Pruett's cooldown lap: Detroit

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emailBy Marshall Pruett | June 16, 2021 1:28 PM ET

A pole for Pato O’Ward. A win for Marcus Ericsson. A pole for Josef Newgarden. A win for Pato O’Ward. A win for Honda. A win for Chevy. A crash for Romain Grosjean. A podium for Rinus VeeKay. A red flag where every engine starts. A red flag and every engine but one starts. A red flag that felt like it should have been a yellow. A fire for Romain Grosjean. A crash for Felix Rosenqvist. A suit from JPM and boots from Palou. A start for Oliver Askew. A crash for Santino Ferrucci. A replacement chassis for Santino Ferrucci. A furious interview from Toowoomba’s finest. A litany of complaints about broadcast delays. And Will Power wants to fight Kyle Busch.

You know an event took off and went absolutely crazy when Friday’s big news – of the Aussie having an interest in post-race boxing matches – gets completely lost in all that went down in the D.

With the Road America race just days away, we’ll skip some items and go deep into others as there’s not a lot of time to dwell on the past.

ALL YOU COULD ASKEW FOR

Oliver Askew’s first lap in a car at Belle Isle was his first lap out of the pits for qualifying on Sunday morning. As expected, knocking off months of IndyCar rust after doing a one-day test for Andretti Autosport in February wasn’t going to achieved in the 10-minute qualifying session. While learning the circuit and getting re-acclimated to the No. 7 Chevy, Askew gave the team more than anticipated by claiming 23rd out of the 25 drivers onsite.

The 24-year-old climbed as high as 17th in the race before engine problems intervened and called an end to his day. The lasting memory from Askew’s 46-lap race should be what he achieved with pace: His fastest race lap of 1m17.2889s was better than Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin, Carlin Racing’s Max Chilton, A.J. Foyt Racing’s Sebastien Bourdais, Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s Santino Ferrucci, and Andretti Autosport’s Alexander Rossi, along with a handful of others.

Even teammate and Race 2 winner Pato O’Ward, who scythed through the field and ran away once he took the lead, wasn’t that far ahead of Askew with a best lap of 1m17.0989s – just 0.1900s better.

Considering all of the drivers who spun, hit others, and hindered their final Sunday results, I hope some team owners take a moment to appreciate how the one guy Askew, thrown into the deep end at Detroit with never driving the circuit before qualifying ,that had every excuse to make mistakes, was clean, fast, and smooth.

And he’ll get another chance to prove it this weekend at Road America.
Rosenqvist’s crash meant an Oliver twist for AMSP, and Askew will get another shot with ECR this weekend. Motorsport Images

WOMEN ENGINEERS ROCK

There were a couple of cool “firsts” on Saturday at Belle Isle. Not only did Marcus Ericsson take his first IndyCar win – and reach victory lane for the first time since 2013 — but his race engineer Brad Goldberg also made his first visit to the top step of the open-wheel podium since 2013. That was an interesting time match.

Two other important firsts came with the Swede’s win with the No. 8 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda with Angela Ashmore, Goldberg’s assistant race engineer, who scored her first IndyCar win. And that wasn’t all for women engineers. Nicole Rotondo, Ericsson’s Honda Performance Development engine engineer, also joined in with the group pool party as she got her first victory as an engine tech.

It goes one step further for Goldberg: He’s won races with Angela Ashmore and her husband Craig Ashmore, who was his Roush engine engineer on the former Ford Chip Ganassi Racing IMSA GT Le Mans program, where Goldberg oversaw numerous wins.

And while it was by no means a first win for AMSP’s Kate Gundlach, who won the 2018 championship with Scott Dixon, it was great to see O’Ward’s performance engineer celebrating in the same fountain as Rotondo and Ashmore after Round 2.
There are a lot of first-timers in that fountain. Owens/IndyCar

POINTS THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’

Leaving the Indy 500, this was your top 10:
Deleted ...article too big.

