'He's made an enemy out of me': Drivers furious with Benjamin Pedersen for holding up traffic
LEXINGTON, Ohio – After Benjamin Pedersen’s on-track antics in Sunday’s IndyCar race at Mid-Ohio, his competitors – young and old, experienced and not – took the Foyt driver to task for the way he “held up” numerous cars in the front half of the field as he first fought to stay on the lead lap, and then scrapped tooth-and-nail to stay ahead of anyone who approached his rear-wing.
“He’s not going to make any friends if he holds people up. He’s not even in our race,” 5th-place finisher Scott McLaughlin said on the post-race Peacock show after making a point to take Pedersen to task in a brief, private conversation on pitlane. “I get he’s in a race of his own, but it’s a give-and-take in this series.
“If I’m a lap down (in the future) and the No. 55 is behind me, who knows what I’m going to do.”
Having qualified 23rd for the ninth race of the year Saturday, Pedersen fell back a couple spots to 25th on Lap 1 of 80, rose as high as 14th during the first pit sequence and then drifted back to 25th, where he found himself in what turned into an ‘elbows out’ match with eventual race-winner Alex Palou for Pedersen to try and remain on the lead lap midway through the race.
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It came at a pivotal moment in the race, with Palou in the middle of his only stint on the alternate tires where you’d expect them to begin losing their advantage and allow challengers Colton Herta, Scott Dixon and Will Power to begin to cut into Palou’s 8.3-second advantage. Pedersen, in his defense, had a theoretical battle on the line; if he held his spot on the lead lap and a caution were to fall, he’d find himself bunched back up with the entire field and in position to make gains closer to the 20th and 21st-place finishes he’d logged in recent races.
For a driver 26th in the standings and needing to make up a few dozen points to put the No. 55 Chevy into the Leaders Circle conversation (and the near-$1 million check that would come with it for the team in 2024), even five or six spots could be big.
Within three laps of tailing Pedersen, Palou had lost two seconds of his cushion on Herta – as much as, if not more, due simply to slower lap times turned running behind a back-marker, rather than a lack of performance in his tires. By Lap 44, Palou was asking strategist Barry Wanser to report the No. 55 to race control.
“This is a joke, he’s blocking me,” Palou said, to which Wanser replied, “I know, send it in. Just hang in there, Alex. You’re doing the right thing. Race control is monitoring.”
By Lap 47, after Palou had used up 30 seconds of his Push-To-Past horsepower boost to clear the No. 55 – Pedersen was responding by doing the same – the eventual winner’s gap to Herta was down to 4.3 seconds before the cars ran side-by-side through the “esses” in Turns 4-6, Palou possibly risking his race win and another significant points haul, to finally put Pedersen in his mirrors. Palou would go on to add 4 seconds back to his lead in as many laps on degrading tires before pitting on Lap 53 and cruising to his third-straight win.
“He’s really not making any friends here. (Pedersen) is well within his rights to fight, but at some point, you’re running (25th) and you’ve got the leader behind you for 10 laps,” NBC analyst and ex-IndyCar driver James Hinchcliffe said on the broadcast. “You’ve got to be smart about it and make you preserve some of your credit within the paddock.”
Twenty laps later, a full train of cars got a taste of Palou’s frustrations. Pedersen was still a lap down to the lead pack but not yet to those between 8th and 12-place, and the Foyt driver developed what eventually grew to a six-driver train.
Per IndyCar rules, lapped cars aren’t formally required to move out of the way until they’re a lap down to the entire field, meaning those trailing the No. 55 Chevy with 12 laps to go didn’t have race control to lean on. But they tried other means.
“We’re trying to get help from Chevy,” said Will Anderson, Pato O’Ward’s strategist, to his driver who eventually finished 8th while the No. 5 Chevy spent several laps leading a snaking string of cars held up by Pedersen. Moments later, Anderson told O’Ward, “Pedersen is not cooperating, for whatever reason. Just do what you can do and make a pass.”
O’Ward did that with 11 laps to go, though the pair drag raced wheel-to-wheel through Turn 3 and nearly touched.
“It just doesn’t make any sense. If a yellow came out, Pedersen would get pushed to the back by IndyCar rules to let the lead-lap cars go to the front,” said Hinchcliffe’s NBC boothmate Townsend Bell. “I just don’t get it.
“If I’m Pedersen, I’m going to finish this race, come to pitlane and keep on driving to somewhere out west and get away from the rest of these drivers, cause there’s going to be a lot wanting to have a conversation.”
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Bell then theorized Pedersen hadn’t wanted to let O’Ward and Alexander Rossi by easily because doing so would’ve exposed the rookie to Felix Rosenqvist on his tail, who at the time was also a lap down in 26th. In the end, Rosenqvist made the pass anyways, finishing 25th, and he and Pedersen came away with five points.
“He was just blocking (everybody),” said 6th-place finisher David Malukas of Pedersen post-race. “If I was put in that position, I would never do that. All you’re doing is making enemies, and he definitely made an enemy out of me in just trying to ruin everyone’s races for no reason.
“I just don’t think that’s how you should drive.”
Added O’Ward, who worked his way from starting 25th all the way up to 8th by the checkered flag: “I saw the leaders were struggling with (lapped cars) a little bit, and, ‘Dude, it’s not your day, get out of the way!’ That has to be looked at by IndyCar.”
Power: Race control has known about issue, but *crickets*
Somewhat dejectedly, IndyCar’s podium finishers Palou, Dixon and Power theorized post-race what more could be done by an IndyCar race control that has taken a lot of criticism of late for its inactivity. Power, long a vocal proponent for the series to adopt Formula 1’s flagging rules on lapped cars, wondered if it has come down to a personnel shortage.
“The series is so tight and competitive that I think we could have (F1’s) ‘blue flag rule.’ It’s not like we have yellows constantly where you’re going to get your lap back,” he said. “Maybe they do it in the second half of the race, but we should have a talk about it. We tell (race control) every year, and they’re like, ‘Yeah, no we hear you,’ but ‘crickets.’
“It takes a lot of people to police, because if the first guy passes, then you have to give them ‘command blue’ to every (driver attempting to pass the lapped car). It becomes difficult, but we’re at the stage where this competition is so tough that maybe we have to add some people to do that.”
Dixon, sitting beside the defending series champ, wondered if lapped cars – or those about to be lapped – could have their Push-To-Pass boost taken away.
“But (race control) says, ‘How do we police it? Do we disable it for everyone after that?'” Power continued. “It sounded like it was a big problem.”
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar: Benjamin Pedersen makes 'enemies' at Mid-Ohio
