Two-time series champion Newgarden also admitted that the weekend as a whole was a struggle, as Team Penske searched for pace in the second round of the year around the Indy’s road track. This year’s Indy 500 winner Newgarden lost a lap when he struck Marcus Armstrong’s stranded Chip Ganassi Racing car at Turn 7
Month: August 2023
Van Gisbergen is set to become the next New Zealander to tackle the US racing scene with a full-time move from Supercars to NASCAR next year. He made his oval debut in the Truck Series on Friday, finishing a credible 19th, and will make a second Cup Series start on the Indianapolis road course tomorrow
Dixon won on his record 319th consecutive start in the series, despite spinning to the tail of the field on the opening lap in a multi-car collision at Turn 7 that involved two of his team-mates. After pitting on lap five, to get rid of his primary compound tyres, he was able to charge through
Dixon won by less than half a second from Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Graham Rahal and Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward. Title contenders Alex Palou (Chip Ganassi Racing) and Josef Newgarden (Team Penske) endured a wild first lap in which both made contact with Marcus Armstrong, with Newgarden losing a lap as Palou escaped relatively unscathed
The two-time World Endurance champion and overall winner in the 2021 Le Mans 24 Hours will start 28th in his Cup debut on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course, driving the #67 23XI Racing Toyota. He joins a star-studded field that includes Shane van Gisbergen, Brodie Kostecki, Jenson Button, and Mike Rockenfeller for Sunday’s race.
Suarez, who remains without a win this season and sits five points outside the playoffs, turned the fastest average lap speed early in the final 10-minute round of Saturday’s qualifying session at 99.814 mph. Nearly every car – including Suarez – went out in the final minute to make a second attempt but Reddick came
Ganassi responded to the overnight story that broke about McLaren revealing that Palou “does not intend to honor his contractual obligations to race with us in IndyCar in 2024 and beyond”. On Saturday morning, Palou’s now-former management team, Monaco Increase Management, stated that it was “bitterly disappointed to learn about Alex Palou’s decision to break
This year’s Indy 500 winner suffered a disastrous qualifying session on Friday, failing to progress from Q1, and was scheduled to start the race from 19th on the grid. But IndyCar revealed on Saturday morning that Newgarden has taken a fifth engine, which is classed as an unapproved engine change and will instead start from
This latest contractual saga follows a protracted legal battle over his services for 2023, when Ganassi filed a lawsuit against its own driver after he signed a contract with McLaren in the summer of 2022. A legal mediation led to him staying with Ganassi for this season, in which he seems certain to claim his
Dixon lapped the 14-turn, 2.439-mile IMS road course in 1m10.9851s in the 30-minute session, which acts as the warm-up for tomorrow’s race. The session took on more importance after a remarkable qualifying session beforehand, in which title contenders Alex Palou (Ganassi) and Josef Newgarden (Penske) could only manage eighth and 19th on the grid respectively.
He said the Fast Six session was “really tricky” due to the problem, but he beat his Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing team-mate Christian Lundgaard by just over a tenth of a second to take his fourth career pole and his first since Detroit 2017. “In Q1, I think we were still P2 or 3, but
Rahal lapped in 1m10.1132s and will start ahead of team-mate Christian Lundgaard and Alexander Rossi of Arrow McLaren. It wasn’t a great qualifying for championship frontrunners Alex Palou, who will start from the fifth row in ninth place, and Josef Newgarden, who will start down in 19th after he failed to make it past Q1.
He will take the place of Helio Castroneves, who will instead take a minority ownership role with the team and solely contest the Indianapolis 500 in his quest for a record fifth victory. Castroneves won the 2021 Indy 500 in MSR’s biggest achievement to date, and the team will add a third car at the
Rahal lapped the 14-turn, 2.439-mile IMS road course in 1m09.8421s in the 90-minute session for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. Given IndyCar already raced on the circuit layout in May, track activity was sparse to begin with apart from rookies, who are allowed an extra set of primary tyres. May’s polesitter Christian Lundgaard led the way
The 2005 season was a period of change for the Indy Racing League side of the US open-wheel split, as road and street courses were added to the schedule for the first time since the inception of Tony George’s series in 1996. And two impressive performances from a series rookie switching over from Formula 1
The Kiwi has kicked off a full-time transition to the NASCAR system which will come into effect next year. He will make two starts in the States this weekend, firstly in the Truck Series later today (local time) at Indianapolis Raceway Park, before a second Cup Series appearance at the Indianapolis road course on Sunday.
