
Jimmie Johnson moves up to third in Honda Indy Toronto before a speeding penalty in pit lane, late incident with other driver drops him to 21st.
Jimmie Johnson’s team devised a brilliant strategy that helped him leap-frog the field from 21st starting position to third place during the first 35 laps of Sunday’s Honda Indy Toronto.
But when Johnson made his first pit stop of the race after running more laps than any driver in the contest during his initial fuel stint, he was caught speeding entering pit road.
IndyCar Race Control assessed a drive through penalty, putting the No. 48 Carvana/American Legion Honda for Chip Ganassi Racing one lap down.
Off the lead lap and in the back of the field, his day ended when Kyle Kirkwood attempted to pass Johnson’s Honda in the tight kink in front of pit lane. Johnson did not see Kirkwood’s Chevrolet to his left, and the two cars crashed in Turn 9 on Lap 60.
Johnson finished where he started, 21st, but was visibly frustrated afterwards that this could have been a breakout race on a street course for The American Legion driver.
“Unfortunate finish to the day,” Johnson said afterwards. “We just had too much damage with the contact late in the race to continue on. I really felt like we were setting up for a nice finish; had a great strategy. Unfortunately, I had a speeding violation earlier in the race that put us in the back.
“But I was hanging on and in the group racing, having some fun, then got caught up in a street racing incident. We had too much damage and had to retire the car.”
Johnson’s race engineer, Eric Cowdin, devised the strategy that was going to help leapfrog Johnson ahead of many of his competitors in the race.
It looked pretty good until the speeding penalty.
“Our strategy going into the race was to try to get track position,” Cowdin said. “You never know how these things will unfold yellow-wise, but getting that position and being able to run there would have hopefully benefitted us down the road. It would have shortened the amount of time we would have had to be on the Firestone Red tires.
“After the first stop, we would have pitted as early as we could to make it to the end and go back to the Firestone Black tires.”
The Blacks were the best tire on the street course at Toronto because of the condition of the track, but each team has to run a minimum number of laps on the Reds in each street and road course race.
Cowdin believes without the pit speeding violation, when the field cycled through, Johnson would have been in the top-15.
“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to find out,” Cowdin said.
Cowdin was impressed with Johnson’s weekend improvement on the streets of Toronto, the first time Johnson has ever raced in Canada. He improved over two seconds a lap from the first practice on Friday to qualifications on Saturday.
“It’s good for not just the program itself, but it shows he is making progress,” Cowdin explained. “I know the increments are smaller than he would like, and we are all competitive, but putting a race weekend like that in contrast to our weekend at Long Beach, not too long ago, it was a dramatic improvement.”
Cowdin said Johnson was frustrated when he heard about the pit road penalty.
“He’s made a career out of being the most level-headed driver out there, but you could hear the frustration in his voice after that penalty,” Cowdin said. “On the inside, we feel the gains. We just wish we would get some external proof of that. It would be nice to validate that.”
Blair Julian is Johnson’s race strategist and described what the team was trying to do with the strategy.
“We don’t have a huge playbook that we can utilize at the moment,” Julian said. “That was going to be our play, and he got a speeding penalty on the way in that eliminated our advantage.
“He did a pretty job there hanging onto the car for a while and running away from Conor Daly. He did a good job all weekend, we thought.”
Julian was impressed that once he got up to third place, he was able to keep up with the front of the field.
“He had some big gains every session and I thought the get was going to be a little more,” Julian said. “He had a good run off Turn 2 going into Turn 3 and that takes away a passing lane for many people.
“We just didn’t get the result that we could have had.”
From a Chip Ganassi Racing standpoint, it was an historic day as Scott Dixon won the race. It was Dixon’s 52nd career IndyCar win, tying him with Andretti for second place on the all-time victory list. AJ Foyt is IndyCar’s all-time winner with 67 career victories and is the first driver to win the Indianapolis 500 four times in his career.
Johnson and the No. 48 team will regroup and head to Iowa Speedway for next weekend’s doubleheader at the short oval in Newton, Iowa. Johnson’s car will have the full American Legion livery on it for the Hy-Vee Salute to Farmers 300 on Sunday, July 24.
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