Reaching the traditional 33-car grid number for the IndyCar Series’ blue ribband round is proving difficult at a time when some teams have struggled to find the requisite personnel to run their full-time cars. There are 32 confirmed entries for this year’s race, with 15 powered by Chevrolet and 17 by Honda. Autosport understands that
Month: April 2022
Having fended off threats from Palou and Grosjean, the Penske driver took the team’s third consecutive win after a crash-strewn race. It marked Newgarden’s 22nd career victory, equaling Tony Bettenhausen and Emerson Fittipaldi in the record books. Former Formula 1 driver Grosjean took his second series podium, having been denied pole for Sunday’s race after a
Defending Long Beach winner Herta delivered the eighth pole position of his IndyCar career after struggling during Friday practice on the extremely gripped-up street track. Herta produced a 1m05.309s lap in the decisive Fast Six session, eclipsing the previous qualifying lap record by 0.9s and earning pole by 0.445s over Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden. But
Defending Long Beach winner Herta delivered the eighth pole position of his IndyCar career after struggling during Friday practice on the extremely gripped-up street track. Herta produced a 1m05.309s lap in the decisive Fast Six session, eclipsing the previous qualifying lap record by 0.9s and earning pole by 0.445s over Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden. But
Andretti Autosport driver Herta lapped 0.445 seconds clear of nearest challenger Josef Newgarden, as second practice pacesetter Romain Grosjean crashed out of the decisive Fast Six session. Herta’s team-mate Alexander Rossi laid down the first marker in the third segment of qualifying with 1m06.0s, his closest opponent being Newgarden (Team Penske) and Felix Rosenqvist (Arrow McLaren SP) after
When Jack Harvey struck the wall during second practice at TMS last month, Ilott’s Juncos Hollinger Racing car was next through. A pushrod from the broken Rahal Letterman Lanigan car flew up and struck Ilott’s aeroscreen, but managed to leave just a hairline fracture on the screen. “What’s amazing for me is I just came
Herta was the first driver to drop into the 66-second bracket around the 1.968-mile course, clocking a 1m06.5710s on his sixth lap which at the time left him half a second clear of the field. However with 35 minutes to go, a spin at Turn 6 caused last year’s Long Beach winner to strike the
The NASCAR legend appeared to grab too much kerb at the Turn 5 right-hander, and bounced nose-first into the tyre wall on corner exit, his right hand still holding the steering wheel. The incident brought out the red flag, and Johnson initially told NBC that his hand was fine. However, the IndyCar sophomore was unable
Pagenaud, the 2016 Long Beach winner, clocked a 1m07.1991s in the session, eclipsing two-time Long Beach winner Alexander Rossi of Andretti Autosport by 0.4021s. Pagenaud’s best time was two seconds quicker than Colton Herta’s first practice time from last year’s Long Beach in September. Apart from the usual problems of drivers outbraking themselves and having
Brad Keselowski and RFK Racing were docked 100 driver and owner points, while crew chief Matt McCall was fined $100,000 and suspended for four races, after it was discovered that that illegal modifications to parts supplied by NASCAR were run on the 2012 Cup Series champion’s #6 Ford Mustang. The penalty dropped new team co-owner Keselowski, who
Rick Mears will join Mario Andretti, Emerson Fittipaldi, George Follmer, Dan Gurney, Jim Hall, David Hobbs, Parnelli Jones, Roger Penske, Brian Redman and Bobby Unser on the list of legends to be honoured by the Road Racing Drivers Club in Long Beach later today. The evening’s emcee and RRDC president Bobby Rahal, along with organiser
The Barwell Motorsport Lamborghini crew’s participation had been thrown into doubt by a Motorsport UK ruling following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which barred Russian license-holders from competing in Britain. Barwell has not formally commented on the development but a British GT statement said that Machitski, who has previously held a UK license, and Danish driver
Works drivers Nicki Thiim, Marco Sorensen and Maxime Martin will share a TF-run Aston Martin Vantage GT3 in the Nurburgring-Nordschleife enduro on 28-29 May together with track record holder David Pittard, who is racing for the factory-run NorthWest AMR squad in the 2022 World Endurance Championship. The campaign in the top SP9 class, which will
Teams split on running a one or two-stop pit strategy in the final stage of Sunday’s race at Richmond Raceway, with William Byron and Martin Truex Jr opting for one stop in the 170-lap stage, while Hamlin and Harvick were among those using two stops. Byron, on older tyres, managed to hang on to the
It was not all smooth sailing for the #32 Audi R8, piloted by Dries Vanthoor, Kelvin van der Linde and Charles Weerts, although through pit strategy they reclaimed first place after losing it to fellow Audi runners Sainteloc Junior Team’s #25 entry. WRT’s #32 team had bagged the first pole position of the 2022 season,
John Fitzpatrick is one of the unsung heroes of touring car and sportscar racing, with a British Touring Car title, European GT and IMSA crowns, and wins at Daytona, Sebring and Bathurst to his name, not to mention a successful racing team. So it’s appropriate that he picks another underrated Briton as his best team-mate:
The seven-time world champion will make his first appearance in the series since 2012 at this weekend’s three-hour Endurance round at Imola, having announced his retirement from MotoGP last August. He has joined Vosse’s WRT Audi team that clinched the GTWCE overall and Sprint Cup titles last year with Dries Vanthoor and Charles Weerts. Rossi