Indycar Race Report: Penske Perfection

You knew it had to happen, Penske scored a 1-2 finish at Sonoma with Helio Castroneves winning from Ryan Briscoe and with Scott Dixon having an uncharacteristically poor day. Penske if you recall have not had a great week with their transporter being destroyed by fire resulting in millions of dollars in damage (two race cars were in said transporter). The Penske boys however set about their business by locking out the front row with Championship leader Scott Dixon lurking in fifth on the grid. Sonoma is a track that is not known to be conducive to overtaking so the front was the place to be. KV racing were also up to their usual party tricks in Quali by grabbing third and sixth on the grid while the only other driver making it into the fast six was Tony Kanaan, who ended up fourth. After that it was the usual chaotic gaggle of drivers on the grid with some notables like Dan Wheldon struggling, Wheldon was 16th on the grid while Marco Andretti was 10th. At the back Marty Roth was painfully slow as usual but due to Enrique Bernoldi crashing and not taking part in quali and the bizarre rules, he started 25th, more on Mad Dog Marty later on.

The Race was unusually clean for an Indy Car race with very few incidents considering the reputation of some of these drivers. It appears that the Usual Gang of Idiots (but MR) went to school to learn how to play nice together. From the beginning the Penske boys led, although they were unable to pull away. The just contented themselves to control the pace from the front and let the others sqaubble amongst themselves, obviously hoping that one of the accident prone drivers would take out Dixon. There were some slower drivers that made some great starts who started to get in the way, the most notable being Enrique Bernoldi who ran in and around 20th in the first stint. This mix of cars led to some unusual pit strategy being employed by the bigger team drivers caught in the midfield. The first of these was Hideki Mutoh who pitted for fuel on lap 9. He was followed by Dan Wheldon and EJ Viso who went off pit sequence hoping for some Safety car interventions to propel them up the order. This strategy ended up biting them a little as when they emerged they were quickly stuck behind the rolling chicanes named Roth and Bernoldi. Marty Roth was the first they encountered (as he was painfully slow) and there were some hairy moments as people tried to get past. It ended with Marty getting scared or stressed or something and spinning, which according to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio announcers resulted in cheering from the fans. Marty duly stalled his car and thus the Safety Car came out. Most of the leaders pitted aside from Briscoe, Danica Patrick, Mario Dominguez, and Ed Carpenter who became the new leaders, this allowed Briscoe and Dan Wheldon (who had managed to avoid the Roth train) to lead and duly rocket away from the third placed Patrick. From there it became a fairly uneventful race as through the pit stop shuffle Castroneves re-emerged ahead of the pack and stayed there until the end as there were no further safety car interventions. Tony Kanaan drove a steady race to finish third ahead of WHeldon, who was very aggressive and exciting all day, and Patrick, who had a quiet but solid day to pick up some big points. After an up and down season Danica is starting to find some consistency, unfortunately she has not been consistently on the podium. EJ Viso came home sixth after a very good run. He led some laps, drive aggressivly, and the big thing, did not run into anyone as he has been prone to do this year. After an incident filled year he is showing some promise and speed. With team boss Keith Wiggins planning to upgrade to a two car team next year he could be a man to watch in the future. The top ten was completed by Vitor Meira, Graham Rahal, Justin Wilson and Mario Moraes. And what of the KV you ask? Well they had far too many adventures for their own good and were let down by strategy, again. Oriol Servia and Will Power both ran strong early on but strategy relegated Servia to 15th and Power ended up dropping back slowly, then was busted for cutting the chicane and had to serve a drive through penalty and then on the penultimate lap he had chicane-issues again and crashed into the tyre barrier, not exactly the way to capitalize on a top three grid placing. Scott Dixon ended up finishing 12th, and with Castroneves winning and getting bonus points for leading the most laps the title race is definetly still on as the two protagonists are now separated by only 43 points, breathing new life into the final two races. The only retirement of the race was Tomas Scheckter for jay Penske's Luczo Dragon Racing team, who plan on racing at Detroit and Chicagoland as well after having missed much of the season. They are hoping to get the money to run the whole season next year, but mechanical failures like this won't help. The other part time entry in the field, Mario Dominguez, also had a good day, although he faded near the end. This is another team hoping to put together a full schedule for next year but it seems less promising than the Luczo Dragon entry. Both Schekter and Dominguez are quality drivers who deserve to be in the IRL, let's hope it happens.

This was by no means a classic but there was some hard clean racing throughout the field and there was a very popular winner. Hopefully the last two points races of the season are good races.