Normally a race weekend for the IndyCar series provides us with plenty of interesting stories to enjoy. Some are feel-good stories, others curious and sometimes there’s one with a driver cast in the role of villain. With a double-header in Houston this past weekend, we doubled our story pleasure and featured all of those plot twists.
Drivers were worried about the temperatures in Houston headed into the weekend. Turns out it wasn’t the heat but the humidity that caused problems with rain just prior to Race 1. That sent cars and other things sideways. Carnage and controversy were the order of the day with a timed race, which resulted in series rookie Carlos Huertas scoring his first victory.
Any last-lap challenge to Huerta’s victory set up by a caution never occurred because Graham Rahal had another brain cramp and ran into the back of Tony Kanaan. Of course, he didn’t try to hit him, but Rahal had also ran into the back of Justin Wilson at Long Beach earlier this year, so another miserable year for this team continues. The only bright spot so far this season was a second-place result in Detroit. Following a penalty issued for the contact this weekend, Rahal was classified 11th in the results. That’s his best finish outside of Detroit.
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing has changed engineering personnel and has big sponsorship money so the team isn’t lacking for anything. It’s time to ask the question: is the problem with the driver?
The other issue that got a lot of attention in Race 1 was blocking. Marco Andretti was ruled to have held up leader Takuma Sato so that his Andretti Autosport teammate James Hinchcliffe — who was running second — could close the gap on Sato. Andretti was penalized during the race for the infraction, then subsequently fined and put on probation after the event.
This is the just the latest ruling by officials that has pointed the focus on race control. Not because of the ruling, which appears to be correct, but in how the penalties and rules are implemented. Too often it seems like IndyCar is trying to interpret the rulebook instead of applying it.
The second half of the double-header also had feel-good stories with a smaller team scoring the top-two results. Simon Pagenaud of Schmidt Peterson won his second race of the year and rookie teammate Mikhail Aleshin grabbed his best result of the year as runner-up.
Another rookie claimed his first podium result in the series as well. Bryan Herta Racing driver Jack Hawksworth, who’s shown brilliant speed all year, came home in third.
The victory by Pagenaud puts him in the thick of the championship hunt. The overall race remained as close as it is mostly because of the difficulty leader Will Power had over the weekend with finishes of 11th and 14th. Neither Helio Castroneves nor Ryan Hunter-Reay had particularly strong weekend results as well.
It’s a shame we have to spend so much time addressing the flares like the rules and penalties in IndyCar instead of the great stories of small-team victories and rookie success from the weekend in Houston, plus the tight championship battle that should go right down to the wire.