Event Coverage: 2019 Indianapolis 500

Simon Pagneaud & John Menard
Not only was this a big day for Pagenaud, but his primary sponsor, Menards Home Improvement and more specifically John Menard. Menard has been coming to Indianapolis for nearly 40 years, fielding cars for drivers like Gary Bettenhausen, Al Unser Sr, Tom Sneva, Arie Luyendyk, the late Scott Brayton, Nelson Piquet, Robby Gordon, and Geoff Brabham. Menard gave Tony Stewart his professional kick start by putting Tony in an IRL car in 1996. Team Menard ran the venerbale Buick V6 in the 1990s, a high powered, but unreliable motor that gave John’s team two Indianapolis Pole positions. But for all of his efforts, John Menard had never stood in Victory Lane. That finally changed in 2019.
John Menard & Roger Penske
Of course Roger Penske is no stranger to standing in the Winner’s Circle at Indianapolis. It was a bit strange to see two 1990s titans of this race shaking hands after winning the Indy 500 together, but that just goes to show how much the world has changed in the last quarter century.
Simon Pagenaud Press Conference
Ayrton Senna would be proud of a drive like Pagenaud’s. Pagenaud was always in control, his car blisteringly quick, his team perfect on pit stops, and his strategy was called brilliantly. There was just no stopping Pagenaud this year and it would have been a disappointment if anyone else had won. Pagenaud becomes the first French driver to win Indy in nearly 100 years: the last French driver who won Indy was Gaston Chevrolet. Yup, that Chevrolet.
Simon Pagenaud Yard of Bricks
Like every other driver before him, winning the Indy 500 will change Pagenaud’s life. Most notably, Pagenaud has pretty well secured his spot at Team Penske for 2020 and beyond. 2018 was an admittedly rough year for Pagenaud. After the race he talked about how he and his team struggled to get the most out of the Universal Aero kits. But the car has slowly improved and Pagenaud is now a force to be reckoned with. With a great car on road courses and super speedways, the rest of the field had better be scared of the Fast Frenchman! A huge congratulations to a very deserving driver.

While this concludes our coverage of the racing, we do have more content from our trip to Indy, so stay tuned to MotoIQ for more racing coverage!

Sources

NTT Data IndyCar Series

Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Red Bull Advanced Technologies

Related Topics
2 comments

  1. Some interesting stuff going on with the compressor housing of the turbo…. looks like it has two outlets. Indycar running anti-lag these days?

    Reply

  2. I don’t think anti-lag is allowed, but they may be using some other method of keeping the turbos spooled. Anti-lag wouldn’t really help at Indy anyway since they’re full throttle through the entire lap. Might be more to do with boost control, which is heavily restricted by IndyCar.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *