Sonsio Grand Prix: Weekend Recap
It’s been a weekend full of ups and downs for the NTT IndyCar drivers. Only 2 weeks after long time Barber Motorsports Park mannequin ‘Georgina’ fell off a bridge onto the track, which caused Scott McLaughlin to win that race, we had a weekend filled with racing again.
While the Indianapolis 500 practices are in full swing, let’s look back on the highlights of the Grand Prix of Indianapolis, also known as the Sonsio Grand Prix.
“The Palou show”
It was the weekend of Palou, or as the commentators liked to call it “the Palou show.” Out of the 85 laps he led 39 of them, and he adds on to the consistency of his season so far. This win was his 10th career win. This win got him from 3rd in the standings to first. Even though he had nearly a perfect race, he did make one mistake on Saturday. Entering the first corner of the race with excessive speed, a drift wide opened an opportunity for Lundgaard to overtake him and take the lead. Lundgaard led the first 18 laps, with Palou regaining the lead only by lap 40. “I did a mistake on that start, lost our first position that we fought so hard for in qualifying,” Palou said. “But everybody on the crew, engineers and the mechanics did an amazing job in the pits, and we just had to try to get the performance we had all weekend in the No. 10 DHL Honda car.”
source: instagram.com/alexpalou
Power-less?
Will Power has been fighting for a race win. 2023 was his first win-less season ever and ever since the start of the 2024 he has been pushing for that win again. He has been in 31 consecutive races without ending up in first place, and this is easily the longest victory drought of his long career. Even though he is yet to win a race this season, he has been pretty strong and consistent so far; he has three second-place finishes in the first four races, and he has three straight top-three qualifying positions. Palou is 12 points ahead of Power in the standings, but the Australian keeps his second position.
Chaos for McLaughlin
While he had a chaotic start, Scott McLaughlin also must feel better about his place in the standings. He went from 9th to 6th in the standings and he currently has 88 points. After the disqualification of last week and the suspension of a lot of Team Penske’s members, he had a quite impressive race with an even more impressive outcome; while starting in 13th position, he eventually finished in 6th, but this was not without chaos. During the opening lap he got caught up in the drama in turn 1, later he benefited when rookie Luca Ghiotto’s spin prompted a caution which led McLaughlin to finishing 6th.
3 out of 5
Team Chip Ganassi had an impressive weekend, with 3 of his cars finishing in the top five. Besides Palou, who won the race, Scott Dixon finished in 4th place and second-year series driver Marcus Armstrong finished in 5th. This race was Armstrong’s strongest performance of his 16 races in this series. Dixon is third in the standings right now, and he is chasing Foyt’s all-time record of seven series titles.
source: instagram.com/chipganassiracing
Teammate rivalry?
Colton Herta, who was first in the standings during the beginning of this weekend, started the race from the 24th position after running out of fuel during qualifying. During the race, he was pushed into a sand trap by his teammate Marcus Ericsson, who received a five-position penalty as a consequence. Despite these setbacks, Herta remained focused and made a determined comeback. He ultimately finished 7th, and he is currently 4th in the standings.
Bad blood (Ferrucci’s version)
Bad blood between Santino Ferrucci and Romain Grosjean? In Saturday morning’s 30-minute warmup session, Ferrucci retaliated against his rival driver Grosjean. Typically, during this time, IndyCar teams and drivers engage in high-speed practice runs to ensure their cars are prepared for the race later in the day. However, Ferrucci hadn’t let go of a bumping incident that occurred on pit lane during the previous race’s warmup session before the Indy Grand Prix at Barber Motorsports Park on April 28th. Ferrucci retaliated as the cars exited pit lane of Saturday morning. He blocked Grosjean’s car on the track, engaged in wheel-to-wheel contact, and expressed his frustration with a one-fingered salute to the driver from France.
In a statement afterwards Ferrucci said: “Man, he drove into me at Barber in the warmup for no reason. I’m simply just returning the favor, my friend. It’s not Formula One anymore. With these cars, you can hit people and be fine. You want to turn into me when I have the inside, I’m not lifting, I’m sorry. So, I had the corner, and yeah, that’s on him. He doesn’t like it, then come over here and talk to me about it.” Grosjean kept quiet about it and let karma settle the score, Ferrucci had mechanical failure after 55 laps and finished last in the 27-car race.
When NBCsports.com tracked Grosjean down on pit lane after the race and asked him his thoughts on the “payback”, he kept quiet and stated the following: “I think I’m not going to comment on that. I have my point of view. I would like IndyCar (officials) to take action for drivers like this. That’s it.”
source: instagram.com/santinoferrucci
Théo Pourchaire confirmed
Moving on to Arrow McLaren, it was a good weekend for Théo Pourchaire regarding the fact that it was finally confirmed that he would get to race the No. 6 car for the rest of the season. This weekend he started in 18th and gained 1 position throughout the entire race, and he eventually finished 17th. Pato O’Ward was not happy about the performance of the team this weekend, and he wasn’t keeping quiet about this. He was very dissatisfied with how they managed the race and fell down from 5th to 13th.
Jamie Chadwick rewrites history!
Besides the weekend being exciting for most of the NTT IndyCar drivers, it was definitely a memorable weekend for Indy NXT driver Jamie Chadwick. The racing driver became the first female to score a podium in Indy NXT for over a decade. There are currently only 2 females racing in Indy NXT, namely Lindsay Brewer as a part of Juncos Hollinger Racing and Jamie Chadwick who races for Andretti Global. Jamie Chadwick is also part of the Williams F1 team, and she is a F1 Academy adviser.
source: instagram.com/jamiechadwick
What is INDY NXT?
Indy NXT is the developmental series sanctioned by IndyCar. While it was previously known as Indy Lights, it recently rebranded into INDY NXT by Firestone for sponsorship reasons. It is the highest step on the Road to Indy, a program of racing series leading up to the IndyCar Series.
