Alexander Rossi shakes off setback from broken bolt in practice

By Sep 20, 2019, 8:45 PM EDT
1 Comment

MONTEREY, Calif. – He laughed about hiding from his family this weekend, smiled at jokes from teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay and sent a lighthearted tweet with a goofy facial expression.

If Alexander Rossi was exceedingly perturbed about a disappointing Friday at Laguna Seca Raceway, the Andretti Autosport driver did a good job disguising it.

“We have a really good team here and a lot of guys who have been through worse scenarios before,” Rossi said when asked about the frustration of being the 23rd fastest of 24 drivers after two practices. “ So yeah, I think it’s a setback, but you deal with it and there’s nothing you can to change it, so you just have to make the most of it with the remaining time.”

Rossi trails by NTT IndyCar series championship leader Josef Newgarden by 41 points entering Sunday’s season finale at the 11-turn, 2.28-mile road course. But the pressure of seeking his first title wasn’t evident in the self-deprecating tweet he sent less than an hour after a pit stop practice session ended.

Rossi ranked 23rd fastest (ahead of only Jack Harvey) in the Friday afternoon practice, which at least was a slight improvement over being slowest in the morning session.

Because of what his team termed “a hardware issue,” Rossi made only four laps in his No. 27 Dallara-Honda that he was forced to exit his team feverishly scrambled to make adjustments to the front end throughout the 45-minute session.

“A bolt broke,” Rossi said plainly when asked about the problem.

The lack of time precluded making a lap on black tires in the first session and resulted in changes on the fly to the game plan.

“We kind of sacrificed the second session to try to get in as many runs as we could to go through the checklist,” Rossi said. “We saved the new reds for warmup session (Saturday morning). We’re getting there. We used yesterday and today to try and run through a lot of things to make sure we leave no stones unturned.

“I think we’ve flipped most of the stones. There’s a couple of more to come tomorrow morning. We’re just trying to make sure we have everything squared away for tomorrow and Sunday.”

WATCH: IndyCar qualifying 4:30 p.m. ET Saturday on NBCSN, race 2:30 p.m. ET Sunday on NBC

Rossi has a comforting backstop in Hunter-Reay, who was fastest in the second practice and overall Friday. The Andretti Autosport teammates also took turns swapping cockpits of their Dallara-Hondas during a Thursday test.

“Him and I have been joined at the hip for a lot of years now in a lot of ways,” Rossi said of Hunter-Reay. “We feed off each other really well and work well together, and it’s great to have a teammate like that and with how competitive it is, you need to have guys you can rely upon.

“The first one I go to at the end of every session is this guy, so yeah. Hopefully we can put two cars at the front.”

Hunter-Reay is expecting Sunday’s race will put a premium on track position and feature heavy tire degradation. “Qualifying is extremely important, as it always is, and we want to leave here with a win, (Rossi) with a championship, so we’ll do what we can to make that happen,” said Hunter-Reay, the series champion in 2012. “Right now for me I just need to focus on going as fast as we can.”

Rossi said figuring out the right tire compound (on road courses, teams must use one set apiece of a harder, more durable black compound and a softer, faster red compound that wears more quickly)

“We got to be on Firesteone red tire for the first time today, and that’s definitely a stronger tire,” he said. “I think degradation is going to be a big issue on both compounds. It’s just trying to understand which one you’re going to want to try and be on for the race, whether a used red can make it. So that’s kind of the similar conversations that we have every weekend.

“But the magnitude of the deg I think is higher than we’ve seen probably since Sonoma last year.”

Strong rebounds for Alex Palou, Chip Ganassi amid some disappointments in the Indy 500

By May 28, 2023, 10:00 PM EDT
0 Comments

INDIANAPOLIS – Alex Palou had not turned a wheel wrong the entire Month of May at the Indy 500 until Rinus VeeKay turned a wheel into the Chip Ganassi Racing pole-sitter leaving pit road on Lap 94.

“There is nothing I could have done there,” Palou told NBC Sports. “It’s OK, when it is my fault or the team’s fault because everybody makes mistakes. But when there is nothing, you could have done differently there, it feels bad and feels bad for the team.”

Marcus Ericsson was a master at utilizing the “Tail of the Dragon” move that breaks the draft of the car behind him in the closing laps to win last year’s Indianapolis 500. On Sunday, however, the last of three red flags in the final 16 laps of the race had the popular driver from Sweden breathing fire after Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden beat him at his own game on the final lap to win the Indianapolis 500.

Despite the two disappointments, team owner Chip Ganassi was seen on pit road fist-bumping a member on his four-car team in this year’s Indianapolis 500 after his drivers finished second, fourth, sixth and seventh in the tightly contested race.

Those are pretty good results, but at the Indianapolis 500, there is just one winner and 32 losers.

“There is only one winner, but it was a hell of a show,” three-time Indianapolis 500 winner and Chip Ganassi Racing consultant Dario Franchitti told NBC Sports. “Alex was very fast, and he got absolutely caught out in somebody else’s wreck. There was nothing he could have done, but he and the 10 car, great recovery.

“Great recovery by all four cars because at half distance, we were not looking very good.”

