A long Indy 500 journey reaches Victory Circle for John Menard

By May 27, 2019, 2:31 PM EDT
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INDIANAPOLIS – After celebrating in Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s Victory Circle with his winning driver, the billionaire industrialist naturally jetted off to Charlotte Motor Speedway to watch another of his race cars.

Roger Penske?

No, “The Captain” monitored Team Penske’s performance in the Coca-Cola 600 from afar and stayed in Indianapolis to celebrate Simon Pagenaud’s victory, the 18th in the Indianapolis 500 for Team Penske.

FULL INDIANAPOLIS 500 COVERAGE: All of NBCSports.com’s 2019 stories over two weeks in May at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. 

The traveling man was John Menard, the namesake founder of the home improvement chain that sponsors Pagenaud’s car and his son Paul’s Ford in the NASCAR Cup Series.

Sunday marked John Menard’s second win as a sponsor at the Brickyard (where Paul won in 2011) but his first in the series where he first planted his company’s flag 40 years ago.

“You ever watch that movie called ‘The Candidate’ when that guy works and works and works and finally gets elected, after the election, he won, and he gazed into the mirror and says, ‘What the hell do I do now?’ That’s the way I feel,” Menard said. “We’ll go try to win another one.”

The Eau Claire, Wisconsin, native recalled dragging a sponsor sign to his first Indy 500 in 1979 and begging an Indianapolis Motor Speedway worker to let Menard through the garage gate without a credential.

“He goes, ‘Where are you going with that sign and I said, ‘I want to get in the garage area,’” Menard said. “So he unlocked the gate and let me in. I didn’t have a credential. I didn’t know where I was going. I said which way is the garage area? I think he thought I was crazy, but we had a good time.”

Over the past four decades, Menard has sponsored cars for IndyCar contenders such as Tony Stewart, Greg Ray and Robby Gordon, and he also owned part-time NASCAR efforts in the Cup (with Gordon) and truck series.

In 2018, he moved his NASCAR sponsorship from Richard Childress Racing to Team Penske and its alliance team, Wood Brothers Racing, after sponsoring Penske’s IndyCar teams for a few years.

“John and I have been around here a long time,” said Penske, who was celebrating his 50th year at Indy in 2019. “I’ve watched him and he watched me and a couple years ago, we said, ‘Look, maybe we’d do better together. Finally it took a couple years, but John, to see the Menards logo and certainly your excitement and commitment to the sport for so many years is terrific, and we could bring home a winner with you and you with our guys. Just tremendous.

“You’ve got a great brand. You’re a great person, your family, and obviously Paul is a key guy on our team down in the south, so we can’t say enough.”

INDYCAR Photo by John CoteSaid Pagenaud, whose No. 22 Dallara-Chevrolet has sported the day-glo colors of Menards since 2017: “John Menard, he’s been trying so hard. I felt so bad that we didn’t get one for him already, so finally getting one for him is very special.

“Having that livery is very cool because people notice the car so easily. It’s so great for all that he’s done for the sport. He’s done so much. He deserves to get a Borg-Warner, so I’m very proud to be the driver.”
Drinking the winner’s milk with Pagenaud, whom he called “just one wonderful human being,” was special for Menard.

But it still might rank behind kissing the bricks at Indy with his son.

“That’s family,” Menard said. “That was probably the highlight of my personal racing career just because it was my son that won. But this ranks right in there. I’ll tell you what, this is a good deal, and I can’t thank Team Penske, I can’t thank the Indianapolis Motor Speedway enough for all the great memories and times and over the years that we’ve had here. It’s amazing.”

Will Power says IndyCar field toughest in world: ‘F1’s a joke as far as competition’

By Jun 4, 2023, 1:46 PM EDT
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DETROIT – With the 2023 Formula One season turning into a Red Bull runaway, Will Power believes the NTT IndyCar Series deserves respect as the world’s most difficult single-seater racing series.

“It’s so tough, an amazing field, the toughest field in the world, and people need to know it, especially compared to Formula One,” the defending IndyCar champion told NBC Sports during a media luncheon a few days ahead of Sunday’s Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix. “Formula One’s a joke as far as competition, but not as far as drivers. They have amazing drivers. And I feel sorry for them that they don’t get to experience the satisfaction we do with our racing because that is the top level of open-wheel motorsport.

“I think Formula One would be so much better if they had a formula like IndyCar. I love the technology and the manufacturer side of it. I think that’s awesome. But from a spectator watching, man, how cool would it be if everyone had a Red Bull (car)?”

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

It probably would look a lot different than this season, which has been dominated by two-time defending F1 champion Max Verstappen.

The Dutchman won Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix from the pole position by 24 seconds over seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton. It’s the fifth victory in seven races for Verstappen, whose 40 career wins are one shy of tying late three-time champion Aryton Senna.

Along with being a virtual lock to tie Senna’s mark for titles, Verstappen is poised to break his own record for single-season victories (15) that he set last year.

“You simply know Max is going to win every race if something doesn’t go wrong,” Power said. “Imagine being a guy coming out as a rookie, and you probably could win a race. It would be really cool to see. But you know that would never happen with the politics over there.”

