IndyCar - Phoenix Grand Prix

This is the first time in 11 years that IndyCars race at the Valley of the Sun, aka Phoenix Int'l Raceway for a Saturday night showcase.

Last time out at the season opener at St. Pete, Juan Pablo Montoya won for the 2nd straight time at the Florida street course. Will Power is back in the 12 after being cleared to race from a proposed concussion.

Hélio Castroneves is on the pole position. Tony Kanaan will start on his outside.

Takuma Sato, Carlos Muñoz, and James Hinchcliffe all spun into the outside wall in turn 1 during on-track activities yesterday and will have start from the rear of the field.

Also, for those who were expecting Honda to close the performance gap to Chevrolet... it appears that they still have some waiting to do. Sébastien Bourdais was the only Chevrolet to be outqualified by any Hondas. Bourdais will start 15th, and the other ten Chevrolets make up the top 10. Various Honda drivers have reported extreme difficulty at controlling their cars through the corners (Sato, Muñoz, and Hinchcliffe among them) and failures of some of the aerokit pieces.

bigdc48 wrote:Will Power is back in the 12 after being cleared to race from a proposed concussion.

Which actually turned out to be an inner ear infection.

So far. the move of the race definitely belongs to RHR right now. Going around the outside on the first lap and passing like five cars? That was a boss move.

It's also crazy how fast this race is moving right now. We're already almost 1/5 the way through it.

This race is great! Needs more laps though!

Bourdais is lucky he didn't hit the wall harder than he did.

Well.....that was an anti-climatic finish

I got to say that was a very disappointing ending, but all in all, a great race indeed. Congrats Dixon. I'll give this a 7.5/10.

Not that it was really the best short oval race, why the hell would Indy Car throw a caution out with 3 to go for a piece of debris that was sitting on the track for more than 5 laps, knowing they don't have their own G-W-C format?

I was honestly didn't think that the air would play such a huge role in the race, but with how much downforce those Indy Cars are producing, I guess it's a given that it's going to be hard passing out there. It was awesome seeing RHR and a couple of others spicing the race up from making those ballsy passes.

On to Long Beach.

Solid race, shame on the finish though. I think the stewards probably realized that even with 5 to go, it'd be hard throwing a yellow and getting back to green. So they were probably seeing how long they could get the race to go. I think the caution was actually the right call. But I thought the race was pretty good.

Last caution was confirmed to be Alex Rossi hitting the wall as said by Andretti itself and fans at the track.

Good race, a nice way to start out at Phoenix. GW Dixie...Actually doing stuff early in the year this time.

Phoenix was meh for me. Watchable but meh.

To be honest I'm pleasantly surprised. I wasn't expecting too much out of IndyCar at Phoenix, but that was an excellent race! Hunter-Reay and Chilton were extremely fun to watch throughout the night. Nice to see Rahal get a top 5, too.

And speaking of Chilton, considering that this is only his second start in IndyCar and his first start on an oval, his performance was very impressive. Looking forward to see what he can do throughout the rest of the year.

2016 Desert Diamond West Valley Grand Prix @ Phoenix Review

First Impression: Solid, enjoyable race.

Not really much to say here, since there really wasn't much that went on. The ballsy passes by Ryan Hunter-Reay, Josef Newgarden and Graham Rahal certainly caught my attention, especially RHR with his hero restarts. If it wasn't for bad luck with the cautions, he'd have a much better finish than what he got.

The race felt like it went by pretty quick, which is nice, since I hate it when races feel like they drag on forever, like last year's Southern 500 (even though it was a good race, it felt like it took forever to run with all the cautions.) Of course, the caution coming out with two to go really killed what probably would've been an entertaining finish, considering the top 5 were pretty much nose to tail to each other.

Scott Dixon won (ugh), Simon Pagenaud took 2nd yet again (pretty sure he's getting sick of that) and Will Power comes back from an inner ear infection to take third.

Star of the Race: Ryan Hunter-Reay, who was the king of restarts tonight. Max Chilton gets an honorable mention for an impressive performance.

Reject of the Race: Hard to come up with one for this race, although I suppose Mikhail Aleshin should get the nomination for spinning on pit road UNDER CAUTION. Pretty noob move from someone who isn't a noob.

FINAL RATING: Overall, a solid race. Could use some more passing, but the restarts were entertaining, and things were pretty close throughout much of the field, and the race went by at a fast pace, which I like. I'll go a 6.0/10 for this race. It did lose some cool points for Dixon winning, because I don't like seeing him win, although I did get a laugh out of Paul Tracy saying that Dixon was a little boring to watch, and the anti-climactic finish hurt it as well, but still a solid race overall. This race definitely has potential in the future.

Next up, we head to Long Beach. HYEP