2023 NTT IndyCar Series Round 17 of 17: Firestone Grand Prix of MontereyHello! I know that you’ve been feeling tired—I bring you IndyCar, and deeper understanding! This is our last scheduled stop: Laguna Seca. Instead of tensing up for the conclusion of a thrilling championship battle, we’re here having already given away the trophy. Lord knows how many things have changed on this green Earth since the last time that happened, but if I know anything about this series, it won’t be the last time it’s blown a great big hole through our expectations.
So how did we get here without a championship on the line, and more importantly, why should you still wake up to the sound of engines?
The Track
“It’s like the old ride at Universal Studios where all the rocks roll down the hill and you don’t know if you’re going to get hit by one of them. That’s my daily life.” - Gill Campbell, former track president of Laguna SecaWeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca
First IndyCar Race: 1983
Surface: Fresh California asphalt
Turns: Officially 11
Track Length: 2.238 mi
Number of Laps: 95
Race Distance: 212 mi
Ideal Pit Strategy: 3 or 4 stops
As a Lyric: “Take your shoes off, and throw them in the [dry] lake.”
Fastest Lap: 1:10.148, Alex Zanardi (no, we’re not counting Gene’s lap in the F2003-GA)
X: @WeatherTechRcwy
’Winningest’ Driver: Bobby Rahal (x4)
’Winningest’ Team: Team Penske (x6)
’Winningest’ Engine: Cosworth (x11)
Last Year’s Winner: Álex Palou
Last Year’s Number of Lead Changes: 7
Last Year’s Number of Overtakes: 286
Last Year’s Number of Yellows: 1 (Lap 39), for 3 total laps
Last Year’s Fastest Lap: 109.099 mi/h
Last Year’s Biggest Mover: Josef Newgarden (25th to 2nd)
You would think that you’d simply be able to type in lagunaseca.com and get this information. but in fact, lagunaseca.com redirects to an antivirus website shadier than Sting Ray Robb’s backers (seriously don’t go there). Confused people like me trying to do research for opening posts that are running late can potentially get lost trying to find information related to the track, and if I’d had any more time to write, you might have gotten more about it!
Thankfully, weathertechraceway.com redirects to the correct website, which is owned by the state of California.
You can find IndyCar’s 30 minute highlight package of last year’s race here, and get a lap of the track in a contemporary IndyCar below:
Exclusive to this weekend (more on this below), Colton Herta also lapped the track in his dad’s old car:
And OK OK I know you’ll all stone me to death if I don’t post the F1 car lap, so here you go:
I don’t know what’s good for me, but I promise I won’t let you down as long as you’ve got the right expectations. There’s already been a test session run on Thursday, and early indications are that speeds are close to the 120 mi/h range and Penske and Rahal are looking good.
The Schedule
"I put this moment… here.”
Friday, September 8
07:15 -- T&S on Track
08:30 -- Porsche Sprint Challenge USA West Practice 1
09:25 -- Blue Marble Radical Cup North America Practice 1
10:20 -- Promoter Ride Program/Arrow Sam Car Lap
10:45 -- IndyCar Experience Event Car Demo Laps
11:10 -- Porsche Sprint Challenge USA West Practice 2
12:00 -- Driver Autograph Session
12:05 -- Blue Marble Radical Cup North America Practice 2
13:15 -- Indy NXT by Firestone Practice 1
14:30 -- NTT IndyCar Series Practice 1
16:00 -- Porsche Sprint Challenge USA West Qualifying
16:35 -- Blue Marble Radical Cup North America Qualifying
17:15 -- IndyCar Experience Event Car Demo Laps
Saturday, September 9
07:45 -- T&S on Track
08:00 -- Porsche Sprint Challenge USA West Race 1
09:05 -- Indy NXT by Firestone Qualifying
10:00 -- NTT IndyCar Series Practice 2
11:20 -- Blue Marble Radical Cup North America Race 1
12:35 -- Indy NXT by Firestone Race 1
14:00 -- NTT IndyCar Series Qualifying
15:45 -- Indy NXT by Firestone Autograph Session
15:45 -- Porsche Sprint Challenge USA West Race 2
16:40 -- Blue Marble Radical Cup North America Race 2
17:40 -- IndyCar Experience Event Car Demo Laps
Sunday, September 10
07:15 -- T&S on Track
08:00 -- Blue Marble Radical Cup North America Race 3
09:00 --NTT Indycar Series Warm-Up
10:00 -- Indy NXT by Firestone Race 2
11:29 -- NTT IndyCar Series Pre-Race Ceremonies (pause for the jets)
11:37 -- NTT IndyCar Series Driver Introductions
12:19 -- Firestone Grand Prix of Monterey
The Viewing Information
North American and United Kingdom Viewers
US viewers will find the race on their local NBC affiliate, or as always, on Peacock. Canadian viewers can watch the race on TSN or TSN+. UK viewers will be able to view the race on Sky Sports F1.
