Incidentally also my desktop every once in a while.2019 NTT Indycar Series Round 9 of 17: DXC Technology 600
Howdy, pardner!
As we coast to the conclusion of Indycar’s month-of-May blitzkrieg, we come rolling like a drunken tumbleweed into the land of cowboy hats, cattle rustlers, and rodeos: the Lone Star State of Texas. If you’ve watched any races this year, you know there ain’t no rodeo like an Indycar rodeo. Practice is already underway, so let’s see what we’ve got going on this weekend!
Texas Motor Speedway
It’s an “oval”. No, I don’t want to know what a “party pad” is, either.Opened: 1996
Track Length: 1.44 mi (2.32 km)
Track Surface: Asphalt
Turns: Depends on your point of view
Laps: 248
Canceled Races: 1
Race Distance: 357.12 mi (575.36 km by my calculations… somebody’s measurements are wrong)
‘Winningest’ Driver: Helio Castroneves (4 wins)
‘Winningest’ Team: Penske? Yeah, it’s Penske (9 wins)
‘Winningest’ Manufacturer: Dallara (26 wins)
Lap Record: 22.542 s (Paul Tracy)
Previous Winner: Scott Dixon
Previous Average Speed: 177.250 mi/h
No mention of Texas Motor Speedway would be complete without the insanities of its only-ever promoter, Eddie Gossage. Where else would you expect to see this besides Texas, honestly?
Juan Pablo Montoya in his true form.Eyetime
Thanks to the magic of Indycar and their wondrous helmet-mounted camera, we can all better experience the guilty hobby we all undertake as racing fans in the dark privacy of our bedrooms: taking a deep breath, holding our arms out in front of us… and rigidly steering them before the screen as if we ourselves are world famous racing drivers.
There’s really not a better perspective on the intensity of oval racing than from (roughly) the driver’s eyes, and there’s no better driver from whom to watch that intensity than Graham Rahal. Feast upon this magnificence!
What’s Left of the Schedule
All times are local (Texas Daylight Time aka US CDT).
Friday, June 7
13:30 – Final Practice: NTT Indycar Series (ON RIGHT NOW)
15:00 – Legends Racing at Lil Texas Motor Speedway (adorable)
16:35 – NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series US Concrete Qualifying (OMG…)
17:45 – Qualifying: NTT Indycar Series
20:00 – NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series SpeedyCash.com 400
Saturday, June 8
12:00 – Legends Practice at Lil' Texas Motor Speedway
14:00 – Legends Racing at Lil Texas Motor Speedway
16:00 – More Legends Racing at Lil Texas Motor Speedway
16:00 – Car Show on Frontstretch
19:45 – NTT Indycar Series DXC Technology 600
Where to Watch
North American Viewers: After spending some time on Big Peacock, we return to Little Peacock NBCSN. Not to worry, as we’ve still got Leigh Diffey, Townsend Bell, and Paul Tracy to help us through these difficult times.
UK Viewers: Sky Sports has become the new home of Indycar in the United Kingdom, with the occasional input from Martin Brundle, Jr.
Other International Viewers: SenorSjon had mentioned at one point that Ziggo Sport Totaal broadcasts every Indycar and NASCAR race live, and I think KnuclesAgain told me at one point that Sport 1 US carried it in Germany, but since Indycar started picking TV companies out of a hat for its international TV deals, I don’t know if this is the case any longer. I have heard the mysterious DAZN may be carrying it in other European territories. PM basically anyone here and they’ll getcha the goods, though.
Spotter? He Hardly Knew ‘Er!
Seeing that most Indycars change paint schemes more often than a Splatoon arena, you probably don’t want to try watching one of these things without some visual aids. Fortunately, here at Autosport, our team of professionals has got you covered, plagiarising the spotter’s guide directly from Indycar’s website.
Motown Mayhem
I had something self-indulgently long and trying-too-hard-to-be funny written here, but apparently because I don’t know how to use a save button and am obsessive-compulsive about closing windows I’m not using, it’s disappeared into the same ether that’s claimed Will Power’s championship hopes for this season. So you’ll have to make do with this tripe instead.
Almost before our retinas had a chance to recover from Simon Pagenaud’s Indy 500 win, the Belle Isle weekend in Dee-troit was upon us with the velocity of a two-headed snake–which is appropriate, because the weekend itself was basically unbelievable. Double the races presumably means double the fun, but thankfully race control had the sense to limit our Indycar intake for the weekend. (Incidentally if as a result of this, you experienced headache, nausea, vomiting, redness, pain, swelling, shortness of breath, stiffness of joints, or an uncontrollable urge to drive over the back of Spencer Pigot, contact your doctor immediately as these may be signs of a rare but possibly serious side-effect.)
If your name ends in ‘Spencer Pigot’ and you were recently mowed over by an Indycar, you may be entitled to compensation! Call 1-800-448-2773 now! (DON’T)Since the clock is ticking and the weekend started… er… yesterday… let’s get on with it!
Race 1
The weekend began behind schedule due to weather, leaving race control with no choice but to send Conor Daly’s career into the skies as a sacrifice to assuage the mighty Thor. Thankfully this was enough to persuade him to banish the lighting assaulting the track to Asgard (‘Asgard’ incidentally being something Spencer Pigot might’ve found helpful on Sunday). We were then treated with a 75-minute rain-shortened melee whose outcome involved prominent appearances from all of our favourite characters.
Mere minutes after a single-file monsoon barreled down Sunset Drive underneath what was supposedly a green flag, a steak dinner changed hands and someone, incredibly, collided with myocardial infarction on wheels Takuma Sato. Racing resumed for a while until the track began to dry, at which point Marco Andretti decided he’d challenge Sato for his title.