After 92 laps, the first caution flew for Sting Ray Robb of Dale Coyne Racing hitting the Turn 1 wall.

During pit stops on Lap 94, Palou had left his stall when the second-place car driven by VeeKay ran into him, putting Palou’s Honda into the wall. The car sustained a damaged front wing, but the Chip Ganassi crew was able to get him back in the race on the lead lap but in 28th position.

Palou ultimately would fight his way to a fourth-place finish in a race the popular Spaniard could have won. His displeasure with VeeKay, whom he sarcastically called “a legend” on his team radio after the incident, was evident.

“The benefit of being on pole is you can drive straight and avoid crashes, and he was able to crash us on the side on pit lane, which is pretty tough to do, but he managed it,” Palou told NBC Sports. “Hopefully next year we are not beside him. Hopefully, next year we have a little better luck.”

Palou started on the pole and led 36 laps, just three fewer than race leader Pato O’Ward of Arrow McLaren Racing.

“We started really well, was managing the fuel as we wanted, our car was pretty good,” Palou said. “Our car wasn’t great, we dropped to P4 or P5, but we still had some good stuff.

“On the pit stop, the 21 (VeeKay) managed to clip us. Nothing we could have done there. It was not my team’s fault or my fault.

“We had to drop to the end. I’m happy we made it back to P4. We needed 50 more laps to make it happen, but it could have been a lot worse after that contact.

“I learned a lot, running up front at the beginning and in mid-pack and then the back. I learned a lot.

“It feels amazing when you win it and not so good when things go wrong. We were a bit lucky with so many restarts at the end to make it back to P4 so I’m happy with that.”

Palou said the front wing had to be changed and the toe-in was a bit off, but he still had a fast car.

In fact, his Honda was the best car at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway all month. His pole-winning four lap average speed of 234.217 miles per hour around the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway was a record for this fabled race.

Palou looked good throughout the race, before he had to scratch and claw and race his way back to the top-five after he restarted 28th.

In the Indianapolis 500, however, the best car doesn’t always win.

“It’s two years in a row that we were leading the race at the beginning and had to drop to last,” Palou said. “Maybe next year, we will start in the middle of the field and go on to win the race.

“I know he didn’t do it on purpose. It’s better to let that pass someday.”

Palou said the wild racing at the end was because the downforce package used in Sunday’s race means the drivers have to be aggressive. The front two cars can battle for the victory, but cars back in fourth or fifth place can’t help determine the outcome of the race.

That is when the “Tail of the Dragon” comes into the play.

Franchitti helped celebrate Ericsson’s win in 2022 with his “Tail of the Dragon” zigzag move – something he never had to do in any of his three Indianapolis 500 victories because they all finished under caution.

In 2023, however, IndyCar Race Control wants to make every attempt to finish the race under green, without going past the scheduled distance like NASCAR’s overtime rule.

Instead of extra laps, they stop the race with a red flag, to create a potential green-flag finish condition.

“You do what you have to do to win within the rules, and it’s within the rules, so you do it,” Franchitti said. “The race is 200 laps and there is a balance.

“Marcus did a great job on that restart and so did Josef. It was just the timing of who was where and that was it.

“If you knew it was going to go red, you would have hung back on the lap before.

“Brilliant job by the whole Ganassi organization because it wasn’t looking very good at half-distance.

“Full marks to Josef Newgarden and Team Penske.”

Franchitti is highly impressed by how well Ericsson works with CGR engineer Brad Goldberg and how close this combination came to winning the Indianapolis 500 two-years-in-a-row.

It would have been the first back-to-back Indy 500 winner since Helio Castroneves in 2001 and 2002.

“Oh, he’s a badass,” Franchitti said Ericsson. “He proved it last year. He is so calm all day. What more do you need? As a driver, he’s fast and so calm.”

Ericsson is typically in good spirits and jovial.

He was stern and direct on pit road after the race.

“I did everything right, I did an awesome restart, caught Josef off-guard and pulled away,” Ericsson said on pit lane. “It’s hard to pull away a full lap and he got me back.

“I’m mostly disappointed with the way he ended. I don’t think it was fair and safe to do that restart straight out of the pits on cold tires for everyone.

“To me, it was not a good way to end that race.

“Congrats to Josef. He didn’t do anything wrong. He is a worthy champion, but it shouldn’t have ended like that.”

Palou also didn’t understand the last restart, which was a one-start showdown.

“I know that we want to finish under green,” Palou said. “Maybe the last restart I did, I didn’t understand. It didn’t benefit the CGR team.

“I’m not very supportive of the last one, but anyway.”

Dixon called the red flags “a bit sketchy.”

“The Red Flags have become a theme to the end of the race, but sometimes they can catch you out,” Dixon said. “I know Marcus is frustrated with it.

“All we ask for is consistency. I think they will do better next time.

“It’s a tough race. People will do anything they can to win it and with how these reds fall, you have to be in the right place at the right time. The problem is when they throw a Red or don’t throw a Red dictates how the race will end.

“It’s a bloody hard race to win. Congrats to Josef Newgarden and to Team Penske.”

Follow Bruce Martin on Twitter at @BruceMartin_500