Did you happen to miss the Indy Car race as well as the F1 race? With no hope of watching a re-broadcast? Never fear! For I am here to help once again. WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!!
The Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersberg ended with James “Hinchtown” Hinchcliffe getting his first ever Indy Car victory. Hinchtown’s win is the first by a Canadian in Indy Car since Paul Tracy back in 2007. Coming in second behind James Hinchcliffe was Helio Castroneves and Marco Andretti, showing a strong performance landed the third podium spot. Check out the race highlight flick below for all the action.
Just as Formula 1 was wrapping up across the pond the Indy Cars were getting warmed up in the land of hockey, maple syrup, and teen drama/rap artist crossovers AKA Canada. Toronto to be more exact. The Honda Indy Toronto race was the official 2/3rds mark of the season and the points race heated up significantly thanks to Will Power’s previous fumbles and Ryan Hunter-Reay’s back-to-back wins. This was the time for the likes of Will Power, Dario Franchitti, and Scott Dixon to not F-up and re-establish some dominance in the battle for the 2012 championship. Unfortunately, each one of them F’d up! Dixon suffered a crash that put him out of the race, Dario had contact which took him out of the race just long enough to lose all hope before he rejoined to try and earn some points, and Will Power had a fight with the wall which screwed his suspension up and put him down a lap over the rest of the field.
At this point you might be asking yourself “who took advantage of all of that misfortune?” The same guy who did the last two times, that’s who! Yes, Ryan Hunter-Reay took his third win in a row after the best laid plans of the top two teams fell apart once again. Charlie Kimball scored a career best second place and Mike Conway nabbed a third place finish. With his win in Toronto Ryan has officially taken over the points lead (34 points over Will Power to be exact) and with 5 races left is looking to be a serious threat for the 2012 championship; which would be the first championship for Andretti Racing since Dario won it for them right before leaving the team to try his hand at NASCAR.
For all the race highlights check out the video below.
Barely recovered from their stop at Texas, the Indy Car grid came back to the Milwaukee mile after a brief absence for “Indy Fest”. Not sure where the new name comes from but I supposed it does not matter much. What does matter is that Milwaukee is just the same as it has always been: short, flat, fast, and unpredictable! If you walked away from the race after the first half you would swear that Dario Franchitti or Scott Dixon would take the victory. However it certainly did not play out that way! Franchitti actually had his day ended early when he had an unfortunate meeting with the wall and Scott Dixon was penalized for jumping a re-start (that decision was later ruled to be “wrong” but it wont change his finish result much). This may leave you asking who was at the front? Why none other than Ryan Hunter-Reay of Andretti Autosport. Ryan was being chased down by Tony Kannan and James Hinchcliffe respectively. While he faced some tough contention from TK he managed to hold off the Brazilian and take the win which actually brings things full circle for Ryan. Back in 2004 he scored his first win at the Milwaukee mile when he raced for Jimmy Vassar in the Champ Car series. To see all the highlights from the race scroll down for video from Indy Car.
There was a ton of racing over the Memorial Day weekend but the biggest event was easily the 96th annual Indianapolis 500 on Sunday. This year’s Indy 500 was a year of firsts. It was the first year with the new DW12 Dallara chassis on the famous oval, the first year in a long time that we had multiple engine manufacturers battling it out, and unfortunately the first Indy 500 without Dan Wheldon who won last year’s race before his tragic death. Really the entire event was a massive tribute to Mr. Wheldon and more so than the thrill of victory, the history, and the glory many of the top drivers wanted to win the event just so they could have the honor of their likeness on the Borg Warner trophy next to Dan’s. The new chassis and their freshly tested oval set up provided for tons of excitement as there were 35 total lead changes, smashing the previous record of 29. There were many who were looking like a good bet to take it all. Rookie James “Hinchtown” Hinchcliffe qualified 2nd and held the lead for a significant amount of time. Marco Andretti also looked very strong and lead more laps than most.
