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Winners and Losers: IndyCar Detroit Grand Prix

Written by Archie O’Reilly & Dan Jones


The ‘Iceman’ Scott Dixon weathered the chaos and stayed cool to win IndyCar’s Detroit Grand Prix last Sunday, overcoming 47 caution laps under eight separate yellow. He shared the podium with Andretti Global’s Marcus Ericsson and maiden podium-sitting Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Marcus Armstrong.


It was a race littered with adversity for most, prompting exceptional recoveries for some as well as frustration for others. Looking ahead to the fifth and final successive weekend of on-track action at Road America, here are DIVEBOMB’s winners and losers from Detroit…


Winner: Ganassi’s Kiwi duo


Marcus Armstrong grew up idolising compatriot Scott Dixon. And now, not only has he lived his dream of driving alongside Dixon at Chip Ganassi Racing, he has stood on an IndyCar podium for the first time alongside Dixon. It was very fitting.


Dixon took the top spot in vintage fashion, thriving again in a chaotic, caution-ridden race - as was the case on the Nashville streets in 2022 and at Laguna Seca last year. These types of races promote out-of-the-box, aggressive strategies and there is scarcely anybody better at execution of this sort of methodical management than Dixon.


The racecraft that has long defined Dixon was shown to crucially pass Colton Herta - on the end of the lead lap - in the closing stages. He is now within nine wins of AJ Foyt’s record and has started the 2024 season as quickly as any since winning the opening three races in 2020; last season, it took until the final four races before he picked up his three race wins. 


After six rounds, he is now atop the championship as teammate and closest rival Alex Palou finished 16th in Detroit, as well as rivals Herta finishing 19th, Scott McLaughlin 20th and Josef Newgarden 26th.


Armstrong’s race to third consisted of similar management as he perfectly managed a precarious late-race fuel situation, running out just as he crossed the line. It was a good bounce-back from the engine issue that took him out of the Indianapolis 500 before a racing lap had been turned.


Detroit ended his record of qualifying inside the top 10 in all four road and street course races this year but was his best race to date. As well as starting 19th, he had to recover from being caught up in a mid-race incident. And while he lost second late on to Marcus Ericsson, it was an excellent, almost Dixon-like drive.


A maiden podium “a long time coming” was a reward for his continued upwards trajectory from his rookie year into 2024, coming only three races after his first top-five finish at Barber Motorsports Park. 


Archie


Winner: Honda


After a turbulent Indianapolis 500, which saw no Honda cars in the Firestone Fast Six, three engine blowouts and a Chevrolet victory, Honda bounced back supremely on Chevrolet’s home turf, as they leapfrog their way into the lead of the engines manufacturer standings, and remain to lock out the first two positions in the championship.


The weekend was near faultless from a Honda perspective. Colton Herta and Álex Palou locked out the front row in comfortable fashion, with four of the Fast Six being HRC-run. And despite the chaos all day, it always seemed to be Honda at the front, whether that was Colton Herta, Kyle Kirkwood, Christian Lundgaard or eventually, Scott Dixon.


Dixon lead home three more Honda’s in Marcus Ericsson, Marcus Armstrong and Kirkwood, right underneath the Renaissance Centre - the home of General Motors, quite the statement after a woeful Indianapolis 500.


The celebrations were led by Marcus Ericsson: “It felt good to spoil the party, for sure. No, I think Honda did a great job this weekend. We obviously had a tougher month of May than we would have liked as a manufacturer. I know how hard they work over at HRC. Like you said, 1-2-3-4, couldn't be better for us.”


Honda’s future in the sport remains a worrying uncertainty in and around the paddock, but results like these may just give a little smile on the corner of Honda executives looking in. There’s no denying the battle with Chevrolet is fierce, but after an Indianapolis 500 that couldn’t have gone much worse, Honda have responded in the perfect way, with the presence of General Motors right above them.


Dan


Winner: Andretti Global


Andretti Global appeared to have the strongest car of any team across the Detroit weekend, again excelling on a bumpy street circuit to preserve their 100 percent street course podium record for 2024. They could not convert the speed into a first win since Nashville last year but executed the race much better than at points last season.


Colton Herta was the anomaly in the race after out-braking himself into Turn 5 when shaping up to pass Alex Palou, bringing out the race’s fifth caution on Lap 56. But he had shown speed by qualifying on pole position before making that unfortunate error. 


All three cars made the Fast 12 before Marcus Ericsson came home for his first Andretti podium, which could have been a win with another lap or two. Kyle Kirkwood led 24 laps - second to only Scott Dixon and Herta - and could have won without poorly-timed yellows, instead finishing fourth for his third IndyCar top five and the first that was not a victory.


For Ericsson, a second-place finish was much-needed. He showed pace and made the Fast Six in both St. Petersburg and Long Beach but suffered a mechanical issue in the first before finishing fifth in the latter. In the following two races at Barber Motorsports Park and on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, he finished 18th and 16th.


The Indianapolis 500 was then a disaster for 2022 winner and 2023 runner-up. A crash in practice two days before qualifying necessitated a new chassis and saw him qualify 32nd after contesting Last Chance Qualifying. He was then an innocent party in Tom Blomqvist’s first-lap crash. A podium in Detroit was a good response as he targets “2024 2.0”.


Meanwhile, finishing fourth continues Kirkwood’s early-season consistency. He has been elevated to sixth in the championship - ahead of Herta and best-placed Andretti - after top 10 finishes in five of the first six races. His worst finish has been 11th on the Indy road course.


Archie


Winner: Arrow McLaren


This isn’t, and won’t be Arrow McLaren’s best weekend of the season, but it’s one that’s quietly steadied the ship after a particularly rough patch of races, even more so before the Indianapolis 500, in the first weekend in a while, that you can say they were close to maximising their result.


It’s the first time since World Wide Technology Raceway last season that all three McLaren cars have found themselves in the top ten at the flag, and the first time that the No.6 entry, this weekend occupied by Théo Pourchaire, has been classified in the top ten all season long, despite the chaos and the cautions.


It initially looked like their frustrating run would continue, when Pato O’Ward and Alexander Rossi got stuck in the opening corner melee, cycling them to the pack of the field. But a combination of good strategy and incident avoidance saw Rossi and O’Ward finish 5th and 7th at the flag.


It feels like an important weekend for all three drivers. Rossi has finally gained the consistent results we first expected he’d achieve in Arrow McLaren colours, finishing in the top ten in all races this year bar Barber, where he lost a tyre after a pitstop. Rossi now quietly lies fifth in the standings, just one off his teammate.


It feels significant for O’Ward too. He hit Rossi at Long Beach, and Pourchaire in Barber, amongst others, in a really messy three weekends, when you include the Indianapolis Road Course. Detroit has felt like a much smoother weekend in many respects, and with several drivers struggling for consistency, it’s results like these O’Ward needs for a championship.


But maybe Théo Pourchaire was the biggest takeaway for McLaren. He was immediately fast, topping his qualifying group, and qualifying seventh. His race would be messy, causing an accident with Agustín Canapino, as well as being involved in the opening lap mess, but even with bent steering, he still recovered to 10th. Hopefully a sign of what’s to come from a successful IndyCar career.


Dan


Loser: Cautions and chaos


The Indianapolis 500 is of course going to be the event that brings in the most viewers year-on-year. Detroit though is critically important from a viewership standpoint, to see how many of those fans have converted. And the TV ratings are respectable - the fourth most watched race not on cable TV in IndyCar’s modern history. But with so many accidents - does it do good on the series?


Scott Dixon said: "I don't think it's ever embarrassing. I think you do a survey, most people go to races to watch crashes. I know when I watch some kind of NASCAR race, they have a similar kind of effect. It's obviously exciting. Obviously you don't want to see the caution laps and them taking over."


But at what point does all the crashing become farcical? The race saw nearly 40 laps of consecutive caution, as drivers went for ridiculously ambitious overtakes on every single restart, as frustrations mounted due to the lack of racing. Yes, it is fun, but it gets to a point where crashing doesn’t become entertaining and we want to see hardcore racing.


Many comparisons over the weekend have been made to the popular Belle Isle Circuit, home of the Detroit Grand Prix before it went downtown. The reason? The new circuit isn’t popular. It’s bumpy. It’s narrow. It’s slow. It’s prone to wild races. IndyCar races shouldn’t necessarily be a lottery, it needs that element of unpredictability but not ridiculousness.


But what do you do? You can’t repave most of the circuit as it is in downtown Detroit. You can’t really open up the track any more. You can’t change the layout due to planning permission. The responsibility also has to be accepted by the drivers though. Yes, slippery conditions made things more tricky, but we aren’t at a circus, as much as fans want to see crashes, we want to see edge-of-the-seat racing.


Dan


Loser: Team Penske


After a dream Month of May, locking out the front row for the Indianapolis 500 and winning the race with Josef Newgarden, Team Penske suffered a comedown in Detroit.


The weekend started well, with Will Power their lowest qualifier in eighth, Scott McLaughlin fourth and Newgarden impressively third after a sleep-depriving week of commitments as Indy 500 winner.


McLaughlin was running second in the early stages of the race before crashing on his own in Turn 1 on Lap 33. He appeared to out-brake himself and lock his rears, with seeming indecision as to whether to go into the runoff. He opted to commit to the corner but ended up against the tyres barrier.


While there was no race-ending damage for McLaughlin, the fact he had to be unwedged from the tyres by the safety team was race-ruining. It was a rare but costly error, sending him a lap down and to a 20th-place finish, meaning he has finished 20th or lower in half of the races so far this season, including his St. Petersburg disqualification.


Newgarden’s day was even worse. He had two separate pit lane issues - one a fuelling issue and the second seeing him narrowly miss hitting one of Christian Lundgaard’s crew members after being hooked towards the wall by his misplaced wheel gun. He was penalised with a drive-through penalty for the latter but recovered to the top five.


But then on Lap 70, he spun at Turn 3 before later damaging a toe-link with a wall strike. He ended up 26th and six laps behind the leader. The notorious Indy 500 winners’ hangover appears to have continued and Newgarden’s fourth-place finish and Indy 500 win remain his only top-15 finishes of the season.


On the face of things, with four penalties - one for tagging Rinus VeeKay - and a Lap 1 incident that dislodged his rear wing, Power’s day should also have been a disaster. But he recovered magnificently to finish sixth, partly owing to the infringement that saw him receive his final penalty as he strategically underwent full service in a closed pit lane.


Archie


Loser: Colton Herta


It feels like Colton Herta has been a massive winner of a huge loser every single weekend. This is no different.


Six rounds into the season, it’s very difficult to make a judgement on Herta’s season. Maybe the words that sum up his career, and even his race at Detroit: So much promise, but so little to show for it.


It was a frustrating Indianapolis 500 for Herta. He looked like he had one of the best cars all month, and binned it completely by himself mid-race. But Detroit was a circuit that ways always going to favour Andretti, a tight, bumpy street circuit, similar to the likes of Nashville that they’ve found so much success at.


And it looked like that would continue when Herta took pole on Saturday and led the opening exchanges on Sunday. Yes, the team made a poor strategy call when they pre-emptively put him on wet tyres, but he was still in an advantageous position. But, like we’ve seen too often in Herta’s career, an over-ambitious move has cost him dear.


It’s a particular contrast to the man who he was trying to overtake, Álex Palou. You’d never see Palou go for an overtake of that nature, and look at where he finds himself now. It’s hard to believe that Herta lead the championship standings heading into the ‘Month of May.’ He now finds himself seventh, and well over a race win behind championship leader Dixon. 


I highlighted Herta’s composure at times this year. I don’t know if he got desperate at Detroit after a poor Indy 500, or the fact he knew he had a quick car. However, that desperation is back at the forefront again. If Herta ever wants to be a serious championship contender, he can’t afford for these moves to regularly happen.


Dan


Loser: Alex Palou


Alex Palou deserves a tip of that hat. 


With a 16th-place finish, a 23-race run of finishing inside the top eight came to an end in Detroit. You have to go back 31 races to find a finish this low as he ended up 27th at Road America two years ago.


The Spaniard managed seven victories in this period - five coming last season en-route to his second IndyCar championship in three years. And of the 23 races inside the top eight, only 10 were not podium finishes.


The fact that Palou is a loser this week is frankly no fault of his own. The only fault of his is that he built up such unprecedented consistency and had such a remarkable record to lose. 


His race in Detroit was struck with misfortune as he was caught with nowhere to go as Josef Newgarden spun in front of him on Lap 70. While Palou apologised on the radio, the tight margins of the Detroit streets left him little room to evade the stricken Newgarden. 


With Sunday’s result, he has fallen behind race-winning teammate Scott Dixon by 18 points in the championship after his first non-top-five finish of the year. The pair have been almost neck-and-neck for the entirety of the start of the 2024 season.


Dixon has a best worst finish one place higher than Palou, along with two wins to his teammate’s single victory on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. The pair have each finished third once.


The Detroit weekend was no disaster as Palou remains firmly poised in the championship and still possibly the driver to beat. He had looked well-placed to finish at least comfortably inside the top 10 in Detroit after starting second. 


But there will no doubt be disappointment to have lost such an astounding record.


Archie

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