Josef Newgarden grabbed his third win of the season in Road America and claimed a million-dollar bonus as he did.
The first 10 laps at the Road America circuit were marred by three incidents, two of which had serious implications in the IndyCar Series points table. Not so much the first one, where Jimmie Johnson was run out of road and into the gravel in turn three shortly after the start.
Then just one lap into the restart Ganassi team mates Álex Palou and Marcus Ericsson made contact when the latter lunged up the inside at turn five. The contact broke Palou’s left-front suspension and put him out of contention.
Palou eventually returned to the race to run some more laps, before ultimately retiring after 36 laps. The reigning IndyCar champion was furious with his Indianapolis 500-winning team mate after the incident.
On the ensuing restart, rookie Devlin DeFrancesco clattered into the back of championship leader Will Power as they plunged downhill into turn five. DeFrancesco was given a stop-go penalty for avoidable contact, which was little consolation for Power, whose points lead vanished as a consequence. Power stayed on the lead lap after getting a new nose assembly, but he finished down in 19th position, and nudged DeFrancesco on the cool-down lap.
Once the race truly got going, pole-winner Alexander Rossi led until his first pit stop on lap 14, where Newgarden followed him in. A fast pit stop for Newgarden helped him take the net lead ahead of Rossi. Felix Rosenqvist, who made a pit stop on lap nine, cycled to the front of the field, and stretched his fuel tank out to lap 25 before pitting.
From there, Newgarden resumed with a lead of five seconds over Rossi, which held up after the third and final round of green-flag pit stops.
But with eight laps to go, Newgarden’s lead, which was up to three seconds, completely vanished when yet another title contender, Pato O’Ward, suffered an engine failure inside the top 10. The anticipation was building to a restart with five laps left – then Hélio Castroneves spun out before taking the green flag, bringing out the fifth full-course caution of the race and reducing the restart to just a three-lap sprint.
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
When the time came to make a perfect restart, Newgarden launched into the home straight and started breaking away, while Ericsson slipstreamed past Rossi into second place, gaining more championship points for his manoeuvre.
But Newgarden was the story…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at RaceFans…