Although, in the end it was the familiar sight of the Target Chip Ganassi team taking control of the race. Teammates Dario Franchitti and Scott Dixon took turns swapping the lead several times during the last 20 laps although they had serious contention from Tony Kanaan and Takuma Sato. It was Dario who had the lead at the end of the race and despite what can only be described as the ballsy-est oval pass attempt in history by Takuma Sato, Dario managed to hang on to the lead and earned his third Indy 500 victory (under caution). According to Indy Car Dario earned just over 2.4 million dollars for his victory as well as a place in the history books as being among the few drivers to have 3 Indy 500 victories under their belts. To see some of the best race action from the event, scroll down to check out the highlights video.
Over the weekend the Indy Car Series stopped in my home town of Long Beach, California for the 38th annual Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. This was my first chance seeing the new cars, engines, and drivers up close and it was awesome! More on that in a later post though. This post is to give you the results of the race in case you missed out and for some reason can’t watch a rebroadcast.
First a little background. The weekend started off with controversy as Chevrolet decided to pull their engines from Chevy-backed teams and replace them with new units. Per Indy Car rules changing an engine before its “desginated threshold” will cost a team 10 grid spots. Since most of the top tier teams are powered by Chevrolet engines it meant that the likes of Team Penske and Andretti Autosport had to start in the middle or back of the field. This left the door wide-open for teams powered by Honda or Lotus engines.
Despite Will Power getting the pole it was Dario Franchitti and rookie Joseph Newgarden who started in the front row (both drivers with Honda engines). However due to some expert strategy and pit stops Will Power was able to fight his way to the front on a two stop strategy. In the end Will had his hands full with a very agressive Simon Pagenaud who nearly took the win from Power in the last 5 laps. James “Hinchtown” Hinchcliffe was granted a third place spot due to his teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay being religated to 7th due to a penalty.
For highlights of the race check out the video below. Also stay tuned for a full event gallery from the entire weekend!
If you missed round 2 of the IZOD Indy Car Series at Barber Motorsports Park yesterday then don’t worry as we have a quick recap for you. Things started off with a bit of controversy as Will Power was deined pole position due to a technicality. He had just barely missed a red flag cut off point as he got onto the track for his fast lap right after Ryan Hunter-Reay suffered an off-track incident. Due to a new rule which prohibits pasing through a yellow zone during a fast lap Will Power’s fast lap was waived off giving pole position to round 1 winner Helio Castroneves and putting Power back in 9th starting position. With Helio starting off at the front it looked like he may secure back to back wins but due to some pitstop mishaps and excellent strategy in Power’s pit the Aussie was able to fight his way back to the front and claim a come-from-behind victory. Scott Dixon, barely missing out on win due to a pit mishap captured 2nd place and Helio Castroneves held on for third. To see some of the best action from the race check out the highlight reel below. Also stay tuned to MotorworldHype.com as we stuff your face full of coverage as the Indy Car Series comes to our home town for the Toyota Grand Prix Of Long Beach in just two weeks!
The Indy Car season finally kicked off its 2012 season over the weekend on the streets of St. Petersberg Flordia. This race kicked off a lot of firsts. It was the first race for the new DW12 chassis, the first race for new engine suppliers Chevrolet and Lotus, and the first race without Dan Wheldon. Although it seemed like Dan was there all along as not only St. Petersberg Dan’s adopted home town but in remeberance a section of the track which is also part of the streets of the city was named Dan Wheldon Way in his honor.
As things got started it was Will Power returning to form by capturing the first pole position of the season, setting a track record in the progress. However, his performance during qualifying would not hold up during the race as it was Helio Castroneves who managed to take the first victory of the season. Scott Dixon of Target Ganassi racing finished second and Ryan Hunter-Reay of Andretti Autosport took third spot on the podium. If you want to see some of the best action from the race scroll down below for a highlight video.