Speaking of Marco, it was mere minutes before Ed Jones had an unintentionally intimate encounter with Marco’s title sponsor, prompting everyone to duck into the pits. This inevitably didn’t end well for Will Power, who left the pits with 75% of his wheels attached, subsequently completing his metamorphosis into a Verizon-sponsored boat anchor by copping a drive-through penalty in the process for good measure.
At this point, Roger himself probably wasn’t surprised.As one of the home team’s cars disappeared, the other two were on a roll: Simon Pagenaud tore up the field from behind (I’m not laughing and neither should you be), and Josef Newgarden assumed the lead at the front. In what felt like mere moments since the last time Dallara’s accounts receivable column expanded even further, we witnessed something rarer than a lunar eclipse as Scott Dixon’s race ended as unexpectedly as Will Power’s had expectedly: by emulating Sebastian Vettel’s exit from the lead in Hockenheim last year.
Better luck next time…**Factual statement
As the boardrooms at Hitachi and Napa erupted with applause as they NBSawIT, this left Alexander Rossi to chase Newgarden to the finish line while Sato uncharacteristically lurked behind in third.
Thankfully this only went on for a few more minutes–I’d say heaven help us all if we were to ever find out what would happened if it went on for longer, but this being Indycar, we found out the very next day!
Race 2
Since most of Saturday’s race looked like someone attempting to carve a pumpkin with a can opener, it was hard to imagine being treated with something wilder than we got. This being Indycar, we weren’t disappointed.
Detroit Saturday Sixth-Place Finisher Simon Pagenaud and Star of Yesterday Felix Rosenqvist opened the day by immediately became unwitting guests on the latest episode of The Continuing Misadventures of Will Power, filmed on location in Turn 3. This may or may not have led to a thoroughly predictable teammate-induced gearbox issue for Power and caused Pagenaud to go several laps down.
The resulting yellow caused Indycar’s trademark Alternate Strategy Shenanigans (ASS™), through which Santino Ferrucci and Graham Rahal appropriately found themselves fighting for the lead with Scott Dixon. Spencer Pigot was briefly a part of this group before Sebastien Bourdais’ retroactive participation in the weekend’s Stadium Super Trucks event (YEE-HAW), prompting a yellow that briefly sent us all into an alternate timeline as Ferrucci actually managed to claim the lead.
If you thought all hell hadn’t broken loose already, hold on.
Hinchcliffe dived into the pits for a pitstop, racing back out in front of Newgarden and Rossi. All the ingredients necessary for Peak Indycar now in place, the result was inevitable.
Frasier Crane reportedly described this incident as, “Newgarden and Rossi did a charming duet to ‘Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better’. They were both wrong.”Newgarden furiously gestured at the marshals as if his hands were on fire, Hinch shook his head as if his podcast had just been canceled, Rossi tail-flicked his way out of the mess–and then suddenly Scott Dixon was leading with literally all of his championship rivals in bad positions. What else was really going to come of this?
Behind Dixon, we were treated to a top seven that somehow included Sebastien Bourdais, who after his incident presumably took advantage of the fact that the rest of the field was in an alternate timeline while Ferrucci was leading to regain a few places. The last yellow of the race saw Rosenqvist undo all the good favour he’d earned the previous day by walling it in Turn 1, prompting a red flag that led to a restart for a three-lap duel for the lead. Ice-bath lover Eric Marcusson was able to follow Dixon home in second, Ryan Hunter-Reay suffered a tyre failure before the red flag but incredibly managed to hang onto fourth, and Will Power–who for the majority of the race was running so low in the field he almost died of radon poisoning–inexplicably finished third. None of it was enough to stop the Iceman, though.
In Indycar, it turns out that the probable can in fact seem improbable at the same time.I’d imagine if you looked at the result sheet beforehand, you wouldn’t have believed it 20 minutes into the race. Hell, even reading this now you probably don’t believe me. See for yourself:
Points of Contention
1st – Josef Newgarden (316 pts)
2nd – Alexander Rossi (301 pts)
3rd – Simon Pagenaud (291 pts)
4th – Scott Dixon (264 pts)
5th – Takuma Sato (255 pts)
6th – Will Power (232 pts)
7th – Ryan Hunter-Reay (219 pts)
8th – James Hinchcliffe (179 pts)
9th – Graham Rahal (175 pts)
10th – Sébastien Bourdais (165 pts)
As always, drivers in italics are still able to win the championship.
The Fantrax Indycar Nightmare League
Here are the standings (I think) in the Atlas Autosport Indycar Fantasy League this year. While we won’t laugh too much if you start the season late, there’s still a chance to compete for race wins and prizes!
You can sign up here!
Lone-Star Learnin’
- This is the shortest trivia segment I’ve ever written.
- Dallara has actually won this race more times than the number of years they’ve come here.
- The 2016 race took 467 years to finish because of a crash that led into a rain delay.
- Despite what its PR department would have you believe, Texas Motor Speedway is in fact located in Ft. Worth, Texas, home to a race known as the “Cowtown Marathon”
- Oldsmobile has the longest winning streak of any engine manufacturer
- The summer incarnation of this race has only been held between 6/5 and 6/12
- 65612 is an area code in Montana for Boise D’Arc
Yee-HAW!
Okay, that’s more than enough of my idiocy, because we’re about to miss the second practice session! Logic tells us that we’re on a streak of some of the craziest races ever, and now we’re headed to a track that has a reputation for producing wild races. If we’re applying the traditional Texas multiplier to what we’ve seen over the last few races… hoo boy. Whether we see more of the same from the last few weeks or a green-flag race all the way to the finish without a single overtake on one of the easiest tracks to pass (becase Indycar, obviously), you’re going to want to tune in tomorrow night. Welcome to No Limits, Texas, y’all.
Yipee ki yay, mofos
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