Bienvenue au Portland – quick one to get us underway before practice starts. You know Portland: home of GI Joe’s, Ursula Le Guin, liberal politics, that big mountain in the background. Portland! It’s also home to one of the US West Coast’s premier straights-and-corners natural race tracks, where they used to hold a CART fixture (Jabroc failure, Mark Blundell, Juan Montoya spinning 360 degrees at a restart) and later on an Indycar race (when Scott Dixon essentially won the 2018 championship).
The track hasn’t changed – it’s a long and wide pit straight, a narrow and curvy back straight, and some esses and a hairpin at either end. The straight also has a chicane in the middle which I forecast will attract most of the pre-race broadcast’s talking points just as surely as it will attract somebody to leave their braking to the latest possible minute, aim their car at the apex and hope. Possibly at every restart.
Championship-wise we are now waiting for points leader Alex Palou to appear at the finish line and claim a second series title. He has in fact not won a race since Mid-Ohio at the beginning of July and while his non-Ganassi rivals are totally out of the picture, double race winner as of last weekend Scott Dixon still has a chance provided his teammate has two terrible weekends and the 74-point deficit can be closed up. By my calculations Palou needs something like a fourth-place finish to wrap up the title even if Dixon makes it three wins in a row. He will probably achieve this. Or he won’t, and he’ll win it at Laguna Seca with an eleventh-place finish and we’ll have to try and summon up some enthusiasm.
Any championship interest further back? The battle for third is on after Newgarden’s terrible races at Indy and Gateway have brought him within sight of the winless Pato O’Ward and the still fairly streaky Scott McLaughlin. Speaking of winless, Team Of The Future McLaren are still without one this year, and although Zak Brown may be more irritated that Alex Palou has eluded him, the fact that they haven’t scored something that Andretti Autosport have two of and even Rahal-Letterman-Lanigan have achieved is surely present in that big deal-making brain of his. Oh and Estonia’s Juri Vips, who in the distant past narrowly beat Marcus Armstrong to the German F4 title, is getting a late-season Indycar debut taking over the vacant Rahal seat that Conor Daly kept warm last week. Best keep the radio on mute.
Anyway, here’s the schedule. This is Pacific time, Portland being in furthest Oregon, so add on 8 (eight) hours to get to the UK and 9 (nine) for western Europe.
Friday, 1 September
1.55pm: Indy NXT practice 1
3.00: Indycar practice 1
4.30: USF2000 race 1
5.30: USF Pro 2000 race 1 (how is this different)
Saturday, 2 September
9.00am: Indycar practice 2
10.15: US Touring Car Championship (!!!) race 1
11.20: Indy NXT practice 2
12.30pm: Indycar qualifying
2.15: USF2000 race 2
3.10: USF Pro 2000 race 2
6.00: US Touring Car Championship race 2
Sunday, 3 September
10.20am: Indy NXT race
12.30: Indycar race
3.15: USFPro 2000 race 3
4.20: USF2000 race 3
Aaaand enjoy! Practice starts in 20 mins!!
Me seeing track activity at 1:55.
Me remembering I’m on the other coast.
