Sign Santino and Taku quick for 2020. Terrific race with Chevy vs. Honda, always like to see a new winner.
Simon first French winner since Rene Thomas in..............................................................1914. Somehow Thomas has not commented on his twitter yet...
NBC said the last French winner was Gaston Chevrolet in 1920, though Wikipedia claims that Chevrolet was Swiss, being born in France to Swiss parents.
before that was Rene Thomas in 1914, who was truly French. pretty incredible really, considering how important French manufacturers were to the Indy 500 in the early years, that it would take a century for another French driver to win.
I would like to see Pagenaud get the red carpet treatment here driving his Indycar down the Champs Elysees - as Prost and Laffite did years ago, Pironi-Jaussaud too after they won Le Mans 78-, get a medal from Macron... He deserves it but not sure at all it will happen considering the anti car politics here. If not he should just stay stateside and enjoy the positivity there.
That was pretty fun to watch. Lots of stuff going on in the pits. In the end, yet another victory for Team Penske. This guy never gets old. He may have another 50 before he retires.
Now the only one of his drivers who hasn't won a 500 is Newgarden, and I think his turn will come if he keeps racing for the Captain.
Rossi didn't help Honda when he was asked what was the difference at the end and he said "horsepower". Actually the Honda probably had a pretty good chance to win but the screwed up pitstops and the crash right at the end that helped the Chevy save fuel might have been the difference.
I can remember the ONLY one I can say was THE GREATEST about.... the 1971 Italian GP at Monza. First, Peter Gethin; 2nd, Ronnie Peterson; 3rd, Francois Cevert; 4th, Mike Hailwood; .....all finished under a less than 0.2 sec. blanket ('only timed to the hundrdth back then) after swapping the lead slipstreaming ALL race long..... poor Howden Ganley got left behind a WHOLE 0.4 sec. further back in 5th...... 'Will never.....nay.....never ever..... forget that one.
The Chevy's were wayyyy faster in the draft compared to the Honda. Rossi had to be on the ass of another car to pass on the straight. The Chevy's could be 2-3 car lengths further back. Rossi was also struggling to hold the line at the end which hurt him on the straights. I'm not a huge Pagenaud fan but he drove like a boss this month. Congrats to him on two well deserved victories.
+1 Glued to the TV for the full three hours - admirable - begs the question of what they have got right as opposed to F1
Without the Bourdais/Rahal crash, Pagenaud would not have even been in contention (fuel conservation), and it seemed like Rossi would have run away with it. Of course, you never know what would have happened if the crash hadn't happened.
A thoroughly enjoyable 500 again this year. Had the Rahal/Bourdais shunt not happened, the results would have been dramatically different. To that point, it was interesting how the different strategies were playing out. Penske obviously sent Pagenaud out to the the rabbit counting on cautions which to that point hadn't happened. Rossi, Sato-San, Dixon, et.al. were playing the fuel strategy game and just missed out as that shunt gummed up the works. Got to give to Rossi though, the kid has some serious balls putting the car up against the wall, inside, outside and otherwise passes. He's got more great races ahead no doubt. Andretti should be doing everything he can to keep him on the team. Also, compliments to NBC's coverage. After years of ABC's dismal Indy 500 broadcasts with some of the most boring ********* commentators imaginable, NBC's team did a fine job with Tracy and Bell keeping Diffey on the rails when our Australian fan-boy friend wanted to go off into his own background stories at the heights of on-track action. The broadcast was very well directed with noticeably new camera angles, it was a breath of fresh air and the time just seemed to fly throughout. The cuts to Tirico, Danica and Jr. Jr. Jr. in the pit booth were interesting, informative and fun, it wasn't the train wreck everyone thought it would be. Damn, Danica's got some guns on her huh? Shakes fist at Tracy... Fortunately, the predicted rain which on Saturday night surely looked as though would materialize petered out and showers that were in the area seemed to go around Indianapolis. BHW
I'm not sure if I should congratulate NBC for a great job at Indianapolis or congratulate the participants for having such a splendid race . . . For some reason I actually found Leigh Diffey tolerable.