International Viewers
Sadly, I do not have an encyclopedic knowledge of all the possible ways to view IndyCar, but thankfully, IndyCar does! If you live outside one of the aforementioned territories, you should be able to find out how to watch the race at that link.
The Recap
Can you believe we’ve been through 16 of these things already? Me neither! According to my copy of The Conveniently Abridged Unified History of IndyCar (4th edition), this is the first title race that’s ended early since The Schism That Shan’t Be Shown, in 2007. To recap everything that’s happened since then might take me all my life… but it would only take a moment to tell you what’s happened this season. Clearly, the fact that the title has been wrapped up means that if you had to pick the highlight of the year, it’s that Álex Palou was the undisputed King of the Mountain.
Could you see the aisles of race fans?Could you see them screaming and cheering?
Could you see the storm rising?
Could you see the guy who was driving?
Could he climb higher and higher?
Could he climb right over the top?
Why does this multi-millionaire
Fill up his home with broken contracts?
It seemed like only yesterday we were still having to listen to how Indianapolis 500 Winner Marcus Ericsson really definitely was a legitimate title contender for real trust me bro as he improbably managed to seize victory at the season opener in St. Petersburg. Granted, this was somewhat helped by Scott McLaughlin and Romain Grosjean choosing the path of mutually assured destruction during a concrete ownership dispute, as well as half of the field removing itself from the race before we’d even reached the second turn of the season, but I digress. Behind Ericsson in 2nd was Pato O’Ward (get used to this) and Scott Dixon in 3rd. Álex Palou, keen to fool us all after a tumultuous year which involved a series of legal headaches, notched up what was ultimately his equal worst finish of 2023 (so far) in 8th. We wouldn’t see him finish a race that low again for another four months.
Next was Texas, the nexus of racing genius and insanity resting somewhere on its reprofiled start/finish stretch. Regardless of whether you thought it was brave or crazy, there was thunder in our hearts as we witnessed some of the closest driving of the year promising an epic finish that ultimately ended up a bit like getting Mega Bloks for your birthday when you were expecting Legos. At least it wasn’t Sato’s fault this time.
Looking for a moment that’ll never happen…Josef Newgarden claimed honors on the oval (you might see this happen again) while St. Pete’s protagonists all landed safely in the Top 8 (they weren’t actually airborne but they may as well have been).
Not eager to let the Ganassi/Penske juggernauts run away with all the wins this year, the recently beleaguered Andretti Autosport added itself to the conversation in Long Beach with first-time pole sitter and winner yet legend-in-the-making Kyle Kirkwood making the streets his second home. Meanwhile, Palou and Ericsson netted Top 5’s while O’Ward bludgeoned Dixon into the wall, establishing Dixon vs. O’Ward as one of the year’s great racing rivalries alongside Scott McLaughlin vs. Romain Grosjean, Callum Ilott vs. Agustin Canapino, and Jim Thurman vs. Don Ohlmeyer.
We didn’t get to a road course until April, with our heroes speeding past trees at the oddly named Children’s of Alabama Indy Grand Prix, which featured a lengthy back-and-forth rematch between the previously mentioned Kiwi… wait… named Scott… hang on… who races for Penske (there) and Grosjean. Scott McLaughlin would win, while at this point, with flashes of pace and two second-place finishes to his name, it seemed (to me anyway) that Grosjean would be a serious contender for the championship. This would actually be his last Top 10 finish until four months later in Nashville. Yikes. What happened to his season from this race onward is one of life’s great mysteries, like what’s beyond the end of a bowling alley.
As May arrived, we went to Indy, to the surprise of no-one who’s been doing this for more than a week. IndyCar says, “85 laps at IMS? Yeah, you’ll want to watch these highlights,” but the only things of note are race winner Álex Palou beginning what would become the greatest stretch of his career, O’Ward finishing second again, and Will Power and Kyle Kirkwood proving that sometimes when two clouds of bad hoodoo collide you just get more bad hoodoo.
