“Doctor, Who?”
Hey folks – A slightly exhausted Dre here to try and wrap up the third in a huge triple-header of Motorsport, and on this occasion, we have a LOT to discuss from the penultimate weekend of the IndyCar season, as the travelling circus headed to the much-anticipated return to the legendary Milwaukee Mile for two races across the weekend. Not jealous of the fact my Motorsport101 brederins Cam Buckley, Ryan Erik King and Christopher DeHarde were all there too. Lucky bastards. Let’s get int- HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER!
Pato O’Ward vs Marketing Departments
I hate that this was considered such a talked-about story, this demanded main event status on a DRR post. Phew.
Going into the weekend much was made about the potential attendance and turnout for Milwaukee, and the signs weren’t great. IndyCar CEO Mark Miles said that a good starting point for attendance for the weekend would be… 15,000. In a 35,000-seat facility. Oof. NASCAR’s Milwaukee Mile race was getting all the billboard attention in the area. Oof x2. And then this clanger from Chris DeHarde went semi-viral in American racing on X:
“My friend booked the Airbnb for the Milwaukee race weekend that the four of us will share. Our host for this weekend thought all of us were in town to see the Brewers play. He had no idea that #IndyCar were racing only a few miles away from the house.”
Oof x3. A hat-trick if you will. It’s not the popular thing to say, especially if you’re a member of the series’ regular media coverage, but it goes hand-in-hand with so many regular comments about IndyCar’s poor marketing and failure to generate new fans, despite having the best product in open-wheel racing right now.
That same weekend across the aisle, NASCAR announced that they’d be making a debut in Mexico City next year, at the F1 track. IndyCar’s drivers – Pato included, were livid that NASCAR beat them to the punch. Alex Palou said: “We’re being overtaken left and right”, with teammate Scott Dixon saying it was a “Massive Miss”. Pato went even further and said there’s no point in trying now NASCAR has the race and IndyCar didn’t. That’s what led to Mark Miles’ bizarre comment in response:
“I will say that it’s clear that Pato isn’t as famous as the last previously famous Mexican driver – Adrian Fernandez – but he’s really gaining ground, and he’s actually on some billboards now.”
My brother in Christ, what are you doing?! Yes, Adrian Fernandez was probably more of a mainstream name in his prime, but that was in the heyday of American open-wheel racing, during the split, when CART demanded a seat at the table alongside F1, something IndyCar can no longer claim to own, having lost their market share to NASCAR and ironically, the same F1 the US used to not care about.
Pato O’Ward more than any other driver in IndyCar, “gets it” from a promotional standpoint in Motorsport. He reminds me of MotoGP’s Pedro Acosta, someone who plays up to the role drivers play in marketing and beyond the easy Pro Wrestling gimmicks of faces vs heels. No one has pushed harder to try and promote the series for the greater good than Pato, and it’s not even close. I’ve talked about the series dropping the ball when trying to promote talent like Josef Newgarden. Pato O’Ward IS the ball.
Of course, being Mexican helps, they’re a hugely loyal sporting audience, I’ve talked about that with F1’s Sergio Perez before. But beyond that, he’s always trying to find ways to get people through the door. He pre-purchases tickets and flips them on his website alongside merchandise orders. He has exclusive boxes for meet-and-greets. He’s huge on social media, with more Instagram followers than the series itself, and with a 100% shirtless guarantee.
And that popularity has been returned in kind. Journos scramble to get him on Podcasts where he’s constantly talking about ways to promote the series. His merch stands with the series constantly sell out, so much so that he has to have a personal stand just to facilitate demand.
He has to have his autographed gear pre-signed because his lines are so big (Happened in Portland a week ago). Both current and former teammates Felix Rosenqvist and Alexander Rossi took to X to defend Pato, saying they felt like stars just because they were his teammates, and that his fans were so loud they couldn’t do technical debriefs in their garage due to the noise. A Mexico City race in the city would sell out like hotcakes with Pato front and centre and with proper promotion and investment. But Miles bizarrely was taking cracks at the promoters claiming the series wasn’t popular enough beyond a rental. And if you want to measure the popularity of the series on billboards as Miles did – The ones in the area were promoting the NASCAR Truck Series race. Not even the “B” show, the “C” show… that happened last week.
