NTT INDYCAR SERIES points leader Alex Palou (pictured) and his teammate Scott Dixon of Chip Ganassi Racing were among the four drivers who received a nine-position grid penalty for Saturday’s Bommarito Automotive Group 500 presented by Axalta and Valvoline.
INDYCAR officials announced Friday morning that Palou, Dixon, Meyer Shank Racing’s Felix Rosenqvist (No. 60 AutoNation/SiriusXM Honda) and Dale Coyne Racing’s Katherine Legge (No. 51 Elf Cosmetics Honda) will drop nine spots from their qualifying positions due to unauthorized engine changes following the July 21 race on the streets of Toronto.
The teams violated the following regulations:
Rule 16.1.2.3.2. A fifth (5th) engine is eligible to receive points from the engine manufacturer if a full season competitor has achieved the full season competitor’s engine mileage with his first four (4) engines. Otherwise, a fifth (5th) or more engines will not receive points from the engine manufacturer and will be considered an unauthorized engine replacement.
Per Rule 16.1.6.1.2, the penalty is six starting positions for road and street course events and nine positions for oval events and will be served at the series’ next event, Saturday’s 260-lap race, which will be broadcast at 6:00 p.m. ET on USA Network, Peacock and the INDYCAR Radio Network.
Dixon said the Ganassi team decided the change was beneficial at this point in the season. Saturday’s race is one of five remaining races of the season, the first of four on oval tracks.
“When you’re deciding which tracks to choose, you kind of think that maybe strategically you have more options with an oval track,” he said.
Dixon and Palou followed a similar strategy last year, opting for engine changes and grid penalties on the 1.25-mile track. It was a decision that paid off: Dixon stormed to victory from 16th on the grid after qualifying in seventh, while Palou moved up from 14th to seventh.
Palou said the situation isn’t ideal this year, but his No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Samaritan Purse had no choice.
“We couldn’t do another race,” he said after qualifying seventh. “Even if this was Portland, we should have made it here.”
Palou will drop to 16th at the start of Saturday’s race, while Dixon will drop from 10th to 19th in his No. 9 PNC Bank Chip Ganassi Racing Honda.
To make matters worse for the championship leader, Rosenqvist qualified second, and his drop allows Team Penske’s Will Power, who is second in the points standings, to move up to fourth in his No. 12 Verizon Business Team Penske Chevrolet.
What concerns Palou most is that this may not be the last engine penalty he faces. With three short oval races remaining, including the Hy-Vee Milwaukee Mile 250s doubleheader and the season finale on Sept. 15 at Nashville Superspeedway, the two-time and reigning series champion said there are still plenty of miles and full-throttle times left.
Power and McLaughlin want to capitalize on the changes to the CGR engine
With Palou and Dixon starting in the midfield, how does that change the way NTT P1 Award winner Scott McLaughlin and his Team Penske teammate Power approach Saturday’s 260-lap race?
The duo won the last two oval races on the schedule and cleaned up at the Iowa Speedway race weekend on July 13 and 14.
“It’s hard to say,” Power said. “These things change so quickly. You have to take it as it is in the moment. You know what’s smartest, and not like Toronto.”
Power is referring to being too aggressive on a late restart of the Toronto race. At the time, McLaughlin was fourth and Power was fifth. Power threw McLaughlin out, which dropped McLaughlin to 16th. Power was penalized for avoidable contact and dropped to 12th.
Palou climbed from 18th to fourth place, gaining points on the duo.
McLaughlin comes to WWTR in sixth place, 83 points behind Palou. Power is 49 points behind in second place. McLaughlin has the best average finish of 3.33 points in the three oval races this season, tied with Pato O’Ward.
“I’m just going to do my race and keep going,” said McLaughlin, referring to the track position. “It (bad luck) can happen to any of us. We’re just going to focus on what we need to do and slowly find our way back into this championship. I know we can do it.”
Fittipaldi enjoyed the break
Pietro Fittipaldi, driver for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, said his three-week break was shorter than normal, as he traveled around the world and visited three different countries.
“After Toronto, I went to Spa in Belgium for my duties with the Haas F1 team, which was fun,” he said. “Then I stayed in North Carolina with my family for two weeks and just enjoyed the time there with my siblings, my parents and the dogs at home. I went biking with my brother, which we enjoy, and played a lot of pickleball.”
Fittipaldi also dedicated himself to simulator work in his state-of-the-art simulator at home in order to finish the 2024 season with a good result.
“We’ve had chances to get some good top-10 and top-12 finishes recently but unfortunately have been hit by some adversity that, to be honest, has been largely out of our control. We just have to keep pushing and keep going because I’m sure the results will come. We’re getting ready for another short oval race, which I’m really enjoying, so we’re all looking forward to that.”
This is Fittipaldi’s second race at WWTR. As a rookie in 2018, he improved by 10 places and finished 11th with Dale Coyne Racing.
