A few days have passed by since the conclusion of the 2019 NTT IndyCar Series season-opening race in the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.

By now, the temporary barriers, grandstands, barricades and signage are being taken down. By Saturday, the citizens of this beautiful Florida community that is nestled between Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico will have their city streets back.

That means unimpeded access to the Salvador Dali Museum and the Mahaffey Theater. In a few weeks, baseball fans will trudge to the worst ballpark in the Major Leagues – a domed monstrosity known as Tropicana Field – to watch the Tampa Bay Rays of the American League.

For one glorious weekend in March, however, St. Petersburg is the center of attention for many motorsports fans in North America as another NTT IndyCar Series season is underway.

There were many great moments that came out of last Sunday’s 110-lap street race. Here are just a few of the things that we learned from last weekend’s IndyCar Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.

Team Penske’s IndyCar Team is Keeping Pace with its Fast Start in NASCAR and Australian SuperCar Series

Team Penske’s Will Power won the 55th pole of his IndyCar career on Saturday and teammate Josef Newgarden won the race on Sunday, the 11th victory of his career. Newgarden led three times for 60 laps including the final 29. Simon Pagenaud rounded out the trio of drivers at Team Penske with a seventh-place finish after starting 13th.

Not a bad start for team owner Roger Penske’s IndyCar squad after his NASCAR team has gotten off to a fast start with Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano already victorious this season. Ryan Blaney came close to giving Penske another win last Sunday at ISM Raceway in Phoenix before his Ford Mustang started to run low on fuel.

Autoweek was part of a private and small group of media members that met with Penske Friday afternoon in his office motorhome and the 82-year-old team owner admitted he expected his IndyCar program to match the effort of his NASCAR and Supercar teams in 2019.

“It’s amazing,” Penske said. “I walk in the shop, and the first thing the NASCAR guys say is, that’s great what they did in Australia. We bring them together. Tim Cindric (President, Team Penske) does a real good job. We had our big meeting 4-5 weeks ago when the guys here from Australia. There’s good camaraderie between all of our operations.

“When you’re in the different series and we’re trying to have the best people we can, we moved a lot of people over from IndyCar to Sports Cars to back to IndyCar and people going back and forth, and we’ll continue to do that. One of the best young guys now doing strategy was a strategist for me on Helio’s Indy car. He’s doing a hell of a job down there now. So, these are the things we’re trying to do.

“They’ll stay there for a while and migrate back. This is what we want.”

Cindric believes his team has healthy competition back in all of its racing teams.

“The IndyCar guys showed up there this weekend and our drivers were like it’s up to us now,” Cindric said. “In a healthy way it spurs them on with they can’t get too comfortable.”

So far, the only Team Penske program that hasn’t won a race is Acura Team Penske in IMSA. It gets a chance to win in Saturday’s 12 Hours of Sebring.

“It's pretty impressive for the team to have won in every series, except sports car,” Power said. “I think sports car is getting dropped now

“They have got a chance next week to win, so we'll see what happens.”

Dixon’s “Big Picture” Finish

St. Petersburg is one of the few places five-time IndyCar Series champion Scott Dixon has never won a race. That streak continued Sunday, but his second-place finish is a great start to the season for the driver that enters his 19th season of IndyCar racing and is focused on a sixth IndyCar Series championships.

"We always come to these races to win," Dixon said afterwards. "We came up a little bit short. It was an interesting race. I think between at least the Penske cars and Ganassi cars, it was a bit opposite.

"I felt our cars were strong for the first 15, 20 laps, especially on restarts, as well, but the last sort of five to ten, it flipped the other way and they had some really good speed. I had some great battles out there. Lap traffic was interesting, Will Power and I had a really tough fight in Turns one, two, and then all the way to three I think it was, and then, you know, it worked out for us.

"I think strategy-wise and pit stops, it was a clean day for us. I think any of us got out front, as will said, had some really good pace, you would have been able to capitalize and Josef's did that and their strategy, they were able to run and start on new Reds and use Reds later. Their pace opened it up.

"Interesting day, and good points for us and hopefully we can keep maintaining that."

Throughout Dixon’s career, he is aggressive when necessary, but when he realizes his car isn’t going to win, he doesn’t get overly aggressive and cost himself a top finish. That is what he did on Sunday as he tried to close the gap on Newgarden in the late stages of the race.

Once he realized he couldn’t make up the gap, he finished second.

That ability to recognize that and not throw away a good result while still scoring a high finish is what makes Dixon a champion driver.

Power’s Early Pit Stop was Ultimately the Wrong Call

Starting on the pole, Will Power raced his way to a nice lead before a call to the pits proved to be costly. Sebastien Bourdais car began to smoke heavily on Lap 12, and he drove into the runoff area in Turn 10.

Penske, who calls Power’s race strategy, anticipated a full-course caution so he called Power into the pits early rather than get caught on the track when the yellow came out. But IndyCar Race Control never called for a full-course caution, choosing to keep that area under a “local yellow.” By pitting early, it proved costly to Power because it took him out of the lead.

"The thing that cost me the race, the chance of the race was when I was passed on that restart," Power said. "We pitted early.

"I think Roger did a real early call hoping it would go yellow but didn't. We still were in the game. I felt we were quicker than Rosenqvist, and we could have pulled a big gap, which would have covered for the called tie penalty, but unfortunately, I lost that position and I was stuck there.

"I just had to do everything I could on out laps after I had to pit early from everyone, and third was as good as it could possibly do."

Rosenqvist Lives up to his Billing

As a highly-acclaimed driver from Europe, including back-to-back wins in the Grand Prix of Macau in 2014 and 2015, 27-year-old Felix Rosenqvist expected to be fast from the start in his No. 10 NTT Data Honda at Chip Ganassi Racing.

He lived up to that promise in his first start, leading 31 laps before finishing fourth. He made the pass of the race on Lap 23 on the restart of the race when he passed race-leader Power beginning in Turn 1. The two drivers zig-zagged their way through Turns 1, 2 and 3 before Rosenqvist completed the pass in Turn 4.

It was thrilling to see, but just another reason why team owner Chip Ganassi hired the driver from Sweden to return the No. 10 to glory, something it hasn’t achieved since Dario Franchitti drove that entry from 2009-2013.

"Felix did a great job all weekend to qualify the way he did and to race the way he did, very strong in the race, good as you would expect," Power said. "He's a rookie, but he's obviously going to be really strong and has done a good job."

So far, Dixon and Rosenqvist have meshed quickly as teammates at CGR.

"I think it's been a lot of fun," Dixon said. "Felix has worked with the team for two or three years now with open tests we've done with him as a rookie. The guy has got a ton of experience in so many different cars, so it's been really refreshing, actually, to not be in the same ecosystem and thinking of the same things. It's kind of thinking outside the box which has been really refreshing.

"He's a strong guy, very committed and obviously very talented and he's going to be a hell of a fight for the whole year, and it's nice to be working with somebody really close as far as on the speed side."

More to come from INDYCAR

A new series sponsor in NTT and a new television partner that is showing all of its races on the same network in NBC has created a very positive vibe in IndyCar.

But IndyCar President Jay Frye told Autoweek before the weekend there is more to come, including what he calls two “game-changer” announcements at this year’s Indianapolis 500.

Although he would not reveal what those are, momentum seems to be increasing that an interested auto manufacturer is rising above the rest to become the third engine supplier in IndyCar.

Now that would certainly qualify as a “game changer” for IndyCar.

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