I’ve barely even mentioned the embarrassing state of Mexico City negotiations that the AP’s Jenna Fryer reported, which showed IndyCar had to clarify who their proxies were in the country to negotiate on the series’ behalf, and the confusion as team owner Ricardo Juncos was allegedly out here claiming he had the exclusive rights to the series in Latin America?! What the fuc-
All in all, this was an embarrassing build-up to the weekend and you’d need a frying pan to collect all the egg off the face of Mark Miles. He’s already had a horrible year managing the series with miss after miss in terms of the series PR’, but alienating your most popular driver and putting the onus on him to promote your stale and stagnant series is everything wrong with the state of IndyCar. It wants to punch up at F1 at every given opportunity, but despite the better product, it fails to capture its audience. Even NASCAR, often mocked as its popularity has dwindled in the last 15 years has pushed the boundaries with new cars, more media opportunities, and encouraging foreign stars like Kimi Raikkonen, Shane van Gisbergen, Danill Kyvat and more to give the series a shot. Hell, Zak’s pushing Pato to race in Mexico City next year. That says it all and speaks to the chances IndyCar fails to take, and then it wonders why it’s spinning its wheels.
I want to love this series, but man is it infuriating at times. Let’s talk about the racing.
Oh Yeah, We Had 2 Races Here Too…
I’ll be real with you, watching the Indy NXT cars run round the place, I was nervous. There was a lot of bumps, and a re-paved inside line where the difference in grip could have been problematic for racing. Thankfully, they got enough rubber down where the inside lane was viable and genuinely, the racing was great.
Penske continued their short oval dominance with splitting pole positions, with Scott McLaughlin taking Race 1 after Josef Newgarden had to take a 9-place grid penalty for an unapproved engine change, with the latter taking Race 2 pole.
It was McLaughlin and the surprisingly fast Linus Lundqvist who battled early on for the lead, and with the Kiwi struggling to deal with the frequent lapped traffic, we actually got 18 laps led for Lundqvist, which was nice to see with the man fighting hard for his future in the series. We also had Pato O’Ward lurking like he so often does, and Colton Herta pushing hard too – I’ll give the American this, he’s massively improved his oval form and has been looking like the oval breakthrough (Like McLaughlin’s), will come soon enough.
After the first caution for Katherine Legge spinning on the back stretch, O’Ward and McLaughlin traded the lead back and forth, with the race switching to a more aggressive 4-stop strategy, with drivers pushing for early undercuts as the fresh rubber was worth almost a second a lap compared to the older rubber. Then, the second major flashpoint – Marcus Ericsson goes side-by-side with Josef Newgarden into Turn 1, they make minor contact, Ericsson loses the front of his car and spins out, collecting Newgarden on the outside and both crash into the wall. A pretty good visual metaphor for both of their respective seasons, riddled with sloppy driving and some bad luck. Remember that, it becomes important later.
Pato maintained the lead through the caution as everyone came in for new tyres, but flashpoint Number 3 was the gamechanger – Wait, whose loose tyre is that?! It’s Colton Herta again, are you kidding me?! Another sloppy Andretti pitstop ended Herta’s race and his Championship campaign right then there, with the American picking up a Drive-Through penalty for the emergency service, and then a 30-second stop and hold for the dangerous pitstop. He’d finish four laps down in the end in 22nd.
Final restart came and Will Power tried desperately to stick it out in front with the man’s title campaign hanging on for dear life, but Pato retook the lead on Lap 195 and never looked back enroute to his 3rd win of the season, and in stunning, shit-eating grinning fashion. Pato, WHO?