Leaving Detroit, here’s how good and bad fortunes shuffled the deck:

1. Pato O’Ward, 299 points
2. Alex Palou, 298, -1
3. Scott Dixon, 263, -36
4. Josef Newgarden, 248, -51
5. Rinus VeeKay, 243, -56
6. Simon Pagenaud, 243, -56
7. Marcus Ericsson, 211, -88
8. Graham Rahal, 209, -90
9. Colton Herta, 202, -97
10. Takuma Sato, 181, -118

Of the major takeaways, Palou’s rough Saturday and a pair of finishes behind O’Ward surrendered the championship lead, as he went from +37 to -1 with the AMSP driver. Dixon, remarkably, maintained the same 36-point deficit to first after a pair of decent top 10s.

On the strength of a 10th and second, Josef Newgarden was the second-biggest mover up the standings from sixth to fourth; Marcus Ericsson used the points from his win to vault the farthest from P10 to P7. And going in the opposite direction, Simon Pagenaud had the big points haul at Indy to hold fourth to start Belle Isle, but a relatively unspectacular event saw him drop to sixth. Similar for Colton Herta, who rallied with a fourth on Sunday, but that 14th on Saturday hurt and moved him from seventh to ninth. An unforgiving weekend for Scott McLaughlin meant surrendering 10th to Takuma Sato on the way to landing in 12th.

The only other decent mover in the full-time field was Sebastien Bourdais, who improved from 18th to 15th after the doubleheader.

HERE IS THE REAL STORY OF THE RACE:

PRE-FAMULATED AMULITE, TWO SPURVING BEARINGS, AND SIX HYDROCOPTIC MARZLEVANES

What caused Felix Rosenqvist’s crash? We don’t know, other than the Swede was cleared of any blame, and to be honest, that part was obvious from the in-car footage.

The car simply took off, and if he’d mistakenly mashed the throttle to the floor instead of hitting the brakes, which is rather hard to do in the Dallara DW12s, there was no sign of lifting before impact. But since AMSP said Rosenqvist had no part in the crash, we can safely assume he did nothing wrong with his hands or feet. The same goes for Chevy, which received the all-clear from AMSP, and like Rosenqvist, there’s no reason to question the Bowtie here.

The other obvious item that stood out was the lack of braking to slow the car, lock the tires, and drag the engine down from banging away on the rev limiter at 12,000rpm. The all-blue LED lights seen atop his steering wheel were telling him to upshift. Without black streaks from his skidding Firestone tires leading to the crash site, and in the absence of a clear explanation from the team – which was requested, and awaits response – we’re left to draw our own conclusions.

Within moments of the car being hauled away from the crash site, I’d heard that something wonky was found in the pedal assembly. It could be wrong, or it could be right; don’t take it as anything other than a sharing of what was relayed.

On the topic, this is what AMSP had to say: “The sequence of events has been clearly established and the root cause identified as a singular, non-recurrent mechanical fault.” Meaning absolutely nothing...a BS excuse without saying anything.

(Full credit to the team for watching the legendary ‘Turbo Encabulator’ clip before assembling that word salad!)



The lack of braking makes me think there was a braking malfunction of some kind, but that doesn’t answer why the engine rocketed to maximum revs and hurled Rosenqvist into the wall. In the same release, AMSP said Chevy was not to blame for anything related to throttle issues. That is assumed to mean the engine side of the throttle system, not the chassis side, as Chevy has nothing to do with the pedal’s electronics.

The DW12 relies on a drive-by-wire electronic interaction between the throttle pedal and its partner on the engine that opens the throttle butterfly through a motor that’s operated electronically in reaction to the pedal’s movement.

At the pedal, an electronic potentiometer is attached, and as the pedal is moved by a driver’s foot, the shaft in the potentiometer moves. Purely for the sake of example, if one inch of throttle pedal movement equates to the engine cracking open to 10 percent throttle, it’s actually the electronic potentiometer’s movement that gives the instruction to the little motor on the engine that opens the throttle butterfly.

And as more than one IndyCar electronics specialist has suggested since the crash, if things were to come loose in the pedal assembly, and in particular, the throttle potentiometer came loose from the pedal while in the wide-open position, a driver would have no control over the engine and an unfortunate maximum-throttle situation like Rosenqvist’s could occur.

It’s worth restating that in the absence of a concise explanation from the team, what you’ve just read are hypotheticals and not facts.

