Pruett’s cooldown lap: Indy road course

From beating on his teammates at Nashville to beating up the field at Indianapolis, we just witnessed a classic Will Power turnaround at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. The Team Penske veteran went from being placed on a week-long timeout by The Captain to earning the redemption required to stay in Roger Penske’s good graces. And despite his long tenure in the series, Power’s spirited performance was reminiscent of the dominant drives that marked the earlier stages of his career.

Once he got clear of polesitter Pato O’Ward, Power fell into a familiar place, leading 56 of the 69 laps remaining; only Andretti Autosport’s please-don’t-lap-me entry driven by James Hinchcliffe slowed his march to victory lane.

What was the takeaway from the 40-year-old’s output at Indy? Never underestimate the fire that resides within the Australian. Despite all of the eccentricities that fill the man’s social media timelines, the same burning desire -- more of a raging need to win -- has not waned.

Yes, he’s always been prone to making a few too many gaffes, but his sheer intensity and skills are just as sharp and cutting today as they were in Champ Car and those early days as a Penske stand-in. A lack of consistency has been the bane of Power’s time in IndyCar; he improved from P11 to P9 in the standings with the road course win, but hopes of earning a second title set sail months ago.

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Turning his first win of the season into a hot streak over the last four races would prime Power and the No. 12 Chevy for another run at the championship when the series reconvenes in 2022, and with his history, wins tend to come in clusters. It might not be back-to-back victories, but Power usually adds a second or third win once he has a breakthrough.

And if you’re points leader Alex Palou, cheering for Power to go on a race-winning rampage might not be the worst thing on the days where the No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda is unable to secure victories at Gateway, Portland, Laguna Seca, or Long Beach.

If you can't stand the heat…

The second major takeaway from Indy was how close Alex Palou came to staking a greater claim on the championship. Prior to his Honda engine’s expiration, Palou was in a happy place as those holding the most valuable positions weren’t in the championship hunt. Capturing a third win on the season would have been great, but in the absence of glory, having Power, Romain Grosjean, and Colton Herta preventing Pato O’Ward -- his main contender -- from earning a big points haul was the next-best option.

With engine issues from the start of the race, Palou was forced to run a lean fuel mixture which robbed power and possibly contributed to the unintended mangling of internal components. Nonetheless, the Spaniard charged up to P6 by lap 36, directly behind O’Ward, and by lap 61, he took P4 from the Arrow McLaren SP driver and was on pace to extend his championship lead. He was carving into Grosjean’s gap when it all went sideways on lap 68.

Up from a 42-point lead over O’Ward to 50 prior to the kerblammo, Palou is left sitting on a tiny 21-point margin as World Wide Technology Raceway beckons. And is there a better driver in the field (not named Scott Dixon) to deal with that pressure?

Palou took a painful blow to his title aspirations in stride. IMS Photo

That’s the real takeaway here. O’Ward was on pole, drove off in the first stint, was reeled in by Power and others in the second, and with his main title protagonist in sight, Palou dialed up the aggression, tracked him down, got him, and then went after Grosjean for P3. And when it was all lost and he was left with P27 -- worst finish of the year -- Palou took it in stride.

Within CGR, Palou’s hailed as a 24-year-old with the same kind of poise and composure that Dixon has used to such devastating effect. Seeing a 42-point lead cut in half would send some drivers off the deep end, but not Palou.

As much as it might seem like the right time to tap into his inner spirit animal (the gorilla, for those who don’t know) and go wild at WWTR to recoup his points loss, look for Palou’s exceptional maturity to lead the way. He’s built to absorb pressure and deflect desperation. Even so, how will he respond to all-out attacks from O’Ward, Dixon, Josef Newgarden, and Marcus Ericsson as they try to wrest P1 from his hands? That’s the fascinating subplot that awaits us a few days from now under the lights at WWTR.

Respect

A quick note that after a few years of modest results and lowered expectations, Dale Coyne Racing deserves more respect for becoming a legitimate threat almost everywhere it goes with Romain Grosjean in the No. 51 Honda.

Romain Grosjean and his Dale Coyne Racing with RWR Honda were on great form again at Indy. Barry Cantrell/Motorsport Images

The partnership with Rick Ware Racing has flourished, and thanks to the natural talents of Grosjean and his race engineer Olivier Boisson, there’s every reason to expect the DCRwRWR entry to be near the front in qualifying and again at the end of races. Despite missing out on three ovals -- with a combined 200-plus points on offer -- Coyne, Ware, Grosjean, and Boisson have the No. 51 Honda holding P15 in the championship.

