Blow up another motor and officials screw you over further.

Palou faces another grid penalty

Motorsport Images
1.3k shares
share
tweet
emailBy Marshall Pruett | August 19, 2021 1:07 PM ET

Another degree of difficulty will be added to Alex Palou’s quest to win the NTT IndyCar Series championship after receiving his second unapproved engine change penalty of the month.

Following an unapproved change prior to the August 6-8 Music City Grand Prix at Nashville, which came with an automatic loss of six positions on the starting grid, the Spaniard will start Saturday’s single-day event at World Wide Technology Raceway with another fresh motor and a nine-position grid penalty to manage.

It comes as a result of internal damage incurred late in last weekend’s race on the Indianapolis road course as his 2.2-liter twin-turbo V6 engine expired while the Spaniard was holding fourth place. RACER understands Chip Ganassi Racing engine partner Honda evaluated whether the engine could be repaired in time for WWTR, and decided the best course of action was to install another motor in the championship-leading No. 10 entry.

Palou holds a slim 21-point lead in the standings over Arrow McLaren SP’s Pato O’Ward after the Indy road course engine malady left the No. 10 Honda in 27th place, its worst finish of the season.

If there’s a mitigating factor to consider for the 24-year-old, it’s the duration of the Bommarito Automotive Group 500, which is scheduled for 260 laps which, provided the No. 10 Honda is competitive, should afford Palou more than enough time to overcome the grid penalty.

Broadcast of the 305-mile contest begins at 8 p.m. ET on NBCSN, with the green flag expected to fly around 8:45 p.m.

 

In this case, change motor and other stuff and they can only hurt you so much....since they can only move you so far back!
And getting a fresh engine means you can kick their butts for later in the year.
Perez and Latifi to start Dutch GP from pit lane

Andy Hone/Motorsport Images
62 shares
share
tweet
emailBy Chris Medland | September 5, 2021 8:20 AM ET

Sergio Perez and Nicholas Latifi will both start the Dutch Grand Prix from the pit lane as a result of penalties after qualifying.

In a dramatic Q1 session on Saturday, Perez was a surprise casualty as a result of some poor timing and high track evolution that meant his first lap time wasn’t good enough to advance. Despite trying to fit in one more run, Perez didn’t make the checkered flag in time and was eliminated in 16th place.

Starting so far back on the grid at a track where overtaking is expected to be extremely difficult, Red Bull and Honda have opted to fit a new power unit as Perez was set to need one at some stage later in the season due to damage sustained in Hungary. As the Energy Store is of a different specification to the one used in qualifying, that necessitates a pit lane start.

Latifi advanced to Q2 but then crashed on his final lap at Turn 8, severely damaging his car. Williams needed to replace the gearbox, which carried a five-place grid penalty and would have demoted Latifi to 19th on the grid, so it has also changed the specification of nose box and front wing assembly, meaning he also will start from the pit lane.

As a result, the two Haas drivers make up the back row on what will now be row nine, with Sebastian Vettel and Robert Kubica promoted to 15th and 16th respectively.

 

Engine change brings grid penalty for Sato

Image by Marshall Pruett
82 shares
share
tweet
emailBy Marshall Pruett | September 11, 2021 2:37 PM ET

Takuma Sato’s return to Portland International Raceway where he won on the NTT IndyCar Series return in 2018 was less than kind. Trailing past the pits early in Friday’s opening practice session, the Japanese driver’s No. 30 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Honda sounded like it was running on less than six cylinders, and with the unexpected malfunction slowing his progress, he coasted into the pits and came to a stop with a silent engine.

With just three laps turned and the best of the three more than 23 seconds shy of session leader Alex Palou, the RLL team wasted no time in rolling the car under the No. 30’s test to start the process of installing a fresh 2.2-liter twin-turbo V6 motor.

More IndyCar!

RACER: Portland qualifying report

Ilott 'happy' after IndyCar qualifying debut, but focused on improving

Palou takes Portland pole as key title rivals miss Fast Six..
or did they miss out on some fast sex?
and who was voted Miss Fast Sex?

Owing to the short two-hour gap between practice and qualifying, Sato’s crew leapt into action and should have the No. 30 ready to go in time to take part in setting the grid for Sunday’s 110-lap race.

However, the change means Sato will be required to serve a six-spot grid penalty this weekend, as will Rinus VeeKay of Ed Carpenter Racing.

Grid Penalty, Portland, Takuma Sato, IndyCar

 

Hunter-Reay joins the ranks of the engine changers at Portland

Image by Marshall Pruett.......................................... A crew member tucks his shirt back in after Formula One officials demanded that he personally pay a penalty for the team.....
229 shares
share
tweet
emailBy Marshall Pruett | September 11, 2021 3:23 PM ET

A troubled morning practice session with suspected electronics issues kept Andretti Autosport’s Ryan Hunter-Reay off track for most of the session, and the problems continued with the No. 28 Honda as an engine change is taking place moments before the start of qualifying.

