re: 2023 IndyCar Season - R17 Laguna Seca 9/10 2:30 pm ET (NBC)

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Marcus Ericsson! He's maturing nicely as an IndyCar driver. Chip Ganassi has three really good drivers

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I was thinking this also.

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I don’t really fault Grosjean he was going for his first win.

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OK after re-watching it a few times and listening to McLaughlin's mea culpa, I've reconsidered. Grosjean trusted McLaughlin to back off, and McLaughlin acknowledged he pushed it a little too far and meant to back off but just lost it on cold tires. Grosjean wasn't wrong to trust McLaughlin, who's normally a good, trustworthy driver.

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While it would be unrealistic to expect a commercial-free race

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F1 says hello! Love the Sky Sports coverage without commercial.

Most importantly though came here to say that Im probably going to Texas Motor Speedway race again, look forward to that.

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I know, I was saying it's unrealistic for a low-viewership series just happy to be on a broadcast network channel to have the power to have a commercial-free broadcast. IndyCar will never have that, but if they can make all the commercials continue a live race feed in the corner, that would improve things considerably.

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NBC has Peacock. I wish they would do a non commercial stream on there if people didn’t want to watch it on NBC.

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Considering the race in Birmingham. Anyone ever been?

I’m def a F1 guy but would love to experience Indy in person.

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I've never been, but I've heard great things about Barber Motorsports Park, and there's a cool museum there. I'd be stoked to visit any of the IndyCar road courses and ovals. The only circuits that I would hesitate to attend are the temporary street tracks. They're terrible for watching the racing.

I've only seen IndyCar at Laguna Seca, Sonoma, California Speedway (aka Auto Club Speedway), and the infamous temporary San Jose circuit that had a brutal bump that sent every car airborn. One thing I like about Laguna (in terms of on-track viewing) is that on the top of the hill, you can stand in two places, maybe 30 yds apart, and see every corner of the track except Turn 6. I don't know that you can do that at any other road course.

Race 1 St. Petersburg

Official results and points

2023 Grand Prix of St. Petersburg - 100 laps

P01 Marcus Ericsson (#8 Ganassi / Honda)
P02 Pato O'Ward (#5 McLaren / Chevy)
P03 Scott Dixon (#9 Ganassi / Honda)
P04 Alexander Rossi (#7 McLaren / Chevy)
P05 Callum Ilott (#77 Juncos Hollinger / Chevy)
P06 Graham Rahal (#15 Rahal Letterman Lanigan / Honda)
P07 Will Power (#12 Penske / Chevy)
P08 Alex Palou (#10 Ganassi / Honda)
P09 Christian Lundgaard (#45 Rahal Letterman Lanigan / Honda)
P10 David Malukas (#18 Coyne / Honda)
P11 Marcus Armstrong [R] (#11 Ganassi / Honda)
P12 Agustín Canapino [R] (#78 Juncos Hollinger / Chevy)
P13 Scott McLaughlin (#3 Penske / Chevy) 99 laps
P14 Conor Daly (#20 Carpenter / Chevy) 99 laps
P15 Kyle Kirkwood (#27 Andretti / Honda) 97 laps
P16 Sting Ray Robb [R] (#51 Coyne / Honda) 96 laps - Off Course
P17 Josef Newgarden (#2 Penske / Chevy) 95 laps - Running
P18 Romain Grosjean (#28 Andretti / Honda) 71 laps - Contact
P19 Felix Rosenqvist (#6 McLaren / Chevy) 51 laps - Retired
P20 Colton Herta (#26 Andretti / Honda) 49 laps - Contact
P21 Rinus VeeKay (#21 Carpenter / Chevy) 41 laps - Contact
P22 Jack Harvey (#30 Rahal Letterman Lanigan / Honda) 41 laps - Contact
P23 Hélio Castroneves (#06 Meyer Shank / Honda) 0 laps - Contact
P24 Santino Ferrucci (#14 Foyt / Chevy) 0 laps - Contact
P25 Devlin DeFrancesco (#29 Andretti / Honda) 0 laps - Contact
P26 Simon Pagenaud (#60 Meyer Shank / Honda) 0 laps - Contact
P27 Benjamin Pedersen [R] (#55 Foyt / Chevy) 0 laps - Contact

After a momentum-killing gap between Race 1 and 2, we're finally at the Texas super speedway.

After just one practice session, qualifying is today at 12:15 pm ET on Peacock.

The race is tomorrow at 12:00 pm ET on NBC.

There are 27 full-time entries, plus a 28th entry for oval-only Ed Carpenter. Takuma Sato is also only doing ovals but he's sharing the full-time #11 Chip Ganassi entry with rookie Marcus Armstrong.

After the practice session, Scott McLaughlin was P1, the three McLaren drivers were in the top 10, Sato was the fastest Ganassi driver in P8, and the three Team Rahal drivers were dead last in the order. Looks like their engineers completely botched their setup.

Touched...how would you say the Texas oval compares to the others on the circuit?

Looking forward to saying Sting Ray today

Indy really needs to stop with the long breaks...seems like Florida was a year ago

It's amazing to watch how fast indy cars go around Texas. It looks like a short track compared to nascar

I’ve got tickets to Grand Prix of Alabama at the end of the month. Interested to see the turnout as it’s usually pretty solid.