Firestone Grand Prix Weekend Recap
Whether your racing thing is open wheel, sports cars or jumping trucks, the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg (GPStPete) weekend is your event. Using the streets of the city as the race course and the tall downtown buildings as a back drop, the IndyCar series, Pirelli World Challenge and Stadium Super Trucks all shone under Florida sun.
Indy was the top draw with St. Pete the season opening weekend for 2017, open wheel racing also included the “ladder” series classes USF2000, Pro Mazda, and Indy Lights which are typically viewed as a development progression from young race car drivers coming from go-karting with Indy as their final goal.
The Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg (GPStPete) was also the opening weekend for Pirelli World Challenge (PWC) which, in years passed, opened their race season at Circuit of the Americas. PWC held racing rounds one and two over the weekend for classes GT/GTA, GT Cup, and GT4/GTS.
Absent was the SprintX class which will be at Virginia International Raceway (VIR) for their season opening race April 28-30 weekend. I invite you to read more about the different PWC classes at this website:
To learn more about the history of PWC, tracks the series will race, and records set at those tracks, please refer to the media guide, found here: http://files.world-challenge.com/press-media/guides/2017-PWC-MediaGuide.pdf
And last but not least are the rootin’ tootin’ Stadium Super Trucks (SST) and the fearless leader Robby Gordon. Two years ago, I had the great pleasure of interviewing Robby and one of the best lines from the whole weekend was Robby’s statement which is visually true at every SST race, “IndyCar definitely puts fans in the grandstands, but we take them out of the grandstands and put them at the fence."
Even though there is a little delay in the action before the trucks hit the streets, it’s worth the wait while the ramps are being moved into place. Fans are drawn to the fence to get a sense of height of the trucks coming off the jumps. If you have not seen SST in person, please check out the website and schedule and make this a priority!
Let’s first start with my weekend interview and then I will recap the race weekend!
I had the pleasure to chat with Ian James, driver of the #50 GTS entry Team Panoz Racing, Panoz Avezzano GT. IMSA fans may also know Ian James from #23 Team Seattle/Alex Job racing and currently with #14 3GT team Lexus GT3 car.
Please meet Ian here before reading my hard-hitting intense Q&A!
The weekend wasn’t the best for Ian, but I enjoyed our chat and I hope you will too:
Q) Do you have a nickname? Not really. I used to be called “Jamesy” but that was it.
Q) Who is your favorite athlete? Steve Redgrave, 5 time Olympic gold medalist
Q) What would you be doing for a career if not a race car driver? Engineer of some kind.
Q) What track is on your bucket list to race? Bathurst and hopefully doing in 2018
Q) What is your favorite track and why? I’ve been lucky to race a lot of tracks, but I really love Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. I worked there for many years.
Q) If you could spend the afternoon with anyone, who would it be and what would you do? Winston Churchill and I would just like to talk to him.
Q) You have race many different manufacturer cars (Porsche, Mazda, Ford Mustang) Is there anything similar to all of the cars? They all the same kind of genetics, but they all have their own different feels. Similar in terms of race car, but everyone has their own personality.
Q) Do you prefer being the single driver or part of a multiple driver car/team? It’s been a long time since I’ve done single driver events and I’m really enjoying. I do like the team aspect, having to work together with a teammate but this is a lot of fun, I must admit.
Please find out more about Ian James and the Panoz Team by following on Twitter @Ijracer1 @panozllc or on Website: http://www.panoz.com/
The talk of the weekend was Turn 3. Since GPStPete is a street course, obviously most of the track is lined with unforgiving concrete walls. On Thursday, Turn 3 collected many “twisty bits” from the USF2000 cars. Overnight the turn was widen so cars could go on either side of the curbing which was now front and center.
While the reconfiguration of Turn 3 helped the Indycar series, the drivers I spoke to in PWC found that the new turn 3 had a domino effect and now made the entry into Turn 4 a bit trickier. One driver that didn’t seem to have any troubles with the course was Lawson Aschenbach.
After his podium finish on Friday, I had the chance to catch up with Lawson Aschenbach, GTS driver of the
#10 Blackdog Speed Shop Chevrolet Camaro GT4.R, which still has the new car smell. After getting the Friday pole, Lawson finished second. See what he had to say about it here:
Along with Ian and Lawson doing double March duty racing with PWC followed closely by IMSA at Sebring International Raceway, many other double series drivers can be seen at GPStPete either as a fan or driver coach. It’s worth the trip to spend spring break in Florida, come for GPStPete and stay for Sebring!
Now a little about my “fan” experience. I am unable attend many Indycar PWC race weekends, so I will assume that St. Petersburg is unique in enforcing fans to have their belongings searched and body scanned when going from the support series paddock to IndyCar. This is not the first year for the scanning policy, but I still don’t understand it.
The other fan frustration I have every year with GPStPete event is no total combined schedule. IndyCar has their own time schedule of events which does not include PWC and the reverse is true. This same dysfunctional concept occurs for other weekends when multiple “unrelated” race series are in attendance.
Once the concrete walls are removed and the local residents return to drive on the city streets used as part of the course, I always wonder what the road surface is like with rubber bits from IndyCar on Firestone tires, USF2000/ProMazda/IndyLights on Cooper tires, PWC Pirelli tires, and SST on Toyo tires!
Thank you all for reading and I welcome your comments. I have no affiliation with PWC, IndyCar, St. Petersburg or any race series. I am just a fan. There are many blogs and websites where you will find statistics, results, and scoring from the race; this is just my view.
Got a response? Follow and tweet me @viclovesracing
And look for future “Vickie’s Trackside Report” coming to a track near you!
