It has been more than a month since the IZOD Indy Car Series last hit the track on the Streets of Baltimore, and it’s been more than six years since Houston, TX has hosted an Indy car race.
But on Saturday and Sunday, October 5-6, the Shell and Pennzoil Grand Prix of Houston will make up for time lost with doubleheader racing action around the 1.7- mile Reliant Park temporary street circuit.
After off the track news the past weeks of IZOD leaving the series, an early May event on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course and Tony Kanaan reportedly joining the Chip Ganassi Racing team for 2014 – it’s time to get back to on the track action.
The now-defunct Champ Car series ran on a street course in downtown Houston from 1998 to 2001 and switched to the Reliant Park site for two years in 2006-07.
Current IICS drivers who have won at Houston during those years include Dario Franchitti (’98) for Team Kool Green and Sebastien Bourdais (’06-’07) for Newman/Haas Racing.
Houston fans will experience the third doubleheader of the 2013 Indy Car season as each day will see a 90-lap, 153-mile race around the Reliant Arena, Stadium and Astrodome.
The Houston races will be numbers 17-18 on the schedule with only Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California on October 19 left to decide this year’s champion on its 2-mile high-speed oval.
Penske Racing’s Helio Castroneves (1 win), who has lead the standings for most of the season, comes to Houston with a 49-point lead over runner-up Scott Dixon (3 wins). Simon Pagenaud (2 wins), is 70-points behind, but just one point ahead of fourth-place Marco Andretti and three ahead of 2013 series’ champ Ryan Hunter-Reay whose two wins have him 74 markers behind in fifth.
Pagenaud won the Baltimore event for Schmidt-Peterson Honda with Josef Newgarden scoring his best career Indy Car series finish; a second-place for Sarah Fisher Hartman Honda. Bourdais, who has the most series’ wins at Houston, was third at Baltimore for Dragon Racing-Chevrolet.
Baltimore, which will not be on the 2014 schedule, was not a good stop for several contending drivers.
Will Power finished 18th, Scott Dixon 19th, Hunter-Reay 20th and Dario Franchitti 21st on a day that may have spelled the end for any of these four drivers’ hopes of catching Castroneves.
Honda and Chevrolet are tied with eight wins each in 2013 as they come to Houston’s asphalt/concrete temporary circuit with very little current series’ history and virtually no track knowledge for most of the drivers and teams.
With two good finishes here in Texas, Castroneves could leave for the California finale with a comfortable lead in pursuit of his first series’ crown.
Pagenaud should be considered a race-favorite coming off his Baltimore win and having had both his 2013 victories on temporary street courses.
She may not win this weekend, but Simona De Silvestro’s fifth place at Baltimore shows just how much she and her KV Racing Technology team have improved during the season.
Castroneves may not want to risk a fight for a win but may play a conservative hand to protect his 49-point lead. His strategy on Sunday may depend on how the Saturday race plays out.
Scott Dixon and his Target Ganassi team have nothing to lose in their pursuit of Castroneves. So, look for Dixon, James Hinchcliffe and Pagenaud to duel for wins at Houston.
NOTES:
• Bradford, England’s Jack Hawksworth, current Firestone Indy Lights pilot, tested a Rahal Letterman Lanigan Indy Car at Sebring recently and hopes to join the Indy Car circuit in 2014. The 22-year-old has won three Indy Lights events and trails series’ leader Sage Karam by eleven points with two Lights races left on the schedule.
• A recent story that appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel backs up what we wrote in a recent column. Road America’s George Bruggenthies told us that Indy Car would likely appear at Road America in “a different format” in 2014. Dave Kallmann wrote that the series probably would hold a test session at the Elkhart Lake circuit in 2014 with hopes that the track might be on the race schedule in 2015.
• The 2006 Houston race, won by Bourdais, was Champ Car’s first night race held on a street course.
• Shell Oil Co. has signed a multi-year title sponsorship deal with Houston promoters.
• Saturday’s Houston race will be shown at 5:30 pm ET on the NBC Sports network. Sunday’s race will be on at 1:00pm ET.
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