Lundgaard hopes to keep competitors at bay; Rahal expects advancement
Christian Lundgaard is optimistic that he can finish near the top 10 in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES points standings at the end of the season. He heads into the WWTR in 11th place after 12 races. He was ninth at this point last year and improved to eighth place in the points standings.
The difference between this year and last year is that the last five events of 2023 featured three natural road courses, one street course and one oval course, with this time there being four oval courses and one natural road course.
“The fact that four of the last five races are on oval tracks definitely favors those with strong oval packages and could help them move up in the overall standings,” said Lundgaard.
Lundgaard is two points behind Santino Ferrucci in tenth place in the overall standings, but only 32 points ahead of his teammate Graham Rahal, who is in 17th place.
Lundgaard believes his No. 45 Hy-Vee Honda team for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing has the potential to move forward, but improvements are needed to get there.
The third-year driver is 15th in the field with a 17.33 average finish on ovals this season. In two WWTR starts, he has finished 19th and 17th, respectively. His best oval finish to date is 10th in Race 1 of the 2022 Hy-Vee INDYCAR Weekend doubleheader.
Rahal has the opposite mindset and expects to charge forward. The speed he showed in the Iowa Speedway doubleheader and the strength he promises to bring to his oval package in Milwaukee and Nashville have Rahal expecting big things.
Portland could be the icing on the cake.
“We’re coming up to Portland. We were on pole at this track last year, so we’re optimistic that we’ll have a good weekend,” he said. “I have very high expectations there. It’s important to score as many points as possible. We’ve been very competitive in many places this year, but we haven’t been able to get everything right. So it would be nice to come out on top with a win or even a podium on the home straight.”
Odds and ends
· BorgWarner was selected from a broad pool of entries and recognized as the winner of PR Daily’s Social Media & Digital Awards in the LinkedIn category for its Charging Forward campaign and in the Twitter/X category for its Borg-Warner Trophy Speaks to Racing Fans campaign. For the LinkedIn category, BorgWarner created a year-long brand campaign to align BorgWarner with the automotive industry’s top talent. The company began generating buzz in the first half of 2023 with a shift in its organic LinkedIn presence focused on brand storytelling, PR amplification and thought leadership. The campaign also highlighted employee career achievements, innovative projects and stories while supporting advocacy, diversity and inclusion, and growth opportunities while offering prospective applicants a behind-the-scenes look at the company’s culture. In addition to impressive metrics on LinkedIn, traffic to the careers section of the BorgWarner website also increased – the page was visited nearly 1.2 million times in 2023, 38 percent more than the previous year. 69 percent of these visitors subsequently viewed job postings.
· The 49 points separating Palou and Power is the seventh-largest points difference with five races remaining since INDYCAR SERIES racing was unified in 2008. Before this season, the average margin with five races remaining was 43.9 points.
· Since 2008, with five races remaining, the championship leader has won the championship nine times. These drivers were: Dixon (2008, 2018, 2020), Dario Franchitti (2011), Ryan Hunter-Reay (2012), Simon Pagenaud (2016), Josef Newgarden (2019) and Palou (2021, 2023).
· There are 18 drivers mathematically eligible for the 2024 NTT INDYCAR SERIES Championship: Palou, Power, Dixon, Colton Herta, O’Ward, McLaughlin, Kyle Kirkwood, Newgarden, Alexander Rossi, Santino Ferrucci, Lundgaard, Marcus Ericsson, Rosenqvist, Marcus Armstrong, Rinus VeeKay, Romain Grosjean, Graham Rahal and Linus Lundqvist. Any driver who is 217 points or more behind the points leader after this race will be eliminated from the race.
· Team Penske has the most wins at World Wide Technology Raceway with eight (1997, 2002, 2003, 2017, 2018, 2020-Race 2, 2021, 2022). It won two of the first three NASCAR Cup Series races at the 1.25-mile track with Joey Logano (2022) and Austin Cindric (2024).
The closest margin of victory in World Wide Technology was 0.0399 seconds, when Takuma Sato beat Ed Carpenter on August 24, 2019.
· Pato O’Ward has finished second in three of the last four World Wide Technology Raceway events. David Malukas is the only driver in 2022 to finish second since the second race of 2020. This is the second time in the last three seasons that O’Ward has started the 13th race of a season fifth in the points standings. A year ago, he was sixth.
· Since the series returned to World Wide Technology Raceway in 2017, Dixon is the only Chip Ganassi Racing driver to finish on the podium, winning in 2020 and 2023, finishing second in 2017 and third in 2018.
· In the 12 races of a season, Rossi has collected the same number of points (265) in each of the last three seasons. He was 10th in the points standings in 2022 and 2023 and ninth this season despite starting 11 times. He did not race in Toronto due to a broken thumb sustained in a training crash.
· Palou led the NTT INDYCAR SERIES points standings after 12 races in three of the last four years, winning the championship the previous two years.
· Dixon has finished third in the points standings after 12 races in a season in three of the last four years. He had 357 points at this point last season and 358 points this year.
