MOTORSPORT: Power out but Penske powers on

Will Power’s hopes of regaining his IndyCar title have taken a huge hit with him missing the opening race in Florida with concussion after having set the pace throughout the weekend.

However, another Toowoomba racer bobbed up with a win there – reigning Australian Formula 4 champion Jordan Lloyd in the US F2000 Championship.

Power headed IndyCar practice and qualifying at the Grand Prix of St Petersburg but a heavy crash into a concrete wall on Friday took a delayed toll and he felt nauseous with flu-like symptoms after claiming pole position by beating his own qualifying record lap time.

The medical problem was diagnosed as concussion and Australia’s 2014 IndyCar champion was replaced in the No. 12 Penske Dallara-Chevrolet for the 110-lap race on the 2.88km street circuit by Spanish veteran Oriel Servia, who started from the rear of the grid and finished 18th in the field of 22.

Penske’s other three regular drivers – Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya, Frenchman Simon Pagenaud and Brazilian Helio Castroneves – finished first, second and fourth, giving them a huge head start on Power in the chase for this year’s title.

The second round of the championship is at Phoenix, Arizona, on April 2 but there were suggestions at St Petersburg that, even though his concussion was assessed as mild, Power may not return to racing until the two races at Indianapolis in May – the first on the road course there, the second the 100th Indy 500 on ‘The Brickyard’ superspeedway.

Power has been the fastest qualifier at St Pete six times and won there in 2010 and 2014.

“Heartbroken to not be out there today,” he tweeted.

“Focusing on getting healthy. Thank you to everyone for the support. Hope one of the boys can bring (home) a win.”

Montoya’s triumph, repeating his 2015 success, gave Roger Penske his eighth victory in the event in 11 years. Castroneves won there in 2006, ’07 and ’12, while another Aussie, Ryan Briscoe, won the race for ‘The Captain’ in 2009.

American Ryan Hunter-Reay passed Castroneves for third place with three laps to go this morning, Australian time, to give Andretti Autosport and its engine supplier Honda a place on the podium with the first two Penske Chevys.

Russian Mikhail Aleshin was fourth in his Honda-powered Schmidt Peterson entry after a year away from Indy racing through injury from a huge crash and Japan’s Takuma Sato finished sixth in one of AJ Foyt’s Honda-engined cars.

New Zealander Scott Dixon, who pipped Montoya on a countback at the end of last season to win his fourth IndyCar title, came in seventh today in his Chevrolet-powered Team Ganassi car and is still without a victory at St Petersburg in the 14 years of the event.

Eight cars were caught up in a mid-race tangle, including the Penske driven by Servia. Colombian Carlos Munoz was penalised for avoidable contact.

F4 champion and other Aussies star in USF2000
Jordan Lloyd, the 20-year-old who won the first Australian Formula 4 Championship last year, has made a flying start to the US F2000 Championship, winning the first race of the series at St Petersburg and finishing second in today’s race that ended behind a safety car.

The first 11 laps of the opening race were run behind the safety car after incidents on the first and seventh laps, but pole-position starter Lloyd then scooted to victory 1.553 seconds ahead of his Chinese teammate in the Wisconsin-based Pabst Racing team, Luo Yu Feng.

Two other Aussies, Luke Gabin (JAY Motorsports) and Anthony Martin (Cape Motorsports), both from Perth, WA, finished fourth and fifth in the field of 27, with Martin posting the fastest lap – just 0.0022 second faster than Lloyd.

The Toowoomba ace looked headed for a follow-up win in the second race until yet another safety car intervention negated his 3.3-second lead after 15 laps.

Canadian Parker Thompson (Cape Motorsports) grabbed the lead soon after the restart before Luo took charge and raced to the chequered flag 0.5 seconds ahead of Lloyd, with Gabin and Martin fifth and 10th this time.

Lloyd leads Yuo in the championship by two points, 58-56, with Gabin third on 36 points and Martin fifth on 29, with the next round – also with two races – not until April 23-24 at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama.