The current generation Indy Cars battled each other on a street course for the very last time over the labor day weekend as the Indy Car series took over the streets of Baltimore. The weekend started out with Will Power dominating qualifying on Saturday but the real surprise came from young Graham Rahal who managed to qualify P2! When the race started on Sunday Rahal launched an attack on Will Power that would last for the majority of the race but due to an off fuel strategy he couldn’t quite capitalize on his various opportunities to pass the Team Penske points contender. As a result Will Power was able to hold on and win the race from the pole with Oriol Servia taking second spot and Tony Kanaan (who had a pretty bad practice incident) captured third place. Power’s win puts him just 11 points away from championship leader Dario Franchitti (who finished 4th).
If you missed the race check out the highlights in the video below.
If you didn’t watch the MoveThatBlock.com 225 Indy Car race in New Hampshire yesterday then you missed one heck of an event. Things started out normally, with a Chip Ganassi/Target car dominating the race, namely Dario Franchitti. While the other teams including Team Penske were struggling to figure out the short oval course, somehow the Ganassi cars had it locked down. However that all ended on lap 188 when Takuma Sato accidentally made contact with Franchitti during a restart, causing him to spin and eventually retire from the race. This made for a prime opportunity for Will Power to gain some much needed ground in the points chase. As Will fought his way to the front of the pack Ryan Hunter-Reay was leading the race with Oriol Servia behind him and a battle for third going on between James Hinchcliffe and Scott Dixon. It was a short time later that things really got interesting.
With 19 laps to go some light rain brought out a full course yellow. After a few caution laps it was evident that the moisture was going to keep coming and in a total breakdown of information and a serious lapse in judgement race control ordered the field to go green again despite pleas from the drivers to their teams to not go green due to the track surface being dangerously slippery. The team owners were livid with race control at the mere thought of trying to back to green in such dangerous conditions and scrambled to find an authority to talk sense into. Michael Andretti predicted that if the race went green again several drivers would spin as most could not even put power down in 2nd or 3rd gear. Michael’s predictions came to past when the green flag came out and Danica Patrick spun which caused several other cars to spin including Will Power. Will absolutely lost it going into a swear-ridden tirade over the radio to his team on the incompetence of race control’s decision. If that wasn’t enough Will got out of the car and started looking for any official he could find and when he did find one he went into a display that many (including myself) are calling one of the greatest indy car moments ever.
After the carnage was over race control immediately red flagged the race bringing the whole thing to a stop while they tried to figure out what to do. The final decision from control was to end the race in the order the cars were in before the initial yellow flag came out. This granted the victory to Ryan Hunter-Reay (thus appeasing Michael Andretti’s anger), Oriol Servia took second place while Scott Dixon nabbed third. The furious Will Power (who later apologized for his tantrum) walked away with a 5th place finish which shaved 15 points off of the points gap between him and Dario Franchitti.
So far there has been no official word on possible fines for Will Power due to his “colorful display” and language during the incident but we are expecting an answer on that to come soon! In the meantime check out the race highlights below.
The Honda Indy 200 is officially in the books and the winner has made history. Scott Dixon was on an absolute mission the entire weekend. He was fastest in practice, dominated qualifying, and went on to own the track on race day. After some questionable contact between Dario and Will power on the first lap Dario was able to hold on and take second place which increased his points lead over Power. Ryan Hunter-Reay was able to hold onto first place despite fighting fatigue due to Mid-Ohio’s very physical configuration. To make matters worse for Ryan, his drink tube was broken! Get that man a Gatorade! In other track hi-jinks Danica Patrick made herself the most hated woman in Ohio by taking out hometown hero Graham Rahal in a “racing incident” after which Graham’s team had to talk him out of taking revenge on the tiny terror. I’ll bet he is glad that Danica is going to NASCAR next year.
Next up on the schedule is the MoveThatBlock.com Indy 225 at the New Hampshire Motorspeedway oval. This is the first time Indy Car has been back in NH in 10 years. Will the drivers take to it like any other oval? Or will they be thrown off but nuances at the track that they aren’t used to? We’ll find out a week from now!
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