2017 Rainguard Water Sealers 600

Perhaps the most ironically-named race of the 2017 Verizon IndyCar Series season takes place at Texas Motor Speedway, where the series will go oval racing for the third time this year on Saturday night!

Last year, the race that began in June concluded after an eleven-week postponement due to rain in thrilling fashion, with Graham Rahal winning by approximately 0.008 seconds over James Hinchcliffe after an exhilarating four-car battle for the victory. Carrying momentum from a pair of race victories at Belle Isle, Graham is certainly one of the favorites to win here again. But don't count out names such as Scott Dixon, James Hinchcliffe, Mikhail Aleshin, Tony Kanaan, Ryan Hunter-Reay, and Hélio Castroneves, all of whom have been very fast at the speedways in recent years. The latter four drivers also have the extra motivating factor of two-to-three-year winless streaks (Aleshin, in fact, has yet to win a race).

While this will be the 29th IndyCar race that the speedway has hosted since 1997, setup notes from previous years will be no good this time around with the recent reconfiguration of turns 1 and 2. With those two turns being flattened to 20 degrees from 24 and widened significantly, the drivers and teams are faced with new challenges, both in having to set up the car for the first two turns as well as having to find a setup that will work well on both ends of the track.

After piloting the Dale Coyne Racing car #18 at Detroit, Esteban Gutiérrez will not be in the car this weekend, with Coyne opting to bring 2012 Indy Lights champion Tristan Vautier back to the series for the first time since 2015 (in which he also raced for Coyne on a limited schedule). Since we last saw him in IndyCar, the Frenchman has ventured into sports car racing, having ranked seventh in the Pro Cup class of last year's Blancpain GT Series Sprint Cup with co-driver Felix Rosenqvist. The two together took victory in the finale at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

On a note unrelated to this weekend's race, an article posted on racer.com reports that Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing may soon be confirming a second full-time entry for the 2018 season. It is unknown as to who would drive the car if it does make the grid, but with Fifth Third Bank having recently signed on to a three-year deal, it appears that the team would not have to rely on the driver for funding (Oriol Servià is supposedly one of the candidates for the ride, but little else is known for the time being).

With this recent news regarding RLL, it now appears very possible that there will be three new cars added to the full-time grid next year, and potentially (though unlikely) even more. Harding Racing is reportedly close to finalizing their entry into the series, and Juncos is attempting to get one or two cars of their own onto the grid, as well. Carlin is also rumored to be attempting to join the full-time grid, although it seems more likely at this point that the team will opt to remain in Indy Lights.

And with the new configuration, which type of race will we see this year? The drizzling shitfest this track is usually known for, or the God-tier epicness from last year?

I really hope it's the latter. XD

Kimball on pole.

Alright, trigger mode initiated

Why the hell did Hinch gas it like that coming out of his pit box? He could've ran quite a few cars over if he was in a more tight situation than he already was. Helio then had nowhere to go and spun down into Taku, who lost his lap. Rossi also wrecked, so that's another Andretti car, which sucks.

Trigger mode powered down.

We have a big one boys! Looks like everybody is okay, but that locks a Penske win pretty much unless something miraculous happens. Sucks that both Coyne cars are eliminated too. GG Kanaan for pinching Hinch into Aleshin.

Unfortunately, a Penske will win this race now

EDIT: I actually take back the blame on Kanaan and I'm putting it on Hinch, nice job forcing unecessary three wide. And shout out to Indycar for the NASCAR yellow.

My tweet to Ganassi regarding the big wreck.

mtrimmer365 wrote:We have a big one boys! Looks like everybody is okay, but that locks a Penske win pretty much unless something miraculous happens. Sucks that both Coyne cars are eliminated too. GG Kanaan for pinching Hinch into Aleshin.

Unfortunately, a Penske will win this race now

EDIT: I actually take back the blame on Kanaan and I'm putting it on Hinch, nice job forcing unecessary three wide. And shout out to Indycar for the NASCAR yellow.

Aleshin moved to both Kanaan and Hinch's outside, and Kanaan moved up on both of them.

Kanaan's fault.

Wow. This has to be the most attrition I've seen in an Indy Car race in a really long time. Too bad this race has to end under caution.

The 500 treaded the line between crazy race and crashfest leaning towards crazy race, this race leaned towards crashfest. Really frustrated over the Brickyard 400 esque tire call but i guess that's on Firestone fuckin up. That race was bizarre and wild.

I won't give to much flak to Firestone... I mean, they only had 1 test to get the tires right for a brand new track.

My eyesight truly does suck, cause I thought for sure that Hinch moved down into Kanaan, but I was wrong (I only noticed Hinch moving down into Kanaan, so I though Hinch was pinching Kanaan down and got loose) but nope, Kanaan moved up into Hinch. Those last several laps were absolutely thrilling, well, until Sato got into the grass. It was an ambitious move, but he was going for the win, so I'm not too disappointed. GW Will Power.

Ganassi and Penske with some extreme fuckery? God this race truly was a throwback.

Really late comment here, but that was quite the attrition-filled race. It felt more like a mid-2000's IRL race than a what we've seen there in recent years. Personally, I really enjoyed the racing despite the high rate of crashing.

I really enjoyed the race, myself. It was fantastic to watch everyone making such bold maneuvers in such close proximity (Vautier in particular was putting on a great show in another Dale Coyne Racing car despite not having raced in IndyCar for two years, and it's a huge shame that that poor team has lost another two cars to accidents), although it started to become a little wacky after the eight-car crash occurred, with the tire blister yellows and even more crashes. Those are only personal opinions, though.

Objectively I loved the racing, but frankly I'm not sure what I should think of it. Wrecks aside, I presume that many viewers enjoyed the intense racing as I did, but as important as a thrilling spectacle is in order to captivate an audience, I'm not qualified to declare whether or not what we saw on Saturday was just too dangerous. With people like Sébastien Bourdais lambasting it as far beyond acceptably safe, one has to assume that someone of his pedigree probably knows what he's talking about more than most.

From what I've read it sounds like the issue with cars packing up comes as a result of being able to hold down the throttle all the way around (doesn't every problem in racing come back to "too much downforce" these days?). The fact that the groove was so narrow didn't help, but that's not something that could really have been changed. Hopefully the new aerokit next year will help to resolve the problem, but at the same time, I'm hoping that it won't inhibit the cars from being able to put on a great race.

Let's not forget that TMS was recently repaved and reconfigured, so the narrow groove was to be expected.