Indy 500 time trials upon us, the biggest early storyline was the failure of Rahal Letterman Lanigan to secure a spot in the race for any of its regular entries. Graham Rahal would be astonishingly bumped from the race by his struggling teammate Jack Harvey, who ran a hot engine to a time that seemingly defied the very laws of physics. Rahal would eventually be welcomed back into the field to replace the injured Stefan Wilson, though an issue at the race start prevented him from being a factor. Álex Palou continued his hot streak by claiming pole position at a record speed of 234.217 mi/h.
The big race itself was primarily a contest between Ganassi and McLaren. Palou fell out of contention after Rinus Veekay speared him exiting the pits, and McLaren lost 2/3 of its competitors to incidents which caused red flags, setting up a duel between Josef Newgarden and Marcus Ericsson. A major pile-up on the penultimate restart resulted in a record-setting third red flag and the only one-lap sprint to the finish in 500 history, which at last allowed Josef Newgarden to let go of a decade’s worth of frustration like a bell to a southerly wind. It’s not the way anybody probably wants to win, but if you’re given the opportunity to win the 500, you take it, right?
Up on the shoulders of angels…All good things coming to an end, May gave way to June and a new Detroit street circuit, which saw the resurgence of Alexander Rossi and Colton Herta, a Dixon-Power contretemps, and the continued malfunction of Romain Grosjean (oh, the thrill and the hurting) as Álex Palou maintained supremacy. It’s at this point which, if you thought I was writing the season, you might accuse me of reusing scripts, as the following rounds at Road America, Mid-Ohio, and Toronto contained very similar storylines—and let’s be honest, even if Palou ceded victory in Toronto to 2023’s second first-timer Christian Lundgaard, Palou wrangling a car with a cracked and dragging nose to second on that track of all places might as well be considered a win. With a lead close to 100 points after Toronto, it became abundantly clear that any challenge for the championship would depend on considerable misfortune for everyone’s favorite contract-shredding Spanish barista and good results for his two closest rivals, Newgarden and Dixon. This stretch of races also saw Simon Pagenaud have a terrifying accident resulting in a concussion from which he still hasn’t fully recovered. Our thoughts are with you, Simon.
Moving on to the Iowa weekend, consensus wisdom implied the chaotic concert-laden twin races and transiently empty bullring’s strong amicability to Josef Newgarden would provide the platform for misfortune necessary to reinvigorate the title fight, but alas, it was not to be. Though Newgarden swept both races, justifying his sky-high fantasy valuation of $43 (it’s 2023 so by my math the exchange rate to real dollars makes that about the value of a five-bedroom house on 14 acres in northeastern Michigan), Palou finished eighth in Race 1 and third in Race 2, drastically minimizing the damage.
It’s hard to see your opposition when you’re this far ahead.While Iowa couldn’t knock Palou off his championship perch (yes it’s a catbird seat I was getting there), surely something was going to happen to him on the streets of Nashville. It did—the pull and the push of it all damning him to be just shy of fuel for the finish—but like in Toronto, the wily Spaniard trusted the process and received the additional yellow flag running he needed to come home third. There was a WOOOOO energy car and Kyle KirkWOOOOOd WOOOOOn again.
Our next two jaunts took us back to the Indy infield course and the oval at Gateway. “These tracks have very little in common!” you say. You would be right, but what they do have in common this year is that at both, Scott Dixon crushed the field with legendary fuel management—literally only he was able to do what he did at Gateway. On the Indy road course, his nearest rival was a hard-charging Graham Rahal (Graham has no other modes, I checked), who nearly provided us with another photo-finish for Indy’s museum, while finishing second at Gateway was Pato O’Ward (oh hi). Josef Newgarden’s championship run and attempt at a perfect oval season ended across these two races with a pair of uncharacteristic 25th place finishes, leaving just Dixon to stop Palou.
With two rounds to go, headed to Portland, Álex Palou needed an average finish of 11 to seal the championship. Palou appears to have interpreted this as meaning he needs two race results of 1 and 1, because the clinical dominance he showed in Portland to secure his second IndyCar crown was eerily similar to what he did to the field at Laguna Seca last year. As we’re wont to say on these boards: ominous. But alas, this is IndyCar—all that’s to come runs in at once.
