Formula Indycar World Championship Round 11: Pocono IndyCar 500 Fueled by Sunoco
Things you should know
Track length: 2.5 miles
Number of turns: Four Three haha most tracks have four turns!
Track record: 222.6mph (Marco Andretti, Dallara-Chevy)
Number of times Juan Montoya has raced here: 14
Number of times the rest of the field has raced here put together: 19
The Roger Penske of his day.
Ultra compressed superlight race schedule in association with Will Power's suspension
Saturday, 5 Jul
10.00-11.00: Indycar practice 1
12.30-13.15: Indy Lights qualifying
13.30-14.30: Indycar practice 2
15.45: Indy Lights race
17.00-18.15: Indycar qualifying
Sunday, 6 July
13.00: Poco-go
15.45-ish: Poco-stop
How Tricky Was My Triangle?
You may have gathered that Pocono Raceway is a Proper Racetrack in a Proper Location. It's never going to produce a last-lap wheel-banging thriller, it's in the middle of Pennsylvania's third most notable mountain range (which is one way of saying “nowhere”), and it's neither high-banked, 1.5 miles long nor built as a response to the 1990s NASCAR boom. The less said about the tracks built during the 1990s CART boom the better.
Or maybe not! To my untutored, ignorant, never-even-been-there eye, it reminds me like nothing so much as the old Rio oval raced at by Andretti, Zanardi, Moore and co between 1996 and 2000. Wide, little banking in places, different corners, a slightly road coursey feel to something that nonetheless only turns in one direction. No tyre barriers admittedly but it makes a lot more sense to me than trying to imagine an Indy-Trenton-Milwaukee chimaera.
I tried to get into the spirit of your average 1970s Indy fanatic with a pin-up Chris Economaki on his bedroom wall and drew up a track combining the three classic European circuits. Come to think of it it looks like the only-slightly-less-imaginary Sochi track.
(Thanks to the possibly defunct Racingcircuits.net for this)
What else is tricky about it? The distance! It's 500 miles long – last year it ran to only 400 at the understandable insistence of ABC, whose commentary duo of Eddie Cheever and Scott Goodyear provided enough awkward silence to increase its mental distance to a combined Indy 500, Coca Cola 600 and episode of Midweek Motorsport on an F1-free week.
What's not tricky? The scheduling! By a blind bit of coincidence there's NO football, NO British Grand Prix and NO Daytona to clash with. Maybe a bit of Wimbledon if it runs past 6pm, although given the rules of tennis technically the Wimbledon final can clash with Toronto, Iowa and the 2015 Indy 500 too.
May have been a NASCAR fan.
Vitesse2 Powerball Round
Pennsylvania's own Sunoco Incorporated is sponsoring, sorry, fueling, this race. This is likely to push mentions of America's favourite racing fuel into the low millions.
Sunoco aside, this race – the Pocono IndyCar 500 – has the lamest name I think I've ever heard. You can't have an Indy 500 and then an Indycar 500 a month later! This is like calling it Texas-style BBQ sauce because the factory's in Glasgow. The following Saturday's race is sponsored by a carbohydrate-rich kind of grass, and it's still not as lame as this.
Would've turned up at Indy with a diesel.
Independence Day!
You've got that right! Like the Indy 500 which is on Memorial Day and the 500-miler at Fontana which comes on or close to Labor Day, the Pocono 500 falls on Independence Day weekend. Independence Day commemorates the day lots of American lawyers got together to write some fancy legalese and then celebrated by getting to work on writing some more fancy legalese.
Would probably have been team owners.
This week in Indycar
Former (or is that current?) Panther Racing boss John Barnes is now suing the United States of America. Graham Rahal, fresh from destroying everything in the world, has a new one-off National Guard livery. I like this one! And (also from Racer.com, because no one else does Indycar news), Marshall Pruett has a nice small story about the suspension failure suffered by Will Power last weekend. Something about a dodgy shim.
Two non-stories: Carlos Huertas appears to have been caught with his car being not at all right. Nothing's going to be done about it so you sort of wonder why they brought it up in the first place. And based on attendance figures for an event that hasn't happened yet, the Pocono 500 is in Serious Trouble. Come on, they'll be plenty of time to discuss the empty stands during the race.
The championship? Four drivers left in it probably. Will Power is a win ahead of Helio and Hunter-Reay, and a win-and-a-half ahead of Pagenaud (who has been on the verge of making a Big Career Announcement for it seems 18 months now). Course in 500-mile double points terms they're all separated by less than one victory so it's still pretty stupid to talk about the championship unless less than four of them do something foolish.
Montoya, who unbelievably enough is the third Penske driver in the top five in points, is probably too far back. He's looked in with a chance of winning the last three races and he was quick at Indianapolis as well. Knows Pocono, so he's probably due a breakthrough/re-entry. Other contenders? Marco was set to win until his strategy turned out to be not the right strategy. Hunter-Reay won Indy and was heading for something good last year till Sato did something that ranked as stupid and crass even for Sato. Ed Carpenter's weirdly the favourite for pretty much all the oval races. The big ones, anyway.
That's enough from me. I hope they all break down.
Edited by Risil, 03 July 2014 - 19:41.
hehe
Best Burr vs. Hamilton reference eh-verrr. I bow to you, sir.
) meaning may end up watching the race on Sunday at a time that may clash with indycar (also chance of Wimbledon intrest from other people as well). I blame people who are interested in watching motorsport but "don't want to be watching motorsport all day" 
love it!
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