“We tried everything we could to find the problem and fix it before qualifying, but it wasn’t the electronics so we ended up needing to change the motor; I will be starting last, he told RACER. “The hits keep coming.”

The 2012 NTT IndyCar Series champion will start 27th for Sunday’s Portland Grand Prix.

 

Chris Owens/IMS
By Marshall Pruett - Jul 14, 2025, 2:17 PM EDT

Crash and learn: How Palou cracked the oval code

Crash and learn. Crash and learn. That’s the process Barry Wanser has seen Alex Palou use to become one of the IndyCar Series’ best oval drivers. And the latest member in an exclusive club of complete IndyCar racers, as Palou has developed into a true multi-discipline threat.

Like his teammate Scott Dixon. Like Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward. Like Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden, Will Power, and Scott McLaughlin. With victories on a street course, road course, superspeedway, and short oval since March, Palou’s reached the lofty status of being a favorite to triumph at any racetrack on the calendar, and the journey has involved some hard knocks.

After winning three championships together in four years at Chip Ganassi Racing, Wanser’s witnessed the Spaniard use his road racing skills to devastating effect, but it’s in the very American art of turning left on ovals big and small where Palou’s team manager and race strategist has come to appreciate his driver’s superpower.

Separate from the 28-year-old’s obvious talent and incandescent motivation to win, it’s the mistakes that stand out to Wanser. It's not the highlights, but rather, the lowlights where Palou showed he was capable of winning races like the Indianapolis 500 in May and Sunday’s Farm to Fresh 275 at Iowa Speedway.

“He was strong immediately in the first year with us (in 2021) at Indy,” Wanser told RACER. “What's hard at Indy for a new guy without any real oval experience is when they crash, like he did the first year. We did a qualifying sim in practice on qualifying weekend and he crashed on Saturday. Well, fortunately, his qualifying time from the first qualifying run was fast enough to get him in the top 12 so we could go onto Sunday and the run for pole.

“He then came back from that crash and went out there on Sunday and we qualified sixth.

“He came back from that crash and went out on Sunday and we qualified sixth! Sixth!


I think it was easy for everyone to think he's just going to qualify 12th, put it in the field, start 12th, be conservative with it.
But no, he went out there and went for it. He didn't become scared of the car.
He didn't say, ‘I have no idea what happened’ and pull back.

“Then in the race, we raced up front, and then he batted and battled with (eventual winner) Helio (Castroneves) at the end and finished second. But that's how he learned from Helio. The difference with him is he knew what caused the crash. He felt it, knew what transpired when the car stepped out, made the mental adjustments right away, and he became much smarter at Indy because of the crash.

“So that put him in a position to go for it in qualifying and be up there in the race with Helio where he saw what happened chasing him, seeing how Helio was catching and dealing with the traffic, and Alex couldn't do anything with him. He learned that from Helio and applied that this year to win Indy. That is something in ‘21 that he learned that he carried forward. But I knew right away he's going to be good at Indy, which is hard to do, and especially hard to do to coming back from a crash.”

In years past, it’s the smaller ovals where Palou was viewed as a slight liability when pitted against the recognized oval masters. He’d run well, often near the front, but there was an extra tier where the likes of Newgarden played that seemed out of reach.

Wanser looks at last season’s visit to Iowa Speedway, where his driver made another mistake — he lost control of the No. 10 Honda in a slow and spin exiting Turn 4 late in the race that sent the car into the wall while they were running 11th – as a key moment in Palou’s oval education.

It was a setback in their title run as he fell to 23rd in Race 1, but once more, Wanser witnessed his driver turn a costly error into a moment where a weakness was removed, as Palou returned less than 24 hours later to run second in Race 2.

Jump to 2025 and Palou was the first Honda-powered driver home with fifth in Race 1 and turned Race 2’s pole position into a win — while leading 194 of 275 laps — and go on to say “I’m officially an IndyCar driver” in the post-race press conference.

“As far as short ovals, the hard part is, as a team, our cars have not been as competitive as other teams, especially the Penske cars, especially at Iowa,” Wanser said. “Iowa last year was definitely challenging. He crashed in Race 1 and learned again. Any veteran who doesn't say they learn from crashing doesn't really become a seasoned veteran. I don't think you learn unless you're pushing it and in order to go fast on a short oval, you have to push it.

 

Palou found the wall late in the Saturday race at Iowa last year, but rebounded to finish second the following day. Joe Skibinski/IMS

“We were getting near the end of a stint and he lost it coming out of 4. And you could see him processing what happened and what to do if he felt the car doing the same thing again. So he took that and went to second the following day which was the best we could offer him. And we’ve made our cars better this year.”

Errors don’t appear very often for Palou in road racing, but he made two at the recent Mid-Ohio race where the No. 10 Honda started on pole, dominated most of the event, and a pair of unforced mistakes allowed Dixon to fire by and take the win after Palou slid off track while holding a four-second lead.

