As NASCAR decides its final four, you’ve gotta recognize this transformed Chase

By Nov 9, 2014, 12:00 PM EST
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One year ago, NASCAR got what it needed.

In the wake of the Michael Waltrip Racing race manipulation incident at the regular season finale in Richmond, NASCAR acted swiftly with major penalties against MWR and the insertion of Jeff Gordon as a 13th Chase driver.

But with all of the controversy that Richmond generated, the sport needed a post-season run that was based primarily on competition, not drama.

Luckily for them, Jimmie Johnson and Matt Kenseth emerged as the main contenders. They weren’t looking for controversy and they respected one another. Ultimately, Johnson got his sixth Sprint Cup title and Brian France likely heaved a sigh of relief while the 48 team celebrated once again.

But he and NASCAR couldn’t just say ‘Bullet dodged’ and move on. And so this past January, the Chase got its fourth retooling of its existence: 16 drivers, eliminations after every three races, wins putting you through to the next round, and a four-driver, winner-take-all season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

And once again, NASCAR has gotten what it needed. In this case, though, it’s the opposite of what they needed last year.

Today, the Chase reaches Phoenix International Raceway this afternoon for the Eliminator Round finale with eight drivers still in the mix for the championship.

Thanks to wins from non-Chase competitors over the last two weeks, none of them are safely locked into that final battle at Homestead. Separated by a mere 18 points, all of them are going to go as hard as possible today to earn one of those four spots in the title race.

But most important of all, the cordiality and friendliness that marked the 2013 duel between Johnson and Kenseth has given way to bitterness, tension, and yes, drama.

Granted, as Johnson himself touched on following his win last weekend at Texas, said drama has been no accident. But with all due respect to him and Kenseth (who, along with Carl Edwards, is behind the cutoff to advance to Homestead by a single point), this year’s run to South Florida has been infinitely more compelling to watch.

While we can make do without the post-race rumbles on pit road, the emotion and the intensity that has played out over this post-season has been everything we could have hoped for – and everything France and his team could have hoped for, too.

It’s within this setting where the four championship finalists will be decided. Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin have respective top finishes in this Eliminator Round of fifth and eighth, yet are tied for the Chase Grid lead (+13 points) ahead of Ryan Newman (+11 points) and Jeff Gordon (+1 point).

But behind the cutoff lie the aforementioned Kenseth and Edwards, plus NASCAR’s current black hat in Brad Keselowski (-5 points) and Kevin Harvick (-6 points), who has to be considered the favorite today to win at Phoenix (a place where he’s already won five times) and get in the title race via automatic berth.

At the center of it all lies Keselowski, who has helped touch off two post-race fights during this Chase with his aggressive driving style.

The second such donnybrook came at Texas, and in the days that have followed, multiple drivers including Hamlin, Gordon, Johnson, and Harvick have all mentioned what they see as Keselowski’s lack of respect towards them.

But Keselowski himself remains unrepentant and is not worried about what anyone else has to say. The only thing that matters is coming through again at Phoenix in a must-win situation like he did in the Contender Round finale at Talladega just three weeks ago.

Of course, that all fuels the prospect of payback for Keselowski in today’s 312-lap race at PIR.

If any of the Chasers that have felt recently besmirched by Keselowski falter on the track and accept that their championship hopes are gone, they just might take their frustrations out on Keselowski and ruin his hopes too.

“We’ve all gotta do the best we can but if we have a bad day, this is typically the point of the season where people get back at each other if they feel like they’ve been done wrong,” Hamlin said earlier this week of such a scenario.

Joy. Heartbreak. Revenge?

We could very well see all of that this afternoon in the Valley of the Sun.

IndyCar Detroit GP starting lineup: Alex Palou wins first pole position on a street course

By Jun 3, 2023, 4:00 PM EDT
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DETROIT — Alex Palou won the pole position for the second consecutive NTT IndyCar Series race and will lead the Detroit Grand Prix starting lineup to green on a new downtown layout.

The 2021 series champion, who finished fourth in the 107th Indy 500 after qualifying first, earned his third career pole position as the first of three Chip Ganassi Racing drivers in the top four (Scott Dixon qualified fourth, and Marcus Ericsson sixth).

Scott McLaughlin will start second, followed by Romain Grosjean. Coming off his first Indianapolis 500 victory, Josef Newgarden qualified fifth.

INDYCAR IN DETROIT: Entry list, schedule, TV info for this weekend

It’s the third career pole position for Palou and his first on a street course — a big advantage on a nine-turn, 1.645-mile track that is expected to be calamitous over 100 laps Sunday (3 p.m. ET, NBC).

“It’s going to be a tough day for sure,” Palou told NBC Sports’ Marty Snider. “It feels good we’ve had a great car since the beginning, and it was just about maximizing. They did a great strategy on tires and everything. We need to finish it (Sunday).

“I got off a lot in practice. We wanted to see where the limit was, and we found it. It’s a crazy track. I think it’s too tight for Indy cars and too short as well, but we’ll make it happen.”

QUALIFYING RESULTS: Click here for Detroit GP qualifying speeds | Round 1, Group 1 | Round 1, Group 2 | Round 2 l Round 3

The narrow quarters (originally listed as a 1.7-mile track, its distance shrunk by a couple hundred feet when measured Friday) already were causing problems in qualifying.

Colton Herta, who has four career poles on street courses, qualified 24th after failing to advance from the first round because of damage to his No. 26 Dallara-Honda. It’s the worst starting spot in an IndyCar street course race for Herta (and the second-worst of his career on the heels of qualifying 25th for the GMR Grand Prix three weeks ago).