Behind, some good stories – Will Power in second reducing the title deficit to 42 points. And after being in the pits at the time of caution, Conor Daly, who started 25th on the grid, shuffled up to third, his IndyCar podium in eight years, and the first ever for Juncos Hollinger Racing. A delightful and critical result for an incredibly hard working team and for Conor who’s become the series go-to Driver for Hire. With Christian Rasmussen criminally unlucky with an excellent 11th place, it was a 16-point gain for the #78 car in the Leader’s Circle, a podium that could be worth nearly 1.5 million dollars for the team by season’s end. Not a dry eye in the house.
…And guess who was fifth. Go on, guess. That’s right, Alex Palou, who started in the midfield, stayed out of trouble, picked off spots when he could and ultimately ended up in P5, mitigating Championship damage yet again. A big result in Race 2 and he could wrap this up early…
Race 2
*grabs a non-alcoholic beverage and takes a seat* WAIT, WHY IS ALEX PALOU’S CAR DEAD ON THE WARM-UP?!
Turns out the #10 car had a drained battery while in its pitbox and as a result, couldn’t get going when it was time to start the formation lap. Panic in the CGR garage after a huge error, and the car had to be wheeled back to the garage so they could fix the battery. The race gets started without him, and Palou loses 28 laps in the pits. They send Palou back out and rightly so because the points system benefits you for doing so. For those new to the series, a quick explainer:
In IndyCar, you get 5 points just for taking part in the race. Every position above 25th (There’s 27 full-timers in the current field), pays out an extra point, up to 10th (20 points), then it goes up by two until you get to fourth (32 points), then 35 for third, 40 for second, and 50 for a win, alongside four possible bonus points – 1 for pole position, one for leading a lap of the race, and 2 for leading the most laps in a race. So, if Palou can pick up some spots via retired cars, every point counts. Scott Dixon famously did it in Texas back in 2015 despite being 40+ laps down. Did it work? Well, he won the title on countback, so you tell me.
Anyway, let’s get this race go- OH MY GOD, NEWGARDEN’S IN THE WALL.
So much for the new restart line to clear things up eh? The race start is fragmented, IndyCar waves off the start with a caution almost immediately, but Linus Lundqvist “doesn’t get the memo”, clips 3rd placed Marcus Armstrong in front of him, he hits Newgarden as he’s slowing down, and they both go into the wall. Days over for the pair of them, and immediately, two more spots for Palou. He’s already now leaving with more than five points.
Worse news for Alex – Post Restart drama, Will Power is now second, and after fighting McLaughlin to lead, at times, he was leading the Championship straight up. Disaster for the CGR team. It would be McLaughlin and Power going back and forth until a caution on Lap 63 for David Malukas suffering a technical problem. Alex Rossi was being rhe main antagonist, taking early stops again to use the undercut and take track position, by half distance, he was running second.
Not without more drama mind. McLaughlin retook the lead after being Power’s crew out of the pits, then on the first lap of the restart, Christian Rasmussen drove into the back of Graham Rahal after the RLL driver backed out of a three-wide into Turn 3. I do appreciate that in the moment, Rahal lost his rag, pointed to his head and and pointed at Rasmussen like Hulk Hogan had just started his comeback sequence. Also, it led me to making a meme out of it on the M101 Twitter.
Cool, let’s going and OH MY GOD, WILL POWER HAS SPUN. Power, on his own, coming out of Turn 4, spins under his own throttle and taps the wall. Not the end of the world, but it did lose him a lap to the leaders and drop him to 14th.
Late race action has Colton Herta going for a hail mary, 70-lap final stint to try and survive, knowing only a win on the scoreboard could get give him a very slim chance of the title in Nashville, but it wasn’t to be as McLaughlin reeled him in. It did lead to a brilliant fight though as Herta, on 20 lap older tyres, went around the outside of McLaughlin as a counter-attack. One of the passes of the year.
And with Sting Ray Robb hitting the wall late on, it was Scott Dixon from out of NOWHERE that was now in second and pushing McLaughlin for the win, but the other Kiwi would hold on to take his second oval win, and his third win of 2024. Dixon was second, because of course he was, and Colton Herta scored his first career podium finish on an oval. Will Power would come back to finish 10th, and Alex Palou ended up ahead of all of these dudes in the war of attrition:
Newgarden, Armstrong, Siegel (Gearbox Failure), O’Ward (Gearbox Failure), Graham Rahal (Crash Damage), David Malukas (Mechanical), Pietro Fittipaldi (Mechanical), Linus Lundqvist (Crash Damage).
