Photo: A wall section goes into place on Dan Wheldon Way. Photo from GPSTPETE Twitter page
A welcome sight in downtown St. Petersburg, although a month later than usual, today was the first day of the track build for the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. The race has been the traditional opening round of the NTT Indycar Series. Because of the pandemic in 2020, the race took place in August last year. In 2021, this will be the second race race of the year. The Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama will open the year April 18, followed by St Pete the following weekend.
St. Petersburg has quite an extensive heritage of street racing dating back to the 1980s. I wrote a piece about the early racing last October.
You can find it here:
https://thepitwindow.blog/2020/10/09/early-racing-in-st-pete-laid-groundwork-for-indycar/
On hand for today’s ceremonies A. J. Foyt racing driver Sebastien Bourdais, a resident of St. Petersburg. Bourdais won this race in 2017 and 2018
The event has a 20,000 fans per day limit. Three day tickets are on sale now at gpstpete.com.
VeeKay Reveals 2021 Livery
Ed Carpenter racing driver Rinus VeeKay revealed the livery for car 21 on Twitter this morning. The car is basically the same as lat year’s. Sonax is the main sponsor with help fro Netherlands grocer Jumbo.
The 2020 Rookie of the Year won his first pole and earned his first podium finish at the Harvest Grand Prix last Octoberat Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I think he will have a great season in 2021.
The Pit Window by Mike Silver 