May came in for me 11 days late, trailed by a rooster tail of spray and the oddest sense that no one at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was hearing what used to be the rhythm section to a soggy day in May: The whine of track driers and the whoosh of utility trucks whirling around and around, trying to dry out the most hallowed 2.5 miles in motorsports.
In other words, the rain came and they ran in it anyway, because you can do that on a road course. The sixth IndyCar Grand Prix of Indianapolis ran in the wet on Saturday, and I watched it from my couch, on account of I'm out of that scene these days. And what was fascinating to watch was the way it turned the usual rainy-day-at-Indy trope inside-out.
Which is to say, everyone was glued to the weather radar, but not to see when the rain would stop. They were glued to it to see when it would begin.
It made for some fascinating strategizin' on everyone's part, as teams tried to figure out the exact moment to switch from dry slicks to rain tires. Some did it too soon. Some waited too long. And then there was Simon Pagenaud, who did everything exactly right.
If you didn't see it -- and, sure, it's IndyCar, so a lot of you probably didn't -- you missed a virtuoso performance. Sitting fourth with 15 laps to run, and with his allowable push-to-pass boost exhausted, Pagenaud hunted and pecked and expertly found the fastest line and braking points on the wet track, running down first Matheus Leist, then Jack Harvey, and finally leader Scott Dixon with a lap-and-a-half to run.
It was master-class stuff, Pagenaud relentlessly whittling an impossible deficit -- Dixon had a seven-second lead on him with 15 laps remaining -- while finding the wettest spots on the track to run through to keep his soft rain tires from burning up. It was the drive of his life, and it snapped a two-year drought for him.
And if it's any indication of what awaits us two weeks hence in the biggest race in the world, this is going to be a hell of a May. Tardy or not.
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