 

Pruett's cooldown lap: Detroit
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emailBy Marshall Pruett | June 16, 2021 1:28 PM ET

COOL HAND EVERYBODY

Just as IndyCar has mandated the use of the aeroscreen at every event, it’s time to take the same approach to cool suits. While every driver does not need to wear one; some drivers run cool, while others run hot, it’s no longer something to be left as an option for teams to try and develop on their own.
Andretti Autosport was first to successfully create and deploy their own cooling system that Colton Herta wore on the way to victory at St. Petersburg, and we’ve seen Chip Ganassi Racing follow suit recently.

We can expect Team Penske to have the resources to come up with something fantastic, but as Sebastien Bourdais and Conor Daly have made clear, the risk of overheating in the cockpit is just as big of a threat to some driver’s safety as a result of having to work behind the aeroscreen. Not every team is built the same in terms of engineering and R&D resources, and budgets are widely varied. This is where a standardized driver cooling system makes sense.

Raising the minimum weight a negligible amount so that no team would look to skip the cooling system to gain a performance advantage is a no-brainer.

IndyCar wanted to protect its drivers from cockpit strikes to the highest degree possible, so it went and brought Red Bull Advanced Technologies, Pankl, PPG, and Dallara together to form a solution. With all the time between the end of Road America and the six weeks or so until the Nashville street race, I have to believe the series can follow the same routine as the aeroscreen and pull together some of the vendors currently working on an independent basis with its teams to fast-track a cooling solution for all.

O-FER TEAMS

At the halfway point of the season, we have an equal split of happiness and dissatisfaction among full-time entrants. The winning teams so far are:

1. Andretti Autosport
2. Arrow McLaren SP
3. Chip Ganassi Racing
4. Ed Carpenter Racing
5. Meyer Shank Racing

Those on the outside looking in are:

1. A.J. Foyt Racing
2. Carlin Racing
3. Dale Coyne Racing
4. Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
5. Team Penske
Penske’s wait for a win continues. Barry Cantrell/Motorsport Images

LEADERS CIRCLE WATCH

It’s never too early to check in on how IndyCar’s Leaders Circle competition is going among full-time teams looking to land in the top 22 and earn a $1 million prize money payout for the following season.

The most interesting wrinkle here is how Santino Ferrucci’s stellar finishes for Rahal Letterman Lanigan – sixth at the double-points Indy 500, coupled with sixth on Saturday and 10th on Sunday – have the No. 45 Honda holding 21st in Entrants’ points (105). Depending on how many additional races the No. 45 completes this year, it’s not unreasonable to think this part-time car could do enough to earn a Leaders Circle for 2022 if Ferrucci or another talented driver can continue banking points.

On a related Indy 500 boost, Meyer Shank Racing’s No. 06 Honda is 22nd at the moment (103) thanks to Helio Castroneves’ big win, but he won’t be back until August, so it would take a strong rally to close the year to get back into the Leaders Circle mix.

In a worrisome 23rd, first below the cutoff line, is the No. 29 Andretti Autosport Honda driven by James Hinchcliffe (103, tied with the No. 06). The No. 29 will move ahead of the MSR car this weekend, so that’s good for them. Next in 24th is Arrow McLaren SP’s No. 7 Chevy (92), which was having a troublesome year before Felix Rosenqvist’s crash, and worsened when Askew’s engine left the entry last in Round 2.

After that, it’s the No. 4 A.J. Foyt entry for Dalton Kellett in 25th (81) and a distant No. 59 Carlin Racing Chevy in 26th (59). If the part-timers with the Nos. 45 and 06 drop behind the full-timers, the odds of earning a Leaders Circle improve for those hovering around the P22 bubble. Decent Road America finishes for the Nos. 29 and 7 would go a long way to ease those $1 million fears.

MR. INVISIBLE

That crash minutes into the only practice session of the weekend ruined Scott McLaughlin’s chances of making an impact. As a result, he was at the races, but not really in the races. Rough slide for the quick Kiwi, who heads to Road America with finishes of 20th, 19th, and 20th to resolve.

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

Big Indy Lights weekend for Andretti Autosport’s Kyle Kirkwood, who dominated the event with back-to-back wins. That brought his season tally to three victories, and brought him closer to the formidable HMD/GRG duo of Linus Lundqvist and David Malukas.

