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Two weeks after a massively successful return to the epic natural terrain road course at Road America in Wisconsin, the IndyCar Series moved to Iowa Speedway. It is a 0.851-mile short track in the middle of corn country.
Here are the talking points from the third oval event of the 2016 season:
Newgarden dominates
When you’re good, you’re real good, and Josef Newgarden was absolutely superb on Sunday afternoon. He completely and absolutely obliterating the rest of the field en route to his first ever IndyCar Series oval victory.
The Tennessean, a rising star who will be the face of the series for hopefully many years to come, led 282 of the 300 laps run around the fast, tight oval out in the American heartland.
Whichever way you look at it, Newgarden’s drive was a butt-whooping of the highest order. When you consider that the young American is driving with a broken hand and clavicle, with thirteen screws inserted into it, following a vicious crash at the postponed Texas Motor Speedway race, his effort to head off the entire field on a track where the G-force loading is extreme is even more amazing.
I don’t think any of us not on out there racing can properly understand the nature of short-track racing. An IndyCar laps Iowa at an average speed of 160mph, and it’s bumpy as hell. At that speed, every bump the car hits is going to hurt. Graham Rahal tweeted that he’d never been so sore after a race and, to a man, IndyCar drivers believe that Iowa is the toughest track, physically speaking, that they run, including the insane speeds at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The physical nature of the track, combined with the injuries Newgarden brought in make his dominating triumph perhaps the most impressive victory in recent IndyCar Series memory. JoNew totally deserved this one, and after two years dominating at Iowa but not quite getting the win – a late pit stop snafu in 2015 handed victory to Ryan Hunter-Reay, and it was a crushing loss for the Tennessean – it was great to see him in victory lane. I daresay we’ll see plenty more of the affable American in IndyCar victory lane in years to come.
The points chase
After two straight wins – the second leg of the double header in Detroit and Road America in dominating fashion two weekends ago – Australia’s Will Power has once more furthered his championship cause.
A late-race burst saw the Queenslander overtake current championship leader Simon Pagenaud and New Zealand’s Scott Dixon to take a strong second place and, importantly, to shave six points from Pagenaud.
Currently, Power sits in third, seventy-five points back of his Penske teammate Pagenaud but only two markers back of Newgarden. The key here is that Newgarden crashed out of the eventually-postponed Texas race – the moment he sustained the clavicle and hand injuries – and will not line up for the resumption, so Power figures to jump ahead of the American.
Another victory or two, and a handful of finishes ahead of Pagenaud, and the series championship is going to come right down to the wire. There’s plenty of racing left in the 2016 season – and don’t forget the double points on offer at the Sonoma Raceway finale.
Mikhail Aleshin
A great fifth place finish for the Schmidt Petersen Motorsports driver. The Russian has shown flashes of speed throughout his short IndyCar Series tenure, and drove a smart race on Sunday, leading home the Honda contingent, seven seconds behind Newgarden, and the last man on the lead lap.
The next step in Aleshin’s development is to develop season-long consistency, but it was an impressive drive nonetheless.
Attendance
It was a disappointing turnout at Iowa, which has become a bastion of IndyCar Series racing in the last few years. There were noticeable gaps of empty seats on the grandstands, and the great shame of that is that behind Josef Newgarden, the racing was fast and furious, with plenty of side-by-side action.
Generally, it’s IndyCar who chooses start times and days, with input from television partners, but by all accounts, it was the track who wanted a late Sunday afternoon start. By the time the field took the green flag, it was nearly five o’clock. Surely, such a late start and the prospect of a long drive home before work on Monday kept plenty of folks away.
Earlier in the weekend, the track announced that it had extended its contract with the IndyCar Series, meaning there’ll be races in the cornfields in 2017 and 2018. The powers-that-be would be smart to have the green flag drop at around 1:00pm local time.
You need only look at Road America, who did exactly that, and look at what sort of a turn-out they had – attracting fans from as far away as suburban Chicago. The early start allows people to get home at a reasonable time on Sunday evening. Proper timing should see an uptick in attendance.
Off to Toronto
No rest for the wicked, or for IndyCar Series teams, with the circus heading north of the border for the popular race weekend on the streets of Toronto next weekend. It’s always a spectacular race up in Ontario, with a wonderful crowd, many parochially support Canadian favourite James Hinchcliffe. I can’t wait!
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