In the rather unique IndyCar race at The Thermal Club in the Southern California desert, Alex Palou drove his Ganassi Racing Honda to victory in the new and very unconventional Thermal $1 Million Challenge on Sunday.
Organizers transformed what could have been a preseason test session at a gentlemen’s club racing track into a full-fledged, non-points race weekend dubbed “The Thermal $1 Million Challenge.”
For those who aren’t millionaires, The Thermal Club is a private racetrack bordered by the wealthy and famous’s $10 million condominiums. The Club is conveniently located near to a very nice airport with an 8500-foot-long runway that can comfortably accommodate all manner of private jets.
Last year in February, IndyCar held a successful preseason test at the facility. Everyone enjoyed it, despite the high-deg (rough, tire-eating) surface of the track, which is more suited to Porsches and Ferraris than IndyCar race cars. So this year, IndyCar began with a two-day “Open Test,” with nine hours of total test time for teams to work out their vehicles early in the season.
Following that, the 27-car field was divided into two groups for qualifying, with each driver having around one good lap at maximum speed before the track ate up their tires. The two qualifying sessions lasted eight minutes for all cars, which may appear short, but everyone seemed to agree that the tires wouldn’t last much more than that.
Qualifying set the grid order for each heat race, with the top six finishers advancing to the 12-car “all-star” event. The race comprised merely 20 laps around Thermal’s 3.067-mile course. However, the 20 circuits were separated into two races, each with a mandated 10-minute stop for all cars.
And, while no points were awarded, there was a lot of money at stake: $1.756 million, the richest prize for an IndyCar Series race other than the Indy 500. Obviously, the winner did not receive all of that. Furthermore, the winner did not get the $1 million prize mentioned in the event title, which could be interpreted as misleading. The winner received “only” $500,000. Second place received $350,000, and so on.
Leave a Reply