Well, the Porsche Sprint Series was comical. It rained a great deal over night and still sprinkling a little on the way to the track at 6:45 AM. But it started to dry up. The trouble is the track was soggy, and the series contained a lot of n00bs not ready for it. They raced maybe 3 to 5 laps of a 30 minute race under green. It took 5 or 6 pace laps to get the initial green flag. By the time Indy was practicing, it was dry, no issues. By the time Indy was ready to race, the skies opened up and the temperature went up what felt like 20 degrees! Thankfully the sun went away for a bit, but came back out. The rain held off until an hour plus after the race completed. The race itself was fast. It went from lap 15 to lap 65 in what seemed to be a half hour. They just had the one yellow after Marcus Ericcson decided to drive like a blind man for a moment. Felix Rosenquist was likely confused as to what was happening as Ericson's car appeared to be trying to mount his.
It is hard to keep track of things at the race live, but from what I could tell, O'Ward did a Will Power, moving up a substantial number of places, 25th to 7th or something. Herta and Rahal were up front early, but then Palou Palou'd and he didn't look back., The interesting trivia on the front row is that Colton's Dad was team mates with Graham's Dad back in the day. It was odd to see Will Power get stuck behind traffic (he passed 1000 cars last year after a spin put him in the back). Ben Pederson and Ray Robb weren't giving up position in getting lapped. It was something to see how much space opened up between the slow traffic and the passers once they got by in just one lap. Rahal has a pit issue, but overall, I'd say RLL racing were happy with the results having two in the top ten! Veekay and Ferrucci struggled all day. Veekay had performed much better last year. Saw Veekay talking while in the Paddock post race and he seemed frustrated. I'm 2 for 3 seeing Ganassi at Mid-Ohio now.
We stood in line for 90 minutes in the Indycar driving signing thing. Didn't make it to the drivers (I was surprised, as while it was a long line, I didn't think it'd take that long to shift forward, probably not doing that again). I was looking at what some of the people had that they wanted signed, and it was a collection of things. I just had printed 8x10s of photos I had taken last year. Didn't get to the tent, but Veekay was near the front. He and Ferrucci came out towards the people (the other drivers left from the rear to escape) and were handing out placards they had signed. I was able to get Veekay to sign the shot I got of him last year, which barely made the wait worth it. But there were a few things left inside to take advantage of (Kirkwood, Rahal, I did see Rahal getting to his scooter, ready to leave, but I didn't press it). Then for whatever reason, the Ganassi team signing had a relatively short line the next day, we waited just 40 minutes overall, and my daughter got to tell Alex Palou she was his biggest fan, so she got a real kick out of that. I just had one driver with a pic to sign (Dixon), but she got all four signatures on the paltry race program that we received at the gate. Now it is less paltry (two Indy 500 winners, Alex freakin' Palou and a kid about half the age of Scott Dixon).
A few pics. The exit out of the Essess, entrance into the Essess, and the turn into Thunder Valley are all unobstructed (fence-wise) . You can get shots on the front stretch from the Paddock viewing areas, but there is the pit wall which visually distracts without a larger zoom, and it is tricky to time it with all of the other pit related obstructions. Obviously the better photos have the blurry background. Cars were checking up in a big way into Thunder Valley, which is why the tires have very little blur.
Conor Daly driving Pagenaud's car (Sunday Morning Practice, entry into Essess)
Felix Rosenquist (Sunday morning practice, entry into Essess)
Colton Herta (Saturday Morning practice, just before turn down into Thunder Valley)
Helio Castroneves (Saturday Morning practice, just before turn down into Thunder Valley)
