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With Scott Dixon having dealt another Kansas butt-kicking (the last one, perhaps?), we’re now officially on the road to the Indianapolis 500. After a quiet start to the 2010 IZOD IndyCar Series championship, Dixon and his Target Chip Ganassi Racing team certainly have “Big Mo” on their side now going into the Brickyard.
Meanwhile, championship leader Will Power was able to maintain his hold on the lead and will go to Indy with a 26-point edge on Dixon. But he’ll have to do better than the 12th-place run he had yesterday in Kansas if he’s going to keep it after this current run of ovals end. One way to do that is by winning the Indy pole, which now pays out 15 title points as part of a new qualifying format. And of course, there’s winning the race itself (May 30, ABC). He’ll likely be a contender for both.
The Indy 500 is its own animal, but I think we’ll be keeping track of the series title fight a little bit closer than we may have been during past months of May. I’m all for an added dimension to the proceedings at the Brickyard. Kansas shook up the standings a bit, and Indy may well do the same.
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Yesterday’s race saw a lot of good drives, ensuring that this run at Kansas wasn’t as dreadful as the 2009 edition. The Andretti Autosport guys in particular were all hard-chargers. Tony Kanaan went from 15th to 3rd, Ryan Hunter-Reay jumped from 22nd to 5th, part-timer John Andretti came from 17th to place ninth, and Marco Andretti climbed 13 spots to finish 13th. The only one of the AA bunch that didn’t advance was Danica Patrick, who got 11th place after starting ninth.
Out of all of them though, I have to say I was most impressed with John Andretti, who’s driving a car owned by both Andretti Autosport and NASCAR legend Richard Petty. Saturday was John’s tune-up for the Indy 500 (where he’ll also race the Andretti/Petty No. 43 car), and he turned in a nice effort. As George over at OilPressure.com said in his own review of Kansas, this guy hasn’t been in a car for eleven months so kudos to him for driving a well-run race in his return to IndyCar.
AA didn’t quite have the pace of the two Target Chip Ganassi Racing drivers of Dixon and Dario Franchitti yesterday, but it would appear that their oval program is nonetheless looking solid going into IMS.
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Hideki Mutoh and Takuma Sato saw great runs go by the boards as they crashed together on a restart at Lap 186. Both Japanese drivers found themselves on the outside of the lapped car of Simona de Silvestro coming to the green, but de Silvestro washed up a bit in the tri-oval, causing Mutoh and Sato to make contact and go into the wall together.
Mutoh ran as high as fourth yesterday and Sato, in his first oval race ever, got as high as sixth before their incident.
Sato’s been snakebit since he’s come to the IZOD IndyCar Series from Formula One. He crashed out of the first two events, had a throttle problem relegate him to 25th place at Barber, and was spun out at Long Beach before coming back for 18th place there.
After being in F1 for a while, maybe the racing gods are upset with him for daring to try his luck Stateside?
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Nobody should be surprised at the swaths of empty seats in the grandstands yesterday. Randy Covitz of The Kansas City Star reports an attendance of about 40,000, but if the TV cameras were any indication, that number is generous.
This year, Kansas Speedway did away with the practice of making fans buy tickets for both their spring and fall event weekends. It would appear that, combined with the IndyCar race being relegated to Saturday afternoon, the decision had an adverse effect for the IRL. For what it’s worth, however, track president Pat Warren told Covitz that sales and revenue hit the expected mark.
One wonders if attendance would be better if they had chosen to keep the event in its old July 4th weekend spot. For one thing, weather has been problematic for the IndyCars at Kansas since they put the race in the spring. Remember the tornado that caused everyone to hide in the track’s media center last year?
But even with that, there’s the bigger, more nagging sensation that more promotion can be done with this event — and it isn’t happening from track owner ISC.
I’ve got a feeling that this race is done.
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