11 weeks ago on June 11 the Verizon IndyCar series had just wrapped up a double-header in Detroit and was looking to the high banks and high speeds of Texas Motor Speedway and the Firestone 600.
Mother Nature had other ideas.
First rain delayed the scheduled Saturday night race to a Sunday afternoon start.
71 laps into the 248 lap race, it became a washout.
With the field behind the pace car after a huge crash involving Conor Daly and Josef Newgarden, the skies opened and the race was postponed until this Saturday night.
It marked the first time since Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2011 that an IndyCar race started on one day and would be completed on another. That one wasn’t quite 3 months!
James Hinchcliffe was leading the race when the red flag came out.
The cars will restart the race in Saturday nbight in the same order in which they were scored at the completion of Lap 71. The big deal in all of this is that Josef Newgarden, currently 3rd in the IndyCar Series points battle, and fastest car on the circuit when he crashed, will not be involved since he was taken out of the race prior to the red flag in the horrifying crash with Daly.
Feelings on the topic were mixed. Many drivers wanted to just restart the race from the green flag and run the full 248 laps. This would have allowed both Newgarden and Daly to compete. But with Newgarden being so strong in June and last week at Pocono and dominating the short oval at Iowa, the other key players in the title chase, Team Penske’s Simon Pagenaud, Will Power, and Helio Castroneves, as well as Scott Dixon from Target Chip Ganassi Racing may end up thankful that IndyCar officials decided to pickup where they left off.
Not to mention The Mayor of Hinchtown, who will start as the leader.
Regardless we know that the remaining 177 will be action packed. TMS is a great track for IndyCar always producing wheel to wheel racing at 215+MPH.
The schedule will be incredibly condensed on Saturday with the cars hitting the track for their only warmup from 5:30 to 6:00PM CDT (10:30 – 11:00PM GMT) and the race resuming at 9:15PM CDT (2:15AM GMT)
The race most likely will have a major impact on the points battle. Simon Pagenuad’s crash combined with Will Power’s win at Pocono last week tightened the battle between P1 and and P2 to but 20 points.
Power will restart in P4 while Pagenaud is down in P15. Here is how the field will line up for the restart:
- James Hinchcliffe
- Ryan Hunter-Reay
- Mikhail Aleshin
- Will Power
- Ed Carpenter
- Gabby Chaves
- Helio Castroneves
- Charlie Kimball
- Carlos Munoz
- Juan Pablo Montoya
- Sebastien Bourdais
- Graham Rahal
- Alexander Rossi
- Scott Dixon
- Simon Pagenaud
- Tony Kanaan
- Takuma Sato
- Marco Andretti
- Max Chilton
- Jack Hawksworth
- Conor Daly
- Josef Newgarden
On thing for sure…it’s gonna be fun!
Eric Barnes @ebarnes442