Latest news with #CurtCavin
Fox Sports
30-04-2025
- Automotive
- Fox Sports
Inside Line: Who Most Needs Strong Month of May?
INDYCAR Today's question: There are three NTT INDYCAR SERIES races in May – the Children's of Alabama Indy Grand Prix powered by AmFirst on May 4 at Barber Motorsports Park, the Sonsio Grand Prix on May 10 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course and the 109th Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge on May 25. Who most needs a strong Month of May? Curt Cavin: Doesn't it feel like May is Team Penske's month? History certainly suggests it is, and the team needs it to be this year. Take a glance at the standings after three races: Roger Penske's drivers are surprisingly eighth, ninth and tied for 10th. That's not typical Team Penske land, and no one expects them to be there at year's end. (At least one Penske driver has finished in the top three each of the past 17 seasons.) Any number of the races over the next 30 days could be a breakthrough for the organization that has not won a series race this year. Penske drivers have combined to win 43 series races in the next four events (including the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear on June 1). Scott McLaughlin has won the past two races at Barber Motorsports Park, Will Power is the master of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course (five wins, six poles), and, of course, Josef Newgarden is aiming for a historic three-peat in the Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge. So, the schedule is ripe for Team Penske to start stringing together results. Eric Smith: There are several drivers that need to produce a strong Month of May, and most reside with one manufacturer – Chevrolet. So, I'll take the broad approach and pick the entire manufacturer here. Honda has stormed out to a 3-for-3 start with two Alex Palou wins and a victory by Kyle Kirkwood in Long Beach. Recent history, however, suggests a pendulum swing this month. Chevrolet has seven wins in the last nine trips to Barber Motorsports Park, including three in a row. The end of the month is the 109th Running of the Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge. Josef Newgarden is a two-time defending winner in his No. 2 Chevrolet. Chevy-powered drivers also won six of the seven oval races last season and went 4-for-5 in each of the two prior years. The problem is, the Sonsio Grand Prix, where the Chip Ganassi Racing and Andretti Global Honda's have won the last three May road course races on the 2.439-mile IMS road course, is the meat of the May race sandwich. Also, CGR produced the fastest 'race trim' lap times in last week's Indy 500 Open Test, and the Andretti Global drivers seem overly confident in their chances. That makes me wonder if the pendulum will really swing in the Bowtie's favor this month or will Honda storm out to a 6-for-6 start and pull further ahead in the driver's standings as it has four of the top five in points, too. Chevrolet needs a rebound, and these have statistically been strong upcoming tracks for them. I officially put them on notice. Arni Sribhen: Who could use a good Month of May? The NTT INDYCAR SERIES' newest team most certainly could. PREMA Racing is one of Europe's most famous junior formula racing names, but its startup NTT INDYCAR SERIES effort has had some growing pains as the team races in North America for the first time. Neither Callum Ilott nor Robert Shwartzman has cracked the second round of qualifying or recorded a finish in the top half of the grid in 2025. Both drivers have pace on road courses and could aim for top-15 finishes at Barber and the IMS road course. Having both drivers stay out of trouble on the IMS oval and earn a spot in the field on the first day of qualifying would also be a plus. A solid Month of May for both drivers – without any drama – could go a long way in helping the team establish itself in the series long term. Paul Kelly: A handful of preseason contenders for the Astor Challenge Cup could use a good Month of May. It should come as no surprise to see three-time and reigning champion Alex Palou atop the NTT INDYCAR SERIES standings entering this crucial month. But most of the other drivers pegged in the preseason as the most serious contenders to Palou's throne are in serious danger of losing touch with the Spaniard if they don't kick it in gear this month. Curt made a compelling point above for Team Penske, and I'll add three drivers to that list – Scott Dixon of Chip Ganassi Racing, Pato O'Ward of Arrow McLaren and Colton Herta of Andretti Global. We're just three races into the season, and all three of those preseason title contenders are more than a race worth of points behind Palou. Dixon is fifth, 56 behind. O'Ward is sixth, minus-62, while Herta is seventh and 69 points back of Palou. With almost any other driver leading the championship, it would seem foolish to sound the alarm after just three races. But Palou has produced performances, with three titles in the last four years with Ganassi, that stand among the greatest in the long history of this sport. The No. 10 team makes so few mistakes, as Palou has finished in the top five in 26 of his last 34 points-paying starts. It's clear that another driver will need to take the title from Palou; the crown won't be given away. If Dixon, O'Ward, Herta and the Penske trio don't step on it this month, the last two years show there's a good chance it will be too late to catch Palou from June through the end of August.
Fox Sports
09-04-2025
- Automotive
- Fox Sports
Inside Line: Most Memorable Grand Prix of Long Beach?