On its own, P15 is meaningless without context applied: A team with fewer dollars and overall resources than all but one or two of its rivals sits directly in front of two Andretti Autosport drivers and others from larger organizations who didn’t miss three races. Better still, Grosjean is only eight points out of overtaking Meyer Shank Racing’s Jack Harvey and Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin in the standings. Andretti’s Alexander Rossi is farther up the road -- 40 points -- in P12, but it’s not an insurmountable deficit to overcome.

All while he’s learning every track, finding the right setups, and preparing to do his first oval race. If Grosjean and Boisson have done this within a tight budget, imagine how the year would have gone in a resource-rich environment. Depending on how negotiations pan out, there might not be a need to imagine in 2022.

Strategery

It was a weekend where Arrow McLaren SP added another entry to its ledger on how competitive the organization has become. O’Ward’s pole-winning lap was truly impressive, and while opening the race on Firestone’s faster red-banded alternate tires, he built a 3.6-second lead over eventual winner Will Power from Team Penske before stopping and switching to the slower primary tires.

It’s here where the race was set on a different path as O’Ward was the only front-running driver to open on alternates. A quick look at the top five at the checkered flag showed the top four -- Power, Grosjean, Herta, and Alexander Rossi -- all started on primaries, and with their switch to alternates for the second stint, O’Ward’s early gap was erased and turned into a deficit. It worked for Graham Rahal, who used the sequence of alternates-primaries-alternates-alternates to good effect as he moved from P16 to P7, but for O’Ward, it was the one call that proved to be out of sync with his closest contenders.

Miller time

What a delight to see our man Robin Miller receiving all the love and adoration he’s due from a sport that’s been propelled, flamed, healed, and championed through his written and spoken words for longer than any of the drivers in the 2021 championship have been alive.

There’s no doubt that Miller’s enraged just as many fans and racers as he’s enthralled, and both were by design. Many think they know the true Miller and refuse to accept that he’s anything other than a crotchety old crank, but that’s just a sign of how the public persona and the real person differ.

He was given bear hugs by the all-time greats last weekend, and cherished by the modern greats of NASCAR and IndyCar who wanted to pay their respects to the reporter whose work and personality has powered the sport like the best engine the sport has known.

Collectively, we who work in the sport do a wonderful job of honoring legends when their time is short, or after it’s too late and they’ve been lost. Recently, a Robin Miller, or Bob Jenkins, or a few others who’ve been fighting grim realities have been lavished with praise and awards. But it’s here, collectively, where we’re failing those like a Miller, or like a Jenkins, who should have been inducted, embraced, and heralded for their contributions before illness and advancing age accelerated the process.

Who are the veteran or retired drivers, owners, managers, designers, mechanics, engineers, reporters, broadcasters, producers, marketers, and other invaluable figures who’ve powered our sport for decades who deserve their nominations, awards, banquets, and gatherings while they’re still here, still healthy, and have more than a few months -- or maybe a few years -- to bask in the recognition they’ve earned?

Mr. Invisible

Helio Castroneves, come on down and get your award for being the driver at the race who was never really in the race.

Bizarre stat: From his last four races on the IMS road course, the four-time Indy 500 winner has finished P21, P20, P21 and P21. His teammate Jack Harvey, the number one lover of the IMS circuit, was P6.

Top debut

RC Enerson figured it had been 27 months since his last outing on Firestone’s primary tires in qualifying. As expected, the seriously talented Florida native left some speed on the table when it came time to set his best laps in time trials, and even with the red-tire rust, the tiniest team in IndyCar -- which failed to qualify for the Indy 500 -- managed to out-run three other drivers and earn P25 in the field of 28.

No bucks, no Buck Rogers? RC Enerson and Top Gun Racing beg to differ. Motorsport Images

Top (Freakin’) Gun Racing put an entry from Dale Coyne Racing, A.J. Foyt Racing, and the defending series champion Scott Dixon (penalized for spinning and losing his best laps) from Chip Ganassi Racing behind his No. 75 T(F)GR Chevy.

However impressed people were with Christian Lundgaard qualifying fourth on his IndyCar debut, I’m not sure it was a bigger achievement than what Enerson and a team working with a marginal Indy Pro 2000 budget delivered on Saturday. By every metric, T(F)GR should have been dead last in every session and miles behind the slowest entry from one of the established teams. But they weren’t.

An early mechanical problem in the race where the throttle remained partially open when he was off the throttle ruined any chance of Enerson coming home with a decent finish. T(F)GR had a bunch of small sponsors -- even some rabid IndyCar fans who joined together -- to buy $1500 sponsorship sections on the car, which helped make the entry possible. I hope they enjoyed the ride and that if the opportunity presents itself, the No. 75 Chevy returns to action with more crowd-funded support for Enerson to embarrass those who achieve less with more.

