IndyCar Gateway Conclusions: Oval racing is Indy’s greatest party trick

IndyCar has returned from its Olympic break with a stunner at Gateway — and with three more ovals remaining in the season, it also promised to shine a light on what could happen during the rest of the year.

Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden took a win after a spin, a quick pit stop, and a controversially slow restart, but we’ve got so much more to delve into for our IndyCar conclusions.

Conclusions from IndyCar Gateway

Oval racing is IndyCar’s best party trick

IndyCar’s oval racing tends to wax and wane in terms of excitement. Some tracks, strategies, and conditions lend themselves to fairly straightforward single-file racing — but that wasn’t the case this weekend at Gateway.

The Bommarito Automotive Group 500 was a masterclass in what makes oval racing so great when everything falls into place. Several distinct race strategies formed, while the cars throughout the field were capable of dicing and racing hard.

Yes, there was a bit of contact and a handful of crashes, but beyond everything else, the race was a compelling one that should remind fans of how good oval racing can be.

Will that novelty wear off? Four races remain in the season, and three of them will take place on oval tracks. Those three races take place on two different tracks — two events on the Milwaukee Mile, one at Nashville Superspeedway — that only one or two drivers are familiar with.

Will that make for better racing? Or will the new tracks leave drivers especially hesitant? That remains to be seen, but there’s reason for optimism after Gateway. IndyCar has found a compelling oval package, and that bodes well for the rest of the year.

Team Penske promises a swing to the top of the championship — if it can stop hurting itself

Team Penske’s 2024 season has been characterized by extreme highs and extreme lows. On the negative end were the cheating-related disqualifications for Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin at the start of the season, as well as a handful of retirements or poor finishes.

On the positives: An Indy 500 win for Newgarden and impressive wins for fellow drivers McLaughlin and Will Power.

The early part of the IndyCar season, though, was dominated by road and street circuits — and everyone has known that ovals will be where Team Penske shines.

However, Newgarden’s slow late-race restart made him deeply unpopular with his teammate Will Power, who was wiped out by a high-speed Alexander Rossi ready to take the flag.

The move ultimately gave Alex Palou, championship leader, a much higher finishing position than expected.

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Alex Palou can still win this thing

No, Alex Palou may not have won on an oval just yet, but his fourth-place finish at Gateway means he’s still firmly in control of the IndyCar championship in a race that very well should have seen the competition make critical gains.

Power, Palou’s biggest competition, ended the race in the wall when he was on track for a podium finish. The move also launched Palou up the finishing order by three places — and he gained another one when Herta was penalized for defending too hard against Linus Lundqvist.

IndyCar heads to Portland International Raceway next, where Palou is expected to dominate. If he does, he’s going to have a massive lead heading into the final three races in the season — all on ovals. He won’t have to overperform to maintain that lead.

In fact, if the season keeps going the way it’s going, Team Penske may very well hand him a title on a silver platter.

Chip Ganassi Racing has tough charter decisions ahead of it

Earlier this week, Penske Entertainment delivered the first official draft of its charter agreement to all of IndyCar’s 10 full-time teams; though the detail may change, Chip Ganassi Racing is going to have a tough decision ahead of it.

See, with this new charter, each team will only be able to guarantee entry for three cars in each race. CGR, which fields five cars this year, will have to carefully select the cars that will qualify for a charter, as well as the drivers that will race them. It’ll also have to decide if it’s worth running two non-chartered cars.

Alex Palou and Scott Dixon are clear favorites for a chartered car… but who else?

Marcus Armstrong in the No. 11 is the highest placed of the team’s three other drivers, and an eighth place at Gateway will further make him appealing to CGR higher ups.

But Linus Lundqvist’s impressive podium should keep the rookie driver in contention for a chartered car as well. He hasn’t had as strong results as Armstrong, but he is a rookie, and he’s leading the series’ Rookie of the Year standings.

However, there’s also Kyffin Simpson. The 19-year-old driver of the No. 4 machine has yet to crack the top 10, and his mistakes — like his unprompted spin at Gateway — have set him out as the weakest link in the CGR team.

Simpson, though, brings money, and money talks. Can it talk loudly enough to persuade Chip Ganassi to put him in a chartered car? We’ll have to wait and see.

Katherine Legge needs a full-time ride to make the most of the e.l.f. sponsorship

The occasional drive in a Dale Coyne Racing machine isn’t going to cut it anymore: If e.l.f. wants to make the most out of its Katherine Legge sponsorship, it needs to find her a more reliable full-time ride, ASAP.

Legge has run four events in the No. 51 Dale Coyne Racing Honda, and thus far, her best finish has been 17th. However, that’s in large part because her equipment has been a challenge.

With no chance to qualify at Gateway after her car failed tech and limited running during practice, Legge was one of the least experienced racers on the track when it came time to start the Bommarito Automotive Group 500. That lack of experience showed when she powered into the back of Ed Carpenter while the two entered a turn.

It might be easy to simply claim that Legge has little skill, but I’d argue that we just don’t have enough evidence to prove that’s the case — not while she’s racing for Dale Coyne.

DCR has experience in the IndyCar game, but the team’s equipment isn’t exactly renowned for its stunning reliability and expert performance.

And that’s particularly unfortunate, because Legge’s e.l.f. cosmetics sponsorship has been a game changer. The company’s Indy 500 activations were impressive in the way they engaged a female audience without tokenizing it — a challenging feat to achieve.

Further, e.l.f. has also brought with it ample support for IndyCar as a whole, and for the races in which Legge has run. But the cars… they’ve left a lot to be desired.

If e.l.f. really wants to make the most of this partnership with Legge, it’s going to need to find her a more reliable ride for 2025; it’s a sponsor that deserves to see its car finish a race.

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