PRUETT: The Year of Surprises

When I think back to the 2018 season in the future, I’ll remember it as a time where all manner of unexpected outcomes ruled our worlds of open-wheel and sports car racing.

Some years go down as rather boring affairs in racing, and on rare occasion, most of the easy predictions, as we just witnessed, turn out wrong. I love those years.

IndyCar

Robert Wickens, the Canadian flash, is the first and biggest surprise. When 2018 comes to mind, Wickens is atop the list; winning the St. Petersburg pole on his IndyCar debut, nearly winning the race almost happened until Alexander Rossi introduced him to the Chrome Horn...the series’ favorites were put on notice from the opening round, and it was pure magic.

Robert Wickens was an instant contender in his debut IndyCar season, winning the season's first pole at St. Petersburg. (Image by Levitt/LAT)

He was in position to win his second race -- which doubled as his first oval -- at Phoenix until a blown strategy call took that opportunity away. How about eight finishes inside the top six, including a fine ninth on his Indy 500 debut, during Wickens’ abbreviated rookie season? Out of nowhere, he became the best show in town. Only the cruel ending at Pocono was capable of stalling Wickens’ rise.

And what have we received from Robert during his daily fight to reclaim his former life as an elite driver of race cars? An almighty inspiration. His tears in rehabilitation have become our tears. His regular triumphs and failures to regain the use of his legs have also served to remind some of us that whatever frustrations or setbacks we face in our lives, he’s staring at a steeper climb to overcome his own.

Few drivers transcend the sport by touching something deeper inside of us, and like Alex Zanardi, Wickens has become an inspiration in ways he never imagined, but has embraced with humility. All this from someone we barely knew nine months ago.

Image by Marshall Pruett

Will Power’s Indy 500 win wasn’t the unexpected part; it’s the personality who emerged from Victory Lane. Power’s raging passion, expressed on the cool-down lap in his barking ‘Respect me, mother-effer’ quote to nobody in particular, and again with his wild eyes and screams of joy and relief while sitting in the cockpit, to all of the post-race interviews…the real Will Power finally emerged.

Some fans were turned off by the big explosion of personality from Power; he’d spent the past decade fitting nicely into a more demure zone in the media, but for those who know the Australian, the Indy 500 revealed his true self. If we’re lucky, the playful, engaging, high-energy character from Indy will make more frequent appearances going forward.

Scott Dixon has been a pre-season title favorite for most of his career. The same was true when 2018 arrived, but if we’re honest, it was a trio of Penske drivers and half the Andretti squad that looked like the clear bets to win the championship. Without the luxury of a stout teammate to share the development load, Dixon entered the season as a one-man band against imposing multi-car teams. And yet, with the odds far from being in his favor, he banked useful points through the Indy 500 to keep himself in the hunt, then went on a points-scoring rampage to close the year.

Out of the 11 races that followed Indy, Dixon finished inside the top five in all but one event. Penske, Andretti, and the rest of his rivals were powerless as his fifth title was secured.

Scott Dixon (behind Ed Jones' No. 10 Chevy) found himself in the middle of this wreck at Portland, but miraculously emerged relatively unscathed. (Image by LePage/LAT)

And if we’re talking about the truly unexpected, who will forget Portland where, in one of the great ‘hand of God’ moments, his Chip Ganassi Racing Honda was all but unharmed in the huge melee that broke out at the start. Driving off from the multi-car pileup, restarting at the back of the field, and motoring his way to fifth at the penultimate round -- ahead of Rossi, his main title rival -- is one of the better forms of proof that miracles do indeed exist.

Young Patricio O’Ward can also stake his claim as one of the most unexpected stories to emerge from 2018. A rookie alongside sophomore Indy Lights driver Colton Herta at Andretti Autosport, O’Ward would have been an easy pick to place third in the standings behind Herta and third-year veteran Santiago Urrutia. Well, that didn’t happen -- not by a long shot.

Despite his relative inexperience, O’Ward took a full 2017 season in IMSA’s Prototype Challenge class where he and the Performance Tech team won every race bar one, used the heavy sports car mileage to accelerate his experience, and promptly mopped the floor with his Lights rivals.

