Alexander Rossi came into his own in 2018, all that’s left is to win IndyCar crown

By Sep 6, 2018, 11:02 PM EDT
IndyCar
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There’s no question about it: the 2018 season has been a coming of age for Alexander Rossi.

We’re not talking about Rossi’s actual age (although he turns 27 on September 25th). Rather, in 2018 the Auburn, California native has come into his own as one of the most successful and consistent drivers in IndyCar.

The stats he’s amassed this season have more than doubled his overall performances in his first two seasons in IndyCar, 2016 and 2017.

Sure, he won the 100th Indianapolis 500 in 2016 as a rookie. And while that will likely be the pinnacle for the rest of his career – unless he wins the Greatest Spectacle In Racing a few more times – Rossi has gone from curious spectacle after winning the 500 to a legitimate championship contender.

Where Rossi can usually be found in 2018: at the front of the pack.

Consider the facts:

* Rossi earned one win (Indy in ’16 and Watkins Glen in 2017) in each of his first two seasons. He’s already won three races in 2018, with one more race remaining next weekend, the season-ending Grand Prix of Sonoma at Sonoma Raceway.

* Rossi had a combined four podium finishes in his first two seasons. He’s doubled that in 2018 with eight podiums in the first 16 races.

* He led 23 laps in 2016, including 14 en route to his win at Indy, and led 99 laps in all of 2017. Thus far in 2018, he’s led 415 laps.

* He had an average start and finish of 14.3 and 11.8, respectively, in 2016. He improved to 8.6 and 9.5 last season. But this season, Rossi has really shined, with an average start of 6.3 and average finish of 5.6.

* He had 11 lead lap finishes in both 2016 and 2017, a mark he’s already eclipsed in 2018 (15). He’s also been running at the finish in every race this season, as opposed to 15 in 2016 and 16 in 2017.

If that’s not a breakout season, what is?

“It’s been great,” Rossi said during a Thursday morning IndyCar media teleconference. “It’s been a continuation of really the second half of 2017 where I think the whole Andretti Autosport organization made a pretty big step forward. It’s been a pleasure to be part of the team and watch the progress that’s been made since I came onboard in ’16.

“The fact that we’ve been able to win three races this year, run towards the front most weekends, has been kind of just the result of a lot of hard work and a lot of very good people on the team.”

Now Rossi will have the biggest race of his career on Sept. 16. Yes, even bigger than his win at Indy.

If the driver of the No. 27 Andretti Autosport NAPA Auto Parts Honda can overcome the 29-point deficit he has to series leader Scott Dixon, Rossi will become an IndyCar champion for the first time – and potentially the first of perhaps several more to come in the future.

Dixon will not make it easy on Rossi. The New Zealander also has great incentive: he is going for his fifth IndyCar championship at Sonoma.

In fact, Dixon has had a very Rossi-like year – or you could say Rossi has had a very Dixon-like year – with three wins, eight podiums, 357 laps led, a 7.9 starting average and the best average finish of all IndyCar drivers in the series at 4.4.

Rossi knows what’s on the line next Sunday. He also knows that he pretty much has to drive the race of his career, yes, even bigger and better than at Indianapolis.

He can’t wait for Dixon to slip up and make a mistake, because that’s a rarity. If Rossi expects that to happen, he could potentially be in for a rude awakening.

Rather, he has to make things happen on his own. And while he has to drive aggressively as he traverses Sonoma, he also has to reign in over-aggressiveness, lest that leads to an incident with another driver that could potentially end his championship hopes early.

“To actually be going into this weekend with a goal in mind of trying to win the thing outright, it’s just a privilege,” Rossi said. “It’s a privilege to be mentioned in the same sentence at Scott Dixon, to be able to race against someone of his caliber week in and week out, hopefully get the better of him.”

Rossi acknowledges that if it wasn’t for a string of fair to mediocre mid-season showings, he might actually be leading the championship battle heading to Sonoma, not Dixon. At the same time, he and his team rallied back hard and fast to be right in the middle of the title bout.

