Give him a break; at Indy he did very well, better than the other Andretti drivers top Rookie in quali, kept his nose clean throughout practice. Then in the race all accidents happened in the same place; wind? Bump? This Detroit crash is a clear mistake however.
contact with drivers at St Pete and Barber too. he’s not making many friends in the series and is hard on equipment, that doesn’t bode well.
A clean race . . . . but not a fun race. Next comes Road America. We switch to a tire strategy circuit to a fuel strategy circuit at the bratwurst capital of the world.
I thought it was a pretty good race, thanks to the different tire strategies. It's rather amazing that neither the IMSA race nor the IndyCar race had a yellow flag! (At least until after the checkered.)
Interesting race, had it gone another lap Power would have been dead in the water and passed by Rossi and Dixon. Penske marginal on the red tires at the end just as Newgarden was last year as the NBC crew pointed out. They've definitely dialed Leigh Diffey back, which is a good thing, but he doesn't need to keep selling the race as we may see what is happening with our own eyes. Pity for Kyle Kirkwood who was up to third for A.J. Foyt Racing and just like that tagged the wall a day after winning GTD for Lexus. He's stepping into Rossi's seat at Andretti next year. BHW
I thought it was a pretty good race, and a good send off for an under appreciated track. Amazing that both the Indy car and IMSA (100 minute) race went green flag to flag. Not a yellow for either event. I don't think that's ever happened at Belle Isle before for either series, but for both to go green flag to flag was amazing. It seems like just making the announcement that he's going to McClaren has helped release some tension from Rossi and allowed him to relax into his first decent finish in a while. And if things had gone slightly different he could easily have won it. Can't wait to see Rossi and Pato together, with Rosenqvisat of course, at SPAM next year.
There's some whispers about Pato replacing Ricciardo at McLaren F1 next year. He already had a successful test for them at Yas Marina last year and he's high on Zak Brown's list. Maybe Pato and Ricciardo switch seats? BHW
Definitely some tension between Pato, Colton and Zac Brown or perhaps pressure is the better word here. Both Colton and Pato want that seat. Pato is already a McLaren driver tested their F1 car and in spite of that, they sign Colton for a F1 upcoming test with McLaren, Pato is not happy and drives the wheels off his Indycar to prove himself. Colton too, but he either wins or makes mistakes. Lando Norris swears by Colton as fast as they competed against each other. Equally important, does Ricciardo come to Indycar or give Nascar a go. We all know he loves America, but does he love Indycar, that we don't know. Arrow McLaren Indycar haven't resigned Rosenqvist yet and his contract is up, so presumably they'll replace him with Ricciardo if he's interested, that would be my guess.
Ric seems logical to go to McLaren Arrow but I hope he doesn’t. I don’t particularly like him, but everybody will see it as a demotion (which it would be) so he might find it more comfortable with a different team, assuming he goes to IndyCar.
So booking a flight from BWI to Milwaukee for RA this weekend is no problem. What's a problem is the rental car . . . . . ain't none!!
In 2002 I was PR for a French 550 Maranello team at Elkhart.... I got to Milwaukee airport without a way to get to the track...then I saw team owner Franz Konrad and asked him in my poor German if he could take me along and he kindly obliged...he told me lots of Nurburgring Nordschleife tales on the way. Great guy.
