Welcome to the 2024 NTT IndyCar Series season opener at World Wide Technology Raceway.
Oh wait, that’s not right.
Sure enough, the 2024 season has been well underway since the opening round at St. Petersburg. But, with the Summer Olympics forcing a hiatus of 27 days in between races, the gap has made much of the year a distant memory, lost in the fog of life.
It’s like a whole new championship run has commenced, but that’s not the case. Everything in 2024 carries over to this weekend for the Bommarito Automotive Group 500, which returns to a Saturday night clash under the lights.
Let the 2024 season begin, or resume.
Last Year
Another race for Scott Dixon’s growing scrapbook of fuel mileage wins, he took the victory in last year’s running of the Bommarito 500. While he didn’t have the best car – shocker – he was able to go longer between stops and then leap frog both front runners Pato O’Ward and Josef Newgarden, the latter of whom later crashed while trying to work his way back to the front.
Pit strategy won both Iowa races, so the way Dixon won last year will be an over-analyzed data set for Gateway. I guarantee it.
The Racing Product
There’s no hiding it but the biggest concern rolling into the weekend will be the racing the series puts on the 1.25 mile oval. The prior oval at Iowa Speedway was a bust, the first with the hybrid unit. While there isn’t one reason to point at that impacted the quality of racing in Iowa, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that the once thrilling shows in corn country were impacted by the weight of the hybrids and a recent, Frankenstein-like repave in the turns.
Well, Gateway will have no such repave problem. If the racing is processional, and drivers vent that its harder to overtake than ever – a place not really known for its quantity of passing to begin with – then IndyCar can’t hide from the elephant in the room any longer.
Testing at the track outside St. Louis, Missouri, held on Aug. 2, wasn’t promising as far as what’s in store this weekend. Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood‘s revelation that the team focused on qualifying setup during a rare test session means the upcoming race will be about track position. From the sounds of it, the sleek IndyCars are going to have as tough of a time to overtake as they did at Iowa.
Later, when Jack Harvey talked to media, including Frontstretch, on Thursday (Aug. 15), he offered similar thoughts, but held back on wholeheartedly confirming this feeling until he had spent time on-track.
All of this can be summed up by one monumentally descriptive word.
Bummer.
While this possibility isn’t the end of the world, it does have the feeling of cold water being thrown on you by an evil twin, because if a trend is brewing, then the show at Iowa, mixed with drivers; early predictions doesn’t make things sound appealing for a great television show under the lights. The series needs eyeballs at every race, and ovals are in theory supposed to be the best product put on this planet as far as racing goes.
With the season firing up its V6 twin turbo engines for the run to the Astor Cup trophy, the last thing they need is a parade at one of the most reliable partner tracks in the series.
Speaking of Track Position
Championship leader Alex Palou will be gnawing on the term track position leading up to Saturday’s race. The man atop the points with a 49-point lead is facing a nine-place grid penalty for an unapproved engine change. He will need to hit the track fast to get the coveted pole position to put himself in the best position to bounce back from the penalty.
Unfortunately for Palou, Gateway is one of his worst tracks, if not his worst outright. While he does have two top tens there, it shows he still is not quite there in grabbing the one trophy missing on his mantle in his casa, which is one from an oval win. He was very close at Iowa Race 2, until Will Power snookered him at the end during the waning stages.
With the penalty forthcoming, it seems like race strategy is going to be his best hope to get the victory.
Regain A Crown
IndyCar’s proclaimed oval-king Newgarden didn’t have the results expected of him at Iowa, but as already detailed, that was not a competitive feature. He still wound up on the podium for Race 1, and the next day, seventh. Heading into St. Louis this weekend, he’s on a floundering row boat, taking on water. His 2024 season has been dismal compared to his prior efforts. To be sure, there have been six races where he wasn’t running at the finish, not to mention the St. Pete disqualification.
The best he can hope for is visiting victory lane at least once in the five remaining races to come away with something before the season ends. Or not, and he can still claim to be a two-time Indy 500 champion. That works too.
Rest of the Field
Welcome back to Conor Daly. The super-sub returns, taking over for the rest of the year in the No. 78 after Agustin Canapino and Juncos Hollinger Racing decided to go separate ways. This is probably his second-best track. His four top 10s, including a fifth in 2017, are the most he has at any circuit outside of Indianapolis.
Colton Herta is coming off a win at the most recent IndyCar race at Toronto. Do you remember that? I had to look it up, it’s been that long. If he wins at Gateway, that will be two in a row. In the words of the famous manager Lou Brown for the then-Cleveland Indians during the Rachel Phelps era, “that’s called a winning streak.”
The one-race stint on the disabled list for Alexander Rossi is over. After injuring his thumb in a crash in the lead up to the Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto, the American was sidelined to have surgery to fix it. Well, thanks to Simone Biles’ and Katie Ledecky’s absolute butt-whooping of the competition for Team USA in Paris , Rossi had maximum healing time to minimize the number of races he’d miss. He’ll be able to get back in the seat,and finish off his last five races with Arrow McLaren.
Frontstretch Predictions
Let’s assume the racing will be processional and the winning car is lucky and calls the right strategy.
Did anyone else just hear Dixon in their head? Because I did.
He’s not out of this championship and Mike Hull calls him to another win at World Wide Technology Raceway.
- Dixon – this has a Dixie race strategy all over it.
- O’Ward – we didn’t talk about him above much, but he’s run well here his whole career.
- Newgarden – can’t keep a good oval driver down.
The Bommarito Automotive Group 500 at World Wide Technology Raceway will start at 6 p.m. ET on Saturday, Aug. 17, with coverage on USA Network and Peacock.
About the author
Tom is an IndyCar writer at Frontstretch, joining in March 2023. Besides writing the IndyCar Previews and the occasional Inside Indycar, he will hop on as a fill-in guest on the Open Wheel podcast The Pit Straight. His full-time job is with the Department of Veterans Affairs History Office and is a lieutenant colonel in the Army National Guard. After graduating from Purdue University with a Creative Writing degree, he was commissioned in the Army and served a 15-month deployment as a tank platoon leader with the 3d ACR in Mosul, Iraq. A native Hoosier, he calls Fort Wayne home. Follow Tom on Twitter @TomBlackburn42.
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