Verizon Indycar Series – Round 1 of 16 in St Petersburg, Florida
Let's do it! It's 2015! The fastest show on four wheels, the stars and cars, the non-electric Formula E – after an offseason lasting for 7 months, 2 dropped races and one million aerofoils, Indycar is less than a week from fruition. Blankets, tents and illegally-connected cable television are available to those of you fleeing Eff One's tsunami of engine tokens and declining TV figures in countries you've never visited. Team owners are only sued by other team owners here. When a team arrives with the sole object of picking up some start money, they actually run a few laps. Every last irresponsible driving yahoo is above the legal drinking age.
Why are we here? Or why weren't we here three weeks ago? A race in Dubai was dropped before anyone had even worked out what opinion to hold about it. Another one, this time outside Brasilia, lasted slightly longer before it became subject to that grand old tradition of being cancelled by politicians temporarily discovering their social consciences.
All this has left our season-opener back at the traditional-for-six-years-now venue of St Petersburg in Florida. Or putting it more positively, we're opening the season at St Petersburg in Florida. St Pete is the first of three early-season races in the Southern states, which are raceable all year round but For Reasons We Won't Discuss only take place after the kind of winter break more appropriate for the Paris of the Baltic. The other two will be at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama, which we know about, and Satchmo Raceway Park near New Orleans, which we don't.
I like this map best 'cause it mentions the friggin' yachts.
Who are you and why aren't you saying when the racing is on
Here's your schedule. It's a busy one. Note how I'm doing these in Florida time, which by Sunday ought to be back to five hours difference to UK time again. Also note that the broadcast is being done by the lovable folks at ABC, so you can have lots of fun picturing Scott Goodyear nodding silently as Eddie Cheever tells us how he won the Le Mans 24 Hours, and possibly the Monaco Grand Prix and the Nixon-Kennedy TV debates.
Friday, March 27
12.30-13.45: Indycar first practice
16.15-17.30: Indycar second practice
17.45-18.15: Pirelli World Challenge GT qualifying
Saturday, March 28
09.30-10.00: Indy Lights new car qualifying
10.15-10.55: USF2000 race 1
11.10-12.10: Pirelli World Challenge GT race 1
12.30-13.15: Indycar third practice
13.30-14.10: Pro Mazda race 1
14.15: Indycar autographs session. You want their autographs. Don't bother with Indy Lights race 1, which is on at the same time. The squeak of sharpie on glossy paper. That's why you came.
15.15: NO MORE AUTOGRAPHS FOR YOU.
15.30-16.00: Stadium Super Trucks (enjoy it while it's not the only kind of racing left and instead of racing they drive through flaming buses filled with political prisoners)
16.15-17.30: Indycar qualifying
Sunday, March 29
08.55-09.35: USF2000 race 2 (the stars of tomorrow take on, and sometimes are, the children of the hedge fund managers of today)
09.50-10.30: Pro Mazda race 2 (what's the difference between Pro Mazda and USF2000?)
10.45-11.45: Pirelli World Challenge GT race 2
12.00-12.30: Indycar warm-up
12.45-13.55: Indy Lights race 2
14.10-14.35: Stadium Super Trucks! I hope you like stadiums!
15.30: Indycar race! Then you can leave.
So what's new?
Trick question! Nothing is new. However a few things we haven't seen for a while have squeezed their way into Indycar like toothpaste back in a tube. First of all, Lord of Misrule Brian Barnhart is returning to the chief steward's box to wield his fist of ham. This news caused a bit of intake-of-breath among people with four-year memories, as Barnhart is justly famous for ruling Indycar a bit like one of those bad kings who sets the horse guards on his own supporters and then charges his chief minister with high treason. No fear though, the graven idol System has been set up and will prevent anything from going wrong.
Speaking of things that won't go wrong, 2015 has also witnessed a torrent of aerotica sweeping away those smooth, bulbous sidepods and rear wings flat enough to eat your dinner off. Winglets, flip-ups and weird sticky-uppy things on the front wing are in. Ground effects are a little bit out. Dirty air? Ain't no dirty air that's going to stop Graham Rahal rear-ending someone on a restart.
The calendar? We're doing a new race near New Orleans, there's only one double-header (in Detroit, the fun one), Fontana's in June and Pocono's gone to August. Season finale's in Sonoma where double points will be awarded. I've put this in the middle of the post in the hope that the F1-is-shit arrivistes won't see it.
Better hope it stays that way. Who's driving this year?
