Category: Auto Racing

Grosjean on Pole for St. Pete

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Romain Grosjean survived a crash filled fast Six to win the pole for tomorrow’s Firestone Grand Prtix of St. Petersburg. It is his second career pole. Grosjwean led a trio of Andretti Autosport cars in the Fast Six. Teammate Colton Herta will start second. Kyle Kirkwood will start sixth after a crash early in the final round.

The top six:

Romain Grosjean 59.5532 seconds

Colton Herta 59.96871::

Pato O’Ward 1:00.163

Marcus Ericsson !:00,4435

Scott McLaughlin No Time

Kyle Kirkwood No Time

Notes

The second round featured three cars from Andretti, three from Arrow Mclaremand three from Ganassi. Team Penske had just two cars advance- McLaughlin and Will Power.

Kyle Kirkwood had a great weekend going until he locked up the brakes and hit the wall on the first lap of the Fast Six. I still think he will have a strong race tomorrow.

We may be seeing the beginning of a rivalry between Arrow McLaren and Andretti. The teams have had the strongest cars all weekend. Whar=t a great story to dollow this year.

Grosjean’s pole is the 50th for the Andretti organization.

I tried following qualifying on the updated Indycar app. There are still some bugs to work out. The session time always started at 15:00 minutes and didn’t correct until about four minutes remained. The positions updated slowly, with a driver listed twice as his spot changed.

The new qualifying procedure did not profuce a radical change from the past.

The lineup sopuld make for a very interesting race tomorrow. Tire strategy and how the cautions fall-and there will be cautions- will determine the outcome.

Rinus VeeKay felt his lap was hindered and cost him a chanc to advance. He will start 24th. Veekay was in the top six early in his round 1 group and poised for a final run.

Herta Leads Practice 2; Qualifying Groups Set

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Colton Herta led the final practice before qualifying for the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. Herta’s time of 1:00.0779 was 0.0.0742 seconds ahead of defending pole and race winner Scott McLaughlin. Rinus VeeKay was third and Kyle Kirkwood fourth.

The top 14:

Qualifying Groups

Group 1 Group 2

McLaughlin Herta

Kirkwood VeeKay

Ericsson Palou

Rosenqvist Grosjean

O’Ward Rossi

Harvey Malukas

Lundgaard Dixon

Castroneves Newgarden

Pagenaud Daly

Armstrong Power

Canapino Ilott

Ferrucci Rahal

Robb Pedersen

DeFrancesco

Notes

The light blue nimbers on the Arrow McLaren cars look great when the cars are standing still, but they are hard to see at speed in the bright sunlight.

Mark MIles said attendance for the race weekend is approaching an other record attendance.

Qualifying begins at 2:15 pm Eastern on Peacock

Saturday at St. Pete

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Today’s schedule:

TimeSeriesSession
7:55AM – 8:40AM       MX-5 Cup            Race 1
9:00AM – 9:45AMINDY NXT   Practice 2
10:00AM – 11:00AMNTT INDYCAR SERIES   Practice 2
11:15AM – 12:00PMUSF Pro 2000Race 1
12:15PM – 1:15PM SRO GT AmericaRace 2
1:35PM – 1:55PMINDY NXTQualifying
1:40PM – 2:10PM      USF2000Autograph Session – Outside Mahaffey Theater
2:15PM – 3:30PMNTT INDYCAR SERIESQualifying / Firestone Fast 6
3:45PM – 4:15PM      INDY NXTAutograph Session – Outside Mahaffey Theater
3:45PM – 4:30PM      USF2000Race 1
4:45PM – 5:30PM MX-5 CupRace 2

If yesterday’s practice is anynindication, it is going to be a very copmpetitve season. While Sc ott Dixon led the session at the end, Kyle Kirkwood was the star of the afternoon, leading for mosdt of the first practice. Kirkwood ended up fourth on the speed chart behind Dioxn, Colton Herta, and Alex Palou. Rinus VeeKay was the fastest Chevrolet in sixth place.

Kyle Kirkwood said about his run, “It’s definitely really nice to roll into the weekend with some with some peace, right? I mean, as everyone knows, the cars so close and if you’re behind by a couple of 10ths you’re really fighting to get that all weekend. Now it’s a good feeling, especially since Colton is up there too. And I think some of the other guys that ended up ahead of us Dixon and Palou . I think that they went to new tires at tthe end.”

The Friday crowd at St. Pete seems to get larger every year. Yesterday was one of the largest Fridays I’ve seen here.

I spoke qwith Jack Harvey this morning. he told me turn3 is very slippery and braking in turn 4 is tricky. Qualifying could be interesting this afternoon.

