Verizon IndyCar Series: MAV TV 500 Preview

Tony Kanaan on course during practice for the MAVTV 500 at Auto Club Speedway — Photo by: Chris Owens

Extreme heat on the wide, high-banks at Auto Club Speedway Saturday may be a deciding factor as the Verizon IndyCar Series moves to southern California for the MAV TV 500, the third of six ovals on the ICS schedule.

Temperatures are expected to be in the high 90’s and IndyCar has given the teams six degrees more rear wing than was allowed at Texas in order to counteract the expected slippery surface during a daytime race which has been contested in the cooler evening in the past.

“With it being a day race and the temperatures climbing higher, the grip won’t be quite as good on track so the added downforce out of the (aero) kits will be beneficial,” said CFH driver/owner Ed Carpenter who has finished first, second and third at Auto Club Speedway in the past three years. “I’m sure it will be a great race just because of how that track races; it will just be a little warmer.”

The Fontana, CA 2-mile, D-shaped oval has hosted Indy car events since opening in 1997 as a replacement for Ontario Motor Speedway and will run its 14th Indy car event this weekend.

The 2014 MAV TV race saw Tony Kanaan capture his only win last season as Will Power came home ninth, clinching his first series championship. Current series’ points leader Juan Pablo Montoya led the most laps here (85) last August followed by TK and Helio Castroneves.

Previous Fontana winners in the 23-car field include Carpenter, Power and Kanaan. Chip Ganassi’s team has won here twice; in 1998 and 2014. Twenty of the 23 drivers entered have raced here before with Castroneves and Kanaan each having 11 starts.
The 500-miler will be the second leg of IndyCar’s Triple Crown with Indianapolis 500 champion Montoya being the only driver with a chance to win that honor if he’s victorious here and in August at Pocono.

Montoya also comes to sunny California with a 27-point lead over Power in the standings followed by Dixon (-45), Castroneves (-52) and Graham Rahal (-91). Montoya, Josef Newgarden and Dixon have each won twice this season while Power has started on the pole in five of the ten races held.

“Fontana has really been an enjoyable race over the years. I haven’t won there but the team won last year with Tony Kanaan in one of the Target cars,” explained three-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon. “It’s a track where you’ve got to keep up with the changes. Any time you start the race in the day and you run into the late afternoon, there are a lot of things you’ve got to try to keep up with. But the cool thing about Fontana on the racing side is the sheer fact you’ve got so many lanes to choose from.”

And that may be the only “cool thing” at Fontana Saturday.

FONTANA NOTES:

• Gil de Ferran qualified at 241.428 mph for a 2000 CART event at Fontana; an all-time Indy car record. Will Power’s 220.775 mph for a 2013 ICS race here is the ‘modern’ mark.

• Twenty-three cars are entered including Pippa Mann in a Dale Coyne car and Ryan Briscoe subbing for James Hinchcliffe at Schmidt Peterson. Ed Carpenter returns to the CFH cockpit for the oval race.

• Under-performing drivers who are in need of strong finishes in the final six races include: Ryan Hunter-Reay-7/10 finishes in double-digits (14th in points); Simon Pagenaud-6/10 (10th in points) and Takuma Sato 8/10 (13th in points).

• TV: NBC Sports, Saturday, June 27, 4:00P.M. ET. / Radio: Sirius 212, XM 209 and indycarradio.com.

• No Indy car events were held at Auto Club Speedway from 2006-2011.

• When Kanaan takes the green flag Saturday, it will mark a record 244 consecutive Indy car starts.

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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