquiera who was playing the fuel strategy and hope for enough caution laps game, which ended up not working as he had to pit for fuel with seven to go, dropping him to 13th. It was not exactly a classic, but it wasn't a terrible race. Mid-Ohio is tough on the drivers but not exactly conducive to overtaking so it was quite processional at times and the five yellows were excessive given the nature of some of the incidents that caused them. A good result for one transiton team, KV while another, Newman/Haas/Lanigan will be kicking themselves after their drivers cocked up chances at mega points with incidents, ending up 11th and 16th, Wilson ahead of Rahal. Dale Coyne also had a chance to do some grandstanding with Mario Moraes leading at one point and Junquiera running second for a while. Caution filled races often end up being decided by the strategists and unfortunately this one was one of them. Next up is Edmonton at the tricky and fast Edmonton Airport circuit.

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