100 Days to Indy

- Pato O'Ward and Dixon. - What happened there?

I think both drivers have a different view of what happened.

All right, Pato, if you can make a move,

you can make a move.

Pato went for a late, far-back lunge.

- Oh, no. - You got a car in the barrier.

- Dixon didn't see him coming. - They hit.

One guy ends up in the tires.

One guy carries on.

Racing incident? Maybe. Not if you ask Scott.

That seemed extremely late.

But if that's how the series wants us to race,

then I guess it's all gloves off.

I was on the inside and he decided to stay

on the outside and put himself in the tires.

I'm not apologizing for that.

Kyle Kirkwood! He wins the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.

It's been a really exciting start to the 2023 season.

Let's go!

Penske Racing and Chip Ganassi Racing

are really the two titans of the sport,

but already this year Andretti Autosport has two poles

and a win and the McLaren team has been really fast as well.

We love the Penskes and the Ganassis and we need them.

But you also want new blood.

You want the series to continue to grow.

Agustín Canapino has been part of that big surprise,

that is Juncos Hollinger Racing

and the start of the season that they've had.

This guy's 32 years old

when he makes his IndyCar debut.

Never raced in open-wheel car before in his life.

One of the most incredible stories

I've ever seen in racing.

With that many more teams and drivers

consistently competing for wins,

it makes it hard for some of the established guys

like last year's champion, Will Power,

to really kick-start his campaign

to defend his championship.

Power -- He is going backwards in a fury.

What happened to Will Power?

It's not been an awesome start for Will Power.

Personally, he's balancing a lot.

He had a tough off-season, but I think he's still focused.

But he's not so far back that he's out of the championship.

We've had three different races, three different tracks,

three different winners from three different teams.

I'm looking forward to hopefully seeing

a fourth different winner in four races.

Yeah. What did you guys do with the...?

I'm going to get up and say some words.

It's going to be very dramatic.

This doesn't ding very well.

Just got to hit it harder.

Getting paid to drive racecars is just incredible.

To have been able to do this for 18 years now, amazing.

No matter how bad of a day you have in the racecar,

really anywhere, you can never complain. Never.

Yeah, well, I just wanted to thank you guys

for coming tonight, obviously.

But thank you for all the hard work coming into this season.

No one really picked us in the media

to win the championship last year,

and they didn't this year. So I think we showed last year

that you don't have to do

anything special to win a championship.

Doing something special is just doing what you know well.

I feel like I actually stopped trying to win races

and I just went out and extracted the most

out of myself each weekend, each race, each lap.

It worked out well, so --

Guarantee that's my wife asking "You at that dinner?"

Yeah, of course. Lizzie.

You just really have perfect timing, you know?

You call -- You -- Because I'm standing up

in front of all the guys, trying to give them,

you know, some inspiration about having a great season.

- Here, you're on loudspeaker, so. - Hi, everybody.

- Anyway. - All right, babe,

I'm going to try to finish up here.

- Bye. - Yeah. Thank you.

Anyway.

Getting back to it, let's just go out and have fun

and try to win some races and win another championship

and a 500. Let's do it.

Team Penske has three drivers -- Scott McLaughlin,

Josef Newgarden and Will Power.

He's the veteran of that team.

He's a two-time champion. He's won the Indy 500 once.

Will's season has gotten off

to a little bit of a slow start, but

this is how he built his championship campaign last year.

He only won one race, but he was always there or thereabouts.

He can be so blindingly fast.

The 2022 season found

the driver that was the most consistent.

Will Power won the championship.

Will Power, two-time NTT IndyCar Series champion!

Power has done it!

Power is literally the fastest driver ever in IndyCar.

Last year, he won his 68th pole.

That's one more than Mario Andretti.

It's just been an okay start.

At St. Pete, he salvaged what was there.

And at Texas, it wasn't good.

But bringing home a top 10 on a day like Long Beach

where he didn't have the fastest car,

maybe not on the best strategy.

Those are the kind of damage control days that can really,

really pay dividends later in the season.

Okey dokey.

I hate getting the air out of these things.

There we go.

It's a weird feeling.

Straight to the heart.

- Straight to the heart. - Cold heart.

- That's right. - Cold-hearted.

My wife. We met in 2006.

We both were starting at the same race team at the same time.

She was starting as a PR girl there.

My first impression was, okay, he's kind of shy,

but then that goes away and he's just kind of -- kind of quirky.

But I liked that.

In January, I actually got really sick.

I had been having some back pain,

but I've always had back pain,

so I didn't really think anything of it.

That happened on a Friday.

Fast-forward to Tuesday and I could barely walk.

I was in so much pain and I was running up to a 106 fever and so

Will had to call 911.

This is a lot of heroin.

Shooting up. That's great.

That's a lot.

She just started hallucinating and just talking

no sense at all.

And yeah, she had an infection in the blood.

After a week of being in the hospital,

they did an MRI and they found that

I had this horrible infection in my spinal column.

So they had to go in there and they had to cut

the top of the spine off, take the infection out.

Pretty intense there for -- for a while.

Almost died, like looking pretty bad.

It's definitely been a struggle.

Something that I admire

about Will is how he's been great here.

And then put that aside and do what he needs to do.

- All righty. - All done.

There we go.

Oh, man.

Agustín Canapino -- He's a hero back home.

He's a 15-time touring car champion down in South America.

But that is such a different discipline.

But he is an incredible talent

and he got up to speed in these cars really quick.

How about Argentina's Agustín Canapino going

from strength to strength.

It's been an awesome start for Agustín Canapino.

He gets a pair of 12th-place finishes,

including his first oval.

This guy's a lot better than anybody thought.

Canapino. He's something to watch.

Agustín is one of the two drivers

that raced the most in Argentina history.

To have him with us obviously is very special.

His father also has an idea with me together

that we're going to put him somehow in an IndyCar.

He's not here with us to see this,

but it's very special for us.

Sharing all this together is very amazing.

Ricardo Juncos has got one of the coolest stories

I think, in racing right now. Just coming over to the States,

getting involved in motorsports at the lowest level

and slowly just building his organization

up all the way to the top level in the sport.

For a team with a very inexperienced driver lineup,

they are doing some great things

so Ricardo can be really proud of what he's done.

Basically what brought me here

was I was running out of options in my life

after losing everything in Argentina.

And when I mean everything, it was everything.

Argentina's economic crisis

has been building for three years.

The effects all too prevalent.

During 2001 was the crisis in Argentina.

At that point, the whole country collapsed.

I have enough money just to buy a flight ticket

for Miami where a friend of mine was living.

In September 2003, I opened Juncos Racing as a go-kart team.

We put everything we have. Absolutely everything we have.

In 2017, we decided to start in IndyCar.

To be part of this, it's already growing.

We enjoy the moment that we're going to participate