Nine wins from 17 rounds, including three of the first four and four of the final five, sent a powerful message that this teenager from Mexico was something truly special. As if confirmation was needed, he qualified inside the Firestone Fast Six at Sonoma on his IndyCar debut, started fifth, made some mistakes in the race, and recovered to finish ninth. Other than Pato, and maybe his family, nobody saw this coming. We won’t make that mistake again.

Image by Dole/LAT

IMSA

CORE autosport owner Jon Bennett flirted with the idea of stepping up from the pro-am PC class to IMSA’s top-tier Prototype category for a few years, but he'd choose PC and the comfort of being competitive and winning the title in the series’ second-class prototype home. With PC being phased out at the end of 2017, CORE’s move to Prototype with a spec LMP2 ORECA 07-Gibson was more a necessity than an artfully timed jump into the deep against factory DPis and fellow P2 privateers. Now we're left wondering how the Prototype landscape would look if CORE entered the mix years ago, and how the roster of recent champions might have a different look.

Once there, the outfit almost knocked down the entire DPi field and entered the season finale at Petit Le Mans as a legitimate contender to win the Prototype title. All of this as a brand-new entrant in the class while facing the manufacturer-infused efforts from Acura, Cadillac, Mazda, and ESM’s Nissans. One P2 team, fresh to that top-tier competition and factory might, came within four points of toppling the establishment.

It might sound like a well-worn expression, but it’s deserved: IMSA’s David had all of Prototype’s Goliaths on the ropes in its first yearlong showdown. If there was a more impressive feat in sports car racing last season, I didn’t see it. Only the championship-winning Action Express Racing Cadillac DPi-V.R finished ahead of CORE; that’s two other Cadillacs, both Acuras, both Mazdas, and both Nissans that came up short against the pro-am pairing of Colin Braun and Bennett, plus endurance drivers Romain Dumas and Loic Duval.

Of all the outlandish statements one might have made on January 1, 2018, suggesting CORE would clobber all but one Prototype team would have warranted a drug test. CORE owns a special place, right next to Wickens, as the unexpected standout performers of the years.

An honorable mention goes to JDC-Miller Motorsports and its GAINSCO-sponsored No. 99 Red Dragon that kicked off the privateer P2 win party at Watkins Glen. CORE took the baton and added two more wins, but it was the superb drive by Stephen Simpson, Misha Goikhberg, and Chris Miller to end what appeared to be an unstoppable rout by the DPi teams.

Image by Abbott/LAT

Take a bow, Corvette Racing, for achieving one of the rarest feats in the sport by winning the GT Le Mans Drivers’ championship without the victorious duo of Antonio Garcia and Jan Magnussen reaching the top step of the podium. Ford’s Ryan Briscoe and Richard Westbrook won the big opener at Daytona and captured two more wins in their GT, and yet, it was the Spanish Superman and Mags who ruled GTLM through their alarming consistency.

It was also as if they decided to take a page from Scott Dixon’s Portland scare when Garcia hit the throttle exiting the Road Atlanta pits and hooked hard right into the wall. All they needed to do was make laps at the finale and the title was theirs, but a brief error -- by a driver who doesn’t make mistakes -- saw the GTLM drama spike. Corvette Racing’s crew fixed the C7.R’s crumpled nose and substructures in record time, got the old battle axe back on track, and they turned heartbreak into another crown for General Motors. The winless title…another ending that defied prediction.

Katherine Legge, Michael Shank and Mario Farnbacher celebrate a win at Belle Isle. (Image by Levitt/LAT)

Katherine Legge became a force of nature as she took Paul Miller Racing down to the wire in GT Daytona. Her story will be told for many years: Signed to a part-time deal for Meyer Shank Racing’s second Acura NSX GT3 effort, the Briton’s car was only intended to hit the early endurance rounds due to a funding shortfall.

Earning second place to start the championship at the Rolex 24 At Daytona meant Legge’s car went into 12 hours of racing at Sebring with second in the standings. Although Sebring wasn’t a friendly event for Legge and her teammates, a second at Mid-Ohio and a win at Detroit meant MSR was in the fight for the GTD title…with its part-time car. Additional money was found to keep the train rolling to Watkins Glen where another second place made it a necessity to continue pushing.

