Itaipava Sao Paulo Indy 300 presented by Nestle Preview and Predictions

It is time for the IZOD IndyCar’s annual trip below the equator.  And no Jack Arute I am not talking about Japan!!!  We are going to the home of half the field Brazil.  Okay it is not quite half and when I said “we” I really mean them, as I could not even go to Barber, even though I won free tickets and paddock passes, because of the price of fuel, which seems cheep now only three weeks ago.  So like, I would expect everyone reading this, I will be stuck at home watching this one on Verses.

The track layout for Sao Paulo is absolutely brilliant!  Anyone who knows me or well get to know my through this blog, knows that I am a oval guy but as far as road courses go this lay out might just be the best I’ve ever seen and that includes all of the F1 tracks around the world.  Too bad the track surface cannot live up to the layouts potential.  I am not too concerned about the start/finish straight from last year.  I am sure they learn their lesion and are prepared this year so: 1) the cars can get grip on the concrete and 2) it is not a dust bowl and the drivers can actually see where they are going.  No my complaint has to do with street courses in general.  There are ways to make a “street” course work and that is to do it like F1 does it.  Require the streets to be FIA approved racing surface.  If you want to run in the streets that is find but make sure the streets are acceptable.  St. Petersburg is a good example of this.  They paved their streets to make a usable racetrack.  In contrast, look at Long Beach last week.  That track is just like the roads I travel on every day along with the bumps and man whole covers that my streetcar.  What is the problem you ask?  Well if my streetcar, with a ground clearance of about eight inch and travels at a typical speed of 62 mph, his a man whole cover I probably would not even notice it.  If a racecar however, hits a man whole cover he is sent into the tire wall.  Just ask Josef Newgarden who while leading the Firestone Indy Lights race at Long Beach hit a man whole cover and out of the race.  Can we all agree that there is no room for a man whole cover on a true world class racing circuit!  Sao Paulo may or may not have man whole covers on or near the racing line, I do not remember from last year but I do remember that is was way, Way, WAY too bumpy to be considered as a world class racing circuit.  Last year was a great race but how much better could it have been on a smooth surface?

 

Let us move to predictions.  It is a road / street course to my prediction for pole is the same as ALL road / street courses and that is Will Power.  I am not saying Power is going to take every pole on the twisties this year, as I am sure he’ll faultier somewhere, and end up as far back as P2 but I’ll never pick against him for pole when it comes to the road and street courses.  To take the “twin checkers”, I want to pick a Brazilian and I WANT to pick TK but I am not going to.  TK just does not have the killer attitude this year.  Blame it on the new team where he does not know all of the guys yet.  Blame it on EJ Viso for tearing up so much equipment that Tony feels he just has to bring the car home what ever it is he is just not the same TK we all know and love.  Prove me wrong TK prove me wrong I would love it!!!  Therefore, if I still want to go with a Brazilian then I will look towards Helio.  Lord knows he needs a good, clean race and a win would sure go a long ways to getting his confidence back before Indy.  So sure, why not I will go out on the limb and pick Helio for the win.  Besides if, he is already in front then he will have no one to run into from behind!  To come in P2 I am going to go with Power.  He cannot be too far down the order and with Power behind him; there will not be any “getch’a back” moves to take Helio out.  I would hope no IndyCar driver would do this these guys (and girls) are better then NASCAR driver that way too not just in their talent levels.  But you never know with some of the mid-field and back.  For P3 I am looking at the “Major of Hitchtown” to come home with the podium locking out all of the Ganassi cars shutting out the Penske podium sweep.  Hitch was my pre-season pick for Rookie of the year even though I knew he would miss St. Pete and I am not backing off of him now.  He was faster then Oriol at the preseason test at Barber all the way till the low fuel new tires qualifying sims at the very end.  However, in his two races so far he has been out preformed by “Milk’s Favorite Cookie” (My own personal nick name for Oriol Servia is “Oreo”)  This week Hitch turns it around and starts to out perform his teammate race in and race out.  For the “Story of the Race” I am going to say keep an eye out on Vitor.  He may not be able to back up his podium finish from last year but with a top ten maybe even a top five he can show us all that last year was not a fluke and he still has what it takes to be an elite IndyCar driver.  Last but not least the “Legend In His Own Mind” award I am going to pick EJ Viso to put it in the wall again!  Not much of a stretch I know but hey if I am picking Helio to have a good race.  Who else can I count on to do something stupid?

To Penalize or Not to penalize that is the question.

