After a weekend off, the NTT INDYCAR SERIES heads to Road America, America’s National Park of Speed, with its circuit that has been repaved since last year’s event.
How about chasing the track record to highlight a return to action? And remember, picturesque Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, is always in season.
SEE: Race Details
The Sonsio Grand Prix at Road America presented by AMR will be held at 1 p.m. ET Sunday (USA Network, Peacock and the INDYCAR Radio Network), and this will be the 34th event for the INDYCAR SERIES at the 14-turn, 4.014-mile permanent road course.
The event’s history dates to 1982 when Hector Rebaque earned his first and only series victory – he made only six career starts. Rebaque’s win was a surprise, for sure, and it certainly was an aberration. Since then, nearly all the Road America races have been won by series champions or Indianapolis 500 winners.
Recent winners have followed that all-star lineage. The past eight Road America races have been won by Scott Dixon (twice), Josef Newgarden (twice), Will Power, Alexander Rossi and Alex Palou. Felix Rosenqvist, the winner of the second race in 2020, is the outlier as a non-season champion or Indy 500 winner.
How much speeds increase remains to be seen, but this almost certainly will be the fastest NTT P1 Award at this track since the sport unified in 2008. Helio Castroneves holds that distinction with a lap of 1 minute, 41.3007 seconds set in 2017, and the overall track record is 1:39.866 by Dario Franchitti in qualifying in 2000. Last year, Rossi won the pole with a time of 1:44.8656.
Palou brings a 51-point series lead over Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Marcus Ericsson, with the season’s halfway point nearing. “500” winner Newgarden is Road America’s reigning champion. Clearly, there is much to watch this weekend, beginning with Friday’s first practice (4 p.m. ET, Peacock and the INDYCAR Radio Network).
Let’s examine the storylines in today’s Five Things to Watch:
Start with Speed
There is much anticipation surrounding the NTT INDYCAR SERIES’ official debut on Road America’s new surface, completed in late October.
The repave was the first for the circuit since 1995, and speeds that year increased about 5 mph. More than 800 dump trucks of asphalt were removed, and officials went to considerable lengths to ensure the beloved course remained as unchanged as possible.
Before milling off the old surface, the entire course was surveyed to allow engineers and track officials to review the track’s unique characteristics and make decisions that guided the grade control process. More than 7,000 control points were set to direct the grading and paving process to ensure that the track width, camber angles and curbing locations were accurate within a tenth of an inch. Two paving machines ran side by side to minimize the center seam visibility.
The $4 million project included a renovation of pit lane, and the surface now has a considerably darker appearance. Based on recent testing, quicker lap times will follow, and they might be record-breaking.
Palou, Ericsson Hot
Palou’s success this season in Chip Ganassi Racing’s No. 10 The American Legion Honda has been incredible, and he has done it with consistency.
2021 NTT INDYCAR SERIES champion Palou has won two of the past three races and earned the pole for the other. He fell to last on the lead lap in the “500” after taking pit road contact from Rinus VeeKay on Lap 94 but battled back to finish fourth. He is riding a streak of six consecutive top-five finishes, with an average finish this season of 3.85. As a result, Palou leads the standings by 51 points, the equivalent of a full race.
Second in points is Ericsson, Chip Ganassi’s driver of the No. 8 Huski Ice Spritz Honda. Like Palou, the winner of last year’s “500” has been equally consistent, with an average finish of 5.85, including a win in the season-opening Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg and a second-place finish in the “500.”
Palou and Ericsson are the only series drivers with top-10 finishes in each race this season. Last year, no driver had such a mark through the first seven races.
CGR Flips Script
A year after Team Penske finished first, second and fourth in series points, the Ganassi team has taken those positions. Plus, the depth is about more than Palou and Ericsson.
Six-time series champion Dixon (No. 9 PNC Bank Chip Ganassi Racing Honda) stands fourth in the standings, 79 points out of the lead, and the season’s remaining schedule is favorable for him, too.
In addition to winning two races at Road America, Dixon has won six times at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, site of The Honda Indy 200 Presented by the All-New 2024 Civic Type R on July 2, and he is the reigning champion of the Honda Indy Toronto on July 16, an event he has won four times. Dixon also will try to defend last year’s win in the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix in Nashville when the series arrives for the Aug. 6 race. He also is a former race winner at World Wide Technology Raceway, which hosts the Bommarito Automotive Group 500 presented by Axalta and Valvoline on Aug. 27, and he has finished third each of the past two years at Portland International Raceway, site of the Grand Prix of Portland on Sept. 3.
And then there’s Marcus Armstrong, the driver of the No. 11 Ridgeline Lubricants Honda, who leads the Rookie of the Year standings by 24 points despite not competing in the oval races at Texas Motor Speedway and Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Armstrong ranks 17th in points, ahead of nine drivers who have competed in all seven races to date.
No team in INDYCAR SERIES history has finished 1-2-3 in points while also having the highest-finishing rookie in the series.
Balance of Power is Balanced
The repaving of the track likely impacts the year-to-year carryover of competitor strength, but history suggests it’s important to keep an eye on Newgarden.
Newgarden, the driver of the No. 2 PPG Team Penske Chevrolet, has two Road America race wins, including last year’s 3.371-second victory over Ericsson. Newgarden also has won three poles in this event, second only to Danny Sullivan’s career total, and has recorded four top-three finishes. Newgarden’s 149 laps led at the track are more than twice the career total of any other active driver (Rossi with 70).
Andretti Autosport has only one Road America win – by Rossi in 2019 – but several of its drivers had strong runs last year: Rossi finished third, with Romain Grosjean (No. 28 DHL Honda) fourth and Colton Herta (No. 26 Gainbridge Honda) fifth. The team also has produced at least one podium finisher in each of the past three Road America races, with Herta second in 2021 and the pole winner in 2019. Remarkably, Herta has started on the front row of this event three times and finished in the top five on four occasions, but he has never led a lap.
Rossi now drives the No. 7 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet and is on a streak of three consecutive top-five finishes and four straight top-10 finishes to climb to sixth in the standings.
Chip Ganassi’s team has been the most successful at Road America in this iteration of the sport. Dixon, Rosenqvist and Palou won three consecutive races – two in 2020, another in 2021 – and Dixon netted a win in 2017. That’s four. Team Penske has won three, with Power winning in 2016 before Newgarden got his two.
PeopleReady Reunion
Last year, Newgarden won the Sonsio Grand Prix at Road America for a big payday.
Two-time series champion Newgarden paired that road course victory with a street circuit win in the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach and an oval victory in the XPEL 375 at Texas Motor Speedway to complete the PeopleReady Force for Good Challenge. The trifecta earned Newgarden, his team and their designated charities a $1 million prize to split.
While Newgarden and Palou each have two race wins this season, PeopleReady’s big bonus can’t be secured this weekend as both of Newgarden’s wins have come on ovals and Palou needs an oval win to go with his road course win in the GMR Grand Prix at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and his street circuit win earlier this month in the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear. Palou’s next chance to complete the three-track sweep will come July 22-23 with the Iowa Speedway doubleheader.
Other drivers on the road to winning the $1 million prize are Ericsson, the winner of the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg street race, Andretti Autosport’s Kyle Kirkwood, who drove the No. 27 AutoNation Honda to victory lane in Long Beach, and Scott McLaughlin (No. 3 Sonsio Team Penske Chevrolet), the winner of the Children’s of Alabama Indy Grand Prix, a road race at Barber Motorsports Park.
Each race winner receives $10,000 from the PeopleReady Force for Good Challenge fund to split with their chosen charity.