I know the answer to this one! Wikipedia has this handy table. Since open-wheel racing has been on the wane since 1973, or 1998, or 1968, or even 1932 depending on when you prefer to date the beginning of America's national decline from, this won't take long. 24 drivers will be on the grid at St Pete, of whom probably 20 could expect to be in contention for victory, given the right freak events. Indycar's most entertaining paradox is that the guy you'd expect to win in the absence of freak events, Will Power, is a walking Infinite Improbability Drive of freak events. But enough digression. Here we go!
Superteams
Preserve of the million dollar salaries, underground test tracks and chances of winning a damn thing. Population: 3, handily subdivided into 4 drivers each. Superteam Penske is running two old CART stagers, Helio Castroneves and Juan Montoya. Castroneves will probably finish between fifth and third, and last year Juan Montoya won what was the most boring Indycar race I've ever seen. They join Will Power and Simon Pagenaud, who, ignoring Scott Dixon for a second, are the best drivers in the series. They count as the team's hungry young chargers, in the style of those Indy 500 broadcasts from the early '70s where drivers between the ages of 30 and 35 are described as up-and-comers and young guns and 18-21 year olds are not voting and fighting in Vietnam.
Superteam Chip Ganassi are running last year's trio of Scott Dixon, Tony Kanaan and Charlie Kimball. We'll probably have to wait till the summer again before the planets align and the cars start going quickly. Kimball is fast at random so on that logic he's probably the best bet of the three for St Pete. Youth Project Sage Karam is driving on a race-by-race basis like he's some kind of Ayrton Senna, but in testing he's been channelling Fernando Alonso and driving into concrete walls. Who knows how he'll do? Not me.
Like old broadcasts of Just a Minute, Superteam Andretti are relying on 3 regulars and a revolving extra who usually turns out to be better than the permanent seats. Well, not so much Ryan Hunter-Reay. He's the Kenneth Williams of this outfit. Marco Andretti and Carlos Munoz are the wallflowers, and former Sauber lucky charm Simona de Silvestro is joining them in some Karam-like pay-as-you-go deal. Unlike Team Chip and Pen, Andretti running Honda engines and aero, which according to testing is infinitesimally slower than the Chevy package. Good luck trying to tell the difference after Takuma Sato's driven into the side of you.
The Middle
Those are Indycar's haughty swans. What about the geese of the Indycar world? The scrappy, hissy ones nonetheless capable of swatting away ducks with a single flap of the wing. Probably most interesting is Schmidt Peterson, who have responded to the loss of their stubbly Frenchman with a full-bearded Canadian. James Hinchcliffe seems to be settling into his role as the new Patrick Carpentier (or possibly a calm Alex Tagliani), and in the other seat James Jakes has bought himself into contention. But how many racing drivers can you name from Leeds? Actually Jack Hawksworth's from Bradford but don't tell anyone.
Speaking of Jack the Lad, AJ Foyt has hired him to race alongside Takuma Sato, who has outlasted Mikhail Aleshin and therefore recovers his role as Indycar's eternal dunce cap. Initials fans will get even more enjoyment from CFH Racing, which used to be the absurdly successful little Ed Carpenter outfit plus Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing, who sort of remind me of the old Bettenhausen team. Josef Newgarden's back again, and Ed has outsourced the distasteful road course bits to 2007's Luca Filippi.
KV Racing is engaging in its annual preseason orgy of promises with conviction not heard of since Rubens Barrichello's 2012. Seb Bourdais, fresh from winning his namesake the Sebring 12 Hours, has swapped bouffant Sebastian Saavedra for normcore Stefano Coletti. Forget for a moment that he feels like Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge to Jean-Eric Vergne's Bonestorm; he's been quick in testing, plays poker or at least poses with poker chips, and was better than you/I remember in GP2. Was he really born in Monaco? I don't know.
The rest?
Lovable Frank Grimes-alike Bryan Herta is turning up this year with Gabby Chaves, who in 2014 won several Indy Lights. Graham Rahal is returning with his dad's team, now backed by the wonderful Steak-n-Shake restaurant brand and the gentleman's publication Maxim magazine, which will won't liven things up a bit. They're facing off against another midsize Americobrasserie chain in the Sonny's BBQ Pit powered Coyne team. In a break from the usual, Dale Coyne has brought together an embittered, down-on-his-luck detective and a rookie from another city as they try to work out who killed Justin Wilson's career.
Plug
Jp says y'all can sign up for the Atlas Autosport Indycar fantasy league right here. You have to have a United States address to play, but I suggest you get started with the fantasy right now and pick a place in America you'd always have liked to live in. Remember: it's Driven By Firestone.
Edited by Risil, 28 March 2015 - 11:24.
