IndyCar has 500 miles to glory, through speed, dirt, tire fall off and unpredictability - MotorSportsTalk

FONTANA, Calif. – Put off your evening plans and brew the coffee to stay up late for a late night, 500-mile shootout Saturday night from Auto Club Speedway for the MAVTV 500, starting at 9 p.m. ET on NBCSN.

Because if you miss the 2014 Verizon IndyCar Series season finale, you don’t get any live IndyCar racing for at least the next five, and possibly, six, months.

This season’s condensed 18-race schedule started the last weekend in March, and it will end the last weekend in August. Whether that’s a good thing depends on who you talk to in the paddock, or whether you note the year-on-year viewer increase for most TV broadcasts.

As always, the last race of the year offers a bevy of story lines that are usually hard pressed to be matched at other events throughout the year.

Need a primer on what to look for? Here’s some things to note:

THE TITLE BATTLE

For the second time in three years, IndyCar will have a first-time champion. That is a good thing, as it offers IndyCar another shot to promote a new champ after squandering the opportunity for American Ryan Hunter-Reay in 2012 due to the leadership in-fighting and eventual removal of CEO Randy Bernard that dominated the headlines.

Likely Will Power or Helio Castroneves will deliver Roger Penske his first title in eight years – if either falters, or has some bizarre sequence of events happens, Simon Pagenaud could still steal the title.

DOUBLE FOR THE JUMBLE

The championship battle is always going to be the main storyline, but the double points on offer could provide a significant shakeup in the overall top 10 standings.

From second-placed Castroneves (575) to sixth-placed Juan Pablo Montoya (519), there’s only 56 points that separate those five. So what currently goes Castroneves 575, Pagenaud 545, Ryan Hunter-Reay 534, Scott Dixon 523 and Montoya 519 could be significantly altered after Saturday night.

The rest of the top 10 could change significantly as well. The gap from seventh-placed Tony Kanaan to 11th-placed Ryan Briscoe is only 34 points.

The points breakdown this race: 1-100, 2-80, 3-70, 4-64, 5-60, with 6-10 decreasing by 4 points per position from there down to 40 for 10th, and with 11th through 22nd decreasing by 2 points per position from there down to 16 for 22nd. Four additional bonus points are on offer, one for pole, one for leading one lap and two for leading the most laps.

THE DIFFERENT WINNERS RECORD

We wrote about this leading into Milwaukee and the mark still stands – if a new winner emerges this weekend in Fontana, it will be the 11th of this season, and thus tie a record for the most number of different winners in a season.

THE RELIABILITY ISSUES

On ovals this season, the number of DNFs from Indianapolis through Milwaukee are, in order: 9, 5, 4, 7 and 2.

Last year at Fontana alone? There were 16 DNFs in the 25-car field – 6 alone within the last 100 miles.

With engine reliability compromised by the high heat of the race and the radiators getting clogged with debris, it made for a long night for a fair number of drivers. Both Chevrolet and Honda’s respective 2.2L V.6 engines have done well in battle thus far and rarely have issues, but between them, they had five failures in this race year.

THE TIRE FALL OFF

Wednesday’s test saw a fair number of cut tires, although it was later fixed by the end of the day. Still, fall off and wear should be an issue. A couple drivers I spoke to Thursday estimated the tires will be very good for the first 10 laps of a stint, decent over the next 30 and “hanging on” in the final 8-10 laps of a stint.

With the Mazda Road to Indy seasons complete, and without the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series also on the weekend schedule, this race is the first oval this year where just Firestone rubber is being laid down. So no Cooper or Goodyear rubber will be ground into the surface this weekend. The Texas and Iowa races had NASCAR on the docket, but no MRTI races.

THE DRIVERS WITH SOMETHING TO PROVE

Those drivers without a contract in hand next year – Simon Pagenaud, James Hinchcliffe and more – will no doubt want to showcase themselves to potential suitors Saturday night, and it’s their last chance to do so before the winter.

Josef Newgarden has a contract in hand but still has yet to win his first ever race; Marco Andretti, Graham Rahal, Justin Wilson, Ryan Briscoe and Charlie Kimball are three potential 11th winners of the year; and there’s more still who could use a solid weekend to end 2014 on a high note.

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Media and fan attention focused on a controversial run-in between Haiden Deegan and his Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing teammate Jordon Smith during Round 10 of the Monster Energy Supercross race at Detroit, after which the 250 East points’ Hunter Lawrence defends the young rider in the postrace news conference.

Deegan took the early lead in Heat 1 of the round, but the mood swiftly changed when he became embroiled in a spirited battle with teammate Smith.

On Lap 3, Smith caught Deegan with a fast pass through the whoops. Smith briefly held the lead heading into a bowl turn but Deegan had the inside line and threw a block pass. In the next few turns, the action heated up until Smith eventually ran into the back of Deegan’s Yamaha and crashed.

One of the highlights of the battle seemed to include a moment when Deegan waited on Smith in order to throw a second block pass, adding fuel to the controversy.

After his initial crash, Smith fell to seventh on the next lap. He would crash twice more during the event, ultimately finishing four laps off the pace in 20th.

The topic was inevitably part of the postrace news conference.

“It was good racing; it was fun,” Deegan said at about the 27-minute mark in the video above. “I just had some fun doing it.”

Smith had more trouble in the Last Chance Qualifier. He stalled his bike in heavy traffic, worked his way into a battle for fourth with the checkers in sight, but crashed a few yards shy of the finish line and was credited with seventh. Smith earned zero points and fell to sixth in the standings.

Lawrence defends Deegan — *Jordon Smith failed to make the Detroit Supercross Main and fell to sixth in the points. – Feld Motor Sports*

“I think he’s like fifth in points,” Deegan said. “He’s a little out of it. Beside that it was good, I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

Deegan jokingly deflected an earlier question with the response that he wasn’t paying attention during the incident.

“He’s my teammate, but he’s a veteran, he’s been in this sport for a while,” Deegan said. “I was up there just battling. I want to win as much as everybody else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a heat race or a main; I just want to win. I was just trying to push that.”

As Deegan and Smith battled, Jeremy Martin took the lead. Deegan finished second in the heat and backed up his performance with a solid third-place showing in the main, which was his second podium finish in a short six-race career. Deegan’s first podium was earned at Daytona, just two rounds ago.

But as Deegan struggled to find something meaningful to say, unsurprisingly for a 17-year-old rider who was not scheduled to run the full 250 schedule this year, it was the championship leader Lawrence who came to his defense.

“I just want to point something out, which kind of amazes me,” Lawrence said during the conference. “So many of the people on social media, where everyone puts their expertise in, are saying the racing back in the ’80s, the early 90s, when me were men. They’re always talking about how gnarly it was and then anytime a block pass or something happens now, everyone cries about it.

“That’s just a little bit interesting. Pick one. You want the gnarly block passes from 10 years ago and then you get it, everyone makes a big song and dance about it.”

Pressed further, Lawrence defended not only the pass but the decision-making process that gets employed lap after lap in a Supercross race.

“It’s easy to point the finger,” Lawrence said. “We’re out there making decisions in a split millisecond. People have all month to pay their phone bill and they still can’t do that on time.

“We’re making decisions at such a fast reaction [time with] adrenaline. … I’m not just saying it for me or Haiden. I speak for all the guys. No one is perfect and we’re under a microscope out there. The media is really quick to point a finger when someone makes a mistake.”

The media is required to hold athletes accountable for their actions. They are also required to tell the complete story.

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