The sun rises on America’s national park of speed! Road America hosted the NTT Indycar series for another weekend of racing. The fans have been allowed to return in their entirety. Including the return of open paddocks for the fans. This weekend also saw Several drivers making their debut at Road America including Kevin Magnussen filling in for Felix Rosenquist, Romain Grosjean, Jimmy Johnson, and Cody Ware. However, drivers were not the only ones to be newcomers to the badger state. Fans were also in numbers not seen in the past years. Walking up the hill towards turn 6 and the entire hill is covered in people as well as the grass area outside turn 5 was full of people and covered tents. The weekend also saw the return of good weather and acceptable temperatures throughout most of the weekend, which is more than can be said for IMSA weekends.
After a long drive back to wonderful Wisconsin My Friday was a chance to scout the paddock area and make use of the team’s preparation to get shots that I had not previously been able to get in the covid-19 era Indycar races.
I did however make the mistake of leaving my monopod on Friday which resulted in quite soar arms for the remainder of the weekend.
Saturday was qualifying for Indycar and race day numero uno for the lower classes. Qualifying saw Joseph Newgarden land on the pole with Colton Herta and Jack Harvey in tow.
Sunday was race day, After watching the formula one race at the hotel it was time to head to the track. The Indycar race started earlier than in the previous year. Meaning that upon arrival at the track it was nearly go-time. With the weather being as nice as it was the race ended just as soon as it had begun. Joseph Newgarden had led much of the race. And as the laps winded down he could see the win. But, with only laps to go his car decided it had other plans.
As he went around turn three at Road America with only laps to go it was obvious that he didn’t have full power. Even watching on the monitor you could feel the pain as car after car passed him under the Sargento cheese bridge. When the last lap dust had cleared Alex Palou had won the race with Colton Herta and Will Power following behind.
This has been the first of many Road America Rundowns. Now, I will leave you with a gallery of some of my shots from the weekend
