Music City Grand Prix

 August 11, 2021

Music City Grand Prix

Race day dawned in Nashville pretty much hot and steamy from the get go. The inaugural Music City Grand Prix was on tap for the afternoon, but I headed over early in the day so that I could hang around in the paddock and the pits, watch the support races featuring the Trans Am series and the Stadium Super Trucks and basically enjoy the race day atmosphere.

I always run into a bunch of friends while attending races and this race was no exception, my buddy Jake Query is part of the radio broadcast network and is at every race, my friend Kate is married to the chief engineer at Dale Coyne Racing, Olivier Boisson who calls the shots for driver Romain Grosjean, and I ran into my friend Darren who I see every year in May in the Suite at the Indy 500.

There are often well-known people hanging about on the grid before the start of the race and this race was no exception, I was able to meet Motley Crue lead singer Vince Neil again, he is a racing fan and a good friend of Chip Ganassi’s who I have seen at races before. I got to converse with broadcaster Marty Snyder for the first time and also got to meet Country Music singer Danielle Bradbery who was pegged this race to ride along with Mario Andretti in the two-seater.

But racing was the real reason I was there and it was fun watching the Trans Am series which featured a number of well-known drivers for this race including NASCAR veterans Daniel Suarez and Boris Said, former Indy Car driver Rafa Matos and Sports Car specialist Joey Hand. The race was long with a lot of wrecks and was certainly a good foreshadowing of the chaos that was to come during the Indy Car race.

The Indy Car race got off to a hectic start on lap 4 when Marcus Ericcsson ran into the rear of Sebastian Bourdais and launched his car six feet in the air causing him to pit under yellow for a new front wing and then serve a penalty which dropped him to the very back of the field at the start. Thankfully for him there were a spate of yellow (and red) flags that enabled him to remarkably be in the lead a mere twenty-five laps later and from there he would drive on for the win, his second of the season.

Teammate Scott Dixon finished second in the first new IndyCar street race in 10 years. It was the fourth consecutive IndyCar victory in the Nashville area for Chip Ganassi Racing (which won the most recent three races at Nashville Superspeedway from 2006-08) and the fifth win this season for Ganassi.

Dixon also closed within 42 points of teammate and championship leader Alex Palou in the standings with five races remaining. James Hinchcliffe finished a season-best third in his first podium finish since Iowa Speedway in 2019 and his best road or street course finish since Barber in 2018. Erricsson’s win was a stunning result in the inaugural Music City Grand Prix, which will be remembered for airborne cars, massive traffic jams and controversial penalties. Colton Herta was charging toward the end but put it into the fence with an barely over-ambitious move trying to close the gap.

Through the smoke and into the enveloping darkness, nearly three hours after the start of a race that featured two red flags and nine cautions (for 33 of 80 laps), Ericsson emerged victorious for the second time Sunday in IndyCar by leading 37 laps in total and coming back from near disaster. 

The race itself came under a bit of criticism for the many wrecks, red flags and general mayhem, but I think the crowd was pretty enthusiastic and I know that I enjoyed myself immensely. We will see how this format will work going forward and I am sure that some of the kinks of a first time event will be worked out and the racing itself will improve.