Chevrolet Dual In Detroit Preview

Will Power looks to find the success he had last year in Detriot as the IndyCar Series again has a doubleheader in the Motor City this weekend.  [John Wiedemann Photo]

After a crash-filled Indianapolis 500 that finished with a stirring three-car run to the checkered flag, winner Juan Pablo Montoya leads 23 Verizon IndyCar Series cars and drivers to the Motor City for two rounds of the Chevrolet Dual in Detroit on May 30-31.

The island circuit in the Detroit River has hosted Indy cars, both CART (1992-2001) and IndyCar (2007-2008 &2012-present); with doubleheader events since 2013. The upcoming 2015 pair of races will be the only doubleheader on the current schedule.

Last season’s races on the 2.35-mile street course were won by Penske drivers Will Power and Helio Castroneves, with Power coming from 16^th starting spot to overtake Ryan Briscoe on a restart with 10 laps to go in Race One. Castroneves survived two late-race cautions to win over Power, Charlie Kimball and Scott Dixon who started last in Race Two.

Indy winner Montoya leads the series’ point standings by 25-points over Power, with Dixon (-61), Castroneves (-66) and Graham Rahal (-68) trailing.

Team Penske has won here five times with Castroneves having captured three of those. Other current drivers who have triumphed on Belle Isle include Power, Dixon, Justin Wilson and Tony Kanaan. In a pair of 2013 upsets, Simon Pagenaud (Schmidt Peterson Motorsports) and Mike Conway (Dale Coyne Racing) defeated the Penske/Ganassi/Andretti trinity.

Chevrolet has won five of the first six races in 2015 with Hinchcliffe’s win at New Orleans being the only Honda victory.

Race One (Saturday) and Race Two (Sunday) will be 70-lap affairs, each measuring 164.5- miles.

The 23-car entry brings rookies Conor Daly, Stefano Coletti, Sage Karam, Gabby Chavez and Rodolfo Gonzalez to Detroit with Daly subbing for Hinchcliffe at SPM while Gonzalez and Tristan Vautier are Coyne’s flavor of the day.

With the new road/street course Aero Kits and the track’s resurfacing project providing greater amounts of downforce and grip, qualifying and race speed records are expected to fall this weekend. The track qualifying record is held by AJ Foyt Racing’s Takuma Sato at 111.115 mph, set last year.

MOTOWN NOTES:

• Kanaan made his 300^th Indy car start last Sunday at the 500 becoming the eighth Indy car driver to reach that mark.  Castroneves reached that number two weeks earlier at the Angie’s List Grand Prix of Indianapolis.
• Bobby Rahal won the first race on the Belle Isle circuit in 1992. Championship events have been held in Detroit on tracks at the Michigan State Fairgrounds (1-mile dirt), the Renaissance Center street course and a dirt oval at Grosse Point in 1905.
• Daly will race in the No. 5 Arrow Electronics Honda for SPM at Detroit. No further replacements for Hinchcliffe have been announced.
• Since rejoining the IndyCar circuit in 2012 Chevrolet has participated in 56 races winning 38 times and grabbing 40 poles.
• The United Sportscar Championship series will also run at Detroit this weekend.
• Will Power will start his 100^th race for Team Penske in Race 2 on Sunday.
• Justin Wilson, who is without a full-time ride in IndyCar, will race a Formula E car for Andretti Autosport in Moscow on June 4.
• Ryan Briscoe subbed for Hinchcliffe in the 500 and is also without a regular seat in IndyCar despite having put on a remarkable show at Indianapolis. The Aussie started 31^st and worked his way up to 12^th at the finish having had just two hours of practice time in the car.
• TV: ABC Network-3:30 p.m. (ET) both days (3:50 p.m. green flag).
• Radio: XM Ch. 209/Sirius Ch. 212.

Paul Gohde

Paul Gohde heard the sound of race cars early in his life.

Growing up in suburban Milwaukee, just north of Wisconsin State Fair Park in the 1950’s, Paul had no idea what “that noise” was all about that he heard several times a year. Finally, through prodding by friends of his parents, he was taken to several Thursday night modified stock car races on the old quarter-mile dirt track that was in the infield of the one-mile oval -and he was hooked.

The first Milwaukee Mile event that he attended was the 1959 Rex Mays Classic won by Johnny Thomson in the pink Racing Associates lay-down Offy built by the legendary Lujie Lesovsky. After the 100-miler Gohde got the winner’s autograph in the pits, something he couldn’t do when he saw Hank Aaron hit a home run at County Stadium, and, again, he was hooked.

Paul began attending the Indianapolis 500 in 1961, and saw A. J. Foyt’s first Indy win. He began covering races in 1965 for Racing Wheels newspaper in Vancouver, WA as a reporter/photographer and his first credentialed race was Jim Clark’s historic Indy win.Paul has also done reporting, columns and photography for Midwest Racing News since the mid-sixties, with the 1967 Hoosier 100 being his first big race to report for them.

He is a retired middle-grade teacher, an avid collector of vintage racing memorabilia, and a tour guide at Miller Park. Paul loves to explore abandoned race tracks both here and in Europe, with the Brooklands track in Weybridge England being his favorite. Married to Paula, they have three adult children and two cats.

Paul loves the diversity of all types of racing, “a factor that got me hooked in the first place.”

racingnation.com

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