King of the streets survives final attack from Simon Pagenaud
Once again, Will Power doubted that he could make up a lot of positions and win. And once again, he proved himself wrong.
Despite starting 12th as a result of a 10-spot penalty given to him and the other Chevrolet-powered drivers for their mass engine swap before the weekend, Power methodically moved his way through the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach field just as he did in his charge from ninth to victory two weeks ago at Barber Motorsports Park. He’s got an even better story to tell now after hanging on to defeat a hyper-fast Simon Pagenaud by less than a second for his second win of the year and a new home atop the IZOD IndyCar Series championship standings.
Considering Power’s prodiguous talent on road and street circuits, one can’t be blamed for wondering if Power’s thoughts of doubt are simply to give his rivals a false sense of security. But considering that he’d been unable to convert pole runs into wins at the Beach in 2009, 2010 and 2011, he had a legit reason to wonder if his bad luck would continue.
“I go into every season thinking that there’s no way I can win another race,” Power explained. “I don’t know why I feel like that, but I do, and that’s always my ‑‑ I guess I have an insecurity or something or I don’t believe in myself enough. Yeah, that’s always my feeling.”
Time will tell if Power will show more confidence in the future. He certainly deserves to after Sunday’s outing.
Power had managed a two-stop strategy in the race and capped off his drive to the front by taking over the lead on Lap 71, when Pagenaud relinquished the massive lead he had built in his middle stint to make his third and final stop of the afternoon.
But while Pagenaud came out of the pits in fourth, his stellar pace remained and he quickly disposed of Rubens Barrichello. Pounding out laps at a pace that was at least 1.5 seconds quicker than the leaders, he then hunted down and passed Takuma Sato for second place with six laps left.
As Pagenaud began to set sail for Power, the latter was dealing with having to save fuel and dealing with lapped traffic, particularly the car of E.J. Viso. Steadily, Power’s lead evaporated.
“I really thought I would have a go [at the lead] when E.J. was there,” Pagenaud surmised. “I thought E.J. did a good job. He did his best to get out of the way in the right place. There’s not much else he could have done, really.
“I was hoping we was going to end up a little bit more, so it gave me some time, but I just needed one more lap or a little bit more pace. But to be honest, that’s all I had, and I think it’s plenty quick.”
As for Power, he felt he had things under control even with Pagenaud’s oncoming assault.
“I knew how fast he was,” Power said. “I thought it was about a second a lap quicker, and I knew that we’d saved fuel, so on the last two laps, we could push if it came to him being right on me.”
Meanwhile, the action was just as heavy behind them. On the final lap, Ryan Hunter-Reay made a risky move to the inside of Takuma Sato at Turn 6 and spun out the Japanese pilot. That got him a 30-second penalty at the finish, knocking him to sixth place and moving his Andretti Autosport teammate, James Hinchcliffe, up one position to third place.
Then at the infamous Turn 11 hairpin, a touch from Helio Castroneves sent Rubens Barrichello into a spin and also stopped multiple cars to clog the track entirely. Castroneves got tagged with his own 30-second penalty, which took him from 10th to 13th and out of the points lead as well.
The race had its fair share of incidents early on as well, with an accident coming right off the bat as Josef Newgarden was unable to complete an outside pass on pole sitter Dario Franchitti and hit the wall after contact between the two. INDYCAR reviewed the contact and decided not to penalize Franchitti, who clearly lost the position but appeared to get crowded by Newgarden through the turn, making their contact unavoidable.
But the biggest hit of the afternoon came on Lap 22. Marco Andretti went for position on the inside of Graham Rahal going into Turn 8, but instead made contact with Rahal. That launched his No. 26 RC Cola machine into the air, where it spun before coming down and into the tire barriers.
Afterwards, Andretti felt wronged, while Rahal thought otherwise about the incident.
“There’s one thing blocking, but there’s another thing chopping,” said Andretti. “That was a chop.”
“He wasn’t going to make the corner no matter what,” said Rahal.
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IZOD IndyCar Series
Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach
Streets of Long Beach, California (1.9-mile circuit)
1. 12-Will Power, Penske-Chevy, led 15 of 85 laps
2. 77-Simon Pagenaud, SHM-Honda, -0.8675 seconds
3. 27-James Hinchcliffe, Andretti-Chevy, -13.2719 seconds
4. 11-Tony Kanaan, KVRT-Chevy, -18.1951 seconds
5. 4-JR Hildebrand, Panther-Chevy, -22.9947 seconds
6. 28-Ryan Hunter-Reay, Andretti-Chevy, -42.5631 seconds
7. 2-Ryan Briscoe, Penske-Chevy, 85, -100.1271 seconds
8. 15-Takuma Sato, RLL-Honda, one lap down
9. 8-Rubens Barrichello, KVRT-Chevy, one lap down
10. 18-Justin Wilson, Coyne-Honda, one lap down
11. 19-James Jakes, Coyne-Honda, one lap down
12. 5-EJ Viso, KVRT-Chevy, one lap down
13. 3-Helio Castroneves, Penske-Chevy, one lap down
14. 20-Ed Carpenter, ECR-Chevy, two laps down
15. 10-Dario Franchitti, Ganassi-Honda, three laps down
16. 22-Oriol Servia, DRR-Lotus, three laps down
17. 7-Sebastien Bourdais, Dragon-Lotus, three laps down
18. 83-Charlie Kimball, Ganassi-Honda, five laps down
19. 6-Katherine Legge, Dragon-Lotus, five laps down
20. 78-Simona de Silvestro, HVM-Lotus, Mechanical – Lap 74
21. 98-Alex Tagliani, BHA-Lotus, Mechanical – Lap 46
22. 14-Mike Conway, Foyt-Honda, Mechanical – Lap 41
23. 9-Scott Dixon, Ganassi-Honda, Mechanical – Lap 27
24. 38-Graham Rahal, Ganassi-Honda, Contact – Lap 23
25. 26-Marco Andretti, Andretti-Chevy, Contact – Lap 22
26. 67-Josef Newgarden, SFHR-Honda, Contact – Lap 0
Race Statistics
Winner’s average speed: 88.021 mph; Time of race: One hour, 54 minutes, 1.6082 seconds; Margin of victory: .8675 of a second; Cautions: Three for 12 laps; Lead changes: Nine among seven drivers.
Lap Leaders
Franchitti 1-4, Wilson 5-19, Sato 20-27, Hunter-Reay 28, Briscoe 29-33, Pagenaud 34-47, Sato 48-55, Hunter-Reay 56-58, Pagenaud 59-70, Power 71-85.
Point Standings
1. Will Power (Leader) 127
2. Helio Castroneves -24
3. Simon Pagenaud -27
4. Scott Dixon -31
5. James Hinchcliffe -32
6. Ryan Hunter-Reay -46
7. Ryan Briscoe -55
8. Graham Rahal -65
9. Rubens Barrichello -68
10. JR Hildebrand -70
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Quotes were taken from the INDYCAR post-race press conference and trackside report.
