IndyCar Long Beach
What a 40th Grand Prix of Long Beach!
In an unpredictable, somewhat chaotic IndyCar Long Beach race, Mike Conway of Ed Carpenter Racing won with a clean and steady approach while those around him were banging each other, scraping the barriers, or running out of gas.
Conway was running 15th when the leaders began cycling thru the pits with 27 laps to go. Up to that point, pole sitter Ryan Hunter-Reay had dominated the race. Hunter-Reay and Andretti Autosport teammate James Hinchcliffe pitted together while running one-two on lap 53. Hunter-Reay exited the pits just ahead of Hinchcliffe while Josef Newgarden pitted behind them from third. Newgarden had done a great in-lap and with a clean pit stop, got out just ahead of Hunter-Reay into Turn 1, but naturally on cold tires. Hunter-Reay and Hinchcliffe on warming tires were stacked up behind Newgarden around the fountain. At Turn 4, Ryan Hunter-Reay made an over optimistic attempt to pass Newgarden and punted him into the left barriers. The ensuing melee took out Newgarden, Hunter-Reay, and Hinchcliffe who were running one, two, three as well as Tony Kanaan and Takuma Sato who ran into the pile up from behind.
On the restart, the running order was Scott Dixon, Justin Wilson, Will Power, & Mike Conway. Shortly after the restart, Dixon nudged Wilson into the barriers on the approach to Turn 8. The impact was pretty light, but it was enough to destroy Wilson’s left front suspension. Wilson was furious because even though Dixon had to stop before the end, Wilson was good on fuel and was well positioned for a win.
In earlier action on Lap 32, Will Power helped Simon Pagenaud into the tire barrier at Turn 6 while Pagenaud was running in second place as the sequence below shows:
Pagenaud was about as upset at Power as Wilson was at Dixon. For his part, Will Power apologized, surprised that he wasn’t penalized.
Ultimately, Carpenter took a well-deserved checkered for running a clean and consistent race.
The top 15 at the finish:
Pos Driver Team/Engine Time/Gap
1. Mike Conway Carpenter/Chevy 1h54m41.6418s
2. Will Power Penske/Chevy +0.9005s
3. Carlos Munoz Andretti/Honda +1.5591s
4. Juan Pablo Montoya Penske/Chevy +2.0226s
5. Simon Pagenaud Schmidt/Honda +2.8169s
6. Mikhail Aleshin Schmidt/Honda +3.8574s
7. Oriol Servia Rahal/Honda +4.9621s
8. Marco Andretti Andretti/Honda +8.1948s
9. Sebastian Saavedra KV/Chevy +8.9029s
10. Carlos Huertas Coyne/Honda +24.2295s
11. Helio Castroneves Penske/Chevy +30.0552s
12. Scott Dixon Ganassi/Chevy +30.7310s
13. Graham Rahal Rahal/Honda +1 lap
14. Sebastien Bourdais KV/Chevy +3 laps
15. Jack Hawksworth Herta/Honda +3 laps
Many more pics at IndyCar Long Beach.