2017 Grand Prix of St Petersburg
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Will Power being on pole position at St Petersburg is hardly unexpected but following practice it almost came as a surprise. The Penske domination we’ve become familiar with at this track in recent years has hardly been in evidence, and only two of their four cars reached the Fast Six shoot-out for pole position – the other being team newcomer Josef Newgarden.
On a resurfaced and slightly reconfigured track the Honda-powered cars – particularly the Ganassi quartet – had been much more competitive. Scott Dixon set a sub-61 seconds lap earlier in qualifying which would have been good enough for pole position had he repeated it when it mattered.
It all bodes for a rather more competitive start to the season than we were expecting. Here’s hoping we get a good race on Sunday. We’ll be on F1 Fanatic Live to follow all the action from 4pm.
1. Will Power – 1’01.0640
2. Scott Dixon – 1’01.2219
3. James Hinchcliffe – 1’01.3039
4. Josef Newgarden – 1’01.7229
5. Takuma Sato – 1’01.9851
6. Tony Kanaan – 1’02.0824
7. Max Chilton – 1’01.3516
8. Alexander Rossi – 1’01.5198
9. Charlie Kimball – 1’01.6066
10. Graham Rahal – 1’01.6181
11. Carlos Munoz – 1’01.7399
12. Ryan Hunter-Reay – 1’03.1588
13. Spencer Pigot – 1’01.5898
14. Simon Pagenaud – 1’01.6129
15. Marco Andretti – 1’01.6070
16. Helio Castroneves – 1’01.7159
17. Mikhail Aleshin – 1’01.7674
18. Ed Jones – 1’01.7598
19. JR Hildebrand – 1’01.8465
20. Conor Daly – 1’02.2030
21. Sebastien Bourdais – no timeThat’s a really interesting looking grid. Good to see Newgarden up there in his first race for Penske, and also cool to see Chilton and Rossi both up there.
@keithcollantine, will you be involved with the BT coverage any time this season? I really enjoyed it last year!@f1alex Indeed – you may have heard me this evening! The exact plan for the year isn’t in place yet but we will be doing continuity coverage during the American ad breaks for all of the race bar the few which are on in the early hours of the morning.
I thought that was a very encouraging start to the season. Bourdais was a bit lucky but he still had to make a pass (on a Penske) for the lead and he was great in traffic. I tended to agree with Dixon that the full course caution seemed a little unnecessary. He recovered better from that than anyone else – notably Hinchcliffe didn’t make anything like as good progress through traffic.
@keithcollantine Yep I did! In fact I found your and Ben’s commentary much more interesting and informative than the US commentators, who all seemed a bit bored for most of it! BT should get you guys doing the full race commentary :)
Really enjoyed the race, happy for Bourdais as he did a great job and it clearly meant a lot to him. I feel a bit sorry for Hinchcliffe though, his start and 1st restart were both amazing, but got caught out by the 2nd caution. It died down slightly towards the end, but I don’t think anyone can call a race in which the winner came from last on the grid dull!
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