So that’s why, even though the season isn’t over, we’ve already got this image to celebrate:
“I don’t know if I’m closer to heaven, but it looks like hell down there.”The Standings
1st – Álex Palou (618 pts)
2nd – Scott Dixon (527 pts)
3rd – Josef Newgarden (470 pts)
4th – Pato O’Ward (461 pts)
5th – Scott McLaughlin (448 pts)
6th – Marcus Ericsson (423 pts)
7th – Will Power (393 pts)
8th – Christian Lundgaard (362 pts)
9th – Alexander Rossi (349 pts)
10th – Colton Herta (348 pts)
Italics denote clinched positions
So… Now What?
With just one race left to run, there are still some unfinished storylines which have neatly crystallized into things which are conveniently easy to follow.
The first of these is whether or not Will Power will complete his first season since 2006 without a win. I’d imagine he has other things on his mind (wishing our best, Liz) but you’d have to imagine he’ll be disappointed to close out the year without one, particularly since both of his teammates have secured them.
Next up is probably the year’s biggest question mark: McLaren hasn’t yet won a race. O’Ward has finished second four times this year—more than any other driver—but the papaya-clad folks have yet to close the deal (
). I suspect a winless season will result in an increased frequency of colorectally bound shoes back at Woking, so for the sake of Woking’s resident proctologist I hope they give it their all this weekend.Third place in the championship is also up for grabs between the Bus Bros and O’Ward, who would clinch it with a win unless Newgarden takes pole or leads the most laps during the race and ends second. McLaughlin needs O’Ward third or worse and his fellow Bus Bro to be sixth or worse while he wins to take the spot. If none of them are in the hunt for the win, then the permutations are virtually limitless.
The last item of interest is the potential flashpoint at Andretti Autorsport: Kirkwood and Herta are fighting for Top 10 honors. Herta is well afoul of the superlicense points he’d need to fulfill his F1 dream at this stage so would likely want to cement himself as the de facto team lead on performance when Ericsson joins next year. I honestly can’t imagine Kirkwood being too fussed about it as he’s the only Andretti car to have actually won a race this year. Given what Herta will be racing in I’m not so sure he’s up in arms either:
“But what it becomes in his hands, curving and sweeping, rising and reaching, I could feel what he was feeling. Lines like these have got to be a racer’s dream.”The Spotter Guide
Flights of Fantasy
With one race left to run, any one of our top four contenders could still take the 2023 Haymarket Atlas F1 Autosport Forums IndyCar Fantasy Challenge *breathes* Driven by Firestone and Presented by Motorsport Media Championship. DS27 leads tpatricio by a margin of bonus points, while Magnolia Team Pethke and milestone 11 are outsiders at around 50 points off the lead (typically between half and a third of the weekend’s top haul). At nearly 100 points back, Muppet probably has better odds of getting Roger Penske to laugh at a fart joke on live TV.
Who will win? … huh? What was the question? I sucked this year. Don’t ask me.
Deeper Understanding
- Pope John Paul II celebrated mass at Laguna Seca in September 1987 to an audience of 72,000—pray that we see that many in attendance this weekend
- Only twice has this race been run outside of the fall: in June in 2002 and 2003
- Laguna Seca was the site of Mario Andretti’s last IndyCar race in 1994
- Five drivers have won the IndyCar event here in back-to-back years (hello Palou?)
- The Bridgestone corporation has been the most frequent sponsor of the race, with 6 events including this weekend’s race
- Every time this race has been held on September 10th, a Brazilian driver has won (maybe Helio?)
- Chevrolet has not won a race here in 30 years
- At 212 miles, the race’s current iteration is the longest distance over which it has ever been run
- A grid order of McLaughlin, Ferrucci, Rahal, Dixon, Herta, and O’Ward would give you the maximum possible digits of pi using car numbers, at 9
- If the grid were arranged by random draw, there would be a 1 in 213,127,200 chance of getting this order as the Fast 6
- 213127200 in RGB values is a color roughly defined as “orchid”
In the Gap Between Past and Future
On Sunday evening, at the conclusion of this season’s last race, all the banners stop waving, all the flags stop flying, and silence comes over thousands of race fans as the last IndyCar race of 2023 comes to a close. Maybe it hasn’t been the most memorable championship in recent years, but the individual races have been standouts as we’ve watched Palou defy fate and establish himself as the best of his generation, Dixon defy thermodynamics, Herta inherit Will Power’s cosmic bullseye, and IndyCar’s big three potentially become a big four. There’s less at stake than normal this race, but it’s been a wonderful season. After all, this is IndyCar: I just know that something good is going to happen, and I don't know when, but just saying it could even make it happen.
Oh so exciting,Go on and on,
Every time you leave us,
So Summer will be gone
