ELKHART LAKE, Wis. – With 20 laps to go, Colton Herta, who started from pole and led 33 of 55 laps Sunday at Road America, looked set to earn a feel-good win for Andretti Autosport.
But what proved to be a faulty late strategy call from the No. 26 Honda’s timing stand opened the door for Alex Palou to pounce. The Chip Ganassi Racing driver surged to the late lead, pacing just 10 laps, and grabbed his third win in four starts, lengthening his championship lead to 74 points over Ganassi teammate Marcus Ericsson.
Here’s how Palou converted the late-pass of the pole-sitter en route to a dominant 5-second win:
Alex Palou chases down Colton Herta
Having made numerous top-off pitstops for fuel after starting 22nd, Will Power handed over the lead to Herta on Lap 46 with Palou in hot-pursuit in 2nd place, under a second behind.
By Lap 47, Palou had cut that gap to just 0.2 seconds, and on Lap 48, the Chip Ganassi Racing driver appeared he might try to pass into Turn 5 before backing off. Instead, he set up the move headed to the start-finish line at the end of the lap. At the start of Lap 49 ahead of Turn 1, Palou moved to the outside line and executed a seamless pass on the Andretti driver.
From there, Palou ran away from the field, eventually winning by 4.5610 seconds over Josef Newgarden, with Pato O’Ward filing behind in 3rd to complete the podium. In order, Scott Dixon, Herta, Marcus Ericsson, Christian Lundgaard, Scott McLaughlin, Kyle Kirkwood and Alexander Rossi rounded out the top 10.
Race action: IndyCar highlights, crashes, incidents at Road America
Colton Herta’s ill-fated pit stop
Herta’s strategist Scott Harner called his driver into the pits from the lead on Lap 40, a decision that proved pivotal. The Andretti driver’s last-second dive into the pits under green meant Herta was the only driver in the lead group to pit, which could’ve hurt them had there been an immediate yellow. With the race staying green the rest of the way, Herta ended up in a pickle.
The rest of that lead pack that included Palou, O’Ward, Newgarden, Dixon and Ericsson, would pit the following lap – also under green. Herta used open track in front of him to clear the field and hold his virtual lead with under 15 laps to go. But Herta’s stop at the very edge of the pit window, along with his extended use of push-to-pass on his speedy out-lap, meant he was at a considerable fuel deficit to Palou in the closing stretch.
A lead that sat around 2 seconds with 13 laps to go evaporated to under a second by Lap 45, four laps before Herta lost the lead for good.
Scott Dixon has a strong race
Four early cautions – Lap 1 for Kyle Kirkwood’s spin in Turn 1; Lap 3 for Romain Grosjean dropping a wheel and spinning in Turn 3; Lap 15 for Jack Harvey running off into the Turn 14 tire barrier, and Lap 25 for David Malukas slowing to a stop in Turn 8 – made for an exciting, chaotic and disjointed first half of Sunday’s race.
And in chaos, who performs better than Dixon? The Ganassi driver, who crashed Saturday in practice and couldn’t manage to qualify the repaired car better than 23rd, carved up the opposition on-track and jumped several in the pits to find himself in 5th by Lap 35.
With the four cars in front of him running the red Firestone alternate tires on their second-to-last stint, and Dixon having already used up what proved to be the lesser-performing tire this weekend, the six-time champ eyed an opportunity to salvage a rough weekend for the No. 9 Honda crew.
Though he continued to lose ground in the championship race to teammate Palou, Dixon stayed reasonably close with a 4th-place finish. He nearly picked off O’Ward for the final podium spot for his fourth top-5 of the year.