Final Result – P19. Would have been P18 if his race was one lap longer, just behind Sting Ray Robb.
That was fun, what a mess. Lightning Round, please.
Lightning Round (Start Under Review)
So, where does this leave the Championship with one race to go? Well, here’s the scores on the doors:
Alex Palou (525), Will Power (-33), Scott McLaughlin (-50)
Mathematically, as it stands, these are the only three men who can win the title. Unless Alex Palou gets the Tonya Harding treatment between now and Nashville next week, scratch McLaughlin off the list – Remember, you get 5 points just for showing up, so the moment the race starts, McLaughlin’s out as the most points he can make on Alex is 49.
Assuming Palou starts, Power has to finish third with ALL the bonus points or second without them, or Palou is automatically Champion. Regardless, a ninth-place finish for the Spaniard would be enough to take his third Astor Cup. It’s a long shot for Will Power from here, and sad to say, it’s entirely of his own making.
Also, I had a feeling this was trending this way, but Scott McLaughlin is already confirmed as 2024’s Oval King. The oval-only standings is startling:
McLaughlin (254), Newgarden (185), Dixon (180), O’Ward (178), Ferrucci (162)
69 points on the field. Nice. Also, next four names on that list? Will Power, Alex Palou, Alex Rossi… RINUS VEEKAY!? (I had to double check, turns out he’s had five Top 10’s in his last seven races. Great end of year form.)
Pato O’Ward made absolutely sure to rub his nose in it when he won Race 1, going “Pato, WHO” on social media, mocking the billboards in the area, and showing up to the post-race presser in a friggin’ Sombrero. (available on Pato’s merch store, comes with a free ticket, PLEASE COME TO OUR RACES)
I’ll be real with you – I don’t like how Santino Ferrucci races ovals. He drift-tapped multiple cars out there sending it via divebomb into Turn 3 again and again, but he got away with it. Two fourth places over the weekend was a superb haul and he becomes the first Foyt driver to have ten Top 10 finishes in a season since Robby Gordon in 1995.
Only fair I also post the Leader’s Circle standings here as well going into the finale:
20th: #78 Juncos Hollinger Racing (Conor Daly) – 189 Points
21st: #66 Meyer Shank Racing (David Malukas) – 187 Points
22nd: #30 Rahal Letterman Lanigan (Pietro Fittipaldi) – 177 Points
23rd: #41 AJ Foyt Racing (Sting Ray Robb) – 175 Points
24th: #20 Ed Carpenter Racing (Christian Rasmussen) – 174 Points
Now do you see how huge that podium was? Barring a huge result for three of the field’s rear-enders, Juncos will get both cars above the cut line again. Glad Ed Carpenter did the right thing and give up the #20 car for the rest of the season so Rasmussen gets more seat time, but he may have left it too late. Almost worth mentioning below Daly, Malukas has the tiebreaker priority (Best Finish of 6th), then Rasmussen (9th, 11th), Robb (9th, 15th), and then Fittipaldi (13th).
Shoutout to Linus Lundqvist who sealed Rookie of the Year honors as well. Sincerely hope it’s enough for him to land somewhere given the unsettling status of CGR at the moment…
Unrelated, congrats to Louis Foster for wrapping up a dominant Indy NXT Championship. He’s been superb all year long, with his seventh win of the season, and a streak of 10 Top 2 finishes going back to the Month of May. He should be in IndyCar, someone needs to take him or else this ladder is fundamentally broken. #FREELOUISFOSTER
Dre’s Race Rating: 8/10 (Great) – I had my doubts, I was proven wrong. Milwaukee delivered. Great racing, multiple lines were doable, there were some great back and forths, a lot of title-related drama and two very deserving winners. Hell, even the attendance didn’t look too bad by Sunday. I hope Milwaukee stays long-term, I’m all for more Ovals. See you for the season finale in Nashville.
