Welcome to the 2024 NTT IndyCar Series season opener at World Wide Technology Raceway.
Oh wait, that’s not right.
Sure enough, the 2024 season has been well underway since the opening round at St. Petersburg. But, with the Summer Olympics forcing a hiatus of 27 days in between races, the gap has made much of the year a distant memory, lost in the fog of life.
It’s like a whole new championship run has commenced, but that’s not the case. Everything in 2024 carries over to this weekend for the Bommarito Automotive Group 500, which returns to a Saturday night clash under the lights.
Let the 2024 season begin, or resume.
Last Year
Another race for Scott Dixon’s growing scrapbook of fuel mileage wins, he took the victory in last year’s running of the Bommarito 500. While he didn’t have the best car – shocker – he was able to go longer between stops and then leap frog both front runners Pato O’Ward and Josef Newgarden, the latter of whom later crashed while trying to work his way back to the front.
Pit strategy won both Iowa races, so the way Dixon won last year will be an over-analyzed data set for Gateway. I guarantee it.
The Racing Product
There’s no hiding it but the biggest concern rolling into the weekend will be the racing the series puts on the 1.25 mile oval. The prior oval at Iowa Speedway was a bust, the first with the hybrid unit. While there isn’t one reason to point at that impacted the quality of racing in Iowa, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that the once thrilling shows in corn country were impacted by the weight of the hybrids and a recent, Frankenstein-like repave in the turns.
Well, Gateway will have no such repave problem. If the racing is processional, and drivers vent that its harder to overtake than ever – a place not really known for its quantity of passing to begin with – then IndyCar can’t hide from the elephant in the room any longer.
Testing at the track outside St. Louis, Missouri, held on Aug. 2, wasn’t promising as far as what’s in store this weekend. Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood‘s revelation that the team focused on qualifying setup during a rare test session means the upcoming race will be about track position. From the sounds of it, the sleek IndyCars are going to have as tough of a time to overtake as they did at Iowa.
Later, when Jack Harvey talked to…
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