It wasn’t the best weekend for Malukas, who went from first to second in the standings, but things are close at the top. Lundqvist shadowed Kirkwood in Detroit with a pair of seconds and took the championship lead (191 points) as teammate Malukas (190) and the revived Kirkwood (187) have turned this into a proper three-way fight. Juncos Racing’s Toby Sowery was solid as well, and holds fourth (146), but will need a stellar run through Road America and Mid-Ohio to keep the leading trio from breaking away.

A couple of these kids will be in IndyCar by 2022 and 2023, and they will continue the tradition of using the Road to Indy to do big things in IndyCar. Of the eight IndyCar winners this year, six earned championships of multiple wins in Indy Lights; why would the current and future RTI stars be any different?
Whatever non-alcoholic sparkling beverage is in that bottle probably tastes pretty sweet, but for Kirkwood, getting into the Lights title mix tasted even sweeter. Image via Road to Indy

MISC

• How big of a hit did Rinus VeeKay’s title aspirations take after he broke a clavicle in a cycling crash?

• Chip Ganassi Racing had a magical Saturday with Ericsson’s win and a follow-up first IMSA victory by the Cadillac Chip Ganassi Racing team.

• Odd weekend for Romain Grosjean who, while having a bit of a reputation as a wild card behind the wheel during stretches of his Formula 1 career, had been rock solid during his opening IndyCar races with Dale Coyne. The fateful crash on Saturday that brought about the red flag that sent Will Power’s blood pressure through the roof was part of Grosjean’s dramas; a spin was also part of his event and then, through no fault of his own, fires broke out with the front brakes – likely caused by leaking brake fluid from the calipers – and he was forced to stop on course during Sunday’s race. Teammate Ed Jones had a better weekend, scoring his best result of the year with ninth on Saturday, but a broken shock early in Sunday’s race ruined his chances to repeat or improve. Altogether, DCR left Detroit with a 23rd and 24th for Grosjean and a ninth and 17th for Jones, all while showing exceptional speed that went largely unrewarded.

• If I had to make an informal count of pro-NBC social media posts from IndyCar to anti-NBC missives, the ratio would be uncomplimentary towards the Peacock. Between Lacrosse running long on Saturday and tennis running really long on Sunday, and general confusion on where to find the broadcasts on alternate channels and streaming, and a promise of added coverage after Race 1 that many said never materialized, some form of standardized communication method linking the network, the series, and its fans to disseminate news of changes might be a worthy consideration.

• Since Will Power is one of the 60,000 people who works for Roger Penske, and all of the people in race control work for Penske, did he get a call from Penske’s HR department after Saturday’s outburst? Am I the only one who wonders about this stuff?

• Thanks for playing along – time for Road America.

 

Arrow McLaren SP absolve Rosenqvist, Chevy of Detroit crash

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emailBy Marshall Pruett | June 12, 2021 11:28 PM ET

The reason behind Felix Rosenqvist’s big crash on Saturday at Detroit’s Belle Isle NTT IndyCar Series event was going to be one of three things: Mechanical failure, electronic failure, or driver error.

Related

Askew to substitute for Rosenqvist for Race 2 at Detroit

Rosenqvist to remain in hospital overnight following Detroit crash

Detroit IndyCar Race 1 under red flag for Rosenqvist crash

Rosenqvist’s Arrow McLaren SP team provided a general answer as to where the unexpected burst of full acceleration in a braking zone was based.

“Following the accident involving Felix Rosenqvist in Race 1 of the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix today on Belle Isle, the team has undertaken a detailed examination and investigation into the cause,” AMSP wrote. “As a result, the team has eliminated driver error or any issues related to Chevrolet systems and software, including involving the throttle system.”

The other pedal in the Dallara DW12’s footwell, used for braking, did not appear to slow the car or lock the brakes prior to impact on the external and in-car video replays.

“The sequence of events has been clearly established and the root cause identified as a singular, non-recurrent mechanical fault,” the team added. What that means is the brakes didn't work! The remedy has already been implemented and the team is confident that the issue is now fully resolved.” The rules don't say that the brakes have to stop the car.", so stop giving us a bunch of crap!
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