Indy Weekend Wrap Up

 Raise your hand if you thought the two of the fastest drivers of the weekend would be the duo from Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing? Unless you’re Sarah Fisher, nobody should have raised their hand. Rookies Josef Newgarden finished atop the leaderboard on Saturday with his teammate, and fellow rookie, Bryan Clauson, coming in at third. On Sunday, Clauson finished the day second fastest and Newgarden third. The two American drivers are definitely the future of IndyCar and will be two to watch as we get closer to race day. Another young American driver to watch is Panther Racing’s JR Hildebrand. Hildebrand nearly won the “500” last year but hit the wall in Turn 4 on the last lap and finished second to the late Dane Wheldon. Hildebrand completed the 7^th fastest lap over the weekend.

            The fastest lap award on Sunday went to Sebastian Saavedra who ran a 40.627 second lap and crossed the line at 221.526 MPH. That was also better than any lap ran on Saturday. He is from the Andretti Autosports stable of drivers and the 2012 “500” will be his first race of the season.

            Looking at the leaderboard of the fastest laps from the first two days of the practice, there is a great mixture of Chevy and Honda drivers. Of the Top 15, seven are Chevrolet’s and eight are Honda’s. Unfortunately, there is a third engine manufacturer in IndyCar, and that’s Lotus. Lotus has struggled all season to provide engines that can compete against even the lower-tiered Chevy and Honda teams. In fact, one of the teams that started with Lotus has already switched to Chevrolet. By Sunday night, there were only two Lotus cars that had completed laps. One was rookie Jean Alesi who ran a 209.438 MPH lap. Alesi has yet to finish the rookie orientation program. Alesi said he had the gas pedal on the floor and is still not getting the speed he needs. The other Lotus driver is Simona de Silvestro who came in at a 202.179 MPH. Silvestro became a fan favorite last year and it’d be great to see her turning in quicker laps.

            Missing from the Top 10 of the Leaderboard entirely is Penske Racing. The trio of Helio Castroneves, Will Power, and Ryan Briscoe are all considered favorites for the “500” but none have shown a lot of speed yet. They could just be waiting until later in the week to show their muscle though. Ganassi Racing is fielding four cars and only two of their drivers are in the Top 10. That would be Scott Dixon and Charlie Kimball. Two-time Indy 500 winner, Dario Franchitti, sits in 14^th and Graham Rahal is 22^nd. My guess is they’re doing the same thing as Penske and just waiting until they have to go 100%. Both teams have dominated Indianapolis in the past decade so they know what they’re doing.

It should be noted that all the drivers on top of the Leaderboard were aided by driving in the draft of a driver in front of them. That doesn’t deter me from considering those drivers the fastest though and in my opinion they’re farther ahead in the game than the drivers below them on the leaderboard.

           

This week there is practice every day from Noon to 6:00. Most of what you’ll see is four-lap mock qualifying laps in preparation for Saturday’s Pole Day.