Paul Kelly – INDYCAR Staff Writer
The Bommarito Automotive Group 500 presented by Axalta and Valvoline on Sunday night, June 15 is the 16th INDYCAR SERIES race to take place at World Wide Technology Raceway, a 1.25-mile oval just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis in Madison, Illinois.
Known as Gateway International Raceway when it opened in 1997, WWTR and the INDYCAR SERIES have a deep, rich history. The first race on the oval was a CART-sanctioned event May 24, 1997, scheduled a day before the Indianapolis 500 at the height of the open-wheel split.
CART contested races from 1997-2000 before the Indy Racing League picked up the torch from 2001-03. WWTR disappeared from the INDYCAR SERIES schedule from 2004-16 but has been a staple on the calendar with annual events since 2017, including a doubleheader during the pandemic-shuffled schedule in 2020.
The unique nature of the egg-shaped track, with its asymmetrical corner radiuses and 11 degrees of banking in Turns 1 and 2 and 9 degrees in Turns 3 and 4, creates plenty of challenges for drivers and engineers and breeds excellent racing. Let’s take a look back at five memorable shows at WWTR.
1997: PT Charges to Inaugural Win
First impressions always matter, and a full house for the inaugural event at WWTR, the Motorola 300, received a thrilling show won by lightning rod Paul Tracy.
Tracy had won two straight events leading into this race after being fined for rough driving at the Long Beach Grand Prix. It looked like a hat trick of wins wasn’t going to happen for the outspoken Canadian, as another driver from the Great White North appeared to be poised to take the checkered flag.
Patrick Carpentier took the lead on Lap 210 of 236 when rookie Dario Franchitti dropped out while leading with a broken transmission. But Carpentier was trying to stretch his fuel over the final 60 laps and grab his first career victory and a first win for team owner Tony Bettenhausen.
That fuel-sipping strategy forced Carpentier to slow over the last 10 laps, creating an opening for PT in his Team Penske car. Tracy passed Alex Zanardi for second with four laps to go and passed Carpentier exiting Turn 4 on Lap 234, taking the checkered flag two laps later. It was Team Penske’s last win until Gil de Ferran triumphed in 2000 at Nazareth Speedway.
2017: Newgarden Bumps, Runs To Win in Series Return
The INDYCAR SERIES returned to WWTR in 2017 after a 14-year absence, and the series delivered plenty of excitement and intrateam drama in the Bommarito Automotive Group 500.
After two separate crashes in the first five laps that took out stars Tony Kanaan, Will Power, Ed Carpenter and Takuma Sato, the race settled into a groove with Team Penske drivers Helio Castroneves, Simon Pagenaud and Josef Newgarden taking turns at the front for most of the night.
Newgarden, in his first season with Team Penske, lost the lead on Lap 206 when teammate Pagenaud – who won the series championship in 2016 in his second season with Penske, had a faster pit stop.
On Lap 218, Newgarden spotted an opening in Turn 1 and dove under teammate Pagenaud. The two cars bumped, with Pagenaud’s machine drifting into the high groove of the oval while Newgarden took the lead. The bump also allowed Scott Dixon to pass Pagenaud for second, and Newgarden, Dixon and Pagenaud held station from first to third, respectively, for the rest of the race.
Pagenaud was furious at the aggressive move after the race, while Newgarden was unapologetic.
“He doesn’t have any respect for me, and he’s lucky it was me or we’d have both been in the wall,” Pagenaud said. “If that had been a road course, it was a beautiful pass, but we were going 190 mph.”
Said Newgarden: “I was surprised he left me a lane, and if he leaves me a gap, I’m going to take it. I had a great tow, and he knew I was coming. I didn’t want to touch him too hard, and I kind of figured he might back off when I was alongside. I know people enjoy late passes for the lead, and I think they enjoyed that one.”
2019: Sato Drives from Back To Win
Sato became a legend with his two Indianapolis 500 victories, in 2017 and 2020, but his victory in the 2019 Bommarito Automotive Group 500 at WWTR also was one for the ages.
Sato qualified fifth in his Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing entry but fell to the back of the 22-car field after near-contact with Ryan Hunter-Reay and other drivers. That forced RLL to adopt an off-sequence pit stop strategy to claw back track position, and it worked – with a stroke of luck.
Sebastien Bourdais spun in Turn 4 on Lap 192 during a sequence of green-flag pit stops, inducing a caution period. Sato, Carpenter, Kanaan and Newgarden had not yet pitted, and the other leaders who had stopped were trapped a lap down.
Sato and Carpenter dueled over the closing laps, with Sato holding off oval specialist Carpenter by just .0399 of a second – the closest INDYCAR SERIES finish in WWTR history.
2023: Dixon’s Fuelish Pleasure
No driver in the last two decades has shown better fuel-saving ability than six-time series champion Dixon, and that skill helped “The Iceman” win by the biggest margin in WWTR history.
Newgarden entered the 260-lap Bommarito Automotive Group 500, as he had won the last three INDYCAR SERIES races at the track and had won all four oval races that season.
So, Dixon needed guile to overcome Newgarden’s might on circle tracks. Saving fuel to gain track position also was needed because Dixon started 16th in the 28-car field after incurring a nine-spot grid penalty due to an unapproved engine change in his Chip Ganassi Racing car at the previous race.
Dixon needed only three pit stops, one fewer than any other driver in the field, as he beat O’Ward to the finish line by 22.2256 seconds in a master class of strategy and execution. O’Ward and David Malukas were the only other drivers on the lead lap, and each made five stops for service, two more than Dixon.
2024: Newgarden’s Spin and Win
Danny Sullivan produced the most famous “spin and win” in INDYCAR SERIES history when he did a 360-degree spin just past the halfway mark in a duel for the lead with Mario Andretti, made no contact and recovered to win “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.”
But Newgarden added to Team Penske’s legacy of winning after spinning by pulling off the same maneuver en route to victory in the Bommarito Automotive Group 500 presented by Axalta and Valvoline.
Team Penske teammates Power and Scott McLaughlin dominated the race, combining to lead 184 of the 260 laps. Newgarden pressured teammate McLaughlin for the lead on Lap 196 when he did a half-spin without contact off Turn 2 and dropped to fourth.
McLaughlin and Newgarden pitted for fresh Firestone Firehawk tires under caution after Malukas spun into the Turn 2 wall under side-by-side pressure from Power with 20 laps to go. Newgarden’s stop was faster, and he took the lead, with McLaughlin second, Colton Herta third and Power fourth.
Another flashpoint arose when a restart was waved off with nine laps to go when a slow run to the green by Newgarden induced contact between Alexander Rossi and Power, ending the race for both with contact on the inside wall and creating a red flag for cleanup. Power was none too happy with Newgarden’s tactics, flipping the middle finger to his teammate.
Newgarden got a speedier jump on the green flag on Lap 254 and drove the last six laps to victory.
There was action all throughout the race, with an event-record 21 passes for the lead, a figure that smashed the previous mark of 13. Eleven drivers held the top spot as a multitude of pit strategies were in play, including a different one by each of the three Team Penske drivers.
Additionally, action throughout the field produced 676 on-track passes, with 254 for position – all event records.
This year’s Bommarito Automotive Group 500 presented by Axalta and Valvoline starts at 8 p.m. ET Sunday, June 15 (FOX, FOX Sports app, INDYCAR Radio Network).
