The 2024 running motorsports thread

Bowman.

Sharpie.

 

An IndyCar dream as only one car - the usual bulletproof Scott Dixon of all people - had any issues that may or may not have been related to the hybrids.

As for the race? The usual Mid-Ohio snorefest. Even a 1-2 duel at the end was anti-climactic. Stupid push-to-pass became push-to-protect and neither Pato O'Ward nor Alex Palou could do anything in dirty air as they were stuck behind a pair of cars at the tail end of the lead lap.

NBC, gone anyway soon, had a weird graphical choice. When a driver was using his hybrid boost, they denoted it in red. When a driver re-charged, it was in green. Would think it would be the other way around, but whatever.

 

Yeah, at least it was the two best young drivers in the series but Palou had no chance of making a pass. He did try the divebomb on the last corner but wasn't close enough. Too bad Canapino and Simpson didn't pull to the side with five to go just to give the leaders clear track.

 

Simpson drives for Ganassi and wasn't going to move over to let O'Ward drive away from Palou, another Ganassi driver.

 

Didn’t get a chance to post sooner, but I was glad to see Hamilton back on the top step at Silverstone last weekend. Great weekend for Mercedes.

Red Bull isn’t in any danger this season, but it seems Merc and McLaren have finally closed the gap to where they don’t have pray for a wreck to give them a shot at beating Verstappen.

 

NBC has, understandably, pre-empted coverage of the first Iowa race due to the Trump shooting.

I get frustrated with the local affiliate preempting IndyCar too much. This one is reasonable, but it jacked up my DVRing of the race. I record most and watch later when my youngun, who lives Pato O'Ward, can watch with me.

 

Kirk Ferentz gave the command, so you'll never guess what happened when people started trying to pass:

 

Not a bad race. Kinda what Iowa usually is in my opinion. Pretty good. Generally entertaining, but not amazing either.

It was fun to see Scotty Mac get his first oval. Hard to not like that guy. Kiddo will be devastated Pato "only" took second and we'll have to talk about the importance of getting a podium over winning now that he's in the championship hunt.

I was planning to watch it in the morning, but it was a nice distraction from everything else happening tonight.

 

I imagine it's been a late night for the Juncos mechanics, having to fix two wrecked cars when Malukis made a rookie mistake. That turnaround from 8 p.m. to noon for the second race has to be a nightmare for anyone caught up in the melee.

For a one-groove track, Ferrucci was sure passing cars where angels fear to tread, especially after getting nailed with a stop-and-go. I like the idea behind "stay in line" in an effort to keep drivers from divebombing restarts but if IndyCar enforces it as strictly as it did last night, the leader can't brake-check the field. Will Power had nowhere to go there at the end and caused a three-car accident that didn't need to happen.

The normally rock-solid Palou once again had a pit issue, but this time he compounded it by wrecking himself. Just self-inflicted, which is so rare for him.

They still need to push the start of that race back an hour and let the sun get behind the grandstands. I have no idea how any of the drivers could see a thing at 170 mph with the setting sun heading into 3 and 4.

And brutal luck for the series, having a scheduled prime-time network race moved to Peacock because of the goings on in Pennsylvania. I imagine tens of hundreds of fans tuned in.

 

Didn't hear what happened to Rossi to cause that crazy chain reaction. I can't imagine being Sting Ray Robb and suddenly getting launched on my head. Plus, Kirkwood stuck under Carpenter's wheel couldn't have been a pleasant experience.

 

That crash was incredible, and I agree 100 percent with @playthrough's comments about the cockpits, halos, etc. That could've been a multiple fatality wreck without them.