Ready for America’s great race

EDITORIAL

With specular practice crashes, demotions down the start order for cheating (sorry, a rule infringement), a rookie on pole position, and Kiwis on the second and fourth rows of the grid, this year’s Indy 500 has already delivered its fair share of drama and interest, even before Sunday’s flag fall.

Yes-sir-ee, the 109th running of America’s greatest motor race looks like it’s going to be another classic. It also sports a truly international flavour with drivers from eight different nations taking out the top 10 grid spots.

Reading that Israeli-born, Russian-raised driver Robert Shwartzman had grabbed pole, I found myself wondering both who the heck he was, and why his name seemed somehow familiar.

It was a past Kiwi connection that rang vague bells; Shwartzman won our Toyota Racing Series back in 2018, finishing runner-up in the New Zealand Grand Prix along the way. Since then, he has been based in Italy and has impressed in various European-based series. He completed 2023 and 2024 as Ferrari’s reserve F1 driver before heading across the Atlantic this year for a full-time Indycar drive with Prema Racing.

Shwartzman hadn’t managed to crack the top 15 in any of his first five Indycar races and this is his first time on an oval, so his pole position comes as a bolt from the blue, He is just the third rookie to win pole for the race, and the first since 1983.

The demotions down the start order have dumped Team Penske’s two former Indy 500 winners — American Josef Newgarden (the defending Indy 500 victor) and Australian Will Power — to the back of the grid due to illegal modifications to their cars’ attenuators.

What’s an attenuator, you might well ask? It’s a small box that attaches to the gearbox at the very rear of the car, where its primary role is to absorb impact in a crash. It is a standard-fit part supplied to all teams, but Penske has apparently done something they shouldn’t have, by modifying some of the attenuators they were supplied with.

The modification seems to have been made for aesthetic reasons, because the ‘‘finish‘‘ of the supplied items left much to be desired, and nothing I have read suggests any performance advantage would have accrued. However, the rules are clear that a standard-fit part cannot be modified without explicit permission from Indycar’s technical officials.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this technical saga is that it seems Penske has been using these modified attenuators for over a year, including on the car Kiwi Scott McLaughlin took to pole position for last year’s race. But this had all gone unnoticed, until now.

Anyhow, along with the grid demotion, hefty fines have been dished out to Penske and — in what could be the biggest blow to their potential result — each driver’s race strategist has been banned from this weekend’s race.

As an aside, Penske’s Kiwi driver Scott McLaughlin might also have been caught up in this saga, but fortunately the car he qualified in this month was fitted with an attenuator that had not been modified.

Lining up fourth and 10th, Scott Dixon and Scott McLaughlin look strong prospects for the famous 500-miler, although on an oval track, qualifying is more an indicator of likely race pace than deliverer of tactical advantage on race day.

Others looking set for a strong run at the Brickyard this Sunday (Monday morning NZ time) are Takuma Sato (Japan) and Pato O’Ward (Mexico), who join Schwartzmann on the front row. Dixon, meantime has Felix Rosenqvist (Sweden) and current Indycar series leader Alex Palou (Spain) with him on row two. Add in third-row qualifiers David Malukas (USA), Christian Lundgaard (Norway) and Marcus Ericsson (Sweden), plus McLaughlin to round out the top 10, and that makes up an impressive front-of-pack bunch.

• I’m devoting most of this editorial space to the Indy 500 because it is a very special motor race, and because I don’t have much to say about the Monaco Grand Prix, which also runs this weekend; perhaps not mentioning a certain Kiwi contesting that event by name will bring him overdue good fortune.

In stark contrast to the Indy 500, grid position is massively important at the tight, narrow Monaco street circuit. F1 championship leader Oscar Piastri and defending champion Max Verstappen are even-stevens with three pole positions apiece this year, so take your pick. Nor am I going to dismiss last year’s winner Charles Leclerc as a prospect for pole, despite Ferrari not seeming to have sufficient pace this year. While many F1 drivers choose to live in Monaco, Leclerc is an actual Monegasque and will surely find something special for his home Grand Prix.

• To round out a fairly full weekend of offshore motor sport action featuring Kiwis, we also have Hayden Paddon in Perth contesting the second round of the Australian Rally Championship in his Hyundai I20 Rally 2. The Cromwell-based driver was leading the opening round in Canberra a couple of months back before a kangaroo got in the way.

Errant marsupials notwithstanding, he should have the edge this weekend, but the competition is likely to be tight. Along with series rivals Scott Pedder and Harry and Lewis Bates in their Toyota GR Yaris cars, the West Australian event has attracted 2020 world junior rally champion and current Swedish Rally Championship frontrunner Tom Kristensson. Like Pedder, the Swede will be driving a Skoda Fabia Rally 2.