INDYCAR Today's question: What was your most memorable edition of the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, which celebrates its 50th edition April 11-13? Curt Cavin: I've covered close to 500 series races since the late 1980s, and I'm hard-pressed to remember many outside of Indy that were more memorable than Ryan Hunter-Reay's 2010 victory at Long Beach. Time has a way of making us forget where Hunter-Reay was at that point in his career. He didn't have an INDYCAR SERIES ride in 2006 or for most of 2007, and he drove for three different series teams over the next two-plus seasons. He had joined Andretti Autosport for the start of the 2010 season, but it was billed as sponsor-dependent, and IZOD was new to the sport. But Hunter-Reay won Long Beach to really revive his career. For 12 years he was a foundational piece of the organization, winning 15 races, including the 2014 Indianapolis 500, and becoming a series champion (2012). That Long Beach victory also came at an emotional point in his personal life as he had lost his mother, Lydia, to colon cancer only five months prior. Eric Smith: Similar to Curt, I'm going to go with a jolt of energy for a winner, and that race happens to be three years later, in 2013. Takuma Sato joined the list of prestigious winners, leading 50 of 80 laps to score his first INDYCAR SERIES victory. That was AJ Foyt Racing's first victory since 2002 and catapulted both driver and team to relevance. Paul Kelly: I'll go with the 2008 edition of the race. It was far from a classic, as Will Power led 81 of 83 laps. But it was perhaps the most surreal of the 50 Grands Prix of Long Beach. Champ Car and the Indy Racing League had agreed earlier that year to merge, ending 12 years of a split sport, with Long Beach as the final Champ Car race. INDYCAR already had scheduled a race for that weekend in Motegi, Japan, so staff was split between the two events. I worked the Champ Car race in Long Beach, which definitely had an 'end of the school year' feel about it. During that weekend, Danica Patrick made history at Motegi by becoming the only woman to win an INDYCAR SERIES race. I vividly remember her being whisked across the Pacific to Long Beach from Japan to meet the media on Long Beach race day and talk about her historic Motegi victory, which frankly attracted way more attention than what was happening that day on the streets of Long Beach even though that race marked the official end of 'The Split.' I also remember seeing Power dominate under the Southern California sunshine that day in a race with no cautions and every car running at the finish and thinking, 'That guy is pretty good; some IRL team is bound to pick him up, right?' That team was Team Penske, and the rest, as they say, is history … recommended
Fox Sports
04-04-2025
- Automotive
- Fox Sports
Inside Line: Under-the-Radar Long Beach Moment?
INDYCAR Today's question: The Acura Long Beach Grand Prix celebrates its 50th edition April 11-13 as one of the marquee events in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES. What is an under-the-radar aspect of the event or its history that resonates with you? Curt Cavin: There are so many cool elements to Long Beach's history, which makes it difficult to single out one. It was both the first and last INDYCAR SERIES win of Michael Andretti's career, and the first series outing for two-time world champion Emerson Fittipaldi (he finished fourth in the 1984 race). It's where Scott Dixon won the first race of his title-winning Indy Lights season in 2000 and where Katherine Legge, in her first start in Atlantics in 2005, became the first woman to win a major developmental race in North America. It's where Paul Tracy, Juan Pablo Montoya, Mike Conway, Takuma Sato and Kyle Kirkwood scored their first INDYCAR SERIES race wins (Tracy also won there in Indy Lights). But a single greatest moment? Surely it was when Chris Pook, a former travel agent from England, convinced city officials to stage a street race in what was then a depressed, industrial city without an identity. I wasn't there for the first event, a Formula 5000 race held in September 1975 as a dry run for Formula One to be held six months later, but it must have been a Herculean effort even as longtime event president Jim Michaelian said many of the 62,000 on hand walked in without paying. Eric Smith: Will Power recently told me the 2008 race at Long Beach stood out to him because it was considered the final race of the Champ Car era. That's my nugget because 17 years later, I kind of forgot about that moment and presume a lot of folks did, too. That year's race was the first event to take place after the open-wheel reunification joining the NTT INDYCAR SERIES and Champ Car as one series. Unfortunately, a scheduling conflict arose between Long Beach (Champ Car) and the race at Motegi, Japan (INDYCAR SERIES). A compromise was made that the former Champ Car teams competed at Long Beach, while established INDYCAR SERIES teams competed in Japan. Both races paid full points to the INDYCAR SERIES championship. In Long Beach, 20 cars used the turbocharged Cosworth/Panoz DP01 for the last time. Power led 81 of 83 laps to earn the victory. Arni Sribhen: An under-the-radar aspect of Long Beach – literally and figuratively – is the marine layer typical of the morning on the Pacific coast. The marine layer forms when a warmer air mass travels over a cooler body of water, like the ocean. The low lump stratus clouds can keep the air temperature up at night as it reflects radiant heat from the ground down, but it can also slow the warming of the track in the morning. It's easy to be fooled by the marine layer when it comes to setting up a car. The conditions may be opposite of the weather forecast, and with multiple series sharing the track at Long Beach, what you learn in morning practice may not apply by the time you return for the afternoon sessions. Worse, it could lead a team or driver in the wrong direction come qualifying or race time. Paul Kelly: The 2009 Long Beach Grand Prix always will be surreal to me, not because of who was there but because of who almost wasn't there. Helio Castroneves was on trial for six counts of tax evasion at U.S. District Court in Miami in late March and early April 2009, and a guilty verdict almost certainly would have resulted in a prison term and the end of the then two-time Indianapolis 500 winner's driving career in North America. Tense times for Castroneves and his legions of fans, to say the least. The jury acquitted Castroneves of all six counts of tax evasion April 17, the opening day of that year's Long Beach Grand Prix, with Castroneves openly weeping in the courtroom after learning of his freedom. Castroneves then flew to Long Beach, qualified eighth and finished seventh in an exceptional performance considering he didn't know if he would be a free man 72 hours earlier. Will Power was a temporary fill-in for the on-trial Castroneves that season at the season opener at St. Petersburg, finishing sixth. Team Penske had Power on standby again for Castroneves' No. 3 at Long Beach but fielded car No. 12 for Power once it learned Castroneves was free to race that weekend. Power won the pole, finished second and parlayed that super-sub performance into a full-time ride with the team in 2010, and he's been there ever since. recommended
