Formula 1 wasn’t the only motorsport with its season opener during the weekend. The 2010 Indy Car season got started on Sunday on the streets of San Paulo, Brazil. This race was, problematic from the start. This was the first race in this new street course and it showed. When weather wasn’t plaguing the drivers the nature of the course was. There was a section on the main straight that had a section of recently ground down asphalt and someone forgot to mop up the dust!
Some of the rookies weren’t doing so great either. Former F1 driver Takuma Sato got a little too friendly with the brakes and caused a huge pile up right as the race went green the first time. Then, Mario Morales made the same mistake and literally ran over Marco Andretti. Marco had to sit there with Mario’s car on his head for a few minutes until they were able to get a crane to pull it off. Amazingly, he took it pretty well.. but then again he was probably still fuzzy from the concussion.
When the dust settled it was Will Power and Team Penske on the top of the podium. Check out the race highlights below and a detailed wrap up of the race on Indy Car’s website.
Last week our good friend Bill Wood caught up to Indy Car Series Champion Scott Dixon during the media day for the Long Beach Grand Prix to get his opinion on a few other motorsports besides Indy Car. You might be surprized at his responses. Check it out below.
This weekend was the long awaited season opener of the 2009 Indy Car season at St Petersberg Florida and it looked a lot like the Formula 1 season opener. How? Well just like the first round of F1 the first round of Indy Car saw the top teams struggling while last season’s mid-packers were dominating the field. Recently ousted Newman-Haas driver Justin Wilson lead most of the race in his new Sonny’s BBQ sponsored ride with Dale Coyne Racing.
You heard right, a Dale Coyne car was leading the race. Where was last year’s champ Scott Dixon? Sitting in the pits. He crashed out on the 80th lap after a mash up with AGR driver Hideki Mutoh. Fellow AGR driver Danica Patrick also had an incident with rookie Raphael Matos. Marco Andretti also had some contact which took him out as well.
So who ended up on top? Well like I said Justin Wilson led most of the race however Penske driver Ryan Briscoe was able to get the jump on him during a restart and Ryan Hunter Reay soon followed. After this that was pretty much all she wrote. Briscoe held off Reay and Wilson to win the race by a 0.4169 second margin!
It was definitely an eventful race and an exciting way to start off the season. Next up is our hometown race the Long Beach Grand Prix. Look forward to A LOT of coverage from us on that event!
Just when it looked like the remainder of the 2008 Indy Car season was going to be all about Scott Dixon and Helio Castroneves someone else swoops in and steals the thunder. That someone is UK born Justin Wilson. He earned the 107th win for the Newman Hass Lanagan team this past weekend during the Belle Isle GP in Detroit.
As I stated earlier the story over the weekend was the tightening points battle between Scott Dixon and Helio “twinkle toes” Castroneves. Thanks to Helio’s win at Sonoma he narrowed down the points gap to a scant 43 points. However if Dixon won in Detroit it would have mathmatically clenched the title for him. Obviously a lot was at stake for both drivers. However unfortunately, or fourtuneately (depending on who you ask) both Dixon and Castroneves suffered difficulties over the weekend.
First was Scott who qualified on pole but due to a not-so-great pit strategy left him back in 5th and unable to get up in front. On the contrary Team Penske’s strategy helped put Helio out front where he lead the latter half of the race however their fuel strategy left their driver having to soft pedel the throttle in order to make the milage needed to finish the race. This was partly the reason why Justin Wilson was able to close in on Helio and attempt to make a move for the lead with less than 20 laps to go. But in a desperate move Helio blatantly blocked Justin from getting around. The officials were not amused and ordered Helio to let Justin by. Without enough fuel in the tank to run his car at full power Helio was forced to watch from second place as Justin took the checkered flag.
With Scott Dixon’s 5th place finish and Helio’s 2nd place finish it narrows the points gap to 30. If Scott can get 8th place or better at the next race in Chicago then he will have clnched the title. However Chicago has not been kind to Scott in the past. Last year he narrowly lost the 07 title to Dario Franchitti because he ran out of gas on the last lap.
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