Nico Rosberg satisfied with practice performance - MotorSportsTalk

Nico Rosberg stormed to the top of the timesheets in the second free practice session for the British Grand Prix and although the Mercedes driver is pleased with his performance, he conceded that there is still work to do.

“It’s been a good day pace wise, for sure,” Rosberg explained. “For qualifying, I think I can do the job again. That’s a nice start to the weekend.”

Once again though, Rosberg admitted that he was struggling with the W04’s long run pace which saw him fail to convert pole position into a victory at the Bahrain and Spanish Grands Prix.

“We did a long run this afternoon and it was looking- okay not great and that’s going to be the big challenge for us, long runs on this track.”

Rosberg did confirm that some of the upgrades applied to the car were intended to aid its tire wear.

“There are further pieces again that are on the car to help with tire degradation, we hope it’s the right thing to do. Today was difficult to learn much about it but we’ll see as the weekend goes on and especially in the race. I’m sure we’re on the right track.”

Indeed, the wet weather curtailed running in FP1 and made any evaluation impossible. Rosberg did extend his sympathy to the fans who had braved the conditions, although he also made his reservations over the FIA’s introduction of an ‘FP1 tire’ for next season clear.

“It was a bit disappointing for the fans today. They paid a lot of money and then we don’t run, so it would be worth looking into that [extra set of tires].

“But what to do, I don’t know, because we already have that extra set of tires as it is. It’s just the fact that we don’t really want to risk things going out in the wet when it’s going to be dry all weekend and it’s things like engine degredation. We only have a limited amount of engines for the season, and any extra laps that we do, we lose power, so you don’t want to do any useless laps on the engine either.”

It is clear that, once again, Mercedes will be competitive in qualifying, but as they have already found out this season, it means little if the race pace is not there on Sunday.

INDIANAPOLIS — The first Indy 500 victory for Josef Newgarden also was the richest in race history from a record 2023 purse of just more than $17 million.

The two-time NTT IndyCar Series champion, who continued his celebration Monday morning at Indianapolis Motor Speedway earned $3.666 million for winning the 107th running of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.

The purse and winner’s share both are the largest in the history of the Indianapolis 500.

It’s the second consecutive year that the Indy 500 purse set a record after the 2022 Indy 500 became the first to crack the $16 million mark (nearly doubling the 2021 purse that offered a purse of $8,854,565 after a crowd limited to 135,000 because of the COVID-19 pandemic).

The average payout for IndyCar drivers was $500,600 (exceeding last year’s average of $485,000).

Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Roger Penske, whose team also fields Newgarden’s No. 2 Dallara-Chevrolet, had made raising purses a priority since buying the track in 2020. But Penske but was unable to post big money purses until the race returned to full capacity grandstands last year.

The largest Indy 500 purse before this year was $14.4 million for the 2008 Indy 500 won by Scott Dixon (whose share was $2,988,065). Ericsson’s haul made him the second Indy 500 winner to top $3 million (2009 winner Helio Castroneves won $3,048,005.

Runner-up Marcus Ericsson won $1.043 million after falling short by 0.0974 seconds in the fourth-closest finish in Indy 500 history.

The 107th Indy 500 drew a crowd of at least 330,000 that was the largest since the sellout for the 100th running in 2016, and the second-largest in more than two decades, according to track officials.

“This is the greatest race in the world, and it was an especially monumental Month of May featuring packed grandstands and intense on-track action,” Penske Entertainment president and CEO Mark Miles said in a release. “Now, we have the best end card possible for the 107th Running of the Indianapolis 500: a record-breaking purse for the history books.”

Benjamin Pedersen was named the Indy 500 rookie of the year, earning a $50,000 bonus.

The race’s purse is determined through contingency and special awards from IMS and IndyCar. The awards were presented Monday night in the annual Indy 500 Victory Celebration at the JW Marriott in downtown Indianapolis.

The payouts for the 107th Indy 500:

1. Josef Newgarden, $3,666,000
2. Marcus Ericsson, $1,043,000
3. Santino Ferrucci, $481,800
4. Alex Palou, $801,500
5. Alexander Rossi, $574,000
6. Scott Dixon, $582,000
7. Takuma Sato, $217,300
8. Conor Daly, $512,000
9. Colton Herta, $506,500
10. Rinus VeeKay, $556,500
11. Ryan Hunter‐Reay, $145,500
12. Callum Ilott, $495,500
13. Devlin DeFrancesco, $482,000
14. Scott McLaughlin, $485,000
15. Helio Castroneves, $481,500
16. Tony Kanaan, $105,000
17. Marco Andretti, $102,000
18. Jack Harvey, $472,000
19. Christian Lundgaard, $467,500
20. Ed Carpenter, $102,000
21. Benjamin Pedersen (R), $215,300
22. Graham Rahal, $565,500*
23. Will Power, $488,000
24. Pato O’Ward, $516,500
25. Simon Pagenaud, $465,500
26. Agustín Canapino (R), $156,300
27. Felix Rosenqvist, $278,300
28. Kyle Kirkwood, $465,500
29. David Malukas, $462,000
30. Romain Grosjean, $462,000
31. Sting Ray Robb (R), $463,000
32. RC Enerson (R), $103,000
33. Katherine Legge, $102,000

*–Broken down between two teams, $460,000 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, $105,500 Dreyer & Reinbold Racing/Cusick Motorsports