Using a rotating cast of co-drivers, Legge kept bringing the heat and she added to her title chances by earning a third at VIR and a big win in Monterey. She and the MSR team kept the hammer down to grab second at Petit Le Mans, but the steady work by Paul Miller Racing’s Bryan Sellers, Madison Snow, and Corey Lewis meant Legge’s championship bid fell five points shy of producing an unfathomable upset.

Bundled together with CORE, IMSA’s greatest plot lines from 2018 came with the underdogs who kept us in a steady state of rewriting the anticipated results to suit their defiant performances.

Image by Galstad/LAT

MISCELLANEOUS

Laguna Seca went from having its headstone engraved to executing a genuinely impressive turnaround, thanks to Monterey County altering its approach and treating the beloved road course as a national treasure --something to protect, rather than treating it like an ATM with a few $20 bills left to offer.

Going from the brink of failure to rebirth with a revitalized steward in SCRAMP, its one and only management team since the circuit launched in 1957, to funding a long overdue makeover for the property has been met with a huge response. IndyCar is returning, Superbikes are headed back; Porsche held its glorious Rennsport Reunion in September, IMSA is the featured brand for next year’s Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion, and in almost every regard, Laguna’s fading light has started to shine. New investments from WeatherTech and Lexus have also helped to save this road racing icon. I never imagined Laguna would come so far in such a short amount of time.

It might be easier for Roger Penske to count the major trophies he didn’t earn in 2018. It started with winning the Indy 500, continued with the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup, and closed with the coveted Australian Supercar title. Hard to say whether Acura Team Penske will be able to take home IMSA’s Prototype championship in 2019 or if Team Penske will score the IndyCar Series drivers’ crown, but if so, that would be a mighty fine haul over a two-year span.

IndyCar championship-winning engineer Kate Gundlach (Image by Marshall Pruett)

The rise of initiatives for women in motor racing. Take Katie Hargitt’s Fuel The Female program, Jackie Heinricher’s all-female IMSA GTD team with MSR, Acura, and Caterpillar, Jim Glickenhaus and Aurora Strauss partnering to bring her Girls With Drive program into his auto manufacturing/racing business, Bell Racing Helmets USA establishing its Women in Motorsports Mentor Program, and all of the good work being done directly by the likes of Firestone chief race tire engineer Cara Adams, championship-winning Chip Ganassi Racing engineer Kate Gundlach, and more motivated women who want to make our sport a more inclusive and representative place and it's fair to say 2018 rocked. As the world outside of racing evolves, it was great to see our demographic inside the sport take some important steps forward. Standing still, as these women demonstrated, is no longer tolerable.

The return to Portland International Raceway was a feel-good story for IndyCar, and in more ways than the big crowds and general embrace by Oregonians. Comments sections and social media posts can, at times, paint an ugly picture of the average racing fan. A letter recently shared by PIR, received from a devout fan of the sport who gave us permission to use the letter (but asked to remain private), gave me chills as I was reminded how something as simple as a motor race can cause unexpected reactions.

“I just wanted to let anyone there know how much it means to me, and others I’m sure, to see PIR thriving again. Outside of it being great in general, I’ve got a little story.

“My father took me to a couple CART races at PIR in the late '90s, as well as every historic racing event each year from the day I was born. From `95 to 2015, he took me to absolutely every race at PIR, even if it meant leaving a family reunion in another state. PIR was an incredible part of our lives. Sadly, around 2014 he developed dementia and over the next few years became fully incapacitated. For the first couple years, I took him along with me to the historic races, myself now the adult and him seemingly the child. After a few years he could no longer go, and I had to leave him behind.

“This brings us to this past fall, when IndyCar and Pirelli World Challenge came to Portland. I went to both races and had the time of my life. Along the way I took pictures and videos. The next time I visited him, about a month ago, I had these pictures with me. For the last year, as I said, he hasn’t responded to anything; any pictures we showed him were met with a blank stare. But when I pulled out my phone and started showing him all the pictures, and especially the videos, of IndyCars streaking across PIR, he reacted.

Image by Abbott/LAT

“He held the phone and paid clear attention to every picture. Despite not being able to respond to his own children or say his own name, he remembered PIR. It’s clear that if there is a single memory still alive inside him it’s of PIR. For the first time in a couple years, he showed a smile. That’s pretty much it, I felt you should know the role PIR has played in at least one man’s life and the joy it’s brought me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for bringing Portland back to the world of racing.”

