Xpel Grand Prix at Road America

Road America weekend was definitely one for the books! Just like last weekend with Detroit, cautions breed cautions. During the start of the Xpel GP at Road America the first lap in the first turn Pole Sitter Linus Lundqvist and teammate Marcus Armstrong collided spinning eachother out causing drivers to check up and Newgarden to spin Herta. A couple of caution laps later Colton Herta will find himself spinning around yet again. Coming towards the last turn on lap 6 Christian Rasmussen (R) took Chip Ganassi Racing driver Kyffin Simpson (R) out. Rasmussen ultimately received a penalty for avoidable contact. Scott McLaughlin took no time to reach the front and start setting pace away from second place Kyle Kirkwood. Sting Ray Robb also received a penalty for avoidable contact when he collided with Felix Rosenqvist. Several laps later Scott McLaughlin has grown his lead over Kyle Kirkwood to greater than 2 seconds. Scott led a bunch of drivers to pit lane to get more fuel and to change their tires. We've seen this weekend with driver Graham Rahal during his warm up laps his Firestone Alternate Reds were blistering on his left rear. There hasn't been any other reports of drivers having a similar issue. After a revolution of green flag pit stops, McLaughlin, Newgarden, and Power will revert to be in the top spots of the leaderboard. There is no doubt about it that Scott McLaughlin is hungry to win. With a rough weekend in Detroit, he's been eager to get to Road America and clean his slate.

Scott Dixon started falling back several spots after some issues with his Firestone Reds. He last pitted lap 17 and pitted again on lap 23. He also had a similar situation to Rahal with his left rear blistering all around the LR tire. Lap 24 it's still a Penske 1-2-3.

Fast Forward to the end of the race and It's still a Penske leading podium. Will Power was able to stay out longer than his teammates as he was on black primary tires resulting him the win of the race. This is Will Power's first win since Detroit 2022.

Jamie Chadwick Writes History at Road America

Jamie Chadwick is in her sophomore year with Andretti Global in the IndyNXT Series. Chadwick from Bath, United Kingdom is not new to racing. She has been racing for most of her life. However, this weekend at Road America she set the fastest qualifying lap giving her the pole position with a lap time of 1:51.033. Fast forward to Sunday, as the green flag waves she went into Turn 1 as the race leader. She led all 20 laps and snagged her first career win and also wrote history! There hasn't been an IndyNXT winner in 15 years! She is one of three to have done so. She is also the only female to have won an IndyNXT road course race and lead all laps! Congratulations to Jamie Chadwick!

Chaos and Emotions

This weekend the NTT IndyCar series raced on the streets of Detroit in the Detroit Grand Prix. Some drivers were competitively pushing there cars during practice and qualifying, while some were rubbing the walls and crashing. There was one driver in particular who was causing a bit of drama on and off the racing surface. Santino Ferucci has been a hot topic this year, maybe you can say for his aggressive driving style.

This weekend Romain Grosjean, Kyle Kirkwood, Colton Herta, Josef Newgarden, and Helio Castroneves have had a run in with Ferucci. The conflict between Kirkwood and Ferucci was even handsy! The two later texted eachother Saturday night talking about their issues and the situation and put the differences to the side. Indycar has a huge following and some fans have taken the driver (Ferucci) to Indycar's Instagram saying "He needs to be parked." and "He needs to be suspended and or dropped." There is still a lot more to be explained which will be at a later date.

Moving on to the drop of the green flag of the Detroit GP, we all know in racing that cautions breed cautions. Who knew we would see a total of 8 cautions? A total of 47 laps under yellow. That's almost half of the 100 lap race! The start of the race had a 7 car pileup. Will Power spun on Lap 1 and would ultimately spin later in the race. Turn 3 was a problem for a lot of the race with drivers diving in to block and getting turned. Christian Rasmussen suffered a failing engine causing him to retire from the race. Rosenqvist and Vautier among the 7 drivers that needed to pit due to punctured tires. Alex Palou fought his car very early in the race which showed as he went from P2-P8 in a single lap. The reasoning was the team thought it was a good strategy to start off on used alternate tires because they have already been worn in but that was not the case. Palou later would crash into Newgarden both causing a FCY in the infamous Turn 3. Ferucci was given a drive through penalty for an avoidable crash causing Kyffin Simpson and Helio Castroneves to crash into eachother.

Scott Dixon was in mid pack for about half of the race and then started charging towards the front past halfway. He started tire saving and fuel saving which we all know he is the king of fuel saving strategies. Dixon won the caution filled raced and is already focusing on Road America next week June 9. Scott Dixon has taken over the Championship points standings by 18 points.