New Qualifying Procedures

For rounds 1 and 2, the first red flag stops the clock. Subsequent red flags do not. The session clock does not begin until the first car crosses the qualifying line between turns 13 and 14. This change should allow for at least one extra qualifying lap.

For the Firestone Fast Six, the cars are guarabteed the full six minutes.

Gallery

Top to bottom: Felix Rosenqvist, Jack Harvey, Scott Dixon, Marcxus Ericsson

Dixon’s Late Lap Fastest in Friday Practice

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In the end, the kids had to let the veterans through. Kyle Kirkwood led most of the last half of practice for the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. In the last five minutes,first Alex palou then Scott Dixon beat his time. Colton Herta slipped into secpnd just before the checkered flag.

Dixon’s time of 1:01.6146 beat Herta by0.0329 swconds. The top five had a separation of 0.084 seconds.

Results:

Three red flags interrupted the session. Several cars had issues in turn 3. The Rahal letterman Lanigan Racing cars of Christian Lundgaard and Graham Rahal suffered brake issues.

I will have more about the day later this evening.

Rossi Making Smooth Transition to New Team

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Alexander Rossi is happy with his move to Arrow McLaren for 2023. The 2016 Indianapolis 500 spent his first seven Indycar seasons with Andretti Autosport before signing with Arrow McLaren in early June last year. This morning Rossi said there is still a learning curve not only for him, but also for all the new personnel McLaren is bringing in. He thinks he will get a better idea of the differences between his old and new team after the race,.

“It’s hard to say immediately because we’ve got a race weekend.” Rossi said. “You know, there’s just a lot of obvious structure that exists in an organization from top to bottom. And I’m sure a lot of it comes from, you know, the overarching brand, getting out and about doing things and running race teams. You know, like, there’s pros and cons that are two ways you go about it, you can run them and be like, Oh, I kind of want to vice versa. So there are some some differences that can ultimately be successful if you have anything else. It’s been nice to see areas that they are different in various matters.”

Rossi explained that hisn transition was a little more challengin vecause McLaren hired 40 new people during the off season to accomodate the third car.

” Because we had so many new people in general, like everyone just kind of going through a process. It is challenging in terms of the actual application, being easy to get to work doing what we need to in our condensed timeframe.”

Rossi’s biggest concern this weekend? Driving into the pit of his former team.”This weekend my pit box is right in front of my old 27, so I’m just like please do not drive into that one. So that’s my only concern. It’s pretty easy now to think that you know, the seven car driver tweeted at me like I had to read it a couple of times because I was like, Am I allowed to say this? I mean, it’s been everyone’s been super welcoming.”

Rossi said it was sad to leave his old team after seven tears.

“But you know, I still I’m still very close with Jeremy and Scott and obviously, I’m still in communication with them. So I don’t feel like a whole life changing. ”

Rossi is ot changing his driving approiach with his new team.

“I’m just going out and execute,” he said.

The difference between the Chevroley and Honda engines surprised him.

“I was surprised that engines with basically the same architecture could be that different. They are very different in the way they make power and deliver it. It took some gettinmg used to,” he said.

Alexander Rossi left a formerly elite team that has struggled recently to join a team that is on the verge of joining the top of the grid. I look for have some struggles early, but by Road America Rossi should return to his championship form.

St. Pete Preview

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Today’s schedule:

FRIDAY, MARCH 3, 2023
TIME SERIES SESSION
7:50AM – 8:20AM Mazda MX-5 Cup Practice 1
8:35AM – 9:20AM SRO GT America Practice 1
9:35AM – 10:10AM USF Pro 2000 Practice
10:25AM – 11:00AM USF2000 Practice
11:15AM – 11:45AM Mazda MX-5 Cup Practice 2
12:00PM – 12:25PM SRO GT America Practice 2
12:30PM – 12:45PM SRO GT America Qualifying 1
12:30PM – 1:30PM NTT INDYCAR SERIES Autograph Session
1:00PM – 1:30PM USF Pro 2000 Qualifying
1:55PM – 2:40PM INDY NXT Practice 1
3:00PM – 4:15PM NTT INDYCAR SERIES Practice 1 Peacock
4:30PM – 5:00PM USF2000 Qualifying
5:15PM – 5:35PM Mazda MX-5 Cup Qualifying
5:55PM – 6:35PM SRO GT America Race 1

Indycar returns after what seemed like an unusually long offseason. We need to discuss its length at some point, but today we will just be happy that the series is. The Firestone Grand prix of St. Petersburg begins with a 3 pm eastern practice session. I find it hard to believe that tSunday will be the 20th runnong of this street race, which I have seen grow tremendously since my first visit in 2013.