Andretti Autosport teammate Kyle Kirkwood also found misfortune in the second round, damaging the left front of his No. 27 Dallara-Honda despite light wall contact.

“I’m disappointed for the crew because that was a pole-winning car,” Kirkwood told NBC Sports’ Kevin Lee. “Man, I barely touched the wall. I touched it way harder in all the practices, and it’s just like the angle at which the wall was right there, it caught the point and just ripped the front off the car.

“If the wall was rounded, that wouldn’t have happened. That’s just unfortunate for the guys, but it’s my mistake. It’s hard enough to get around this place let alone race around it. We’ll see how it goes.”

Many IndyCar drivers are expecting it to go badly, which isn’t uncommon for a new street layout. The inaugural Music City Grand Prix in Nashville, Tennessee, was the biggest crashfest of the 2021 season with 33 of 80 laps run under caution plus two red flags.

It could be worse at Detroit, which is the shortest track on the IndyCar circuit. It also features the series’ only split pit lane (with cars pitting on opposite sides and blending into a single-lane exit), a 0.9-mile straightaway and a hairpin third turn that is considered the best passing zone.

“If there’s one day you need to be lucky in the year, it’s tomorrow,” Grosjean told NBC Sports’ Dave Burns. “A lot is going to happen, and it’s being in the right time at the right place.”

Said Dixon: “Expect probably a lot of unexpected things to happen. We’ll try and get through it. I think it’ll be similar to Nashville and maybe the last man standing is the one who gets the victory.”

With the field at 27 cars, Palou estimated the length of the course leaves a gap of about 2.4 seconds between each car, which he preferred would be double. During practice Friday, there were six red flags and 19 local yellows as teams tried to sort out the tricky and tight layout.

“I don’t know what the perfect distance is, but I would say adding 30 seconds to a track or 20 seconds would help a lot,” said Palou, one of many drivers who also said the streets were too bumpy despite work to grind down some surfaces. “We have a lot of cars. It’s crazy. It’s really good for the series, for the racing. But when it comes to practice, and we have 10 red flags, 25 yellows, it’s traffic all the time.”

It seems certain to be a memorable reimagining of the Detroit GP, which was moved downtown by IndyCar owner Roger Penske after a 30-year run at the Belle Isle course a few miles north.

McLaughlin, who drives for Team Penske, believes the race will be very similar to Nashville, but “it’s just going to be up to us with the etiquette of the drivers to figure it out along the way. I think there’s going to be a lot of passes, opportunities.

“With the track, there’s been a lot of noise I’ve seen on Twitter, from other drivers and stuff,” McLaughlin said. “At the end of the day, this is a new track, new complex. I think what everyone has done to get this going, the vibe is awesome. Belle Isle was getting old. We had to do it.

“First-year problems, it’s always going to happen. It’s just going to get better from here. The racetrack for the drivers is a blast. We don’t even know how it races yet. Everyone is making conclusions already. They probably just need to relax and wait for (Sunday).”

Here’s the IndyCar starting lineup for Sunday’s Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix (qualifying position, car number in parentheses, driver, engine and speed):

ROW 1

1. (10) Alex Palou, Honda, 1 minute, 1.8592 seconds (95.734 mph)
2. (3) Scott McLaughlin, Chevrolet, 1:02.1592 (95.271)

ROW 2

3. (28) Romain Grosjean, Honda, 1:02.2896 (95.072)
4. (9) Scott Dixon, Honda, 1:02.4272 (94.862)

ROW 3

5. (2) Josef Newgarden, Chevrolet, 1:02.5223 (94.718)
6. (8) Marcus Ericsson, Honda, 1:02.6184 (94.573)

ROW 4

7. (12) Will Power, Chevrolet, 1:02.1817 (95.237)
8. (60) Simon Pagenaud, Honda, 1:02.1860 (95.230)

ROW 5

9. (6) Felix Rosenqvist, Chevrolet, 1:02.1937 (95.219)
10. (5) Pato O’Ward, Chevrolet, 1:02.2564 (95.123)

ROW 6

11. (11) Marcus Armstrong, Honda, 1:02.2958 (95.063)
12. (27) Kyle Kirkwood, Honda, 1:04.6075 (91.661)

ROW 7

13. (7) Alexander Rossi, Chevrolet, 1:02.5714 (94.644)
14. (21) Rinus VeeKay, Chevrolet, 1:02.1911 (95.223)

ROW 8

15. (20) Conor Daly, Chevrolet, 1:02.9522 (94.071)
16. (77) Callum Ilott, Chevrolet, 1:02.2644 (95.111)

ROW 9

17. (29) Devlin DeFrancesco, Honda, 1:03.0017 (93.997)
18. (45) Christian Lundgaard, Honda, 1:02.6495 (94.526)

ROW 10

19. (55) Benjamin Pedersen, Chevrolet, 1:03.1599 (93.762)
20. (78) Agustin Canapino, Chevrolet, 1:02.9071 (94.139)

ROW 11

21. (18) David Malukas, Honda, 1:03.2126 (93.684)
22. (14) Santino Ferrucci, Chevrolet, 1:02.9589 (94.061)

ROW 12

23. (06) Helio Castroneves, Honda, 1:03.3879 (93.425)
24. (26) Colton Herta, Honda, 1:03.4165 (93.383)

ROW 13

25. (30) Jack Harvey, Honda, 1:03.7728 (92.861)
26. (51) Sting Ray Robb, Honda, 1:03.7496 (92.895)

ROW 14

27. (15) Graham Rahal, Honda, 1:03.8663 (92.725)