INDYCAR: Kentucky Preview

IndyCar

INDYCAR: Kentucky Preview

Round 16 of the 2011 IZOD IndyCar Series championship kicks off on Saturday as 29 cars practice for the 200-lap Kentucky Indy 300.

Marshall Pruett | Posted September 29, 2011

Can Ed Carpenter turn his magic touch at Kentucky into a top 5 result for Sarah Fisher Racing? (LAT)

Round 16 of the 2011 IZOD IndyCar Series championship kicks off on Saturday as 29 cars practice for the 200-lap Kentucky Indy 300.

Circuit: Kentucky, 1.5-mile oval located in Sparta, Kentucky.
Entry List: Click Here
Spotters Guide: Click Here
Event Schedule: Click Here
Live Timing & Scoring: Click Here
Television: Daily trackside updates Saturday through Sunday by Robin Miller on SPEED Center, race broadcast Sunday, October 2nd, 2:45 p.m. ET, Versus.
Tickets: Click Here

2010 Race Winner: Helio Castroneves
2010 Pole Winner: Ed Carpenter, 217.993 mph

Event Preview:

In 2009, it was a furious race to the finish. In 2010, it was a masterful bit of race and fuel strategy.

In 2011, the key to winning Kentucky won’t be known until the checkered flag waves.

Team Penske’s Ryan Briscoe edged Vision Racing’s Ed Carpenter to the finish line in ’09 by .0162 seconds, while last year, Briscoe’s teammate, Helio Castroneves, scored the win after Penske Racing President Tim Cindric set the Brazilian sailing on a fuel conservation run that caught the field off guard.

As the leaders’ tanks ran dry with just minutes remaining in the race, Cindric’s gamble paid off, allowing Castroneves to stay out and collect his second win of 2010 while the front-running cars pitted.

Fast forward to 2011 and the three-car Team Penske program heads to Kentucky with a rather different feel. The team that won the event two years in a row has just one oval win so far this season and Briscoe and Castroneves have been locked out of the win column altogether. Will Power, the final member of the Team Penske, holds the championship lead, earned The Captain’s lone oval win (at Texas 2) and has a better average finishing position on ovals this year (8.0) than Briscoe or Castroneves (10.1 and 10.6, respectively).

A year ago at Kentucky, Power was seen as the weakest link amongst the three, while 12 months later, he’s Penske’s only serious threat.

With a slim 11-point lead in the championship over Dario Franchitti, Kentucky is arguably the most important race of the year for Power. Although he’s proven to be much stronger on the ovals in 2011, it’s hard to forget that the Aussie cracked under pressure at the 2010 season finale in Homestead.

Facing the same pressure-packed scenario this weekend, could Power fold for a second straight year if things go awry on Sunday? It’s doubtful. In the mental game—one he clearly lost to Franchitti late last year, Power is much stronger after spending the off-season analyzing how his bid for the title fell apart.

It’s an obvious scenario, but Power’s also well aware that earning his first IndyCar championship will be much easier if he can finish ahead of Franchitti at Kentucky. Heading to Las Vegas in a situation similar to what he encountered at Homestead last year is the last thing anyone at Team Penske wants.

For Franchitti, and in a slight change of fortune within the team in 2011, the Scot has been most effective on ovals while his teammate, ovalmeister Scott Dixon, has been the better of the two on road courses.

Will Power learned a lot about what he needed to improve after a brief lapse of concentration and subsequent brush with the wall took him out of contention for the 2010 IndyCar Series championship. (LAT)

As the only repeat winner on ovals this season (Texas 1, Milwaukee), and thanks to the close nature of the points standings, Franchitti would be the easy choice to pencil in for the win at Kentucky. But don’t count Power out of the equation. After qualifying second in 2010, a ballsy, bumpy track like Kentucky fits Power’s aggressive driving style better than some of the more featureless ovals he’s driven.

Looking within the rest of the Penske ranks, Kentucky would be the perfect track for Briscoe or Castroneves to go for their first win of the season, but with the Penske operation in full championship mode, expect both drivers to fall behind Power if he’s anywhere near the front of the field.

