GoPro Grand Prix of Sonoma Preview

Simon Pagenaud exits Turn 2 during the open test at Sonoma Raceway.  [Photo by: Mike Finnegan]

Point leader Simon Pagenaud heads to Sonoma Raceway Sunday hoping to win his first Verizon Indy Car championship, but Team Penske teammate Will Power has a record there that might make the French driver a bit nervous.

Pagenaud has won four times this season, leading the point chase since race two in Phoenix, while Power (-43 behind the leader) has missed a race (St. Petersburg, due to an inner ear infection) but still finds himself in a position to overtake Pagenaud if circumstances during the race play in his favor.

In 2015 Juan Pablo Montoya came to the double-points finale at Sonoma with a 47-point lead over challenger Scott Dixon. JPM finished sixth but Dixon won the race and the two finished tied for the championship. Dixon had won more races during the season (three to Montoya’s two) and was crowned the champion. Anything can happen.

Power has three wins and five poles in his six previous races here in California wine country and won the series’ crown here in 2014, while Pagenaud hasn’t won a Verizon championship in five years of trying. Yet, as we know, anything can happen.

The track has hosted 12 previous Indy car events including the iconic Dan Gurney’s win at the USAC’s inaugural in 1970. IRL/Indy Car have raced here since 2006 with Power and Dixon tied with three wins each. Team Penske has the most wins with five and Power has captured a total of five poles.

Sonoma Raceway (opened in 1968) is a 2.385-mile, 12-turn natural road course with a 160-foot elevation change, located an hour north of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. Sunday’s GoPro Grand Prix will be an 85-lapper (202.7 miles). Power holds the one-lap qualifying record (112.589 mph) set last year.

Dixon and Helio Castroneves are tied for third in the standings (-104) while Josef Newgarden is fifth (-109). Only Pagenaud or Power can win the championship, but the tight point battle extends beyond the top-five as Tony Kanaan, Graham Rahal, Carlos Munoz, James Hinchcliffe and Alexander Rossi are separated by only 57-points in their scramble to move into the top-5.

This will be the eleventh consecutive year that the championship has been decided in the final race of the season.

Team Penske will win the Verizon Championship with either Pagenaud or Power and Chevrolet will again be the manufacturer’s champion, but other battles will be for teams to end the season on a high note while several drivers will be driving for their 2017 rides.

NOTES  

• This will be the final race after 27 seasons for Chip Ganassi’s longtime Indy car sponsor Target.
• Castroneves, Dixon and Kanaan are the only three who will race Sunday having run in every Sonoma race since 2005.
• Gurney defeated Mario Andretti and Al Unser in that 1970 inaugural USAC race.
• The usual twenty-two cars are entered Sunday while 25 took the flag last year.
• Pagenaud competed in his first Indy car event at Las Vegas (CART street race) in 2007 for Walker/Team Australia.
• Pagenaud is a red wine enthusiast who maintains a wine cellar back in France.
• Power is a drummer and bought a drum set with his first work paycheck at age 15.
• Power’s first Indy car event was also for Walker/ Team Australia; a CART race at Surfers Paradise in 2005.
• TV: NBC SN-Practice-Saturday, 5:00 p.m. ET (taped). Qualifying- Saturday, 6:00 p.m. ET (live). Race- Sunday, 6:30 p.m. ET (live). Green Flag, 6:50p.m. ET.

QUOTES:

WILL POWER (No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet): “It’s been a wild season. (We) didn’t have the best start even beyond St. Petersburg (where he missed the race with an inner-ear infection). We got it together though, and being in a position to win the championship is awesome. The fact that it’s going to be a Team Penske championship is awesome…Sonoma has been good to us over the years, but I’m not sure how much that matters. Every race has its own circumstances and every team has to make needed adjustments. It will be an exciting weekend for sure.”

SIMON PAGENAUD (NO 22 Hewlett Packard Ent. Penske Chevrolet): “This is our big season finale and I’m excited to get to battle it out on the track, It’s a place where I’ve done pretty well in the past and I was pleased with our test here last week. This weekend is going to be intense regarding the drivers’ championship. I’m very proud with our result at Watkins Glen (a win) that we could bring the team championship in this special 50^th season of Team Penske. Now the job is a little different than usual as we are only fighting (teammate) Will Power. Now we want the championship and may the best win.”

SCOTT DIXON (No. 9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet): “Sonoma is very hard to beat as a venue. You really have it all there. Flying into San Francisco, wine country, the downtown area-what more can you ask for? It’s a huge event for our sponsors as well, with Target bringing hundreds of guests to attend the race and cheer us on. They come here for the racing and the wine, so it’s an easy sell for the team. The track itself has elevation changes and the flowing corners, and it proved to put on a great show for the championship finale last season.”

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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