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Streets of St Petersburg: INDYCAR Fantasy Picks

Patricio O'Ward races in front of Scott Dixon at the Firestone Grand Prix of St Petersburg. © [Al Arena / Spacesuit Media]

Patricio O’Ward races in front of Scott Dixon at the Firestone Grand Prix of St Petersburg. © [Al Arena / Spacesuit Media]

The NTT IndyCar Series heads to the Streets of St. Petersburg in Florida for the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. The race can be seen on NBC on Sunday, April 25th at 12pm ET. Practice 1 (Friday 4:15-5pm ET), Practice 2 (Saturday 9:45-10:30am ET), Qualifying (Saturday 1:45-3pm ET) and Sunday’s Final Warmup (9:05-9:35am ET) can be seen on Peacock Premium. A delayed broadcast of Qualifying will be shown on NBCSN Saturday 10-11pm ET.

Join in the fun with the INDYCAR Fantasy Challenge (https://fantasy.indycar.com/).

Recapping the Last Race

Alex Palou won the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama at Barber Motorsports Park last weekend. He was followed to the checkers by Will Power, Scott Dixon, polesitter Pato O’Ward and Sebastien Bourdais.

My picks in the INDYCAR Fantasy Challenge were Power (2nd), O’Ward (4th), Bourdais (5th) and Rinus Veekay (6th) and in picking the podium I had Dixon finishing 3rd correct for a total of 157.75 points. It was a good week for me. The overall leader had 193.5 points and I was 219th overall.

Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg

This week’s track is a fourteen-turn street course 1.8 miles in length running through downtown St. Petersburg, Florida, including a runway of Albert Whitted Airport.

High Salary Drivers $32-$26

This group includes Dixon ($32), Josef Newgarden ($31), Power ($30), Colton Herta ($28), Palou ($31 up from $24 last week), Alexander Rossi ($27), O’Ward ($27) and Simon Pagenaud ($26).

Newgarden has won the last two races at St. Pete and is looking to make up for the 23rd place finish last week after his spin and resulting wreck. Herta was caught up in the wreck and needs to recover quickly to be a championship contender. Dixon has three podiums in the last four events and has yet to win at St. Pete. Will Power has two St. Pete wins but recently has mixed results. He is looking to build on last weekend to get a strong start to the season. O’Ward was fast last weekend, just off a bit on strategy, and he was quick in the Sebring test.

Medium Salary Drivers $25-$23

This group includes Graham Rahal ($25), Takuma Sato ($25), Bourdais ($24), Marcus Ericsson ($24), James Hinchcliffe ($24), Ryan Hunter-Reay ($24), Felix Rosenqvist ($24) and Scott McLaughlin ($22).

Bourdais finished fourth in this race last year driving for AJ Foyt and looked good at Barber. Hunter-Reay finished fifth last season at St. Pete and is looking for a good result after last weekends wreck had him finishing last at Barber. Ericsson had a seventh place run and finished eighth last week while running out of fuel. McLaughlin finished 14th at Barber and is looking for the Team Penske magic at St. Pete for a better result this weekend.

Possible Bargain Drivers? $21-$18

This group includes Veekay ($21), Romain Grosjean ($21), Conor Daly ($21), Jack Harvey ($21), Max Chilton ($20), Ed Jones ($20), Jimmie Johnson ($18) and Dalton Kellett ($22).

Veekay is a good choice here as he is showing good speed. Grosjean really ran well at Barber with a tenth place finish and he has a lot of experience on street circuits. Daly has a fifthenth average finish in three races at St. Pete.

There you go, good luck with your picks on the Streets of St. Petersburg. Next week I’ll share my results and preview the field for the double-header weekend at Texas Motor Speedway.

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