DZIADOSZSato is helped out of
upturned car as Rossi
and Hunter-Reay fume50 AUTOSPORT.COM 22 AUGUST 2019INDYCAR SERIES
POCONO (USA)
18 AUGUST
ROUND 13/16Through mechanical issues, team fumbles,
driving errors and sheer bad luck, Will
Power had gone winless this year until last
Sunday’s truncated 500-mile race at Pocono
Raceway. But with his third win in the last
four IndyCar events at the 2.5-mile tri-oval,
Team Penske’s 2014 series champion
extended his streak of winning at least
one race per year to 13 seasons.
Power was annoyed that qualifying was
cancelled due to bad weather, the grid being
arranged in championship order. He was
confident that his fondness for a slightly
loose but less ‘draggy’ car at 215mph would
have allowed him to nab his second straight
pole at the venue. Instead, he would start
fifth. But the two-hour afternoon practicePower finally
breaks his 2019 duck
Power rocketed out of the pits well ahead
of Pagenaud, who had himself jumped
Ferrucci in the pitstop exchange and then
held off the feisty youngster. Turning the
fastest lap of the race, Power was swiftly
all up in Dixon’s business and zapped
past him on lap 115 before pulling out a
six-second gap in just 10 laps. When the
lightning came and the race was halted,
he had it all in hand.
Such dominant pace from Power in the
closing stages doesn’t mean his race was
easy. From fifth on the grid, he had moved
straight into third at the end of the long
pitstraight to complete a Penske 1-2-3 on
the opening lap, behind Pagenaud and Josef
Newgarden but ahead of Dixon. Front-row
starter and 2018 Pocono winner Alexander
Rossi, meanwhile, had been caught napping
slightly, so that down to Turn 2 he was
passed by Dixon and then came under
threat from Andretti Autosport team-mate
Ryan Hunter-Reay on his inside and
Takuma Sato (Rahal Letterman Lanigan
Racing) on the outside. As they approached
Turn 2, Sato appeared to jink slightly left,
perhaps a result of running over one of the
track’s seams, squeezed Rossi down into
Hunter-Reay, and the resultant collision
collected James Hinchcliffe’s Arrow
Schmidt Peterson Motorsports machine and
the second Ganassi car of Felix Rosenqvist.
The Swedish rookie was flipped up and onto
the wall and ground along the catch fencing,
but thankfully without the career-halting
consequences of Robert Wickens’s shunt at
Pocono a year earlier. Rosenqvist was takenWORLD OF SPORT
that replaced morning practice and qualifying
did give him a good feel for his Chevrolet-
powered car’s handling on full and light
fuel loads, and on new and used tyres.
Just how much he and race engineer
Dave Faustino had learned in that session
came to light after the fourth pitstop in
a race shortened from 200 to 128 laps due
to the arrival of lightning and rain. Having
been running fourth behind Chip Ganassi
Racing’s Scott Dixon, Dale Coyne Racing’s
highly impressive and brave rookie Santino
Ferrucci, and Penske team-mate and early
leader Simon Pagenaud, Power had saved
a lot of fuel and was able to run six laps
longer than Dixon. More importantly,
those six laps on worn tyres but a clear
track were as fast as his Kiwi rival was able
to produce on fresh rubber, the Honda-
powered Dixon having stymied himself
with a handling imbalance that left
him struggling on turn-in.