Just as we did post-Houston, here are some intriguing stats gleaned from digging into the numbers post-Sunday’s Pocono INDYCAR 500 fueled by Sunoco for the Verizon IndyCar Series:
- Pocono winner Juan Pablo Montoya is the eighth different winner in 11 races. Two more makes 10 to tie the 2013 mark, with seven races to go.
- Montoya has also recorded four top-10 finishes in a row, the longest active streak in the series, as he’s up to fourth in the championship. He and Team Penske teammate Helio Castroneves now have first, second and third-place finishes this year; Will Power is yet to finish third.
- Here’s another Montoya stat: He’s the top-scoring driver in the championship since Round 6 at Detroit. Montoya has accrued 239 points in the last six races, with Castroneves second (226) and Power third (212) for a Team Penske 1-2-3 run. Simon Pagenaud (fourth, 191) is next up ahead of rookies Carlos Munoz (fifth, 180) and Mikhail Aleshin (sixth, 167). In the last six races, Indianapolis 500 champ Ryan Hunter-Reay has only the 16th most points scored (114).
- Oval and road/street course championships aren’t awarded as they were for a couple seasons, but it’s still interesting to note who’s excelled at what discipline. Castroneves (222 oval points, 224 road/street course points) has the best points balance across the two disciplines; Power, Pagenaud and Hunter-Reay have been more skewed towards the road/street courses (276, 246 and 227 to rank first, second and third there; they have 170, 156 and 161 points on ovals to rank fourth, sixth and fifth there). Castroneves (222), Montoya (220) and Munoz (186) are the top three points scorers on ovals; fittingly, they’re the only three with top-five finishes in both 500-mile races.
- Ryan Briscoe became the 20th different driver to record a top-five finish in 2014 with fourth place on Sunday. There were 20 different podium finishers in 2013; thus far, there’s been 16 different drivers in the top three in 11 2014 races.
- There was not much in the way of points movement on Sunday in terms of position changes. Briscoe gained four positions (13th to ninth), Aleshin three (16th to 13th). Hunter-Reay, Sebastien Bourdais, James Hinchcliffe, Justin Wilson, Takuma Sato and Jack Hawksworth all lost two spots.
- Podium stats! After scoring seven of the first 15 available podium positions in five races, Andretti Autosport has just two of the last 18 available over six races. Munoz achieved both. Meanwhile Team Penske has gone from five podiums in the first five races to eight in the last six. No other team has more than two podium finishes over the last six races (last six races: Penske 8, Andretti 2, Ganassi 2, Schmidt Peterson 2, Herta 1, Coyne 1, Carpenter 1, Rahal 1).
- Yes, Pocono offered double points, but Josef Newgarden still made up a bag of points in this one race. With 49 points for eighth place on Sunday, Newgarden scored only three points fewer on Sunday than he had in the previous four races – combined. Finishes of 17th, 11th, 20th and 20th netted him only 52 points in that four-race run from Detroit Race 2 through Houston Race 2.
- How crucial have the double points races been? Just look at how the results have impacted the championship. The five drivers who have two top-10s at both Indianapolis and Pocono (Montoya, Castroneves, Munoz, Power and Marco Andretti) all sit in the top-10 in points. The drivers without a top-10 on either (Hinchcliffe, Wilson, Sato, Hawksworth, Tony Kanaan, Charlie Kimball, Sebastian Saavedra, Graham Rahal and Carlos Huertas) all sit outside the top-10 in points.
- Ganassi posted its second double top-five result of the season on Sunday. Through 11 races though, they only have one double top-five qualifying effort, and a single front row start (Kanaan second at St. Petersburg). Team Penske and Andretti Autosport don’t have many either, with each having three double top-five qualifying efforts this season.
- Pagenaud outqualified Aleshin at Pocono, going back on top after Aleshin’s runner-up grid position at Houston Race 2. Pagenaud leads the head-to-head qualifying vs. his Schmidt Peterson Motorsports teammate 10-1. But with the 11th place in Pocono qualifying, Pagenaud started outside the top 10 for the first time since Round 6 at Detroit Race 1.