“I think there’s always points in the season which you look back on as a missed opportunity,” he said. “You talk about that, then you look forward, you try and maximize the best that you have. We had three pretty rough weekends in a row with Road America (16th, his worst finish of the season), Iowa (9th) and Toronto (8th). We knew that it was going to take something pretty special to get ourselves back in the fight.

“Going to Mid-Ohio, we just focused on just doing our job on Sunday. We always had a fast car, but we weren’t executing, sometimes making mistakes, generally up and down throughout the whole team. You can’t win a championship that way. I think everyone just really refocused and recentered going into Mid-Ohio. We’ve seen the results of that (he won there and again in the following race at Pocono, as well as was runner-up at Gateway).”

Now with one race left, you’d think Rossi would have at least one advantage over the other three championship contenders: Dixon, Will Power and Josef Newgarden.

The reason: Sonoma Raceway is only about 90 miles from Rossi’s hometown. He considers it his home track and he realizes how many family members and friends will be in attendance next Sunday, cheering him on – hopefully to the championship..

First, the good news about his family and friends being at-track next weekend.

“The past couple of years I’ve had probably a bit more than 75 guests,” Rossi said. “It’s an amazing weekend from that standpoint. Obviously with it being the last time we’re racing at Sonoma (IndyCar will race starting next year at Laguna Seca instead of Sonoma Raceway), we’ll hopefully end on a high personally, because that track has a lot of personal history for me and my family.

“Yeah, we’re just going to try to go out there, put on a show for everyone, make it a pretty awesome season finale.”

Will having so many friends and family there put more pressure or act as more of a distraction for the business at hand for Rossi?

“I don’t really think either,” he said when asked by NBC Sports. “It makes my weekend busier because there’s a lot more kind of meet-and-greets, stuff like that.

“At the end of the day, you don’t really realize, I mean, who is there or what’s there as soon as you get to pit lane, put your helmet on.

“Yeah, it doesn’t really matter to me. I’m really happy there will be friends and family and such there. Hopefully it’s a good enough weekend that we can all have a big celebration Sunday night.”

But even though Sonoma Raceway is his home track, surprisingly, Rossi doesn’t consider it one of his favorite tracks.

“It’s not in the top five,” he admitted. “I don’t know where to go from there. I mean, it’s a great track from the standpoint of it’s in a beautiful part of California, it’s very challenging to drive.

“It’s a track most affected by weather conditions because it’s on the hill. The performance and pace you have in the morning to where you are in the afternoon is drastically different. I mean, it definitely keeps you on your toes.

“No, I wouldn’t consider it a favorite of mine.”

That could change, of course, if he wins next Sunday. But one thing that won’t change, no matter what, is Rossi’s mindset and his team’s strategy going into Sonoma.

“You don’t change your approach,” Rossi said. “I mean, I’m going to win, I’m going to try to beat people, do exactly what we’ve been doing all year. That’s our only responsibility.

“If we win, we’ve done our job right. If it doesn’t happen, that doesn’t really matter. We have to go into the weekend and do all we can do to maximize ourselves, our potential.

“We have had a car in contention to win a race probably 90 percent of this year. There’s no reason to change that now.”

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‘It’s gnarly, bro’: IndyCar drivers face new challenge on streets of downtown Detroit

By Jun 2, 2023, 7:32 PM EDT
IndyCar Detroit downtown
James Black/Penske Entertainment
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DETROIT – It was the 1968 motion picture, “Winning” when actress Joanne Woodward asked Paul Newman if he were going to Milwaukee in the days after he won the Indianapolis 500 as driver Frank Capua.

“Everybody goes to Milwaukee after Indianapolis,” Newman responded near the end of the film.

Milwaukee was a mainstay as the race on the weekend after the Indianapolis 500 for decades, but since 2012, the first race after the Indy 500 has been Detroit at Belle Isle Park.

This year, there is a twist.

