IndyCar: Winners and losers from 2018 Bommarito Automotive Group 500

Gateway Motorsports Park hosted the Bommarito Automotive Group 500. Will Power battled with Scott Dixon and Alexander Rossi to win his third IndyCar race of 2018.

Gateway Motorsports Park has quickly become one of the favorite tracks on the IndyCar calendar with the racing being competitive and the crowd turnouts being some of the highest in the sport. Let’s take a look at some of the winners and losers from the 2018 Bommarito Automotive Group 500.

Winners

Gateway Motorsports Park

Gateway Motorsports Park was originally added to the IndyCar calendar with some apprehension from fans and drivers, for understandable reasons. The track is not as famously big as the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway, as it is only 1.250-miles long.

The speeds are not as fast as they are on the superspeedways, but they are still high enough to produce fantastic dicing and the ability for teams to save and spend fuel for varying strategies. But the real reason that the Gateway experiment has succeeded has been because of the marketing and the fan turnout to the event.

Gateway Motorsports Park sits in the small town of Madison, Illinois, which has a minuscule population of 3,879 (2011 census), and with the looks of how packed the stands were, the whole town and more turned out to watch a thriller of a race. The idea that a track has to be a billion-dollar investment to have success is false. The passion of IndyCar fans in the midwest proves that if the racing is good, people will come to see it.

The points battle

With a series that has seen seven different drivers win races and four of those drivers each winning three races, consistency has been the name of the game. At this point in the season, a single DNF would mean disaster for any of the top three drivers in the championship standings.

Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon leads the standings with 568 points. Andretti Autosport’s Alexander Rossi is 26 points behind with 542 points while Team Penske’s Will Power and Josef Newgarden sits in third and fourth place with 500 and 490 points, 68 and 78 points behind Dixon.

Keep in mind that the final round of the season, the IndyCar Grand Prix of Sonoma, at Sonoma Raceway is a double-point scoring event. Having competition this tight through the season is exactly what the sport and spectators want.

Losers

Sebastien Bourdais

It hurts me to write this, but Dale Coyne Racing’s Sebastian Bourdais has had a downturn in performance after starting the season on a high note and winning the first race on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida and taking two more top five finishes in the road course races at Barber Motorsports Park and Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Since then, Bourdais has had only a single top five finish in 10 races. His most recent disappointment came in the Bommarito Automotive Group 500 when he spun on the first lap and hit the wall, ending his race.

Bourdais has the potential, but consistency is what wins championships.