Today’s 75 minute peractice might see more track action. Each yeam has an additional sert of alternate tires and an additional set of primaries, which must be returned after the practice today. Indycar hopes the additional rubber will allow teams to run more laps rather than sit and save their alternate tires for the race. The alternate tire may be used in both practice sessions instead of toaday only as in the past.

This weekend will be the saecond race for the quayule tires, markd the debut of Shell biofuels and lubricants in the series. I don’t expect a driop off in performance. The green brandedquayale tires will be in use at all street courses ub 2023.

WHile the openeing race won’t tell how a team will perform over the entire season, we may get some hints. The big questions- has Andretti Autosport improved? Is Arrow McLaren ready to consistently run up front? Will we see a sophomore surge from David Malukas and Kyle Kirkwood? Today may give a ckue, but a bigger hunt will come in tomorrow’s qualifying.

St. Petersburg is a rac that Team Penske has dominated. The team has won 11 of the races since 2004, Will Pow2eer alone has nine poles, and just missed in 2018 and 2022. The track has produced a series of back to back winners- Helio Castroneves in 2006 and 2007; Juan Pablo Montoya in 2015 and 2016; Sebastien Bourdais in 2017 and 2018; and Josef newgarden in 2019 and 2020, If nthis trend holds, Scott McLaughlin will win again Sunday.

I think we will have a different winner from a deifferent team this year. I look for Colton Herta to come out strong and win the race.

Follow along all weekend for coverage of all on track sessions and some interviews I’m looking to secure.

New-Look INDYCAR App powered by NTT DATA Available Now

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I just installed the new app and I like what I’ve seen so far.

From Indycar:

Many Innovative Features Bring Action, Excitement to Fans Everywhere

INDIANAPOLIS (Thursday, March 2, 2023) – INDYCAR and NTT DATA have joined forces to reimagine and redesign the popular INDYCAR App powered by NTT DATA, with the new-look app available now internationally for all Android and iOS devices.

The INDYCAR App powered by NTT DATA gives fans the insider’s edge on the NTT INDYCAR SERIES, North America’s premier open-wheel championship and one of the most competitive racing series globally. With the power of NTT DATA’s best-in-class mobile technology, the INDYCAR App in 2023 provides a better experience for fans by fully capitalizing on the capabilities of modern iOS and Android devices and platforms.

“While downloads and use of the INDYCAR App powered by NTT DATA grew to unprecedented levels in 2022, we wanted to continue to work with our innovative partner NTT DATA to make this an even more essential way for fans to follow the world’s most exciting racing series,” said Mark Miles, president and CEO of Penske Entertainment Corp. “Mobile continues to be one of the most popular ways to engage our new and existing fans, and we want to bring the action, excitement and personalities of the NTT INDYCAR SERIES to our fans wherever they are, whenever they want.”

Among the highlights and features of the new INDYCAR App powered by NTT DATA:

  • Live timing and scoring leaderboard data in near-real time, with an enhanced 2D track map and driver-specific telemetry information
  • Single sign-on feature for fans to seamlessly enjoy the race across multiple Android and/or iOS devices, connect through social channels and access premium features
  • Exclusive livestream videos, along with highlight clips, race recaps and video features
  • Integration with INDYCAR Fantasy Challenge driven by Firestone, the official fantasy racing game of INDYCAR
  • New for 2023: Users can select multiple favorite drivers and teams, allowing fans to stay up to date on what matters most to them
  • A minimum of 11 in-car cameras during the NTT INDYCAR SERIES season and up to 15 in-car cameras for select races
  • Detailed schedule with a list of races, locations, session times and broadcast channels for the entire season
  • Race-specific content, including INDYCAR’s interactive spotter guide, pit assignments and the full weekend schedule
  • Custom push notifications for race start times, news updates, special announcements and more

“We appreciate the opportunity to partner with Penske Entertainment to bring new digital technologies to help expand and enhance the racing experience, especially on race day. That’s what the redesigned NTT INDYCAR Series mobile app accomplishes,” NTT DATA Services CEO Bob Pryor said. “We expect INDYCAR’s passionate fan base will appreciate the new app to debut now, so they can have it on hand for the 2023 season opener, the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.”

The robust new app debuts just before the 2023 season opener, the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg presented by RP Funding on March 3-5 at St. Petersburg, Florida. Fans can download it at Google Play for Android devices and the App Store for iOS devices. The app automatically will update for existing users who have automatic updates turned on their devices. This new app launch comes after the INDYCAR App powered by NTT DATA reached more fans than ever in the 2022 season. Growth increased to 68,000+ users on race weekends, and over 110,000+ users during the Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge, both all-time records. There were more than 188,000 new app downloads in 2022, the most in a single racing season