Last week on 5 August, the NASCAR Cup Series rookie was indefinitely suspended by both the team and then NASCAR. This was in response to an Instagram post that Gragson liked, which appeared to mock the 2020 murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. The 25-year-old immediately apologised for his actions,
Van Gisbergen, who makes his second NASCAR Cup start this weekend on the Indianapolis Road Course for Trackhouse, watched his old sparring partner McLaughlin in Chevrolet’s simulator this week, as his fellow Kiwi prepared for his IndyCar element of the double-header weekend. McLaughlin defeated van Gisbergen in their last three seasons racing together in Supercars
With just three races to go until the NASCAR Cup playoffs, the 82-lap race around the Indianapolis road course will be action-packed with high drama and even higher stakes for those not yet locked in. But there’s another element to this Sunday’s race: An F1 world champion, two Le Mans 24 Hours winners, a DTM
Speaking after Sunday’s Nashville race, which he finished second after starting from pole position, McLaughlin branded the restarts in the series as a “joke”. He felt the stop-start nature of the end to the race prevented him from attacking eventual winner Kyle Kirkwood, who won his second street race of the season for Andretti Autosport.
Pagenaud has missed every race since his horrendous Mid-Ohio crash in practice last month, which was caused by a brake failure, as IndyCar’s medical team has refused to clear him to race after he displayed concussion-style symptoms. Lundqvist made a highly impressive IndyCar debut in Nashville last weekend, qualifying in 11th and running as high as
The Kiwi will continue his rapid transition to the NASCAR system with two separate outings in Indianapolis later this week. The first is a debut in the third-tier Truck Series with the Trackhouse Racing-aligned Niece Motorsports squad. That will come at Indianapolis Raceway Park, marking van Gisbergen’s first race on a bitumen oval. He will
After the final round of green flag pitstops, Buescher cycled into the lead but with Truex – who had won the first two stages – close behind and looking for the clean sweep. With 12 laps to go Truex went to Buescher’s inside and edged ahead briefly for the lead.Buescher, however, used the approaching lapped
Team Penske’s reigning champion was late getting into his #12 Chevrolet-powered car when he misplaced his regular earbuds and was then horrified to discover that his spare set wasn’t in his helmet bag either. Someone had to run to his RV in the paddock to get them, which delayed Power from getting into the car.
After he finished a close second for the second season running in Nashville, at what’s become IndyCar’s trickiest street course, McLaughlin was clearly extremely hot and nearing exhaustion in both his post-race TV interview and the press conference that followed. When the race was red flagged with five laps to go, McLaughlin desperately gesticulated for
The start of Sunday’s race was delayed by more than 90 minutes due to rain but eventually got under way, only to see the race placed under caution on lap 75 of 200 when it returned to area around the 2-mile oval. After waiting more than 50 minutes, NASCAR decided to postpone the remainder of
Kirkwood scored his second victory of 2023, his first season with Andretti Autosport, by 0.7s after a four-lap sprint to the finish that followed a late-race red flag. “We were really good on the initial lap [of the restart] but right there at the end, man, they were so fast and they ran me down
Kirkwood finished 0.7633s ahead of Team Penske’s polewinner Scott McLaughlin and series dominator Palou (Chip Ganassi Racing). The race was red-flagged in the closing stages for a multi-car pileup, but Kirkwood kept his cool for his second win of the season after breaking his duck at Long Beach. Following an aborted start, McLaughlin led the field
Following the Fast Six session that set the front three rows of the grid, NBC Peacock cameras caught the moment as Herta stomped to the #28 car’s pit and, with his hands on his hips, asked the sister team why Grosjean’s car was released directly in front of him. Herta qualified third, while Grosjean – who
Newgarden starts ninth on his hometown track – with Chip Ganassi Racing rival Palou going from fourth – as he bids to reduce the 80-point deficit in the season’s closing stages. “Not a great qualifying session for us,” Newgarden admitted to NBC Peacock after qualifying was topped by his team-mate Scott McLaughlin. “We’ll work from