Which became a very long, but entertaining day for
some of us…
Question. Am I expecting too mucho by thinking
that IndyCar Radio should have “broken-in” to their canned rerun’s and told us
that qualifying was in a hold Friday?
Having listened to a very entertaining Indy NXT
race, complete with a red flag to allow for the fitting of rain tyres. The
broadcast ended at 2:14PM Pacific, which I was happy hearing how “Stoked” Enzo
Fittipaldi was during His winner’s interview, but.
Got pretty tired of the cliché of stop me if
you’ve heard this before. A Fittipaldi wins at Indianapolis…
As it was Enzo’s maiden win in Indy NXT, being
the grandson of two-times Indianapolis 500 winner Emmo’, aka Emerson
Fittipaldi.
2:30PM came ‘n went, ironically or karmically/
The driver I’d been trying to come up with a nickname for, i.e.; The Count, aka
Rinus VeeKay presumably discussing His lone IndyCar win with Nicky Salt’ yeoman
After playing two-plus minutes of the
pre-broadcast countdown blather, followed by more commercials. It was 2:47PM
and we’re in the midst of an old First to The Flag episode featuring Symone’,
aka Pageantry’, nee Simon Pagenaud’s breakthrough victory at Belle Isle. (2013)
As it was fun hearing Mike Yippee-Aye-Eh! King
tell Driver Analyst and first time team owner Davey Hamilton to leave the booth
early to go celebrate in victory lane! As Pagenaud won for Schmidt Hamilton
Motorsports running the HP sponsorship Davey brought to the team.
Then at 2:58PM more commercials were followed
by Yeoman interviewing DJ WillyP’, ergo Will Power on the pitfalls of making it
to Indy Cars…
This was followed by Paul Page and a very old
Indy 500 race, making me wonder if something was wrong with my browser’s
connection? So I closed out the program and reconnected to IndyCar Radio, which
had now morphed into Mark James calling the 101st Indy 500, Urgh!
Obviously Qualie’ must have been Rained out,
but I thought they had rain tyres for road courses and street circuits…
Decided to ask “Mr. Google”, which was
hilarious, since I got three different AI generated answers. First telling me
Yes, qualifying has already occurred, when asking at 3:18PM Pacific.
Then Yes, qualifying is on FS1 at 2:30PM
Pacific. Before finally I got a link to Trackside Online (TSO) saying
Qualifying had been postponed until Saturday morning. With the funniest part
being the TSO article was written by Bruce Martin, who I thought was writing
for IndyCar.
Fast-forwarding to Saturday morning’s 7:45Am
Pacific IndyCar qualifying being shown on two different Fox Sports channels…
During Group-1, Round One’s Qualie’, believe it
was Mark Gravelly’ James who casually said that Alexander rossi was one of six
drivers to have won both on the road course and oval.
Naturally this made me start pondering this
trivia question. As I could only come up with five, albeit guessing the sixth
had to be Schlick’, Righto?
The first to complete the “Double” was Will
Power in 2018. Followed by Simon Pagenaud in 2019
Third to the party was Scott Dixon in 2020.
Before Rossi joined this club in 2022. Followed by Josef Newgarden in 2023, and
our newest member “The Surgeon”, aka Alex Palou in 2025.
Indianapolis Road Course Winners
(5) Will Power: 2015, 2017, 2018, 2020*, 2021*
(3) Simon Pagenaud: 2014, 2016, 2019
(3) Alex Palou: 2023, 2024, 2025
(2) Scott Dixon: 2020*, 2023*
(1) Josef Newgarden: 2020*
(1) Alexander Rossi: 2022*
Notes
From 2020 to 2023, IndyCar held a second IMS
road course race in conjunction with the NASCAR Brickyard 200 weekend; known as
the Gallagher Grand Prix. Also known as the summer race.
Scott Dixon claimed both of His road course
wins during these summer events. Along with Will Power in 2021, and Alexander
Rossi’s latest IndyCar win in August, 2022.
The Harvest Grand Prix was held as a Double
Header during the weekend of October 2-3, 2020 in order to make up for the raft
of COVID-19 race cancellations. Serving as a support event to the inaugural 8 Hours Intercontinental GT
Challenge.
Josef Newgarden won Race-1 on October 2nd, and
Will Power won Race-2 on October 3rd.
Lastly, it was also mentioned during qualifying for pole, that there were four former Indy road course pole sitters in the Fast Six shootout, i.e.; Alex Palou, Pato O’Ward, Felix Rosenqvist and Christian Lundgaard.
