Supercross 2021: Results and points standings after Round 10 at Arlington

By Mar 13, 2021, 11:08 PM EST
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Cooper Webb topped the results of Round 10 of the Monster Supercross Series in Arlington, Texas from start to finish to grab the victory and the red plate.

Conventional wisdom say races are not won on the first lap, but that was far from true in Arlington. Webb got a great start and pushed holeshot winner Dean Wilson wide on Lap 1 and never looked back. When the checkers wave a little more than 20 minutes later, he had a four-second advantage over the field.

More importantly, Webb gained nine points on Ken Roczen and left the first race of the Arlington residency with the red plate after a nine-point swing over Ken Roczen.

After winning the opening round in Round 1, the first of three Houston races, Justin Barcia settled into second at the checkers. It has been a seesaw year so far for Barcia in 2021. After winning the first race, he alternated top-fives with results outside that mark until the three-race stint in Florida. He finished fourth and third at Orlando, but slipped to sixth last week at Daytona. He rebounded to second Saturday night in Arlington.

Jason Anderson scored his first podium of the season in third.

RESULTS: Click here for 450 results; Click here for 250

For Anderson it was a hard-fought and controversial race, however. Midway through the event it was reported that Supercross was looking into a couple of on-track incidents when he rode Malcolm Stewart wide and forced Dylan Ferrandis to crash.

In his second race after crashing out of the second round of the Houston residency, Chase Sexton finished fourth to score his first top-five of 2021.

Aaron Plessinger finished fifth after winning his heat. That top-five was his third of 2021 and came on the heels of his career-first podium last week.

Ken Roczen got a terrible start to Round 10 after crashing in his heat and finishing seventh. His poor showing early in the night forced him to pick his gate late and he rolled off the grid in a deep rut.

Joey Savatgy earned his best result of 2021 in seventh.

It was also a difficult night for Eli Tomac. He hoped last week’s victory in Daytona would kick start his defense of the 2020 championship, but another bad start put him deep in the field. Tomac finished eighth.

Dean Wilson in ninth and Martin Davalos rounded out the top 10. This was the first top-10 for Davalos.

Click here for Round 8 450 Main results | 450 Rider Points | 450 Manufacturer Points

Seth Hammaker rode a smooth race to win his first 250 Main after scoring his first Heat win earlier in the night. Hammaker became the second first time winner in the 250 West series, following his teammate Cameron Mcadoo.

Early in the race it was apparent Hammaker would have to beat his teammates if he wanted to ascend to the top of the podium. \

Hammaker and Jordon Smith spent the first three minutes riding side-by-side until Smith spun his rear wheel exiting a turn and skidded off course. Smith lost a couple of positions, and was later embroiled in a battle with another teammate Cameron Mcadoo before he crashed at the five-minute mark and retired from the race.

Smith’s trouble allowed Hunter Lawrence to climb to the second rung of the podium. He finished 1.8 seconds behind the leader. This is Lawrence’s first podium of the season after finishing fifth at Orlando and sixth last week in Daytona. With that consistency, he holds onto third in the points.

Mcadoo extended his 250 points lead by two over Justin Cooper with his third consecutive podium finish. He took the lead last week after earning his first 250 win.

The points battle was intense. Cooper caught Mcadoo in the closing laps and was briefly able to get around him as the white flag waved. On the final lap, he charged into a corner hard and had his bike slip out from underneath him. Cooper maintained the fourth position and held onto the second position in the points.

Garrett Marchbanks rounded out the top five. He has swept the top five in the first three rounds of the 250 West Championship.

Jalek Swoll in sixth, Stilez Roberstson in seventh, Mitchell Harrison in eighth, Chris Blose in ninth and Nate Thrasher in 10th rounded out the top 10.0

This was the best finish of the season for Harrison and Blose.

Smith would go on to fall once again at the five-minute mark while battling Mcadoo. He finished last.

Click here for 250 West Main results | 250 points standings | 250 Manufacturer points

Next Up: AT&T Center, Arlington, Texas March 16.

POINTS, RESULTS AFTER ROUND 1 AT HOUSTON: Justin Barcia, Christian Craig take early lead

POINTS, RESULTS AFTER ROUND 2 AT HOUSTON: Eli Tomac closes gap, Jett Lawrence wins his first

POINTS, RESULTS AFTER ROUND 3 AT HOUSTON: Ken Roczen earns one-point margin; Colt Nichols, Christian Craig share 250 lead

POINTS, RESULTS AFTER ROUND 4 AT INDIANAPOLIS: Ken Roczen wins to extend points margin, Colt Nichols doubles down

POINTS, RESULTS AFTER ROUND 5 AT INDIANAPOLIS: Ken Roczen makes it two in a row; Colt Nichols threepeats

POINTS, RESULTS AFTER ROUND 6 AT INDIANAPOLIS: Ken Roczen continues to roll; Christian Craig stops Colt Nichols

POINTS, RESULTS AFTER ROUND 7 AT ORLANDO: Cooper Webb gets second win as Jett Lawrence also doubles

POINTS, RESULTS AFTER ROUND 8 AT ORLANDO: Cooper Webb wins again to close the gap on Ken Roczen

POINTS, RESULTS AFTER ROUND 9 AT DAYTONA: Eli Tomac gets back in contention with fifth Daytona win

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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.

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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