Will Power’s clash with Charlie Kimball on lap 38 of Sunday’s Watkins Glen IndyCar race has placed a giant question mark over how the race for the championship will play out on September 18 at Sonoma Raceway.
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In morning practice around the 3.37-mile, 11-turn layout, all 22 drivers eclipsed Ryan Briscoe’s track record of 1 minute, 28.1322 seconds at 137.657 miles per hour set in 2009 in a Honda V-8.
After winning the 2015 title in stunning fashion at the final race, Dixon has recorded just one win and two other podiums this year as various factors have gleaned mixed results.
In Sunday morning’s 30-minute warmup, Dixon practiced his starts and almost lost it once.
Dixon went back out front on lap 36, but the moment of the race – aside from Dixon’s dominance – came three laps later when Power tangled with Kimball in the esses and ended up in the wall. Comfortably in the final six, he was penalized for impeding Montoya and also had his two fastest laps taken away, too, giving Power the break he needed to advance.
Power won four of the last seven races to narrow the gap on leader Simon Pagenaud. The guys did such a good job and we’re going to be starting way further back than we deserve to be for really no reason. “It’s our best qualifying position of the season, so we’ll take it”.
Last race: Graham Rahal won by 0.008 seconds at Texas, one of the closest victories in IndyCar history.
“We have worked to create a strong team and a relationship with all the crew on the No. 22 vehicle”, he said. “There is the up and down elevation and the track is very suitable for an Indy auto because we are going really, really fast”.
“I don’t know what happened”, Pagenaud said. “It was tough, but we were able to fly up the field there at the end”.
WHO’S NOT: Ryan Hunter-Reay finished 14th for Andretti Autosport as his late-season slump continued.
“This place is so challenging”, said Team Penske’s Helio Castroneves, 2008 Sonoma race victor. Rahal, James Hinchcliffe and Sato had their two best times of their respective first qualifying sessions invalidated for qualifying interference.
“We missed the Fast Six by just a little, but that’s how competitive the Verizon IndyCar Series is”, said the driver of the No. 22 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Chevrolet.
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The GoPro Grand Prix has twice as many championship points at stake to win or lose.
