(Photo: Joe Skibinski / INDYCAR)
By Aaron Bearden
After each NTT IndyCar Series race weekend, Motorsports Beat will share a piece breaking down the stories and takeaways from the weekend. This is a report on the the tour’s first race on the streets of Nashville.
NTT IndyCar Series
Race: Big Machine Music City Grand Prix
Who Won?
Marcus Ericsson, despite getting some literal air time early in the race.
Top Stories
Nashville Madness
Boy… That was a something else, huh?
After months of preparation and a delightfully planned weekend of hype building by NBC Sports, segueing between its NASCAR and NTT IndyCar Series programming with style to accentuate both events, America’s top open wheel series finally got the opportunity to compete on the streets of Nashville late on Sunday afternoon.
It was a smashing success of a weekend and a weird train wreck of a race.
There are more takeaways than any one person could dare pull from everything that played out in a chaotic few hours of IndyCar action, but I’ll do my best.
Let’s start with the positives.
First off, I wasn’t present in Nashville to soak in the scenes. But from everything I saw and heard from people in the area, the overall vibe of the race weekend was fantastic. There was a clear buzz surrounding the event and the sightlines from the track were phenomenal and unique. Nashville is a beloved city and one that’s proven home to a fair few race fans based on TV ratings, so it’s no surprise that the marriage of IndyCar and the city seemed to be a positive one.
There wasn’t the overall ritz of a circuit like Monaco, but the Nashville skyline was akin to one of Formula E’s more spectacular street circuits than something comparatively tame like Belle Isle Park. The bridge section was a notable spectacle that made the circuit stand out.
As I mentioned before, NBC and the series also did a good job of hyping up the event and making it feel like a big deal. It was marketed during the NASCAR races, with a live look-in on Saturday’s qualifying session and an immediate change over after the Cup race ended on Sunday. The series and its competitors clearly cared about the event and that helped add to the prestige.
That was all great. But the challenges also have to be acknowledged.
The thing is, everything about a race weekend can be fun and entertaining. But eventually the race itself takes place, and it needs to be entertaining. A few crashes and fun moments can provide highlights and pop the crowd, but there needs to be good racing mixed in along the way.
A lack of enjoyable racing has slowly doomed similarly hyped events in the past, most notably NASCAR’s Brickyard 400 that has fallen so far that it’s led new Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Roger Penske to shift it to a road course race this weekend. Even Monaco, a classic on the F1 calendar, has a host of detractors now that it’s effectively impossible to pass with the large, modern F1 cars.
Sunday’s race didn’t provide much in the form of entertaining racing. There were memes and outright goofy moments along the way, from Marcus Ericsson’s airborne trip over Sebastien Bourdais on Lap 5 to the multicar pileup kicked off by a pair of Team Penske teammates. But the field spent over half of the race’s first 50 laps behind the safety car and even saw an early red flag, pushing the event long and making it a draining experience.
Thankfully for all involved, the race picked up in the second half. Colton Herta delivered a memorable drive that ended in heartbreak after he crashed in the late stages of the race. Ericsson survived to secure a memorable win, overcoming his early trip through the air for an improbable victory at day’s end. Anecdotes from some in attendance indicate that there may also have been some fun racing in the pack, such as the sketchy moment Scott McLaughlin shared on social media afterward.
Here’s the onboard of my moment passing @maxchilton Sunday… Bit going on 😳😳 #SM3 pic.twitter.com/SCWUk6rEiK
— Scott McLaughlin (@smclaughlin93) August 10, 2021
This isn’t the only event to face first-year struggles this year. NASCAR had similar troubles at its dirt races at Bristol Motor Speedway and Knoxville Raceway, along with a rain-soaked mess at Circuit of the Americas.
Each of those was unfortunate, but here’s the thing – the races all showed potential, too. Bristol looked like a proper spectacle, but was beset by heavy weekend rains that made track prep tricky and forced a one-day doubleheader on the sanctioning body. Knoxville gave an iconic dirt track a NASCAR home. COTA was an enjoyable weekend for fans, even in the wet, until the rain just became too much to manage.
Nashville, too, showed genuine promise. The atmosphere was great, and the scenery would be difficult to replicate anywhere else. Much like Long Beach, IndyCar may have found a good home for a yearly street circuit event. Those involved just have to go to work and see what subtle changes can be made to improve the racing product when the race comes back around.
Rarified Air
There were a couple drivers that would be penciled in as strong contenders for Chip Ganassi Racing entering the 2021 season. But would anyone have guessed that Marcus Ericsson would be one of them?
That sounds like a harsh question now, but it’s important to remember the context of the time. Prior to this year, Ericsson had just one podium in 30 career starts, having finished no better than 12th in the championship standings.
That form held true through the spring months of 2021, too. Through May’s Indy 500, Ericsson finished no better than seventh during a stretch of six races that saw him leave the Month of May 10th in the championship standings.
But in the time since the Indy 500’s conclusion, Ericsson has been the best driver in the field. The Swiss star has two victories, three podiums and has secured a series best 193 points – 31 more than his championship-leading teammate, Alex Palou.
The summer months have been a career renaissance for a driver once considered a Formula 1 castaway, seeing Ericsson rise into contention after two quiet years in America. In Sunday’s case, he even pulled off the feat with extra flair, scoring an improbable win after going airborne in an early crash with Sebastien Bourdais that will live in IndyCar lore for the rest of time.
“It’s unbelievable,” Ericsson said of the win. “It just shows in INDYCAR anything can happen. You can never give up. And if you have a good team and a good car, you can still get to victory lane.”
