Will Power reportedly met with IndyCar’s chief safety expert Terry Trammel on Sunday night, hours after a crash in the IndyCar Grand Prix at Watkins Glen that may have left him with a concussion. Almost three and a half miles in length, it links a series of long straights with just eleven corners, all of which require an average speed of 100 mph or more.
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Dixon led all three practice sessions prior to qualifying and shattered the 7-year-old track record held by Ryan Briscoe by 5.6 seconds. Dario Franchitti’s pole lap at Road America in 2000 corresponds to a 145.924 miles per hour average.
Unless his Team Penske teammate Will Power stages a remarkable comeback in the last race of the IndyCar Series season, Simon Pagenaud should emerge from the GoPro Grand Prix of Sonoma in two weeks with a season championship. The New Zealander has four, and is the reigning series champion until either Will Power or Simon Pagenaud will be handed the title after the Sep. “The next step is to make a wicked fast race auto and pass them all”. “My engine died on the last corner of the last lap, which cost us some time”, Power said. Power crashed just past the midpoint of the race and finished 20th.
Pagenaud failed to make the final six for the first time this season and will start seventh.
But Pagenaud entered the day with a 28-point lead, and he increased it. We can’t extract any performance out of them. We saved a lot of overtakes, our tires were better than everybody.
The Kiwi Indy Car driver took his 16th career pole position after a blistering run on the Watkins Glen racecourse.
“It’s hard. I think all of us fall victim to falling into a championship battle and racing for a championship, as opposed to just doing what we need to do”.
Unlike some sports where a minimum numbers of days must pass before an athlete is eligible to return to action, IndyCar’s Immediate Post-concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing (ImPACT) program is activated and the driver can be tested in whatever time frame is suitable based on the pace of his or her recovery.
“Elkhart [Road America] and Mid-Ohio were tremendous and there was lots of interest at Watkins Glen when we tested there”, observed legendary team owner Roger Penske.
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Regardless of which race weekend it is in Watkins, fans always seems to enjoy coming back.