Points

Other than O’Ward’s aforementioned cut into Palou’s comfort zone, not much changed at Indy in terms of the five main title protagonists. The rest of the top five are closer to the leader, but only O’Ward and Dixon are close enough to take P1 from Palou this weekend with 50 points on offer for the win, and four bonus points available as well.

P1: Alex Palou (+42 points to second before Indy, +21 to second entering this weekend’s WWTR race)

P2: Pato O’Ward (-42 before, closed to -21, rose one spot)

P3: Scott Dixon (-42 before, closed to -34, fell one spot)

P4: Josef Newgarden (-75 before, closed to -55)

P5: Marcus Ericsson (-79 before, closed to -62)

Leader Circle

We’ll do a proper dive into the war for the final $1 million contract for 2022 after WWTR, but just know that the battle for P22 is now down to four points with the No. 48 CGR Honda on the bubble with 151 points and the No. 7 AMSP Chevy right there in P23 at 147 points. Keep an eye on Tony Kanaan this weekend in the No. 48 and Felix Rosenqvist in the No. 7 as they wrestle over a powerful payday for their team owners.

Misc.

• So, that Lundgaard’s pretty good, yeah? Bobby Rahal said we won’t see Christian Lundgaard again this season, even though the Dane does have the Laguna Seca weekend open on his calendar. But with European races on both sides of the penultimate IndyCar event, the back-and-forth with travel was deemed to be a bit too much. His son also confirmed he and the RLL team did not stop to eat gas station sushi before the race. Turns out their food poisoning was introduced through something supplied by the caterer feeding the team for the weekend.

Lundgaard's precocious form was just one of the strong points for RLL. Motorsport Images

• Typical Graham story at Indy where he started P16, passed new teammate Lundgaard and led the team home in P7. He’s aching for a win, and while chasing it, Rahal’s become an overtaking machine.

• Last RLL note: Santino Ferrucci was impressive in most of his outings with the No. 45 Honda. Lundgaard was a rocket on his debut in the car as well. Its race engineer, former Champ Car and IndyCar engineer Brandon Fry, who joined Rahal a few years ago as technical director of their BMW IMSA GT program, deserves some credit for the complementary pace both drivers produced.

• I think we can put the Andretti Autosport slump to rest. All four drivers, led by Colton Herta, have been on our near the podium in recent races and, finally, there’s no need to ask what they’re missing in the speed department. Granted, one win from 48 combined opportunities across the four full-time cars might suggest that the last kernels of competitiveness are lacking, but if one or more of the four aren’t hovering inside the top five, it would be an oddity right now. That wasn’t the case for most of the season.

• Scott McLaughlin’s No. 3 Carshop.com Chevy was a vision of beauty. Among the nicest I’ve seen this season. Wish I could say the same for what’s become a humbling rookie campaign. From the first five races of 2021, he earned three top 10s, including a podium, and since then, it’s seven straight outside the top 10 with four of those being P20 or worse. Taking flight and later being penalized for contact at Turn 4 left the Supercars champ with his worst result of the year -- 23rd -- as teammate Will Power came home P1. Here’s to hoping the talented Kiwi can stem the tide of poor finishes over the final rounds.

• Solid weekend for Jimmie Johnson. His racing coach Scott Pruett, who stayed connected to the No. 48 timing stand during the race by using Discord in Monterey, told me they saw a breakthrough at Nashville in his driving -- despite the crashes and mistakes -- and in Johnson’s return to a familiar track at IMS, we saw a glimpse of what to expect next year.

• Conor Daly was stout once again on the road course, out-qualifying his teammate Rinus VeeKay and putting on an entertaining scrap with Penske’s Simon Pagenaud. The only outlier for the Ed Carpenter Racing team was how it went from front-running pace in May to being on the outside looking in at the second Indy GP.

• VeeKay’s been on a strange slide with recent finishes of P18, P16, P24 and P24.

• Because I’m a simple man, whenever I heard Lundgaard’s name, my brain defaulted to the brilliant movie "Fargo" and the beleaguered car salesman (who hired hitmen to kidnap his wife) Jerry Lundegaard, played by William H. Macy.

https://twitter.com/GeitnerSimmons/status/1426714228845649921?s=20

• A rumor circulated in Monterey about the Long Beach Grand Prix being cancelled. I called LBGP boss Jim Michaelian on Monday to inquire and he said there’s zero truth to it, and the organizers look forward to hosting the event as scheduled.