On the surface, The 2021 Indycar dual in Detroit looks like a split for Chevy and Honda. But look closer, and it was nearly a disaster for Honda, which lost leads in both the Manufacturer’s and Driver’s title races. It would have been a total disaster had not Will Power’s car failed to start after a red flag in the first race, allowing Marcus Ericsson (Ganassi-Honda) to claim his first Indycar victory, and his first race win of any kind in 10 years.
The only party that came off worse in Detroit was Team Penske, which led late in both races, only to come up short. It is unbelievable to many of us that almost halfway through the season, Team Penske has yet to win a race.
After Power lost the lead due to electronic failure in the first race, Josef Newgarden (Penske-Chevy) lost the lead in the Sunday race, and ended up finishing second to Pato O’Ward (Arrow-McLaren-Chevy).
To recap, Ericsson won Saturday ahead of Rinus VeeKay (Carpenter-Chevy) and O’Ward. O’Ward won Sunday, ahead of Newgarden and Alex Palou (Ganassi-Honda).
Let’s pose a few questions and answers before setting off to this weekend’s race at America’s National Park of Speed, Road America.
How is Chevy ahead in the manufacturer’s race?
Since Honda has won five of the eight Indycar races, it may be hard to figure how Chevy is now leading Honda by 9 points in the engine manufacturer’s race. There are two reasons:
- Excluding the Indy 500 (see point 2), there has only been one race with two Honda drivers on the podium: Palou (1st) and Dixon (3rd) at Barber. Outside of Indy, there has been a Chevy second in every race. That adds up after a while.
- In the manufacturer’s race, only the results of full-season entrants count. That means for purposes of the Honda score, Helio Castroneves winning the Indy 500 does not count. If a full-time Honda entrant would have won that race alone, we would be in a much different situation, with Honda about 15 points ahead.
The other major factor in the manufacturer race has been Pato O’Ward. He has been Chevy’s most consistent driver and has scored nearly half of Chevy’s points by himself. This is a stark turnaround from the last 8 years, when the manufacturer’s race has been Honda vs. Team Penske.
Normally, in a down year for Team Penske, Honda would be way ahead. But in this case Pato O’Ward has picked up the slack. On the Honda side, the problem is Andretti Autosport. Ganassi cars have scored well more than half of Honda’s points. For Andretti, only Colton Herta has scored Honda points, at St. Pete (1st) and Detroit Race 2 (4th). Rahal-Letterman and Dale Coyne have also been mostly MIA .
Can Honda win? Certainly. But a team other than Ganassi must contribute. This could all come down to whether Indycar replaces the cancelled Toronto race and where that race is run. If the Toronto race is replaced by a second race at Mid-Ohio (which has been a Ganassi/Andretti playground) or Portland or Long Beach, things look a lot better. If we get a second race on the Gateway oval, things look better for Chevy.
How did Pato O’Ward take the lead in the Driver’s Championship?
In a word: consistency. He is the only driver to win two races this season and his worst result is 19th at St. Pete. For the record, Palou would be leading by 20 if he had won Indy.
At this point the driver’s race is between three drivers: O’Ward in first with 299; Palou in second at 298, and Scott Dixon in third at 263. The next driver on the list is Josef Newgarden in fourth, and he is 50 points behind Palou and O’Ward. Rinus VeeKay is fifth, but will drop a lot this week because he is missing the Road America race because of a bicycle crash.
Penske’s Simon Pagenaud is sixth, but he is 66 points out of the lead. Not an impossible task, but a big ask in a short season.
Who wins? As in the manufacturer’s race, it could come down to where and if the Toronto race is replaced. Mid-Ohio and Portland favor the Ganassi cars, and two races at Gateway favor O’Ward. The fact that Marcus Ericsson has been doing well also should help his two teammates at the top of the chart.
I would have to say that as long as the two Ganassi teammates are in the top three, one of them should win.
What happened to Felix Rosenqvist?
If you have not seen the Rosenqvist crash from Detroit Race 1, go find it on YouTube. The team has not said what caused the crash except to say this:
The sequence of events has been clearly established and the root cause identified as a singular, non-recurrent mechanical fault.
The team also absolves Chevy and Rosenqvist. Meaning that fingers should be pointed within the team?
My thoughts? I suppose the simple answer is the potentiometer on the throttle pedal in the drive-by-wire system broke. But I would think there would be a safety mechanism to close the throttle in that instance, right? As in, the potentiometer comes loose, then you go to something like “limp” mode. I know that is the way most, if not all, drive-by-wire passenger cars and motorcycles work.
IF THERE IS NO SAFETY , we should stop racing NOW before someone runs into a wall at REALLY dangerous speeds, like the wall at the bottom of Turn 5 at Road America.
We need to hear more about this.
Next race:
Rev Group Grand Prix at Road America, Elkhart Lake, Wi. Broadcast of the Race starts at noon eastern time on NBCSN .
Fun Facts: Why the early start? So that fans from Chicago and Indiana can get home before dinner. What does the Rev Group do? They make EMS vehicles and RVs.
I’ll be there.
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