The championship scenario gets a bit tricky when it comes to Scott Dixon, who sits third in the championship, 48 points behind his teammate and 59 markers behind Power. It would take something close to two perfect events for the Kiwi and relatively disastrous events for Power and Franchitti for the two-time series champion to earn his third title, but now that he’s back in the mix after dominating the last round at Motegi, Franchitti can’t expect to get any help from his teammate.

With an 11-point deficit to Power to overcome, two additional Penske cars looking to make life difficult and his own teammate gunning for him, Franchitti has plenty of obstacles to overcome in his quest for his fourth championship. Dixon is in an identical situation with one Ganassi and three Penske cars to overcome, while Power, by comparison, has just the two Ganassi entries to concern himself with this weekend.

Add Andretti Autosport’s Ryan Hunter-Reay and Marco Andretti to the list of serious oval contenders at Kentucky, Indy 500 winner Dan Wheldon driving the chassis Alex Tagliani used to score poles at Indy and Texas 1, and Panther Racing’s JR Hildebrand and Buddy Rice to the cauldron of headaches awaiting the three championship contenders, and Kentucky has all the makings of 200-lap dog fight.

Throw in an average of 15 lead changes the past two years, the high likelihood of team tactics affecting the final outcome and the need for fuel strategies and pit stops to be perfect in the Ganassi and Penske camps, and Sunday’s race could be one for the ages.

Driving Kentucky

With two second-place finishes in as many years and a pole position thrown in for good measure, the unique Kentucky oval and Sarah Fisher Racing’s Ed Carpenter have proven to be a great match.

Carpenter, who isn’t afraid of challenging tracks, says he enjoys Kentucky for all of the characteristics that makes it different from the other 1.5-mile ovals.

“I’ve had good cars there and good runs there, all the way back to my early years with Cheever [Racing],” he said. “I’ve always been comfortable at Kentucky, even though it’s really bumpy. I don’t necessarily mind the bumps; even in sprint cars, my favorite track was Salem, which isn’t known for being smooth.”

The variety of lines and approaches Kentucky offers is also a major bonus, according to Carpenter.

“The Kentucky track really lends itself to IndyCar racing,” he continued. “It’s obviously very fast, but it’s different because the track is so wide. Most of the 1.5-mile tracks are good for two lanes of racing, but at Kentucky, you can run three lanes most of the time and it’s not really a problem. Even when we were still racing at Chicagoland, I felt Kentucky was better for pure racing and getting runs on people. It’s a really unique track.”

Carpenter and SFR have shown plenty of speed this year; now they need to translate that pace into a solid race result. (LAT)

From a setup standpoint, big ovals tend to reward the cars that cut through the air with the greatest efficiency, but with the bumpy nature of the Kentucky track surface, Carpenter says mechanical grip plays a slightly larger role in producing fast lap speeds.

“We always try to look at the whole package from dampers and springs to cambers and toes to aerodynamics at every track, but I think that for a track like this that’s so bumpy, you want to go for a mechanical package that will allow you to be aggressive over the bumps.”

The combination of Carpenter and SFR has delivered some amazing results this year, most notably in qualifying on Super Speedways, but as the IndyCar Series veteran shares, the team is focused on ending the year with stronger finishes.

“I’m really proud with the effort the team has put in, starting at Indy,” he said. “It’s a great group of people and we really enjoy working together. Inside the team, we’re pleased with some of the results we’ve gotten, but feel we should have done better at some of the races. If you look at Indy, we qualified eighth and finished 11th. We just didn’t execute across the entire event to get a better finish. At Texas, we qualified fifth but didn’t get the balance right for the first race and that hurt us for both races.

“We know we have fast cars, but we’re going to these last two races trying to get better finishes. Our crew members deserve it and we want to deliver for our sponsors, too. I think we’re all proud of some of what we’ve achieved so far, but we all want to show the progress we’ve made and to show more of what we’re capable of.”

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