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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Defending champion in the highly competitive American open-wheel series, the Kiwi driver was again fastest in the second of three practice sessions at Watkins Glen Speedway in NY on Friday (Saturday NZ time).
“Good vehicle, good team”.
Pagenaud leads 2014 IndyCar Series champion (and 2010 Watkins Glen winner) Power by 28 points with two races remaining, including the double-points finale at Sonoma Raceway. In Sunday’s race, he collided with Charlie Kimball on Lap 39 and Power hit the wall. We were looking really, really good.
“We’re just going to keep doing what we have been doing”, he said.
Graham Rahal, the victor last week at Texas, was sitting comfortably inside the top six in the first of three rounds of qualifying but was penalized for impeding Jack Hawksworth’s time and did not advance. “We would have gone by him if he had given me room”.
Power had originally been set to sit out the final session alongside championship leader and teammate Simon Pagenaud, who missed out on the Fast Six for the first time in 2016.
With a fifth IndyCar crown out of reach, Dixon can relax and enjoy his latest triumph at one of America’s most historic road racing venues and reflect on taking home another of Watkins Glen’s famous victory wreaths. Hinchcliffe will start 13th and Rahal 20th in the 22-car field. Both succeeded and moved up as drivers ahead of them were forced to pit.
“Obviously got a great run on Kimball, went down inside, completed the pass, and then he decided not to give me any room on the outside”, Rahal said.
Max Chilton, Pagenaud, Josef Newgarden, RC Enerson and Mikhail Aleshin also made the cut.
Sebastien Bourdais will start third on the grid at the Watkins Glen International on Sunday after an exciting qualifying, although the Frenchman once again found it a struggle to get the supposedly faster red-walled Firestone tyre to work. The GoPro Grand Prix has twice as many championship points at stake to win or lose.
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Juan Montoya has +1300 odds today. (19) RC Enerson, Honda, 01:23.9907 (144.445) 12.
