Will Power played the strategy game, got everything right, and cruised home for an easy win over teammate Simon Pagenaud. It’s just an unfortunate missed opportunity because the vehicle was quick all weekend and we’ve got two races with very little to show for it.
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Hinchcliffe was furious, initially blasting the 500’s runner-up by saying Munoz would have to us some of that Indy money to fix his vehicle. Both cars had enough fuel to finish the race while those drivers leading the race would have to stop one more time for fuel. Takuma Sato had his car’s front wing damaged in the incident.
Juan Pablo Montoya placed third in yesterday’s race and showed a lot of signs for good things today.
Newgarden had the fastest lap of the race, closely followed by Dixon, as the only two drivers to dip under 1:15 on the day. But, that was soon to end.
“We are working as a team”, said Power of the “Fab Four” at the IndyCar powerhouse that is Montoya, Helio Castroneves, Simon Pagenaud and Power.
The initial contact resulted in heavy damage to the right of Montoya’s Penske, spearing the victor of the opening race at St. Petersburg into the wall at Turn 10 to become the third retirement.
Bourdais won for the 35th time in his career and the second time at Belle Isle.
This was the first postponed Cup race of the season and ninth since 2011. It was refreshing to see a team going for it rather than easing back to make it to the end of the race. Pagenaud went into the pit on lap 49 and Castroneves stayed out a bit longer. “It’s been a tough start to the year, missing the first race, then with a few mishaps”. On lap 48, Conor Daly pitted from 8th and started the pit cycle. Josef had to take the black compound for his final stint, as he’d been on the reds all race. Pagenaud actually ran out of fuel on the last lap and lost several positions. On the lap Castroneves was planning on making his pit stop Jack Hawksworth stopped on track bring out a full course yellow.
Power fared the worst of the Penske quartet in the first race, losing a wheel and finishing 20th when he thought he had a shot at the victory that went to Sebastien Bourdais and KVSH Racing. Interestingly, Bryan Herta didn’t pit Rossi to put him on sequence with the rest of the field. However, the guessing game about whether heavy precipitation would arrive kept teams scrambling through the 70 laps.
The Power is back on.
So, does team owner Roger Penske agree? Only 10 laps passed by before it became clear there wouldn’t be another caution.
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■Cash bill: The wreck that knocked Hinchcliffe (Schmidt Peterson Motorsports), the 2016 Indianapolis 500 pole-sitter, and rookie Chilton (Chip Ganassi Racing) out of the race began when Charlie Kimball squeezed Carlos Munoz (Andretti Autosport) into Hinchcliffe.
