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IndyCar

O’Ward charges to stunning IndyCar win from 16th

by Matt Beer
8 min read

until Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League

Arrow McLaren SP’s Patricio O’Ward charged from 16th on the grid to take an extraordinary IndyCar victory in the second Detroit race.

Following his messy qualifying run, O’Ward had made steady progress in the first half of the race and sat sixth at a restart with 16 laps to go.

He immediately muscled past champion Scott Dixon for fifth at that green flag, but the race was then paused when Romain Grosjean’s car stopped with its brakes on fire.

Fifth-place qualifier Grosjean’s race had gone wrong immediately when he was sandwiched between Dixon and Alexander Rossi at the first corner, losing ground in a wheel-banging moment and then making further contact with Sebastien Bourdais at Turn 3, with Max Chilton losing his front wing in the consequent traffic jam behind and causing an early yellow.

Grosjean pitted with damage from those incidents, and later had a drivethrough penalty for tapping Jack Harvey into a spin, meaning he was running at the foot of the top 20 when he eventually retired.

He boldly grabbed a fire extinguisher and ran towards his car to try to put the brake fire out, before being dissuaded by marshals.

At the final restart with seven laps left, O’Ward repeated his Dixon move on Graham Rahal to take fourth and then went down the outside of championship rival Alex Palou at Turn 3 to claim third.

O’Ward then immediately joined the race-long lead battle between polesitter Josef Newgarden and Colton Herta.

Newgarden had led by as much as 13s at first by virtue of starting on the harder and more durable black tyres while most went for the softer reds, which faded as expected.

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But the flipside was that Penske driver Newgarden would have to run the reds in the final stint, and this ended up longer than planned as Newgarden made his first pitstop slightly early as a precaution in case a full course yellow was thrown when Dalton Kellett’s car parked in the pit exit on lap 20.

Herta rapidly reduced Newgarden’s lead to nothing and was attacking him for first place when the cautions for first a Jimmie Johnson spin and then Grosjean’s incident paused their battle.

But then O’Ward passed Herta as well and set off after Newgarden. Herta went with him, only to run wide at Turn 3 when trying to go back around the outside of O’Ward.

While Herta was left under attack from Palou, O’Ward escaped and managed to overtake Newgarden for the lead with a wheel-brushing pass into Turn 7 with two laps to go.

He scorched away by win by 6.8s and take the championship lead by one point, despite Palou getting ahead of Herta for third and almost getting Newgarden too.

Behind fifth-placed Rahal, Will Power made up for his Saturday agony to some extent by coming from 20th on the grid to sixth having done a long first stint on the black tyres.

Dixon, Simon Pagenaud, race one winner Marcus Ericsson and Santino Ferrucci completed the top 10.

Ericsson made up ground from 22nd on the grid by pitting under the first caution to get rid of his red tyres, and escaped later contact with second-row starter Rinus VeeKay that left the Ed Carpenter Racing car with a puncture.

Ferrucci’s 10th place was achieved in something of a hybrid car made up from Rahal Letterman Lanigan team-mate Takuma Sato’s oval-spec back-up chassis following his heavy qualifying crash.

Race Results

Pos Name Team Car Laps Laps Led Total Time Fastest Lap Pitstops Pts
1 Patricio O'Ward Arrow McLaren SP Dallara DW12-Chevrolet 70 3 1h41m30.881s 1m17.098s 2 51
2 Josef Newgarden Team Penske Dallara DW12-Chevrolet 70 67 +6.759s 1m16.446s 2 44
3 Alex Palou Chip Ganassi Racing Dallara DW12-Honda 70 0 +6.939s 1m16.401s 2 35
4 Colton Herta Andretti Autosport Dallara DW12-Honda 70 0 +7.056s 1m16.343s 2 32
5 Graham Rahal Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Dallara DW12-Honda 70 0 +7.695s 1m16.698s 2 30
6 Will Power Team Penske Dallara DW12-Chevrolet 70 0 +8.442s 1m16.625s 2 28
7 Scott Dixon Chip Ganassi Racing Dallara DW12-Honda 70 0 +8.832s 1m16.409s 2 26
8 Simon Pagenaud Team Penske Dallara DW12-Chevrolet 70 0 +9.064s 1m17.216s 2 24
9 Marcus Ericsson Chip Ganassi Racing Dallara DW12-Honda 70 0 +9.525s 1m16.893s 3 22
10 Santino Ferrucci Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Dallara DW12-Honda 70 0 +10.686s 1m17.452s 2 20
11 Ryan Hunter-Reay Andretti Autosport Dallara DW12-Honda 70 0 +10.985s 1m17.141s 2 19
12 Takuma Sato Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Dallara DW12-Honda 70 0 +11.576s 1m17.108s 3 18
13 Alexander Rossi Andretti Autosport Dallara DW12-Honda 70 0 +14.21s 1m17.435s 2 17
14 James Hinchcliffe Andretti Autosport Dallara DW12-Honda 70 0 +14.997s 1m17.227s 2 16
15 Conor Daly Ed Carpenter Racing Dallara DW12-Chevrolet 70 0 +15.153s 1m17.002s 3 15
16 Sébastien Bourdais A.J. Foyt Enterprises Dallara DW12-Chevrolet 70 0 +15.273s 1m17.459s 3 14
17 Ed Jones Dale Coyne Racing with Vasser-Sullivan Dallara DW12-Honda 70 0 +16.118s 1m17.808s 3 13
18 Rinus VeeKay Ed Carpenter Racing Dallara DW12-Chevrolet 70 0 +16.854s 1m16.988s 4 12
19 Jack Harvey Meyer Shank Racing Dallara DW12-Honda 69 0 +1 lap 1m17.095s 5 11
20 Scott McLaughlin Team Penske Dallara DW12-Chevrolet 69 0 +1 lap 1m17.45s 4 10
21 Jimmie Johnson Chip Ganassi Racing Dallara DW12-Honda 69 0 +1 lap 1m17.615s 4 9
22 Max Chilton Carlin Dallara DW12-Chevrolet 68 0 +2 laps 1m17.298s 5 8
Romain Grosjean Dale Coyne Racing with RWR Dallara DW12-Honda 57 0 DNF 1m16.885s 5 7
Dalton Kellett A.J. Foyt Enterprises Dallara DW12-Chevrolet 53 0 DNF 1m17.915s 5 6
Oliver Askew Arrow McLaren SP Dallara DW12-Chevrolet 46 0 DNF 1m17.288s 4 5
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