{"id":7578,"date":"2019-04-15T10:11:20","date_gmt":"2019-04-15T08:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/b106543.web05.cust.bluerange.se\/?p=7578"},"modified":"2019-04-15T10:12:50","modified_gmt":"2019-04-15T08:12:50","slug":"felix-rosenqvist-takes-rookie-honours-in-long-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/felixracing.se\/en\/felix-rosenqvist-takes-rookie-honours-in-long-beach\/","title":{"rendered":"Felix Rosenqvist takes rookie honours in Long Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

NTT IndyCar Series
Rd. 4 – Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach (USA)<\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Felix Rosenqvist was the top rookie in Sunday\u2019s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, round four of the NTT IndyCar Series season, but was nonetheless left lamenting what could have been following a costly qualifying crash.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

On his first-ever visit to the Long Beach street track, Rosenqvist looked on course to vie for a maiden IndyCar pole position courtesy of a strong run in Saturday\u2019s qualifying session, where he initially progressed from the opening group stages and later threw in the second-fastest lap of the weekend thus far in the\u00a0Top 12\u00a0<\/em>segment.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rosenqvist\u2019s time would have been enough to see him through to the concluding Firestone Fast Six<\/em> shootout, but \u2013 in pursuit of yet another improvement \u2013 the Swede misjudged a braking zone on his following lap, crashing his Chip Ganassi Racing machine into the barriers and bringing out the red flags.<\/span><\/p>\n

With IndyCar rules stripping drivers of their fastest two laps if causing a qualifying stoppage, Rosenqvist was forced to see his Fast Six-sufficient time deleted, instead dropping him to 12th on the grid \u2013 a less-than-ideal position at any track, and even less so within the tight confines of a street course.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a classic driver mistake,\u201d says Felix Rosenqvist<\/strong>. \u201cIt probably looked a bit silly from the outside since I\u2019d already set a time good enough to advance, but I know how quickly things can change in street track qualifying. The grip improves throughout and you need to push the entire way to make sure you\u2019re not leapfrogged. Also, the instruction from the team was to keep pushing on for another lap. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and we now know it wasn\u2019t necessary, but there and then I think it was the right decision.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

In the race on Sunday, Rosenqvist then found himself stuck in traffic, notably as he came up to lap fellow countryman Marcus Ericsson during a critical pit stop phase. After 85 largely undramatic laps, Rosenqvist eventually came home in tenth place,\u00a0as the top rookie.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was quite a static race,\u201d Rosenqvist continues<\/strong>. \u201cWe were searching for opportunities to improve, but it never really happened. I think our race was lost after the first pit stop, when we needed some clear air but got stuck behind Ericsson.\u00a0In IndyCar, you’re racing even if you’re a lap down and that was probably his instructions, but we lost a lot of lap time behind him. With that, we lost (James) Hinchcliffe as well.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

“After that, it was sort of just following the others and trying to make a difference. The top ten was evenly matched today so it was not easy, but we know we have the pace and we\u2019ll keep working hard on the NTT DATA car going forwards.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Victory at Long Beach went to\u00a0Alexander Rossi, the Californian winning his home race for the second year in a row.<\/span><\/p>\n

The next round of the NTT IndyCar Series takes place at the road course version of Indianapolis Motor Speedway on May 11; a precursor event to the blue-riband\u00a0Indy 500.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

RESULTS\u00a0(TOP FIVE)<\/strong><\/span>
Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

1: Alexander Rossi (USA, Andretti), 85 laps<\/span>
2: Josef Newgarden (USA, Penske), +20.235s<\/span>
3:\u00a0Scott Dixon (NZL, Ganassi), +25.574s<\/span>
4: Graham Rahal (USA, RLL), +26.458s<\/span>
5: Ryan Hunter-Reay (USA, Andretti), +29.344s<\/span>
—<\/span>
10: Felix Rosenqvist (SWE, Ganassi), +41.324s<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

View complete results<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

STANDINGS (TOP\u00a0FIVE)<\/strong><\/span>
After 4\/17 races<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

1: Josef Newgarden (USA, Penske), 166 p.<\/span>
2: Alexander Rossi (USA, Andretti), 138 p.<\/span>
3: Scott Dixon (NZL, Ganassi), 133 p.<\/span>
4: Takuma Sato (JPN, RLL), 116 p.<\/span>
5: Ryan Hunter-Reay (USA, Andretti), 96 p.<\/span>
\u2014<\/span>
12: Felix Rosenqvist (SWE, Ganassi), 80 p.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

View complete standings<\/a><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Felix Rosenqvist was the top rookie in Sunday\u2019s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, round four of the NTT IndyCar Series season, but was nonetheless left lamenting what could have been following a costly qualifying crash…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,1,19],"tags":[44,32],"class_list":["post-7578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news3","category-okategoriserade","category-press-releases","tag-acura-grand-prix-of-long-beach","tag-indycar-series","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"aioseo_notices":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/felixracing.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/felixracing.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/felixracing.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/felixracing.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/felixracing.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7578"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/felixracing.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7585,"href":"https:\/\/felixracing.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7578\/revisions\/7585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/felixracing.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/felixracing.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/felixracing.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/felixracing.se\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}