The second race of IndyCar Series held on the famous street course of Long Beach was rather eventful and ended with an unexpected victory of the British pilot Mike Conway and a great result demonstrated by Mikhail Aleshin, who was sixth to cross the finish line. After a relatively calm race in St. Petersburg, the second Grand Prix of the leading overseas formula series turned into a real thriller abundant with action, overtakes and crashes.
In the first half of the race the victory seemed to be heading the way of pole-sitter Ryan Hunter-Reay. Although the 2012 champion from Andretti Team was not able to leave his closest competitors too far behind, the American pilot was still keeping a confident lead. But with the halfway point of the race ticking over, the situation had changed when after another pit-stop Hunter-Reay found himself behind Josef Newgarden who used a different pit-stop strategy.
Hunter-Reay tried to take advantage of the fact that Newgarden had returned to the track with cold tyres and went over the top. But there was not enough space for them in a narrow turn. So the two cars made impact and created a real pile-up. Following close behind, James Hinchcliffe, Jack Hawksworth, Tony Kanaan, and Takuma Sato had nowhere to go and could not avoid the collision. This crash knocked out several pilots who could claim for victory.
Retirement of leaders and right choice of strategy allowed other pilots, who were in the sidelines of the race, — the defending champion Scott Dixon and Mike Conway — to take the lead. However, New Zealand driver Dixon did not have enough fuel left in the tank to make it to the finish line and had to make another pit stop a few laps before the finish. On the other hand, Conway managed to save the fuel, withstood the attacks performed by the winner of the first race Will Power, and was first to cross the finish line scoring his third IndyCar career win.
It seems like his team’s boss Ed Carpenter should not regret his decision to confine himself to races held on ovals only and provide his car to Conway for races held on road and street course tracks. In Long Beach Mike has fully justified the confidence reposed in him by scoring deserved victory from the 17th (!) starting position!
The third driver to cross the finish line after Conway and Briscoe was this season’s rookie Carlos Muñoz. It’s the second podium for him after a fantastic second place secured in last year’s Indy 500 race.
After the disappointing performance in qualifying, his famous compatriot Juan Pablo Montoya had a confident race and finished fourth one spot away from the podium. Right after the former Formula 1 and NASCAR driver the finish line was crossed by two pilots from the Schmidt Peterson Motorsport team — in spite of his collision with Briscoe, Simon Pagenaud was able to finish fifth, while the sixth place in his second race in the IndyCar Series was taken by Mikhail Aleshin.
The Russian pilot qualified 20th on the unfamiliar track but was able to win back several positions right from the start (and it was a more habitual standing start this time), and then, due to the chosen strategy of the early first pit-stop, he was gradually moving up the table, did not make any mistakes and took advantage of mistakes made by his competitors.
All in all, Aleshin is now taking 9th position in the overall championship standings — he is only 1 point behind Montoya. Next race will be held on the track in Barber where Mikhail had his pre-season tests. On April 27 this race will be broadcast live on Viasat Sport (broadcasting will begin at 11:30 PM Moscow Time).