IndyCar regressed to the mean in Long Beach

In the run-up to the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, a lot of IndyCar media and industry people were eager to make the case that this is IndyCar’s other mythic race. I think it’s unquestionable that if there is another race event on the calendar that deserves its own legendary status besides the Indy 500, it’s Long Beach. It looks incredible. If I still lived in LA, I would go every year.

Unfortunately, no amount of surrounding spectacle can change the competitive reality of the series. Felix Rosenqvist put it on pole, everybody got too excited, and then yet another team failed to avoid losing to Álex Palou. Palou was possibly even more delightfully joyous than usual about it all, but Rosenqvist was desolate with second, and even despite his first podium of the year, Scott Dixon described his race as “blah.” Yes, all three cars on the podium were either Chip Ganassi-run or Chip Ganassi-supported. There were some races further back in the field, but the fact is that — still, somehow — nobody has anything for the 10 team.

I wouldn’t sound so downbeat about the race if there weren’t also classic IndyCar footguns aplenty. Will Power ran over the feet of 4 car crew member Ryan Marzec (he’s fine), and the tower mistakenly gave the whole field push-to-pass on a restart, and half of them used it, which is against the rules, but because the only pass that happened was by people who were both using it, the official statement was that those canceled each other out, so no penalties were awarded. Amazing job, premier American open-wheel racing series.

(Note: Some people are eager to relate this to the Penske push-to-pass scandal in 2024, which was penalized, but those people are wrong. Penske hacked the control software on their cars. This was some IndyCar Race Control person pushing the wrong button and giving it to everyone. Incomparable scenarios.)

Despite the predictable outcome, Long Beach continued IndyCar’s streak of great TV ratings. This one was presumably because Fox aired a NASCAR race right beforehand and absolutely irradiated it with IndyCar commercials. Hey, I’m not complaining.