Although it wasn’t another instance of crash-and-learn, losing control of the car while under no pressure from behind revealed a rare crack in Palou’s road racing game. For some drivers, it could become a weakness to exploit, but Wanser believes it was another learning opportunity — an instance that should make his driver harder to beat in the future.

“When he got out of the car at Mid-Ohio, I wanted to be the first person to him,” he revealed. “I said, ‘Look, I know you're going to beat yourself up, but no one on the team is going to beat you up. You make this look pretty easy, but what you just showed today was how hard it really is, how just the slightest change in line cost you a win. This is not easy, and you proved it to everybody. And you’re going to be stronger.’ He is already stronger because of it.”

As much as learning from adversity has allowed Palou and the 10 car team to reach new levels in their first three titles and the current quest for a fourth, having a short memory — intentional forgetfulness — is another ingredient in their championship strategy.

“With the success we’re having, with the confidence we have in him, the confidence he has in us, we're able to just move on and not even bring that up again,” he said of Mid-Ohio. “That's behind us. We finished second. That was great for the points. We're now racing the Iowa doubleheader. Now we’re going to Toronto. Then we’ll go to Laguna. We're going to take it race by race, and that's what he's able to do, and he's able to do with a smile on his face, and he's loving racing in IndyCar.”

Wanser wasn’t happy with the race strategy they chose for Saturday’s Iowa race, which involved a lot of fuel saving and put Palou in a position where he was reacting to the immense speed that O’Ward, Newgarden, and others used to deliver a 1-2-3-4 for Chevrolet.

Starting from pole on Sunday, the decision was made to go on the assault from the outset, just as Saturday’s top finishers had done, and while Newgarden’s No. 2 Chevy was the fastest car on the track, fans saw a different side of Palou as he fought every overtaking attempt, went side-by-side through the corners, and fended off most attacks throughout the afternoon.

Newgarden certainly had the pace to win Race 2 if a couple of cautions fell in his favor, but Wanser doesn’t view Palou’s first short-oval win as an undeserved gift.

“You look at where we started for Race 1 (from fourth) and we were just kind of falling in line, running and running, not a lot of pace, trying to do it in two stops, which wasn't really going to happen, and it seemed like we then had some pace with the car but we were kind of a sitting duck,” he said. “It was hard for Alex and it was easy for somebody to jump us, and that happened a couple times. We certainly had great performances in the pits. Made up some of those positions back and ended up with a good finish of fifth.

“But we went into Race 2 thinking, all right, we're starting on the pole. If we're able to maintain the lead, we're going to dictate the pace, and by dictating the pace, once we caught the back of the pack, we can use that momentum to more easily get through traffic, and that's what we did. Certainly, it wasn’t exactly the performance we needed; we still need to work on our cars to make them faster. So we told Alex, ‘We want you to push and do everything you can to stay in the lead. Whatever it takes, whatever fuel you need, just keep it up. Keep the momentum up and keep pushing. And what that did is it forced everybody else to do the same thing we were doing, including Newgarden.

“Yes, Newgarden had a stronger car, and he passed us, but he was forced to burn fuel, and then he pitted before us, and we caught the yellow. If he had pitted a lap before that, he'd have been two laps down to us. Which means he would have only gotten one back, because with 36 seconds lost in and out of the pits and 18-second lap times, you're pretty much going down two laps, unless you actually are the leader. So we were able to race to the blend line, and we were to keep him a lap down, which means once the pits open, there were six of us that were on the lead lap.

“We came in, did pit stops, we came out, still the leader. Those lapped cars stayed out, including Newgarden. They got waved around, and they pitted, but they restarted like in 10th or 11th. But what Alex did came from going fast, but being able to go longer on fuel than some of the guys who were in contention. We were probably going to go another eight to nine laps further than Newgarden, and we were pushing hard.”

Seven wins from 12 races. A nearly impenetrable championship lead of 129 points with five races left to run.
Their first Indy 500 victory to complement Palou’s Indy pole from 2023, and a pole and win at Iowa. It’s been a statement-making season for Chip Ganassi Racing and the 10 car program, and it’s here where Wanser hopes IndyCar fans will appreciate the people — his teammates — who make it possible for Palou to author one of the greatest title runs in modern history.

“You can't do what he's doing without a great car,” he said. “And really, the engineering staff, especially his race engineer Julian Robertson, they’ve been giving him some rocket ships and fine tuning what we unload at the track. It's just been absolutely amazing. Everybody's been doing a great job. The 10 car group in the pits were fastest at the last two races in the pits. That is so hard to do, so hard to accomplish. And that's made a big difference as well.

“So when the crew has the confidence in the driver, when the driver has the confidence in the timing stand, and he knows the pit stops are going to be smooth, it all clicks.

You know what? We win and lose together as a team, and we're going to support each other, and we're going to have fun doing it, and we really do have a lot of fun
and when we are having fun, we are winning races!.”

--------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------