One full course caution during a pit cycle worked out for
Juan Pablo Montoya yesterday at Mid-Ohio. He had pitted right before it came
out, allowing him to eventually cycle through to the lead, with early dominator
Scott Dixon suddenly mired in mid-pack. Yes, 2nd place in the
championship Graham Rahal also benefited, but for Montoya, a
potential win at this late stage of the season would have been a giant step
towards a championship.
The next caution during a pit cycle came at the perfect time
for Rahal and the worst time for Montoya. Rahal won the race, Montoya finished
11th, and suddenly we have a title race.
There was obviously more to the race than that, but in the
end the timing of the cautions had a lot to do with how the race was decided.
Passing was at a premium and starts and restarts were critical, as they always
are at Mid-Ohio. That’s not a knock on the track. It’s an enjoyable track to
look at, the crowd was great, and it’s clearly a challenging track for the
drivers. The racing will never be thrill-a-minute, but IndyCar needs tracks
like this as part of its road course portfolio.
I’ve buried the lede enough on this race, so let’s discuss
it. I have no idea if Sage Karam intentionally spun. Those in the booth thought
it was kind of suspicious, but as a layman, there’s no way for me to tell. Of
course, we’ve seen instances of this recently in F1 and NASCAR, so to say it
couldn’t happen here is naïve. If it can somehow be proven it was on purpose,
then we have a shitstorm that makes all the other controversies this season
look like mild disagreements easily settled by sharing a glass of brandy and a cigar. IndyCar is looking into it, but what can they
really do now? They can’t change the result, at least not for Rahal and Montoya
(For Ganassi, it’s obviously a different story).
Rahal needed luck with the caution to get the win, but any
griping that the victory wasn’t deserved ended with that final restart. With
Justin Wilson on the push-to-pass and unable to defend with his own, Graham
outbraked Wilson into Madness like, well, a mad man. Even Wilson was impressed
with how deep in the corner Graham went. From there, that was ballgame. If even
Mid-Ohio master Scott Dixon couldn’t pass after restarts, then it wasn’t going
to happen for anyone else.
With that, Graham gets an emotional home area victory, and
now sits just 9 points back in the championship. The turnaround of driver and
team is officially the on-track story of 2015. The last few years, the Rahal
team and Graham himself were jokes. No one would’ve had them anywhere close to
the title race going into the year. Doing it with the inferior Honda program
just makes it more impressive. Montoya will be tough to beat, and arguably the
final two races favor him, but Rahal and company aren’t going away quietly.
Hopefully it’s selling lots of Steak n’Shake.
Other Observations
I’m still not a fan of Graham per se, but I certainly
respect the effort and the results. The main thing that bothers me now is how
the NBCSN booth is reacting to it. I’ve heard the grumbles the last few weeks
of favoritism, and this week, it felt like it crossed over to cheerleading. I
legitimately wondered who was more excited for the win: the crowd or the booth.
The crowd at least had a reason.
“Karma is a bitch.” Good to know what Juan’s thoughts on
Sage-Gate (ugh) are.
Fantastic drive for Justin “Badass” Wilson. His outside pass
of both Rahal and Montoya was the highlight of the day. As he said afterwards,
the performance couldn’t hurt in his quest for a full-time drive at Andretti
next year.
Today in Race Control Complaining: They gave out more
warnings than an ineffective parent. Next time they’ll count to three: 1…2…2 ½…
Takuma Sato had to retire because the Foyt team ran out of
parts. How exactly does that happen? Awful way for Sato’s 100th
career start to end. At least Foyt got a top ten out of Jack Hawksworth, who
had arguably his best weekend of the year after months of anonymity.
Charlie Kimball: Human Piñata returned. Except for the two
Indianapolis races, it’s been a terrible year for him.
Bad luck for Luca Filippi, who ran out of fuel on the last
lap, turning a 7th place into a 21st place finish.
(Thanks to my Twitter friend @EJGoose for letting me know that when I asked
what happened)
On Tap
Pocono! The last oval and 500 miler of the year, presumably
with less horrific pit lane accidents than what we saw there this week. The
defending race winner is some guy named Montoya.
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