Verstappen’s F1 dominance has been a stark contrast to IndyCar, where Josef Newgarden just became the first repeat winner through six races this season with his Indy 500 victory.

Team Penske (with Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin), Chip Ganassi Racing (with Palou and Marcus Ericsson) and Andretti Autosport (with Kyle Kirkwood) each have visited victory lane in 2023. Arrow McLaren (which has past winners Pato O’Ward, Alexander Rossi and Felix Rosenqvist) is certain to join them at some point.

Meanwhile, Verstappen and teammate Sergio Perez (two wins) have won every F1 race this season with the two Red Bull cars combining to lead more than 95% of the laps.

The primary differences are in the rulesets for each series.

While F1 teams virtually have complete autonomy to build their high-tech cars from scratch, IndyCar has what is known as a spec series in which the cars have a large degree of standardization.

IndyCar teams all use the Dallara DW12 chassis, which is in its 12th season. The development of the car largely has been maximized, helping put a greater emphasis on driver skill as a differentiator (as well as other human resources such as whip-smart strategists and engineers).

Alex Palou, who will start from the pole position at Detroit, harbors F1 aspirations as a McLaren test driver, but the Spaniard prefers IndyCar for competitiveness because talent can be such a determinant in results.

“Racing-wise, that’s the best you can get,” Palou said a few days before winning the pole for the 107th Indy 500 last month. “That’s pure racing, having chances to win each weekend.”

Of course, F1 is the world’s most popular series, and the 2021 IndyCar champion believes its appeal doesn’t necessarily stem from being competitive.

Though the ’21 championship battle between Hamilton and Verstappen was epic, F1 has grown its audience in recent years with the help of the “Drive To Survive” docuseries on Netflix that has showcased their stars’ personalities along with the cutthroat decisions of its team principals (IndyCar started its own docuseries this year).

“I don’t think the beauty of F1 is the race itself,” Palou said. “I’d say the beauty is more the development that they have and everything around the races, and that they go different places. But when we talk about pure spectacle, you cannot get better than (IndyCar).

“You can feel it as a driver here when you first come and jump in a car. When I was in Dale Coyne (Racing), we got a podium my rookie year. It wasn’t the best team, but we were able to achieve one of the best cars at Road America (where he finished third in 2020). It’s not that I was driving a slow car. I was driving a really fast car. I think we can see that across all the teams and the drivers.”

Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin, who will start second at Detroit, is in his third season of IndyCar after winning three championships in Supercars.

The New Zealander said recently that IndyCar has been “the most enjoyment I’ve ever had in my career. I had a lot of fun in Supercars, but there were still things like different uprights, engines, all that stuff. (IndyCar) is spec. Really the only things you can change are dampers and the engine differences between Honda and Chevy.

“I have a blast,” McLaughlin said. “Trying to extract pace and winning in this series is better than I’ve ever felt ever. I’m surprised by how satisfied it feels to win an IndyCar race. It’s better than how it ever has felt in my career. I’ve always liked winning, but it’s so satisfying to win here. That’s why it’s so cool. There are no bad drivers. You have to have a perfect day.”

Qualifying might be the best example of the series’ competitiveness tightness. The spread for the Fast Six final round of qualifying on Detroit’s new nine-turn, 1.645-mile downtown layout was nearly eight 10ths of a second – which qualifies as an eternity these days.

Last month, the GMR Grand Prix on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course produced a spread of 0.2971 seconds from first to sixth – the fourth-closest Fast Six in IndyCar history since the format was adopted in 2008. Three of the seven closest Fast Six fields have happened this season (with the Grand Prix of Long Beach ranking sixth and the Alabama Grand Prix in seventh).

While the technical ingenuity and innovation might be limited when compared to F1, there’s no arguing that more IndyCar drivers and teams have a chance to win.

“The parity’s great, and no one has an advantage, basically,” Power said. “The two engine manufacturers (Honda and Chevrolet) are always flipping back and forth as they develop, but we’re talking like tenths of a second over a lap. There’s not a bad driver in the field, and there are 20 people all capable of being in the Fast Six every week. Maybe more. It’s incredibly competitive. There isn’t a more competitive series in the world. I’m sure of that.

“If you want the ultimate driver’s series, this is it I’m from a big team that would benefit massively from opening the rules up, but I don’t think (IndyCar officials) should. I think this should always be about the team and driver getting the most out of a piece of equipment that everyone has a chance to do so. That’s the ultimate driver series. Who wants to win a championship when you’re just given the best car? It’s just ridiculous.”

Power believes the talented Verstappen still would be the F1 champion if the equipment were spec, but he also thinks there would be more challengers.

“There’s got to be a bunch of those guys that must just be frustrated,” Power said. “Think about Lewis Hamilton, George Russell, Lando Norris, (Fernando) Alonso. Those are some great drivers that don’t get a chance to even win. They’re just extracting the most out of the piece of equipment they have.

“All I can say is if everyone had a Red Bull car, there’s no way that Max would win every race. There are so many guys who would be winning races. It’d just be similar to (IndyCar) and different every week, which it should be that way for the top level of the sport.”