By Tony Solorzano
(Long Beach) – Penalty? What Penalty?
Verizon Team Penske driver Will Power came from 12th place to win the 38th running of the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach Sunday afternoon, holding off rookie driver Simon Pagenaud, who nearly pulled off the upset win.
Power earned his second victory of the season, having won the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama two weeks ago at the Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham. “We
really didn’t think it was possible to win from 12th place here because it was a two-stop race,” said Power after the Race. “But once again with (Team Strategist) Tim (Cindric) Dave (Faustino), my engineer and all the boys, we overcame a 10-spot penalty.”
Power and 10 other drivers with Chevrolet engines were assessed a 10-position penalty at the start of the race, due to Chevy’s decision to replace all their INDYCAR V-6 after the one in James Hinchcliffe’s car failed during a test in Sonoma on Monday.
With Target Chip Ganassi driver Dario Franchitti on the pole alongside rookie driver Josef Newgarden on the front row, the 85-lap race was expected to have a number of thrills throughout the 11-turn, 1.968-mile circuit. Of course, no one expected those thrills to come on turn one.
As the race got underway, Newgarden attempted a bold pass on the outside of Franchitti as the cars went into turn 1, however, Newgarden’s move resulted in him touching tires with the reigning champion and careening into the tire barrier that led towards the “Aquarium turn,” sending the Sarah Fisher-Hartman Racing Honda to an early exit.
On lap 22, Graham Rahal and Marco Andretti made contact along turn 8, sending Andretti flying through the air before landing and spinning around into the tire barriers. At the same time, EJ Viso and Alex Tagliani also made contact with each other, with Viso being assessed a drive-through penalty for running into Tagliani from behind.
After returning to pit lane, Andretti, the son of Michael and grandson of Mario Andretti, felt the blame for the contact laid in Rahal, son of former Indy 500 champ Bobby Rahal.
“There’s one thing blocking but there’s another thing chopping,” said Andretti in his pit stall. “That was a chop.”
Rahal, on the other hand, felt the blame lay in Andretti for being in the wrong place for the turn.
“He wasn’t going to make the turn, no matter what,” said Rahal. “He was going to shoot long how deep we were because he was already braking; it’s just frustrating for everyone.”
For Pagenaud, the race was a question of timing, as the rookie driver of the Schmidt Hamilton HP Motorsports Honda benefitted from the penalties incurred by the Chevy drivers to start on row 2 alongside Takuma Sato. Pagenaud first took over the lead on lap 34 and held it until he pitted on lap 47, but regained it on lap 59 and held on again until Lap 70 when he pitted for the last time, but only dropped four positions as he came out of pit road.
Pagenaud needed 10 laps to chase down Sato, cutting Sato’s six-second lead down and closing in on Power who started to run into lap traffic as the laps ticked away.
On the final lap, Power got around Viso as they reached turn 1. Viso, who was already behind due to the drive-through penalty, got between Power and Pagenaud as they entered the Aquarium turn, but moved over as they exited the turn around the fountain into the short straightaway towards turn Four, allowing Pagenaud to make a final dash for the win. But it was not to be as Power, who had been conservative in his fuel strategy since pitting on lap 55, burned whatever remained fuel he had in a mad dash for the finish line, holding off
Pagenaud by 0.8675 seconds.
The IndyCar Series now heads to the Southern Hemisphere for the Sao Paulo Indy 300. Power won the previous two races held there, in 2010 and last year, and heads to the race as overall points leader.
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