Scott McLaughlin was able to hang on and win the second NTT IndyCar Series race of the weekend at the Milwaukee Mile, while the championship race between Will Power and Alex Palou slightly tightened up.
A late-race accident by Sting Ray Robb brought out a caution that set up an 11-lap shootout. McLaughlin held on for the race win, while Scott Dixon came up just short to finish second. Colton Herta ended up in third.
“That was like the most fun race I’ve had in IndyCar,” McLaughlin said to NBC in victory lane. “It was a blast, so happy for everybody with the Gallagher’s Chevy. We stuck with it, it wasn’t quite good at the start. Then we just tuned it up and it was awesome. Lot better in traffic today, which helped a lot. Just had a blast [racing with Colton].”
“Had it gone a few more laps there, it looked like he was starting to burn his front [tires] off a little bit,” said Dixon to NBC, “Congrats to McLaughlin, pretty sweet to have a Kiwi 1-2… yesterday was a mess. Qualifying just put us in a big hole, to come from 17th we just kept moving up all day, had really good runs going. Just one more would have been cool.”
The biggest story of the race happened at the very beginning. Points leader Palou had a major power failure that stalled him out on the apron.
Palou eventually got back out on track but stalled out on the backstretch. His car was then taken to the garage to fix the issue before he finally came out of the garage on lap 30.
Palou had an issue-free race afterward but finished 19th, 28 laps down.
His main competitor, Power, finished the race in 10th. Power spent much of the race either leading or in the top five, but a restart mid-race happened where Power spun out in turn 4 heading to the line. There was minimal damage and Power kept rolling, meaning not all was lost.
But then after pitting for used tires, Power had to pit again to change the front wing, losing a lap in the process.
Power’s effort was able to cut Palou’s points lead down to 33. Had that spin not happened, Power would have likely cut the lead down dramatically more.
McLaughlin is 50 points back from Palou and is still mathematically in the race, but would need Palou to finish 25th or worse while he achieves max points on the weekend. No other driver has a chance at the championship.
Following the Palou stall, the start was waved off, but Linus Lundqvist didn’t notice and drove into Marcus…
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