The main talking point this week in IndyCar is whether or not Helio should have been penalized and why was PT different.  I know I am in the extreme minority here but I for one think that race control got the exactly right last week at Long Beach.  If you watch the Helio / Wilson contact and brake down what happened to cause the incident you‘d see that Wilson was the second car in line.  The car in front (I do not remember who it was now) break checked Wilson in the hairpin.  This is not a dirty move.  This is a standard defensive move to make it harder for Wilson to get a run down the front stretch and make a pass going into turn 1.  Wilson therefore had to check up to avoid getting into him, in essence break-checking Helio in a standard accordion effect.  Helio could not see the front car brake check Wilson and ran into the back spinning Wilson.  Would I call this “unavoidable contact”?  No, I would not go that far but I would call it a racing incident and not deserving of a penalty.

So how is this different from the Tracy / Simona contact?  As we were never shown video of this incident it makes it hard too assess.  The reaction on Monday was this was the same contact and should have had the same result.  I however kept on saying, “hold the phone there.  We haven’t seen video of the Tracy / Simona contact and you are putting a lot of faith in Tracy by saying it was the same thing just because it had the same result.”  (A car spun on exit of the hairpin.)  I kept on point out the Tracy has a history of attempting bonehead moves and has tried (and failed) to make a pass in the hairpin before.  Therefore, I was not sure this was not the case again.  I am sure there are some people that want to cry conspiracy theories claiming that IndyCar does not want you to see the video because they do not want you to see the similarities of the contact and just want to stick it to PT.  First Versus is the one who opted not to show us the video not IndyCar and what does Versus have to hide?  They would love to show the video if they had it they just must not have it.  So how did race control see it?  Race control uses a different set of cameras.  These unmanned stationary cameras are more like security cameras then high definition television cameras.  Whether or not Versus have access to this footage is yet to be seen if I would to take a guess I would say no and we will never see video of this incident.  So how do we analyze the contact then?  There are two possible answers to this.  One you simply take the high road and do not analyze it at all.  This is what writers in respectable newspapers would do.  (See Curt Cavin’s Q&A as the perfect example of this.)  But this is just a blog not any respectable news source we are here just to create arguments so we do not have to stand up to the same line of ethics as a professional writer does.  So I can go with answer two and that is take the word of someone who saw it.  This becomes hearsay and you have to make decision on which you are going to believe where there are conflicts.  For this case, we have Al Unser Jr. and Scott Dixon.  Scott said the Helio’s move was far worse then Tracy’s and does not understand why Helio was not penalized.  Here is the quote:

“I was one car back from it. It was totally blatant. OK, Justin was struggling a little bit for rear grip, and it was coming towards the end of the stint, but it still doesn’t make it OK for the following person to say, ‘You’re slowing me down—you’re kind of ruining my race—so I’m going to spin you out so I don’t have to deal with you anymore.’”

What Dixon said about the Helio wreck was just dead wrong.  He claimed that Wilson was holding everyone but wait a minute Wilson was not the car holding everyone up it was the car in front of Wilson that was holding up the train and anyone who calls hat a blatant punt has lost their mind!  (Please note that I consider there are four kinds of contact that can happen in a race.  Unavoidable, Racing incident, Avoidable, and Punt.)  I tack this up to Dixon just being mad and talking with out facts.  The other witness we have to choose to speak publicly about it is Al Jr.  As one of the marshals, he would have the best view available for review of both incidents.  When he decided to come out publicly and talk about it.  I was proud to say what I thought happened (even with out video) is was Al said happened.  Tracy was trying a very ill-advised pass in a non-passing zone and caused a wreck.  That is a big difference then what Helio / Wilson contact where Helio was just the third car in line.  My verdict avoidable contact minor penalty.

What about Helio’s move into turn one then?  What happened here (we know because we have video) is exactly how you describe what Tracy did.  Let us break this down and see what really happened here.  Helio has a run down the front stretch pulls to the inside of Oriol Servia.  Servia moves down (not enough to block not even by IndyCar’s extremely stick definition) moving Helio farther on to the dirty line.  Helio kicks up dust does not slow down enough and plows into Power.  If Helio was trying to make a move on Power then that would be a bonehead move and he should have been penalized but he was not trying to pass Power.  He was trying to pass Servia and slot in behind Power.  In racing when you attempt to make a pass sometimes things go wrong that is by definition a racing incident.  If you attempt to make a clean pass in a passing, zone and fail there should be no penalty.  My verdict racing incident no penalty.