While the second half of the race proved to be one of the least exhilarating points of this season, the second visit to the Indianapolis GP circuit It was not without drama in its first interlude, right from the start in which one contender for the title (Pato O’Ward) was spun and another (Álex Palou) had to throw himself on the grass to avoid being scalded . This cleared the front area of the usual actors for the championship, with the luxury secondary being the ones that shone on this occasion.
Colton Herta and Felix Rosenqvist went on opposite pathsemerging the first where the second was sinking, but the goddess Fortuna wanted her to leave the young American lying around again to reward her next ex-partner, a alexander rossi who finally finished everything on the day of the race to achieve a pleasant victory. A pity that Palou was again far from the important points… All this in the 3 and 30 minute summaries, along with the most relevant statistics of the event.
– Alexander Rossi’s victory put an end to a long winless drought that had stretched over the past 37 months, over three years as of June 2019 at Road America. The American pilot had climbed to the podium 10 times since then, two of them this year, but never on the highest drawer. This was just the 50th race since his last win, equaling Tom Sneva (1977-1980) with the 13th largest margin of races in history between a victory and another– The record is held by Graham Rahal with the 123 races that elapsed between his win at the 2008 St. Petersburg Grand Prix and his next win at the 2015 Fontana 500.
– In his 110-race IndyCar career, Rossi already has eight wins, six of them in circuit. Though Indianapolis provided the biggest success of his career in the 2016 500, he had been elusive at the Indy GP track, where his two podium finishes in the 2020 fall doubleheader were the only ones of his previous 10 attempts. With his 28th career podium finish, Rossi became the 24th driver to reach 20 circuit podium finishesequaling Graham Rahal in this regard.
– In a fateful year in many ways, Andretti Autosport has found its manna on the Indy GP circuit with its only two wins of 2022. The last nine victories of this formation have come on circuits, and since Rossi’s aforementioned triumph in 2019, these only had the signature of Colton Herta, who suffered a mechanical break when he was leading the race. The 2018 Pocono 500 won by Rossi remains the last oval victory for a once-fearsome Andretti Autosport on this terrain.
– 2022 was proving to be complicated for the rookies in terms of results, without any of them managing to overcome eighth position in the race, but Christian Lundgaard he struck down that statistic with a stroke of the pen. On the same track where he made his debut in 2021, the Rahal rider has achieved his first podium finish in IndyCar by finishing second, and the first for a Danish driver. Until now, the Scandinavian country, which has only had four drivers in the category, had as its ceiling the sixth position of Ronnie Bremer in Edmonton 2005 and the seventh of Jan Magnussen in Vancouver 1999.
– Lundgaard stepped onto the podium a week after his 21st birthday, being the 16th youngest driver in history to achieve it, the eighth among foreigners, and the eighth youngest on tour. In all these cases, he is situated between Greg Moore (1996) and Pato O’Ward (2020) whom he beats by two months. Among the other 18 drivers on the current grid who have achieved a podium, four achieved it at a younger age: Graham Rahal (1st – 2007), Marco Andretti (3rd – 2006), Rinus VeeKay (9th – 2020) and Scott Dixon (13th – 2001).
– Lundgaard’s second place marks the first podium of the season for a Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing that had the worst streak of races without a podium in its 30-year history. Since Graham Rahal’s third-place finish in the second race at Texas in March 2021, the team had gone 24 races without a single podium finish, breaking the streak of 21 they ran through mid-2007. RLLR’s best result since Takuma Sato’s P2 in the first race of Gateway 2020 (a week after his Indy 500 win), and the first podium finish on the road since Rahal also finished second at the Indy GP in June of that year.
– In his 14 IndyCar races, Lundgaard’s best three qualifying finishes have come from his Indy GP appearances: fourth in 2021, eighth and sixth in 2022. Elsewhere, he has only appeared in the top 12 in Toronto, where he qualified 10th. The final result of the event, yes, allows him to climb to 15th place overall and Extend your lead in the Rookie of the Year rankingswhere he has a 27-point margin with David Malukas.
– The incredible consistency of Will Power, which added its seventh podium of the year, remains unchanged. Not only has she scored three more podiums than any of her opponents, but she has finished ten of the 13 races contested among the top four. All this means that, despite having added only one victory, the Australian has returned to the top of the general classification, something he had not done in the second half of the season since winning his only title in 2014. In addition, with his 92 podiums In total, he stands out in seventh place in history ahead of his old rival Dario Franchitti.
– Despite finishing Sunday in a discreet ninth position, Felix Rosenqvist was the great protagonist on Saturday with his third pole position in IndyCar, the second of the year after the one obtained in Texas and the third of 2022 for McLaren SP, which equals Andretti Autosport in that section. Like Lundgaard, the European characteristics of the Indy GP as a layout work in favor of the Swede, since his only circuit poles have been on this track (2019 and 2022).
– The ‘great pole crisis of 2022’ it has a curiously opposite effect for drivers starting next to you in the front row. There are now 12 consecutive tests in which the poleman has not won, but in seven of them the winner started from second place, as has been the case again with Rossi. That makes the winner’s average starting position (4.9) higher than in 2021 (6.3) or 2020 (5), despite four wins from pole in both seasons.
– With only four races to go, the six-way duel has been stretched very slightly in this last event, although with remountable margins in each case. Will Power (431) and Marcus Ericsson (422 after his eleventh place), both with only one win, continue to assert their consistency for now against the four victories of Josef Newgarden (399). Scott Dixon (393) remains close to the American, while Pato O’Ward (385) and Álex Palou (379) have given up some ground that they may miss later on. Nashville roulette can lead to big winners…or bankruptcy.