Some observations following the SunTrust Indy Challenge at Richmond International Raceway:
• Franchitti was robbed: Dario Franchitti came in second to his Target Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Scott Dixon on Saturday night, but Franchitti didn't lose the race. Some might say rookie Mike Conway cost Franchitti the victory, while others could argue that the real culprit was the Indy Racing League rulebook.
AP Photo/Dean Hoffmeyer
Scott Dixon, left, pulls out of the pits in front of teammate Dario Franchitti during Saturday's race.
Franchitti was steaming along with about a 1.5-second lead after a long stretch of green-flag racing. Just as he was getting ready to make a pit stop, Conway brushed the wall and stopped on the course, bringing out a full-course caution.
Pushing things to the limit as top teams often do, Franchitti was scheduled to pit that lap for fuel. But per the IRL rulebook, the pits close as soon as the yellow flag flies. Franchitti was allowed to come in to grab a splash of ethanol, but he lost his track position. After rejoining at the back of the field bunched up behind the pace car, Franchitti pitted again with the rest of the runners but lost the lead to Dixon. And with passing being a near impossibility at Richmond (not to mention in the IndyCar Series in general these days), unless Dixon or his crew was to make a mistake, Franchitti had lost the race. Which is, of course, what happened.
The timing of Conway's mistake and/or the pit lane-closure rule could have huge implications on the IndyCar Series championship. Franchitti left Richmond as the championship leader, just one point ahead of Dixon. Had Franchitti been able to make that pit stop under green-flag conditions, he probably would have won the race (50 points) and earned the two-point bonus for leading the most laps. Instead, the two-point bonus went to Dixon and -- coupled with Franchitti's earning just 40 points for second place -- made for a 24-point swing.
The past three IndyCar Series championships have been decided by 17 points or fewer.
• Dixon is the best: Scott Dixon tied Sam Hornish Jr.'s record of 19 IndyCar Series victories with his win at Richmond. The New Zealander can move even with Hornish in terms of titles if he wins his third this year, to accompany his crowns from 2003 and 2008.
However, Dixon earned his 19 race wins in just 104 IndyCar starts from 2003 to the present, compared to Hornish's 116 starts between 2000 and 2007. The first three years of Hornish's IndyCar career were also at the height of the IRL-CART/Champ Car war, meaning his competition in those years was considerably less stout than from 2003 onward, when most of the CART teams (including Ganassi Racing, with Dixon) began defecting to the IRL.
Dixon said his 2008 championship was more meaningful to him because of the tougher opposition, as well as the fact that it was earned with road racing in the mix, not just ovals. One key player wasn't around in 2008 for Dixon to beat: Franchitti, who is now his Ganassi teammate. If Dixon prevails in this year's title sweepstakes, it will be a feat even more impressive than winning last year's crown.
• It was an awful race: That's not my description; it's Franchitti's. Actually, he used the word "awful" twice. The Scotsman was remarkably candid in his assessment of the Richmond event, which featured no lead changes on the track and just a handful of passes for position during the course of 300 laps.
"We couldn't pass," Franchitti said. "We were a second slower when we were in traffic. I have to apologize to the fans because that was an awful, awful race. There's nothing the drivers can do about it. We're trying as hard as we can. It was a terrible race."
Here's a memo to Brian Barnhart, Les Mactaggart, Kevin Blanch and the IRL technical brain trust: Adding short bursts of 5 or 10 horsepower through a Champ Car copying push-to-pass system won't solve the problem. Short of a whole new engine-chassis combination -- which might come along in 2012 if we are lucky -- the only thing that's really going to shake up the racing is restoring the ability of individual teams to do some actual development on the existing cars.
Of course, that will only increase the advantage already had by the best-funded and best-equipped teams, such as Ganassi and Team Penske. But if those two teams are going to win all the races anyway (and it appears they will, given the way Andretti Green Racing is going backward), why not make the inevitable a bit more exciting?
• Tale of two teams: Andretti Green was woefully uncompetitive in qualifying, with Hideki Mutoh the team's best performer in eighth place and Tony Kanaan down in 17th. Mutoh led a 4-5-6-7 finish for the team, which looked pretty good on paper. But much like a similar result earlier this year in Long Beach, appearances can deceive. AGR is on a slippery slope that has seen the team look less and less competitive this year, and Kanaan must be ruing his decision to remain with the team rather than taking the seat his old pal Franchitti occupies at Ganassi.
Meanwhile, Team Penske failed to get a car to the finish at Richmond, as both Ryan Briscoe and Helio Castroneves crashed out. Briscoe lost it on his own while running third less than 30 laps into the race, while Castroneves seemed to get distracted when Tomas Scheckter drifted up into the gray and wiped off the right side of his car.
The generous IndyCar Series points system guaranteed that both men wouldn't go home empty-handed. But Briscoe watched a three-point championship lead turn into a 26-point deficit; Castroneves -- already on the back foot in terms of the championship after missing the season opener at St. Petersburg because of his tax evasion trial -- is now 54 points back.
As mentioned above, the past three IndyCar Series titles have been decided by 17 points or fewer. Richmond, which Team Penske considers a home race because sponsor Philip Morris is based there, was a weekend the team would rather forget.
• Format change: Richmond was the last of six consecutive oval races for the IndyCar Series. Now the championship turns right and (literally) changes gears, as five of the next six events are at road-racing venues, beginning Sunday at Watkins Glen International.
From 2005 to '07, Dixon dominated the IndyCar Series road-racing events, but he did not win a road race during his 2008 championship run. This year has started even worse for Dixon: He scored just 29 points at St. Petersburg and Long Beach back in April, far away from Franchitti's league-leading tally of 84 points.
Based solely on those two street course races, Dixon ranks 17th in the standings, but he's a near lock this weekend at The Glen, where he won in 2005, '06 and '07 and was effectively running second when he spun out under caution last year.
Franchitti is no slouch at Watkins Glen, either, and Penske's Castroneves and Briscoe both shine there as well. The race promises to be a lot like the rest of the season is shaping up to be: close competition between the first four, albeit with not a lot of passing. And pretty much a free-for-all from fifth on back.
John Oreovicz
