“And Power Hits A Huge Three to Cut The Lead To… 54?!”
Welcome back to the second Dre’s Race Review of the weekend and in this edition, we’re going to review IndyCar’s 2024 Grand Prix of Portland. A weekend that was defined by an absolute demolition by Will Power, a performance typical of Alex Palou this season, and the big Saturday of… *checks notes*
…Santino Ferrucci?! Let’s get into it.
The Saturday of Santino
We kinda have to address the elephant in the room here first and arguably the biggest story of the weekend – Santino Ferrucci qualified on pole position. The first for AJ Foyt since Detroit 2014 and the days of “Not Now” Takuma Sato.
And yes, it was still a BIT of a fluke. I say this because I saw both The Race and the IndyStar opened their story on this today with that line. Like guys… this was the first time in the ten conventional qualifying sessions we’ve had in 2024 that Ferrucci made the final round, let alone qualify on pole. It was a bit of a fluke, but call a spade a spade, this was an impressive performance and it’s highlighted a genuinely impressive season for Ferrucci.
Spoiler alert: He’d go on to finish in eighth place, but it was still his eighth Top 10 finish of 2024 and he’s still 10th in the Championship and ahead of some big-hitting names like Christian Lundgaard, Felix Rosenqvist, Marcus Armstrong and Graham Rahal.
I can see why some of my peers didn’t want to call this one a fluke as a lot of this success has boiled down to the AJ Foyt/Penske technical alliance that was announced at the end of last year. I already spoke about it during the Indy 500 with Michael Cannon, one of the speedway’s track whisperers bringing Penske’s speed back, as well as keeping AJ Foyt in contention to win it all – So much so there was actually a dispute over just how much credit for Foyt’s success at the track could be attributed to Penske. Funny that!
But bringing in Cannon specifically to make Foyt a more balanced team over the season, as well as other key staff acquisitions like Rich Pearson from CGR has made both teams better. Foyt has become a more consistent team in Ferrucci’s hands, while Penske’s become the main contenders for the 500 again while retaining their Short Oval dominance. Nothing could highlight that better than Will Power being one of the first to congratulate Ferrucci after the pole position and openly telling him: “I hope you were using my setup!”
And I sit here as a humble pundit feeling… kinda weird about it all. I can’t even say this is a Kyle Larson situation where “The talent has never been the problem” because Ferrucci has never been a consistent winner anywhere he’s raced since F2. And I’ve been very vocal about the series over-promoting of him as a Pro Wrestling-esque heel (The Grosjean beef, the homophobic insults in Detroit, etc.), but it has been a genuine surprise to see Ferrucci be the best he’s been. Heck, I saw the emoji reactions to Ferrucci’s pole on the IndyCar Instagram Broadcast Channel, it was extremely split. But he’s starting to do the one thing that solves nearly everything in Motorsport – perform.
In any case, the future of this team looks brighter and it’ll be interesting to see what happens with David Malukas on the way in. Santino has been the team’s spearhead for some time now but he’s always had difficulty generating the funding to stick around, and that’s precisely what Sting Ray Robb was brought in for. A Ferrucci/Malukas pairing IS pretty potent, especially for a midfield team, so let’s see if they can pull it off.
Power Outage
As for the race itself, this was a classic tale that we had not seen for a while – A Will Power #BEATEMDOWN. They don’t happen too often, but when they do, they are potent.
It didn’t look this way at first. Power quickly dispatched Ferrucci after just one corner, nudging his side pod on the way out, before Scott Dixon got the pinata treatment. First, he was hip-checked off the track by Kyle Kirkwood, then hit off entirely by Pietro Fittipaldi. The Brazilian was nudged by Alex Rossi from behind and Fittipaldi went over the kerb entering the back straight. A messy, unnecessary incident and Dixon’s first Lap 1 retirement from an IndyCar race in NINETEEN YEARS.
Power led but could never truly get away from Alex Palou in second. Palou tried a brilliant switchback move into the back straight when Power got caught up in early lapped traffic, but if anything got TOO good a run and had to back out of it. That’s as close as he ever got. They tried, Barry Wanser tried the overcut and then the undercut on two out of the three stops to get ahead and both times, it was the #10 pit crew that lost time in the box. Both Penske stops early on were in the low 6 second range. Palou had his in the 8-second range. Losing 4-seconds in the pits in a dogfight against Will Power and losing chances to take track position at Portland is pretty catastrophic.
In the end, it didn’t even matter (Hi Linkin Park), as Power had saved his final pair of sticker red tyres for the final stint, and you’re never beating Power in a raw pace race. By the end, he was 10 seconds clear of Palou, and the Spaniard was the only man in the same state.
There’s some fun stories behind. Josef Newgarden having another one of his late surges to make his weird season look respectable with another podium. Colton Herta kept his slim title hopes alive with another 4th. By the way, he was 37 seconds off the win. Strong, but probably not enough. Scott McLaughlin chose the worst weekend of the year to have his worst Qualifying result after being knocked out of Round 1 in 20th, came back to finish 7th, but is now almost certainly out of title contention. Scores on the doors say:
Alex Palou – 484
Will Power (-54)
Colton Herta (-67)
Scott McLaughlin (-88)
Scott Dixon (-101)
Safe to say, I think this is now a three horse race. Power drove his arse off, but only took 5 net points out of his title rival. It was like watching MotoGP around 2018 when Andrea Dovizioso beat Marc Marquez head-to-head. Fun, but ultimately nearly meaningless. Losing a round to close Palou in is far more damaging at this point in time. Colton Herta’s barely hanging in there, and McLaughlin and below now need miracles. Milwaukee will be interesting, as the majority of the field have never raced there, but if Palou plays it smart, he should be entering Nashville in a dominant position. If his 2024 oval form keeps up, he might even leave as Champion.
But it was Power’s day, his third win of 2024, the most of anyone in the field, despite no pole positions, and proof that if you’re going to “Old Yella” him, it’s not going to be for performance reasons. He’s still in this race, and he’s not giving up yet.
The Lightning Round
Stewarding in IndyCar is beyond a joke. It’s catastrophically bad. Kyle Kirkwood ran Scott Dixon off the road, with contact, the definition of an avoidable contact penalty… no call. Pietro Fittipaldi does for the second Dixon check though. But not before Kirkwood gets dinged again for a perfectly fair and GREAT racing sequence with Toby Sowery on cold tyres, and has to drop two positions for blocking. Absolutely joke decision making from the series and things have to get better. If you’re so bad you’re making F1 look reasonable, something has gone badly wrong.
Speaking of which, Romain Grosjean, what in the cinnamon toast crunch was that rejoin? Deserved drive-through and a damn shame given he was running for an easy Top 10.
19th. Again, what does RLL see in Juri Vips that I’m missing?
And where the heck was McLaren this weekend? All three cars were eliminated in Round 1 of Qualifying, and Rossi was the best of the cars in race trim, in P12. Nowhere worth a damn at all. Must have spent all their juju in Zandvoort.
Dre’s Race Rating: 5/10 (Meh) – This was… fine. Portland has never been the most driver-friendly of tracks. Narrow, fast, not a lot of heavy braking zones, and it showed here. Lot of reasonably close running, little in terms of actual action unless it was a slow car coming out of the pits. Power and Palou were brilliant, and that was about it. Ah well. See you in Milwaukee.
