Palou emerges from Portland chaos
The timezone difference between Central Europe and the USA’s West Coast being what it is, several IndyCar paddock regulars delayed their departure from their hotels in Portland last Sunday morning until 0730. They wanted to see the Italian Grand Prix to its conclusion and check out whether McLaren could really end its nine-year Formula 1 win drought.
Satisfied that Monza had thrown up one of its regular surprise outcomes once again, those IndyCar paddock veterans were wondering if McLaren could win on their side of the Atlantic too – and were trying to guess when this was last achieved on the same day. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that the last time a team won a Formula 1 race and an Indycar round in the same weekend, it was again McLaren, but a full 45 years ago. On 2 May 1976, James Hunt drove his M23 to glory at Jarama, and later that same day Johnny Rutherford conquered the unusually shaped 1.5-mile ‘oval’ at Trenton, New Jersey in his McLaren M16C.
In fact, there was a period during Sunday’s Grand