The only question remaining at this stage is how long Ericsson can keep this run of form up. Despite his slow start to the year, the 30-year-old has risen to fifth in the championship standings.
He’s still 79 points behind Palou with five races remaining on the 2021 calendar, so a run for the Astor Cup is unlikely. But teammate Scott Dixon is a mere 37 points away in second, giving Ericsson plenty to compete for down the stretch.
Herta’s Heartbreak
Rarely in an IndyCar weekend does one driver thoroughly whoop the field like Colton Herta did in Nashville.
And because of that, rarely does a loss sting more.
Herta was the driver to beat from the moment he arrived at Nashville, leading the way in both opening practice sessions and securing the pole by more than half a second over Scott Dixon. The Andretti Autosport ace led 39 laps in Sunday’s race and figured to factor into the battle for the win regardless of how things played out.
But in the end he found himself on the outside looking in, trailing Ericsson in the closing laps due to differing pit strategies that left him on the back foot. Herta was closing in on Ericsson to challenge for the win when a mistake in Turn 9 with five laps remaining left his machine battered, sending Herta home in 19th.
It was a devastating result for a dominant car.
“I feel terrible,” Herta said afterward. “We had the car all weekend to win, and man, I just threw it away, so I feel really bad.
“I’m OK, though. I know that I didn’t get my hands off the wheel, but they’re OK, so I don’t really have anything to say. This place is brutal. I think we saw that.”
Herta is among the most promising young stars in all of open wheel racing, even generating occasional chatter in the F1 paddock with his strong talent and occasional dominant drives. He likely has many wins in his future.
But Herta’s first memory from Nashville will always be a win that slipped away.
Sweet relief for Hinchcliffe
Through the chaos in Nashville came a much-needed podium for James Hinchcliffe in the Music City Grand Prix.
What was once posed as a happy return to full-time competition has been a difficult slog for Hinchcliffe and his No. 29 Andretti Autosport team. The group has struggled for pace and luck, having finished no better than 14th in any race heading into the Nashville street circuit.
That left little cause for optimism going into the weekend, but Hinchcliffe showed glimmers of promise on Saturday with a 10th-place qualifying result. That early success was nearly undone when he was caught up in the early logjam on Lap 20, stalling on-track to avoid a crash. But a well-timed red flag kept Hinchcliffe from falling a lap or more down while he waited for his car to be restarted,
From there the Canadian marched forward, rising from 13th to fourth heading into the final 10 laps. The aforementioned crash for Herta ahead of him allowed Hinchcliffe to rise one spot higher to third, and he held onto it from there to secure his first podium since Iowa Speedway in 2019.
The moment was a reprieve from a difficult year for Hinchcliffe and a realization of potential from his No. 29 team.
“As the saying goes, you’re only as good as your last race,” Hinchcliffe said. “We’ve been finding some pace in qualifying the last couple events. It was nice to have nothing, well I am not going to say nothing because something went wrong, but then something went right.
“Mid-Ohio sort of ended before it started for us. I think the team is doing a great job. I think we’re really jelling at the moment. We’ve had a few good ones in a row. We got a couple tracks coming up that we really enjoy. Hopefully this is some momentum that we can carry through the last five races of the year.”
Notes
- Finishing second amid the chaos was about as Scott Dixon-like a performance as Scott Dixon has ever managed. As a result, he’s up to second in the standings and within 42 points of teammate Alex Palou for the championship lead. Let the hunt begin.
- Pato O’Ward was less fortunate, coming home 13th to fall from 39 points to 48 behind Palou in third. That result could be difficult to recover from with the season slowly winding down.
- Will Power may not be too popular at Team Penske this week. The 2014 IndyCar champ played a role in the crashes of both Simon Pagenaud and Scott McLaughlin on Sunday. Thankfully for Josef Newgarden, he was out of range.
- James Hinchcliffe wasn’t the only one with a feel-good result. Ryan Hunter-Reay’s fourth-place effort was easily his best of a difficult 2021, topping a 10th-place effort at Texas Motor Speedway. Ed Jones’ sixth-place run was his best since the 2019 May race on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, and Felix Rosenqvist’s eighth-place result was his first top-10 of what’s been a difficult year with Arrow McLaren SP.
- Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves made his IndyCar return in Nashville, scoring a ninth-place finish for Meyer Shank Racing.
- The nine cautions in the attrition-filled affair were the most for an IndyCar event since the 2017 Indianapolis 500, which had 10 totaling 50 laps.
- With 27 entrants in Sunday’s race, Nashville had the most starters of any non-Indy 500 IndyCar event since the 2013 Long Beach Grand Prix. That may have also factored into the many cautions – eight of the competitors failed to reach the finish.
Race Results
- Marcus Ericsson
- Scott Dixon
- James Hinchcliffe
- Ryan Hunter-Reay
- Graham Rahal
- Ed Jones
- Alex Palou
- Felix Rosenqvist
- Helio Castroneves
- Josef Newgarden
- Santino Ferrucci
- Conor Daly
- Pato O’Ward
- Will Power
- Jack Harvey
- Romain Grosjean
- Alexander Rossi
- Max Chilton
- Colton Herta
- Cody Ware
- Simon Pagenaud
- Scott McLaughlin
- Dalton Kellett
- Rinus Veekay
- Takuma Sato
- Jimmie Johnson
- Sebastien Bourdais
Next up: IndyCar shares the same exact circuit with the NASCAR Cup Series for the first time, with both tours competing on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. The IndyCar field will compete at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday in the Big Machine Spiked Coolers Grand Prix.