Racing has its problems -- it always has -- but its power to bring positivity certainly outweighs whatever negativity some choose to spread.

The highest profile racer in all of the land? We all would have been safe at the start of 2018 to nominate Dale Earnhardt Jr., or maybe Danica Patrick, as the driver to command more headlines from coast-to-coast than the rest. I’d like to submit occasional endurance racer Michael Avenatti, whose name and work representing Stormy Daniels has become daily fodder on cable news outlets, as the unexpected leader in this regard. It’s been a few years since he was active behind the wheel, but there’s a good reason: He’s clearly been busy, as evidenced by the tens of thousands of words spoken by Avenatti or written about him on a routine basis.

Sadly, all of the unexpected elements from 2018 did not warm the heart.

Image by IndyCar

The year began with a crushing blow as we lost Dan Gurney on January 14 and the hits kept coming. By the end of December, we’d have said our farewells to Mari Hulman George, Don Panoz, David Pearson, Dave Miraj, Dr. Henry Bock, Shelley Unser, Dee Ann Andretti, John Miles, James Hylton, and more heroes and friends -- some too soon, and others at the end of long lives -- as our sport was diminished by each goodbye.

Collectively, we wrote obituaries at an unwelcome rate, and in many cases, the departed were pillars of our sport. Count me among those who hope 2019 comes with less sorrow.

Derek Daly reminded us that stupidity knows no bounds after he was fired from a TV stations where they celebrated his 30th anniversary as a commentator in May...for words that were falsely attributed to his name. He would admit to grave ignorance in using a racial slur in a different context -- one wholly unrelated to the TV station -- which RACER’s Robin Miller corrected moments after hearing it in the 1980s. Despite an army of supporters, Daly’s fickle employers showed no interest in correcting their mistake.

And if that wasn’t dumb enough, the tidal wave of corporate fear engulfed his son Conor, whose work to sign a pharmaceutical company to sponsor his NASCAR Xfinity debut at Road America was met with the removal of all the company’s branding from the car. The proverbial sins of the father, which were falsely attributed to that father, and purportedly took place prior to Conor’s birth, reached into 2018 and made us ask if common sense had been abandoned.

Image by IndyCar

James Hinchcliffe failed to qualify for the Indy 500. Having been there to witness it up close, it continues to feel like an alternate ending to a script that should not have been written. The 2016 Indy 500 polesitter, a natural pick for Indy’s Fast Nine, was in trouble from the outset and as desperation began to set in, judgment calls on when to throw The Mayor back into the qualifying line only increased the exasperation on pit lane. One of IndyCar’s biggest names, driving for one of the most popular teams, left on the sidelines while Juncos Racing, Carlin Racing, and Harding Racing -- relative newcomers and minnows -- made the show. Wow.

It’s outside my normal purview, but spare a thought for the now-former Furniture Row NASCAR team. There are a lot of seats at the top of my ‘unexpected’ list, and to think Furniture Row could go from NASCAR champs in 2017 to out of the sport due to a lack of sponsorship by the end of 2018 is still a bewildering concept.

I’ll close on two personal items that weren’t particularly awesome, but turned towards happier times as the year drew to a close. Our man Robin Miller has been through the wars since September of 2017, went through somewhat easy rounds of radiation, chemotherapy, and made his return to covering the sport he loves as the IndyCar season began. He’d get hit with a similar cancer-ridding routine again after the championship concluded, and this time, the processes were pure hell.

He’s back, and bald, and giving us our usual rations of hell which, and he’ll hate me for saying it, but it makes a lot of us on the inside rather happy. If he isn’t telling us to go f*** ourselves or threatening some form of bodily harm we know he’s incapable of delivering, the world just isn’t right. And that also goes for his breaking news pieces, the story telling, and even the videos he occasionally files from home. Minus Miller, racing isn’t quite as fun.

Health concerns also hit home with my wife. The future is looking brighter every day, and knowing how many of you took time to offer encouragement, they were received and made an honest difference.

Peering around the corner, who knows what the new season will hold for us. Considering all the surprises we were just given, I can’t wait to see what the New Year has in store for us.