When IndyCar axed the ill-fated Grand Prix of Boston earlier this year, the series suddenly had a void to fill on the calendar. With a few options on the table, IndyCar settled on a date at historic Watkins Glen International in west-central New York state. The series hadn’t visited Watkins Glen since 2010, but with the new cars’ incredible downforce and fresh pavement at The Glen, series fans had plenty of reasons to be excited for the lap times. We’ll get to that in a moment, but this video of Ed Carpenter Racing driver Spencer Pigot flogging his Chevy-powered Dallara around the track for three laps is just utterly mind-blowing As best as I can tell, the car is hardly in second or third gears for any of the track save parts of The Boot and is flat for so much of the lap while the car just hugs the road.
Through two practice sessions on Friday, Scott Dixon had already nearly clocked a lap that averaged 146 mph. Averaged. He topped that with a qualifying time of 1:22.525, which comes out to 147.008 mph on average over the 3.4-mile course. The next-highest average lap we can find for any American road course is 145.924 by Dario Franchitti at Road America in 2000, which means that Dixon’s qualifying lap was the fastest-ever lap in competition on an American road course. That’s faster than F1 at Indianapolis or at Circuit of the Americas and it’s more than 10 mph faster than IndyCar ever went at Watkins Glen in the past.
Unsurprisingly, Dixon went on to win the 60-lap race by a healthy 16-second margin with little doubt about his dominance. Will Power, who entered the race weekend second in the championship, crashed out of the race after contact with Charlie Kimball. Championship leader Simon Pagenaud managed a seventh-place finish to extend his lead over Power by 43 points headed to the final, double-points round at Sonoma Raceway. After the crash, Power was released from the infield medical care center at Watkins Glen but was not cleared for racing yet due to concussion-like symptoms.
Here’s Pigot last Friday, apparently driving with the “Ludicrous Speed” button pressed:
