Power becomes Palou's main rival with Portland win

Will Power took a crucial third win of the 2024 IndyCar season to cut Alex Palou’s championship lead in a combative Portland race in which Scott Dixon was put in the wall and Romain Grosjean got a penalty for  “unsportsmanlike/unsafe behaviour”.

Power - who now ties Palou on three wins this season - absolutely dominated the race and had an answer for Palou in every element of their strategic tyre battle.

Colton Herta recovered from a bizarre pitlane penalty and being dumped off track by Grosjean - who lost a top five in a separate incident of spinning and then hampering Christian Rasmussen - to finish fourth, while polesitter Santino Ferrucci (you read that right) also fell out of a top five late on.

Here’s the full story from the race.

How the race was won

Power and Palou both started on fresh hard tyres, were soon past Ferrucci - Power at Turn 1 on the first lap and Palou on lap eight - and were in a class of their own for this race.

Palou stayed close in the first stint but Power edged out a decent gap of over three seconds before the second stops, partly boosted by having soft tyres over Palou’s used hards.

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Power’s lead extended in the pitstop phase but with Palou then on fresh softs and Power on a used set, Palou erased the lead margin.

But then it rose from inside a second to almost two, and you knew Power would have the advantage in the last stint when he used his set of fresh softs.

Palou only had used hards for the final stint and despite trying to overcut Power by a lap, Palou emerged 2.3s back from Power and with a clear tyre disadvantage.

Power won by 9.8267s in the end, his second win at the track after his 2019 victory, with his pace underpinned by some brilliant Penske pitstops even under intense pressure.

Power was able to eat into Palou’s points lead, but only reduced it to 54 points, which still means Palou can lose 17 points per race to Power over the last three races and still take the title.

There are two races at the returning Milwaukee Mile next weekend and then a trip to the Nashville oval in mid-September.

Points after Portland

1 Palou 484
2 Power -54
3 Herta -67
4 McLaughlin -88
5 Dixon -101

Last week’s winner at Gateway, Josef Newgarden, had a solid Portland race to round out the podium, ahead of Herta, who was in contention for third and entered this race as Palou’s closest challenger 59 points behind.

However, Herta had a stall in the pits and then used the hybrid to restart the engine - which is against the rules - and had to give up a place on track.

Herta gave a position to a car a lap down, which he wasn’t further penalised for and appeared to be the instruction to him, and therefore kept fourth place albeit giving the spot up on track allowed fifth-placed Marcus Armstrong to close in - but ultimately not by enough.

Ferrucci took a relatively early final pitstop and was jumped by Armstrong, Marcus Ericsson (sixth) and Scott McLaughlin (seventh), who came from 20th after an engine grid penalty, with Ferrucci finishing eighth. That doesn’t eclipse his best 2024 result of sixth at Iowa, despite starting on pole.

Another Dixon non-event

Dixon, who started ninth, was attacked by Kyle Kirkwood and the resulting move pushed Dixon off track at Turn 7 and left him scrambling to recover.

Slow on the straight, he was swamped by first Juri Vips who narrowly avoided him, and then Pietro Fittipaldi, who launched over the kerb on the inside at Turn 8 into Dixon, firing him into the outside wall.

Dixon’s title charge is all but over after multiple incidents in the last five races. A hybrid issue forced retirement before the Mid-Ohio race had started and he was pinned two laps down last weekend at Gateway which led to an 11th.

Grosjean mess

There have been times this season and in Grosjean’s IndyCar career where he’s been treated harshly by others, dumped off the track, and blamed for things that weren’t his fault as drivers have exploited his combative reputation.

Today was not one of those days.

After a brilliant start and running in the top five, after his first stop, Grosjean straight drove Herta off the track after Grosjean had slowed behind Newgarden, on an outlap.

Grosjean wasn’t penalised.

The more high-profile incident came just into the second half of the race when he spun alone at Turn 1 - still fighting for the top five - and once he got going he just drove onto the racing line.

Attacking the corner at full speed, Rasmussen had nowhere to go and hit Grosjean’s rear left - causing a puncture and damage to his own car. Grosjean was penalised for “unsportsmanlike/unsafe behaviour” and got a drive-through penalty.

It clearly was an accident, but Rasmussen’s car is narrowly ahead of Grosjean’s team-mate #78 car in the battle for the Leaders Circle, which awards $1million to each entry at the end of the season.

A day to forget for the ex-Formula 1 driver, who was classified 27th, ahead of only Dixon.

McLaren’s rebound struggle

All three McLaren cars attempted various strategy gambles as they all started outside of the top 15.

Alexander Rossi did make it work by doing three stops after pitting early and pushing hard on soft tyres, finishing 12th from 17th.

Pato O’Ward tried a similar strategy and went from 22nd to 15th, while Nolan Siegel went off trying to pass Toby Sowery and finished 17th.

Sowery - the 28-year-old who got a shock call-up at Dale Coyne for Mid-Ohio and matched the team's best result of the year - impressed again, but less under the radar this time.

He got some serious TV coverage for his battle with Siegel - where he almost dared Siegel to go deep and make the mistake he did - and for a battle with Kirkwood which Sowery came out on top of.

Back to McLaren, and it was clear it had a significant deficit today. Penske driver McLaughlin going from 20th to seventh showed what was possible even when qualifying down the order.

"The reality is, this is unacceptable," said O'Ward, with team boss Gavin Ward adding "I think everybody here would say that we put too much hard work and investment to perform at the level that we did this weekend".