Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach 2015: Indy Car Recap

Another great weekend of racing is in the books.  The 41st running of the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach is now over, and the temporary road circuit will be disassembled and put away like your kids Tyco track until next spring. Only here, the pieces are much bigger, way heavier, and don’t fit neatly on the floor of your closet.  This is a great circuit, which has been through several changes over the years, and in it’s current form yields some of the best street circuit racing you’ll find anywhere.  Some may disagree, saying that it’s too narrow and there’s not enough passing, blah, blah blah…  But I personally love it.  The strategies developed here are unique, because of the environment, and pit stops become an even more important part of the fabric of the race.

Pit stops, as it turns out, was part of the final outcome this weekend.  Scott Dixon beat your pole winner, Helio Castroneves, off pit lane during the first round of stops and never looked back.  Dixon would end up taking the win from Castroneves with a margin of over two seconds.  During the pit stop, Castroneves was held in his pit box by chief mechanic Travis Law to avoid contact with the Number 10 Chevrolet driven by Tony Kanaan, who was entering the pit stall just in front of him. The extra second proved to be critical, but better to avoid contact considering the perceived fragility of the Indy Car bodywork.

“This is huge,” Dixon said.  “I like coming here, I love the event. But as far as an event and coming and doing well and looking forward to it, it was never really on that list. To finally conquer it- a lot of credit goes to a lot of people. That pit stop exchange there definitely helped us get to the lead, but the car was fast and we needed to maintain it. All in all, this is huge. Long Beach, I finally get to crack this one and I’m really happy. Firestone did a fantastic job. We even started on used (alternate) reds for the opening stint and were able to maintain pace. They are always good and we were able to maintain and look after them. For this weekend, our car was just dynamite on the (primary) blacks.”

Current World Champion Will Power had a tough weekend.  After a poor qualifying effort, he could only manage P20 at the finish.  After the race he had this to say: “I feel bad for the Verizon Chevy Team. They worked so hard and me finishing P20 was a result of a bad day in qualifying. I didn’t get it done and it was snow ball effect from there. Today I made mistakes and I stalled the car on pit road during the first pit stop.  Was hoping for a top ten finish but it didn’t happen.  It makes me more motivated to make up for it the next couple races.”

Your pole winner, Helio Castroneves, had this to say about his weekend and his second place finish: “It was actually nice, the weather. Obviously Southern California is nice. Certainly the track was constantly changing. Every time it gets new tires, reds versus blacks and things like that, it’s about two hours of racing and the track changed quite a lot. For us, we kept constantly changing a little but of the driving style because one lap is good and another was different. The Firestone tires were actually holding pretty good for me. My AAA car was awesome and we were pretty good all the way. (On when his crew held him longer in the pits) “The guys did a great job in the pits and especially the incident between me and Ganassi. It was just perfect. It was better to be safe than sorry, but it was a great job overall for Team Penske. At the end of the day, second place is not bad.”

Here are the full results and my favorite photos from this weekends action:

Results Sunday of the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach Verizon IndyCar Series event at the 1.968-mile Streets of Long Beach circuit, with order of finish, starting position in parentheses, driver, chassis-engine, laps completed and reason out (if any):

1. (3) Scott Dixon, Chevrolet, 80, Running
2. (1) Helio Castroneves, Chevrolet, 80, Running
3. (2) Juan Pablo Montoya, Chevrolet, 80, Running
4. (5) Simon Pagenaud, Chevrolet, 80, Running
5. (7) Tony Kanaan, Chevrolet, 80, Running
6. (9) Sebastien Bourdais, Chevrolet, 80, Running
7. (6) Josef Newgarden, Chevrolet, 80, Running
8. (10) Marco Andretti, Honda, 80, Running
9. (12) Carlos Munoz, Honda, 80, Running
10. (11) Sebastian Saavedra, Chevrolet, 80, Running
11. (8) Graham Rahal, Honda, 80, Running
12. (13) James Hinchcliffe, Honda, 80, Running
13. (4) Ryan Hunter-Reay, Honda, 80, Running
14. (16) Jack Hawksworth, Honda, 80, Running
15. (15) Charlie Kimball, Chevrolet, 80, Running
16. (17) Gabby Chaves, Honda, 80, Running
17. (21) Conor Daly, Honda, 80, Running
18. (20) Takuma Sato, Honda, 80, Running
19. (19) James Jakes, Honda, 80, Running
20. (18) Will Power, Chevrolet, 79, Running
21. (22) Francesco Dracone, Honda, 78, Running
22. (14) Luca Filippi, Chevrolet, 77, Running
23. (23) Stefano Coletti, Chevrolet, 69, Running

Race Statistics
Winners average speed:   96.800 mph
Time of Race: 01:37:35.2353
Margin of victory: 2.2221 seconds
Cautions: 1 for 4 laps
Lead changes: 5 among 4 drivers
Lap Leaders:
Castroneves 1 – 29
Hawksworth 30 – 33
Dixon 34 – 53
Castroneves 54 -55
Bourdais 56
Dixon 57 – 80
Point Standings: Montoya 119, Castroneves 116, Kanaan 93, Dixon 87, Hinchcliffe 83, Power 80, Pagenaud 73, Newgarden 66, Bourdais 66, Rahal 62.

Always one of my favorite races of the season.  You can bet we’ll be trackside again next year.