The Road America Scorecard -- 2016

Hey there Internet!! I'm back! Sorry for the delay with posting these scores from the Kohler Grand Prix at Road America in beautiful Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin (I'm biased, I know). But, I was out of town and out of touch with the whole of the internet from June 26 through like Sunday, so I think I've done a really good turn around here actually. We'll be back to normal turn around speed after Iowa. But, let's get to the numbers.


The Scorecard

Finish	Driver	Grid	Led	Completed	A.R.P.	Race Score	Index
1	Power	1	46	50	1.18	97.06	30.39
2	Kanaan	3	0	50	2.64	64.18	0.55
3	Rahal	6	2	50	3.34	65.97	5.36
4	Hunter-Reay	8	0	50	7.36	58.55	0.97
5	Castroneves	5	0	50	5.30	54.09	-0.45
6	Kimball	11	0	50	8.16	55.82	4.30
7	Montoya	14	0	50	10.88	53.21	4.73
8	Newgarden	20	0	50	12.00	57.58	12.12
9	Pigot	17	0	50	14.22	46.64	4.21
10	Munoz	10	0	50	9.64	39.94	0.55
11	Hawksworth	18	0	50	16.52	38.61	2.24
12	Andretti	21	0	50	17.08	39.27	5.94
13	Pagenaud	4	2	50	3.72	32.06	1.76
14	Hinchcliffe	22	0	50	17.16	34.61	7.33
15	Rossi	16	0	50	13.46	28.09	3.85
16	Aleshin	13	0	50	14.14	19.48	-1.73
17	Sato	15	0	50	12.44	22.06	3.88
18	Bourdais	12	0	49	20.35	2.61	-12.55
19	Chaves	19	0	49	18.18	13.21	1.09
20	Chilton	7	0	48	15.77	-3.85	-12.94
21	Daly	9	0	39	6.46	8.39	2.33
22	Dixon	2	0	6	2.50	1.61	-1.42

Quick Hits

- First Quick Hit: I haven't ACTUALLY watched this race yet. During one of my brief bouts of internet access during the week I was gone, I downloaded the radio podcast on the IndyCar app (love that feature), so I've experienced the race, but I still haven't had the 3 hours to get my actual eyeballs upon it. I will. I promise. Now, on to racing related hits.

- #Overlordsmanship: Will Power just Will Power-ed all over this race. The level of dominance that this race sounded like Power displayed was the unbeatable sounding aura that I remember from him during his run of second-place series finishes from 2010-2012 (which for me felt more dominant than his series win in 2014). The level of impressive that this race was is evidenced by Power's 30.39 Happiness Index, a fun new stat here on ScoringIndy that I'll keep promoting all Quick Hits long.

- ECR's Big Day: I wasn't terribly bullish on Ed Carpenter Racing going into the weekend. Spenser Pigot has had decent races index-wise since joining ECR as "Twisty Ed" (my nickname for the revolving door of road course ringers that run the 20 car when it must turn right. Ed Carpenter, like Derek Zoolander is not an ambi-turner). However, Pigot's time as Twisty Ed hasn't generated much in the way of finishes. Josef Newgarden, on the other hand, was coming off of breaking himself in Texas. I didn't if know he would "have it" this weekend, and qualifying seemed to prove me right. Pigot and Newgarden, however, conspired to prove me wrong in the race, with Top 10 finishes and Indices in fairly appreciable positive numbers.

- Index MVP: The Index MVP from this race, that is the driver whose Happiness Index best helps explain his race is Conor Daly. Daly had the race of his year: running up front without the help of some of Dale Coyne's spectacular strategery (Will Ferrell says it best: here). This time, it was all Daly. He qualified high. He ran high. Then, late in the race he got optimistic (again, haven't actually seen it yet) and got his race cut short. Thus, he landed a Race Score of 8.39. Now, normally, I would have no idea what to make of an 8.39. It looks bad. And, it is bad. He finished P21 after all. But, here's where Happiness Index comes into play. That 8.39, while being a bad Race Score, is actually 2.33 over the baseline for that position. So, while Daly did finish second to last, the numbers tell us it was a quite good second to last.


Stay Tuned

Well, that's all the trouble I'm going to get into this week. How do you all like the way that I'm displaying the Index column? Does the green work for everyone? Should I be doing something else to make good and bad Indices stand out? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @ScoringIndy. Until next time, enjoy the racing. I'll be back after Iowa with a scorecard, and maybe some number dives in the near future.

See you out there!

-- Guido