In the Pro Mazda Championship – the next level up in the ‘Road to Indy’ open-wheeler route in the US – Jake Parsons from Melbourne finished eighth and fifth in two races at St Pete for cars with a 1300cc rotary engine.

Parsons, a former AsiaCup champion and runner-up in last year’s Formula Masters China Series, is sixth in the championship with 30 points to Mexican leader Pato O’Ward’s 59 and the next round also at Barber.

Parsons is driving for Argentinean-owned but Indiana-based Juncos Racing.

James Davison, also from Melbourne but long based in the US and who has raced in the past two Indy 500s, finished second in one of the Pirelli World Challenge GT races at St Pete after having been classified 23rd and last in the earlier GT race there.

The safety car led most of the 50-minute race in which Davison and his Nissan GT-R finished runner-up to American Michael Lewis in a Porsche 911 GT3 R.

The pair made contact at one point as they jostled for the lead going into the first turn.

The next round of that series is at Long Beach, California, in mid-April, again as a support event to the IndyCars.

NASCAR the closest thing in racing
NASCAR’s Sprint Cup champions of the past two years are tied for the championship lead after the fourth race this season.

However, 2014 champion Kevin Harvick has a victory – by 10 centimetres today over Carl Edwards after they twice made contact in the last few hundred metres – while reigning champion Kyle Busch is yet to win in this year’s Cup.

The margin between Harvick’s Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet and Edwards’ Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota at Phoenix International Raceway, Arizona, was 0.010 seconds – the same margin by which Denny Hamlin won the Daytona 500 last month for Gibbs ahead of Martin Truex Junior.

Harvick’s win was his eighth at Phoenix and his fifth in six starts there since joining Stewart-Haas.

He now has 32 Cup victories, nine of which have come since 2013.

Hamlin was third at Phoenix, followed by Busch as the Gibbs outfit claimed the three finishing positions behind Harvick.

Six-time champion Jimmie Johnson (Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet) is third in the championship, ahead of Kurt Busch (Stewart-Haas), Edwards and Hamlin.

The Penske Ford drivers, Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski, are seventh and 11th in the points – the latter one place behind Dale Earnhardt Junior (Hendrick Chevrolet).

Young Penske’s man shock win as Brazilian comes up light
Brazilian Lucas di Grassi has been excluded after winning the weekend’s round of the Formula E global electric open-wheeler series in Mexico for a car that was too light.

The Abt Schaeffler FE01 di Grassi drove in the first half of the race (drivers swap to a second car mid-race because of the limited battery life) weighed in at 886.2kg – 1.8kg under the minimum allowed.

Belgian Jerome d'Ambrosio, of the Dragon team owned by Roger Penske’s son Jay, inherited his second win in the category.

Di Grassi also lost the points lead he thought he had to Swiss driver Sebastien Buemi, who was promoted to second in the Mexican race and is now 22 points clear of the Abt Audi Sport driver.

Both of d’Ambrosio’s wins have come through disqualifications of di Grassi. The first was in Berlin last season.

However, d’Ambrosio forfeited two points he earned for fastest lap in Mexico because he cut a chicane.

His Dragon teammate, Frenchman Loic Duval, could have inherited third but incurred a 15-second penalty for breaching track limits.

WRC promoter prefers shorter, sharper stages
The World Rally Championship promoter has decreed that the recent 80km stage on Rally Mexico be dropped from the event next year.

“From the promoter’s point of view an 80km stage is too long and doesn’t add any sporting or commercial value and nor does it make the competition more interesting,” Oliver Ciesla said.

“In fact, the opposite seems the case – it’s even questionable whether this long stage motivates the drivers to go flat-out or look to bring the car to the finish.

“We do not encourage rallies at all to run stages longer than 50 or 60km.

“We do not see the added value.

“Endurance is sufficiently covered in the WRC as it is.”