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The middle round of Verizon IndyCar Series’ 500-mile Triple Crown, which also included May’s Indianapolis 500 and will be completed on the last weekend of August at Auto Club Speedway in California, will be remembered in the annals of IndyCar history for two reasons.
Sunday’s Pocono IndyCar 500 was the fastest 500-mile open wheel race in history, with a frenetic average speed of 325.73kmh (202.402mph), besting the previous best, a 500-mile event at Auto Club Speedway for the CART World Series, in which current IndyCar team owner Jimmy Vasser won at an average speed of 197.995 mph.
Yet, the real story in Pocono was the winner: thirteen years, nine months and 20 days after his last Indy car victory, coming at Gateway International Raceway near St Louis, Juan Pablo Montoya drove his Team Penske Chevrolet/Dallara into Victory Lane, becoming just the third IndyCar driver since 1909 to have gone more than ten years between wins.
During those intervening years, of course, Montoya found success in Formula One with Williams-BMW and spent years with his old IndyCar/CART boss Chip Ganassi Racing running in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, though JPM was never quite able to match his open wheel success in the much heavier stock cars, where even races on the same tracks as IndyCar events are a completely different animal.
Released from his Ganassi NASCAR contract, Montoya surprised more than a few people by signing with Roger Penske, completing a full circle movement that brought him back to the series where he really made his name.
The 1999 CART FedEx Series champion also wiped the floor with the Indy Racing League regulars at the 2000 Indianapolis 500, leading 167 of the 200 laps run, giving Chip Ganassi his first win at the Speedway. It was the icing on the cake for Montoya, who was driving a Williams-BMW a year later when he scored his maiden Formula One win at the Italian Grand Prix in September.
Since the Brickyard, there’s scarcely been a race where Montoya hasn’t been a factor, and with every race, a little more rust was knocked off. The promise of finishes of third, second and seventh in the previous three races before Pocono was rammed home with a dominant display on the 2.5-mile triangle, Montoya’s first major victory since winning at the Watkins Glen road course in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series back in 2010.
Starting from the pole, JPM led 45 laps and took over the lead for good with three to go, leading home his Team Penske compatriot, Helio Castroneves, and becoming the first pole sitter to win an IndyCar race in 2014.
The third driver in the Team Penske arsenal, Australian Will Power, might’ve been the one standing in Victory Lane after the speedy 500 miles, during which there was just one caution flag thrown, but a call of blocking on Castroneves was levied against the IndyCar points leader, dropping him to a disappointing tenth.
That was the only disappoint for Team Penske on a day that underscored the faith Roger Penske, as shrewd a team owner as there is in motorsports, put in the thirty-eight-year-old Colombian. Let’s face it, as much as Penske (AKA The Captain) loves a good, promotable story, he loves winning more, and there’s no doubt in my mind that if he didn’t see Montoya winning races in his IndyCar comeback as a serious possibility, there’s no way JPM ever got the seat.
See, that’s the Captain for you. Roger Penske definitely doesn’t do things by half, and he’s always about winning. He believed in Montoya, and the faith has been repaid.
You get the feeling that, with the combination of Penske equipment and Montoya’s rediscovered speed, this won’t be the last time we see that #2 car driving into Victory Lane. The sky’s the limit for Montoya now. With a season under his belt to learn a heap of new tracks, there’s no reason to think that he won’t be a championship contender in 2015.
This year’s championship, however, is incredibly tight. Courtesy of his runner-up finish and Power’s tenth place run, Castroneves and Power are now tied on 446 points, with Frenchman Simon Pagenaud in third, forty-four points behind, and most certainly in striking distance of the Penske duo, especially with the speed Pagenaud’s shown on road and street courses.
For Power, the wheels have come off the wagon, with disappointing results at both Houston races after solid runs in Texas and at Detroit. He needs to rediscover that mojo, the one that gave him a huge jump-start on the field, and stave off Castroneves, the three-time Indianapolis 500 winner who is looking for his first IndyCar Series championship. Helio might just be the favourite now.
A chance for redemption for Power and for everyone else in the Verizon IndyCar Series comes in six days’ time, a night race at the tiny and fast Iowa Speedway, as the tough summer stretch continues.
The weather’s as hot as the racing, and there’s an intriguing run to the late-August season finale ahead.
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