Instead of IndyCar racing at the Belle Isle State Park, it’s the streets of downtown Detroit on a race course that is quite reminiscent of the old Formula One and CART race course that was used from 1982 to 1991.

Formula One competed in the United States Grand Prix from 1982 to 1988. Beginning in 1989, CART took over the famed street race through 1991. In 1992, the race was moved to Belle Isle, where it was held through last year (with a 2009-2011 hiatus after the Great Recession).

The Penske Corp. is the promoter of this race, and they did a lot of good at Belle Isle, including saving the Scott Fountain, modernizing the Belle Isle Casino, and basically cleaning up the park for Detroit citizens to enjoy.

The race, however, had outgrown the venue. Roger Penske had big ideas to create an even bigger event and moving it back to downtown Detroit benefitted race sponsor Chevrolet. The footprint of the race course goes around General Motors world headquarters in the GM Renaissance Center – the centerpiece building of Detroit’s modernized skyline.

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

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Motor City is about to roar with the sound of Chevrolet and Honda engines this weekend as the NTT IndyCar Series is the featured race on the nine-turn, 1.7-mile temporary street course.

It’s perhaps the most unique street course on the IndyCar schedule because of the bumps on the streets and the only split pit lane in the series.

The pit lanes has stalls on opposing sides and four lanes across an unusual rectangular pit area (but still only one entry and exit).

Combine that, with the bumps and the NTT IndyCar Series drivers look forward to a wild ride in Motor City.

“It’s gnarly, bro,” Arrow McLaren driver Pato O’Ward said before posting the fastest time in Friday’s first practice. “It will be very interesting because the closest thing that I can see it being like is Toronto-like surfaces with more of a Long Beach-esque layout.

“There’s less room for error than Long Beach. There’s no curbs. You’ve got walls. I think very unique to this place.

PRACTICE RESULTS: Speeds from the first session

“Then it’s a bit of Nashville built into it. The braking zones look really very bumpy. Certain pavements don’t look bumpy but with how the asphalt and concrete is laid out, there’s undulation with it. So, you can imagine the cars are going to be smashing on every single undulation because we’re going to go through those sections fairly fast, and obviously the cars are pretty low. I don’t know.

“It looks fun, man. It’s definitely going to be a challenge. It’s going to be learning through every single session, not just for drivers and teams but for race control. For everyone.

“Everybody has to go into it knowing not every call is going to be smooth. It’s a tall task to ask from such a demanding racetrack. I think it’ll ask a lot from the race cars as well.”

The track is bumpy, but O’Ward indicated he would be surprised if it is bumper than Nashville. By comparison to Toronto, driving at slow speed is quite smooth, but fast speed is very bumpy.

“This is a mix of Nashville high-speed characteristics and Toronto slow speed in significant areas,” O’Ward said. “I think it’ll be a mix of a lot of street courses we go to, and the layout looks like more space than Nashville, which is really tight from Turn 4 to 8. It looks to be a bit more spacious as a whole track, but it’ll get tight in multiple areas.”

The concept of having four-wide pit stops is something that excites the 24-year-old driver from Monterey, Mexico.

“I think it’s innovation, bro,” O’Ward said. “If it works out, we’ll look like heroes.

“If it doesn’t, we tried.”

Because of the four lanes on pit road, there is a blend line the drivers will have to adhere to. Otherwise, it would be chaos leaving the pits compared to a normal two-lane pit road.

“If it wasn’t there, there’d be guys fighting for real estate where there’s one car that fits, and there’d be cars crashing in pit lane,” O’Ward said. “I get why they did that. It’s the same for everybody. I don’t think there’s a lot of room to play with. That’s the problem.

“But it looks freaking gnarly for sure. Oh my God, that’s going to be crazy.”

Alex Palou of Chip Ganassi Racing believes the best passing areas will be on the long straights because of the bumps in the turns. That is where much of the action will be in terms of gaining or losing a position in the race.

