Grosjean led Alex Palou away but Pato O’Ward was inside Palou into Turn 1 – however, when O’Ward also tried to get around Grosjean at Turn 5 he lost momentum, and Palou was able to draft by him into Turn 8 to reclaim second. Further back, Scott Dixon got around McLaughlin, as all three Penske
Month: April 2023
The 2.3-mile 17-turn track has hosted IndyCar since 2010 and has become one of the favourite venues among fans and drivers for its undulating nature, which creates turns that demand great commitment from the drivers but also present great sight-lines for spectators. The multi-year extension coincides with the new multi-year agreement between Medical Properties Trust/Children’s
Andretti Autosport’s Grosjean was fastest initially in the top six pole shootout with a 1m06.0289s, 0.0341s ahead of Pato O’Ward of Arrow McLaren, but on fresher tyres Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin displaced him at the head of the times. However, Grosjean, who lost an engine yesterday, delivered a 1m05.8396s with his fourth lap and it was
Yesterday’s pacesetter McLaughlin wasted no time in flirting with the 1m06-second barrier, getting down to a 1m07.0036s on his third lap and then broke through it with a 1m06.7282s on his fifth lap.With 36 minutes to go, his nearest challenger became team-mate Newgarden, just 0.0053s behind, but Christian Lundgaard and Graham Rahal were an encouraging
Inevitably, after a warm-up lap at the start of the session, the veterans parked and let the rookies use their extra set of primary tyres to clean the track and add grip to the surface already christened with Firestone rubber thanks to the Indy NXT cars on track earlier in the afternoon. Despite a lurid
Rob Bell has never raced on the Nurburgring Nordschleife, but the Eifel region still holds some special memories for the British sportscar ace. The Nurburgring Grand Prix circuit is often viewed as the poor relation to the 12.944-mile motor racing Mecca that countless drivers (including Yvan Muller) have cited as their favourite, and has come
Jim Hurtubise was the man who warned them all. He set a four-lap qualifying average of 149.056mph on the fourth day of time trials for the 1960 Indianapolis 500 – a new record and about 2.5mph faster than Eddie Sachs’s polewinning average from a week earlier. Then he informed anyone who’d listen that there was
The car is a one-off build – which looks like a reimagining of a Group B rally car – and was conceptualised by the engineering brainboxes at Honda Performance Development in Santa Clarita, California. Built at Honda’s Automotive Development Center in Ohio by the Honda of America Racing Team, ‘The Beast’ is being unleashed in the
Wallace was leading at the start of the final lap of overtime Sunday at Talladega Superspeedway, when Ryan Blaney’s Penske Ford got a strong run entering Turn 1 and attempted to pass. Blaney went low and high and was blocked both times by Wallace’s 23XI Toyota. On the third block attempt, Blaney had seen enough and
Wallace’s 23XI Toyota led the way on the start of the final lap in second overtime, but Blaney was closing fast to challenge for the lead. Wallace moved high, then low to block and finally on the third attempt got hit by Blaney to trigger a multi-car wreck that ended the race under caution. Busch, who
Traditionally, just 33 cars start the Indianapolis 500, with any extra entries having to go through Bump Day during the qualifying weekend to bag a place on the starting grid. The last time this happened was in 2021. Abel will be on the back foot since all its rivals took part in Friday’s open test
The two-time IndyCar champion lapped the legendary Indianapolis Motor Speedway at 227.686mph, 0.9mph ahead of 2008 Indy 500 winner Scott Dixon. That’s the way it remained until very late in the session when 1Conor Daly sprung into the 227s, laying down a 227.466mph lap in his Ed Carpenter Racing entry. Behind Dixon was Long Beach
After half an hour of the first two-hour session for the Indy 500 veterans, Chip Ganassi Racing’s Ericsson sat at the top of the speed charts. Having lapped the 2.5-mile course in 40.1194s, 224.330mph, last year’s Indy 500 winner was over one mile per hour clear of Colton Herta of Andretti Autosport and Dale Coyne Racing’s
These days, team owner Michael Andretti is far more comfortable sitting in front of the media than he ever was as a driver, but still, it’s not his favourite activity. So it was a pleasant surprise to see him twice visit the Long Beach media centre last weekend. But he had good reason: at this
Ilott struck the Turn 1 wall on lap 6 of the race, and had to limp around a whole lap, to get his punctured right-front tyre replaced. That put him a lap down, so when the full-course caution came out for Scott Dixon being in a tyre wall on lap 20, his team delayed his
