IndyCar’s street king now 2-for-2 on young season
Even Mother Nature can’t cool down the white-hot Will Power.
A torrential Sunday storm moved the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg (Fla.) to Monday morning, but it didn’t throw the driver of the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske special off his game. Power led fifty laps en route to a second straight victory by eight-tenths of a second over Justin Wilson. If that wasn’t good enough, his season-starting, back-to-back triumphs have netted him a comfortable early lead in the championship by 44 points over his closest pursuers.
“It’s just great,” said Power, who scored his third career IZOD IndyCar Series win. “It’s Verizon’s first year, and we’re out to win the championship. Perfect pit stop, good race, perfect weekend – pole and a win. Can’t get much better than that.”
He took the lead for good on Lap 73, when gearbox problems befell then-leader E.J. Viso of KV Racing Technology and forced him and his No. 8 PDVSA machine off the track. The Venezuelan’s move to pit road forced Power to quickly dodge him, as Wilson and his No. 22 Z-Line Designs car was starting to bear down.
“I knew [Viso] had to save fuel, but he had a problem,” Power said of the evasive action. “That was close. I didn’t want to nail him from behind, because I knew Wilson was coming. I picked a side and went for it.”
Viso had to settle for 17th position and was three laps down at the checkered flag.
“We definitely had the speed, pace and a good strategy in today’s race,” he said. “…This is the tough part of racing. One second, you have everything, and the next, it is taken away from you.”
With Viso out of the picture, Wilson tried to mount a major challenge to Power in the closing stages but to no avail. Still, his runner-up effort was the best finish for his Dreyer and Reinbold Racing team since Mike Conway finished third for them last season at Infineon Raceway in California.
“In that last stint, we were flat out,” Wilson said. “We were pushing hard. Everyone on the team did a great job on that last pit stop. From that point on, I was trying to put Will under some kind of pressure. I saw him get sideways a bit, but it wasn’t enough.”
Meanwhile, a different pit strategy from the rest of the field worked out well for Ryan Briscoe, who charged from 19th starting position all the way to third place and the final step on the podium. After throwing away a possible win two weeks ago in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the other Australian on the Penske roster was pleased with his result on Monday.
“Qualifying was a mess for us,” Briscoe said. “I think we underestimated the competition of the field. We just had the wrong tire on in qualifying. We knew we had a good car for the race. We had a plan for the race. We were going to do the opposite of the leaders, go off-sequence, and it worked beautifully for us.
“It was tricky there when [the track] was damp, but we kept all four wheels on the island. After Brazil, I was just telling myself to be calm out there.”
Helio Castroneves also bounced back from a somewhat quiet outing in Brazil (ninth place) by finishing fourth. Following him was Dario Franchitti, who recovered from a first-lap spin and then later having to get a flat rear tire changed under green to grab fifth.
“Between the flat tire and me screwing up, it’s not a bad day to finish fifth,” the two-time IZOD IndyCar Series champ quipped in post-race.
While nowhere near the craziness of the season opener two weeks ago, Monday’s race was still lively with plenty of passing (an event-record 10 lead changes among eight drivers) and multiple cringe-worthy crashes.
At the top of the latter list was a Lap 47 crack-up involving Panther Racing’s Dan Wheldon and KV Racing Technology’s Mario Moraes in Turn 1. The right rear wheel suspension broke on Wheldon’s No. 4 National Guard car as he was heading into the turn and with him locking up the brakes, he smashed into Moraes’ No. 32 car and then spun into the runoff area, where he made multiple impacts with the tire barriers. Neither driver was injured.
“It was a big hit, and I have to say sorry to the KV Racing crew for hitting Mario,” said Wheldon, a resident of St. Petersburg. “We probably got a little lucky to come away with as little damage as we did. These things happen in motor racing.”
To make matters worse for Moraes, this occurred after he was found to have a cyst near his ear canal during pre-race exams. According to the Associated Press, the young Brazilian will head back to his homeland to have the cyst removed this week.
Other drivers met swift ends as well. On Lap 64, Conway was knocked out of the race after he battled for position with Raphael Matos at Turn 5 and then ran over one of Matos’ wheels. This sent Conway and his No. 24 Dad’s Root Beer car up in the air briefly and then back down and into the tire barriers. Ten laps later, more mayhem ensued as Scott Dixon hit the wall at Turn 9, while Simona de Silvestro got spun around in an incident with Graham Rahal.
The IZOD IndyCar Series will go on another two-week break before returning to action April 9-11 for the inaugural Indy Grand Prix of Alabama weekend at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham.
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Photo credit: Ron McQueeney/Indy Racing League.