“It will also be really easy to defend in my opinion,” Palou said. “Being a 180-degree corner, you just have to go on the inside and that’s it. There’s going to be passes for sure but its’ going to be risky.

“Turn 1, if someone dives in, you end up in the wall. They’re not going to be able to pass you on the exit, so maybe with the straight being so long you can actually pass before you end up on the braking zone.”

Palou’s teammate, Marcus Ericsson, was at the Honda simulator in Brownsburg, Indiana, before coming to Detroit and said he was shocked by the amount of bumps on the simulator.

Race promoter Bud Denker, the President of Penske Corporation, and Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix President Michael Montri, sent the track crews onto the streets with grinders to smooth out the bumps on the race course several weeks ago.

“They’ve done a decent amount of work, and even doing the track walk, it looked a lot better than what we expected,” Ericsson said. “I don’t think it’ll be too bad. I hope not. That’ll be something to take into account.

“I think the track layout doesn’t look like the most fun. Maybe not the most challenging. But I love these types of tracks with rules everywhere. It’s a big challenge, and you have to build up to it. That’s the types of tracks that I love to drive. It’s a very much Marcus Ericsson type of track. I like it.”

Scott Dixon, who was second fastest in the opening session, has competed on many new street circuits throughout his legendary racing career. The six-time NTT IndyCar Series champion for Chip Ganassi Racing likes the track layout, even with the unusual pit lane.

“I don’t think that’s going to be something that catches on where every track becomes a double barrel,” Dixon said. “It’s new and interesting.

“As far as pit exit, I think Toronto exit is worse with how the wall sticks out. I think in both lanes, you’ve got enough lead time to make it and most guys will make a good decision.”

It wasn’t until shortly after 3 p.m. ET on Friday that the IndyCar drivers began the extended 90-minute practice session to try out the race course for the first time in real life.

As expected, there were several sketchy moments, but no major crashes during the first session despite 19 local yellow flags for incidents and two red flags.

Rookie Agustin Canapino had to cut his practice short after some damage to his No. 78 Dallara-Chevrolet, but he was among many who emerged mostly unscathed from scrapes with the wall.

“It was honestly less carnage than I expected,” said Andretti Autosport’s Kyle Kirkwood, who was third fastest in the practice after coming off his first career IndyCar victory in the most recent street race at Long Beach in April. “I think a lot of people went off in the runoffs, but no one actually hit the wall (too hard), which actually surprised me. Hats off to them for keeping it clean, including myself.

“It was quite a bit less grip than I think everyone expected. Maybe a little bit more bumpy down into Turn 3 than everyone expected. But overall they did a good job between the two manufacturers. I’m sure everyone had pretty much the same we were able to base everything off of. We felt pretty close to maximum right away.”

Most of the preparation for this event was done either on the General Motors Simulator in Huntersville, North Carolina, or the Honda Performance Development simulator in Brownsburg, Indiana.

“Now, we have simulators that can scan the track, so we have done plenty of laps already,” Power told NBC Sports. “They have ground and resurfaced a lot of the track, so it should be smoother.

“But nothing beats real-world experience. It’s going to be a learning experience in the first session.”

As a Team Penske driver, Power and his teammates were consulted about the progress and layout of the Detroit street course. They were shown what was possible with the streets that were available.

“We gave some input back after we were on the similar what might be ground and things like that,” Power said.

Racing on the streets of Belle Isle was a fairly pleasant experience for the fans and corporate sponsor that compete in the race.

But the vibe at the new location gives this a “big event” feel.

“The atmosphere is a lot better,” Power said. “The location, the accessibility for the fans, the crowd that will be here, it’s much easier. I think it will be a much better event.

“It feels like a Long Beach, only in a much bigger city. That is what street course racing is all about.”

Because the track promoter is also the team owner, Power and teammates Scott McLaughlin and Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden will have a very busy weekend on the track, and with sponsor and personal appearances.

“That’s what pays the bills and allows us to do this,” Power said.

Follow Bruce Martin on Twitter at @BruceMartin_500