The Chip Ganassi Racing driver moved to the top of the standings by finishing third behind first-time winner Kyle Kirkwood and his Andretti Autosport team-mate Romain Grosjean. Ericsson, who started on the front row on a street course for the first time, lost out to Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden in the pits when the majority
The Swiss driver started third in Long Beach and was closely tracking his polewinning Andretti Autosport team-mate Kyle Kirkwood for most of the race. But having pitted a lap before Kirkwood – by team design, to respond to Josef Newgarden making his final stop – he didn’t have the fuel to allow him to use his huge
On lap 20, O’Ward dived down the inside of six-time IndyCar champion Dixon in Turn 8. It was a very late manoeuvre, but the Arrow McLaren driver’s wheels were fully alongside those of the Ganassi car. The pair made contact that sent Dixon spearing into the tyre wall. “I was on the inside, he decided
Passing was at a premium in Sunday’s race and Larson struggled to run mid-pack most of the day, but he moved into the top-five by staying out when most others pit for a caution on Lap 305 of 400. While under another caution on Lap 343, Larson pit but took on only two new tyres
The second-year driver, who joined Andretti from AJ Foyt Enterprises for 2023, started on pole before leading 53 of the 85 laps, briefly losing the lead to Josef Newgarden of Team Penske. But a great overcut on both Newgarden and Grosjean at the second pitstop saw him emerge in front and hold steady to the
Mark Webber could be forgiven for wanting to pinch himself just to make sure that the past year hasn’t been a dream. This is not surprising really, for a driver who, in his quest to become the first Australian in over a decade to hold down a regular place in Formula 1, has managed to
In an interrupted Q2 segment of qualifying for the Grand Prix of Long Beach, Kirkwood didn’t take fresh tyres for the final run, having been securely in the top six when the red flag fell with a minute to go. That left him with a fresh set of Firestones for the Fast Six showdown, and he
Kirkwood left it until the final two minutes of the session to take the top spot, with a 1m06.2878s clinching him his first series pole. Having topped his group in the first part of qualifying, Kirkwood finished third in Q2 behind championship leader Pato O’Ward and Romain Grosjean, with his quickest time 0.13s off the
Less than five minutes into the 1h45m session, the red flags were waved after Callum Ilott hit the apex kerbs at Turn 5 before finding the tyre wall in his Juncos Hollinger Racing entry. Barely three minutes after the session restarted, Rinus VeeKay pulled a wheelie over the same kerb, meeting the same fate in the
The Andretti Autosport cars set the early pace, with Romain Grosjean and then Colton Herta taking turns at the top, before Ganassi’s 2021 champion Alex Palou deposed Herta to claim top spot with 1m07.2416s. Then Marcus Ericsson demoted team-mate Palou from P1 with a 1m07.2233s, while 2022 Long Beach winner Josef Newgarden slotted into fifth. Not
McLaren is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, which was marked in Formula 1 by branding its 2023 challenger the MCL60. Ahead of the month of May, McLaren’s IndyCar arm is also celebrating the British brand’s rich history with three throwback liveries on its full-time entries, all commemorating a historic McLaren win in the Triple
Ware missed Sunday’s NASCAR Cup race at Bristol with a statement from his Rick Ware Racing squad saying it was “to focus on a personal matter”. The 27-year-old was arrested on 10 April and charged with felony assault by strangulation – inflict serious injury, as well as misdemeanour assault on a female. Ware has nearly
Bell, who inherited the lead by staying out between Stages 2 and 3, led the final 100 laps but had to ward off repeated challenges, with the last coming from Reddick in the final five laps. Reddick, who won Stage 2, pitted for new tyres during the break and put them to good use to
Robby Gordon wants to be the next Indycar racer in Formula 1. He’s on his way to the top. His first car race was in the Daytona 24 Hours sportscar race and his first single-seater start was in an Indycar. But in between, he destroyed Formula 3000 and Winston Cup machines. I first came across
NASCAR took William Byron’s #24 and Alex Bowman’s #48 cars back to the R&D Centre after the Richmond round for what it called “further inspection”. The teams were found to have made illegal modifications to the greenhouse of both cars. The #24 and #48 teams have each been docked 60 driver and owner points, as