Start, Indianapolis 500, IndyCar, 2018

Power clinches Indianapolis 500 after Wilson’s fuel gamble fails

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Will Power scored his first Indianapolis 500 victory after taking the lead in the final laps of the race.

Power regained the lead of the race with four laps to go when Stefan Wilson and Jack Harvey surrendered the leading positions in the race to pit for fuel. The pair, along with Oriol Servia, had tried to eke out their fuel to the flag after the seventh caution period of the race, caused when Tony Kanaan crashed out.

Pole sitter Ed Carpenter scored his best result in the 500 with second place, having led the opening phases of the race commandingly. Scott Dixon ran a long final stint on fuel to take third.

The combination of hot conditions and IndyCar’s new 2018 aero kit presented the drivers with challenging handling and made overtaking difficult for many. Alexander Rossi was one of few drivers who found the key to passing, and produced several audacious moves as he charged from 32nd on the grid to finish fourth. Behind him the top 10 was completed by Ryan Hunter-Reay, Simon Pagenaud, Carlos Munoz, Josef Newgarde, Robert Wickensand Graham Rahal.

However the knife-edge balance of the cars caught out a string of drivers including several experienced hands. Helio Castroneves and Sebastien Bourdais each went out in single-car crashes. So did Danica Patrick, who ended the final race of her motorsport career in the barriers on lap 68.

Last year’s winner Takuma Sato was among the first retirements from the race as he went out in a collision with James Davison.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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27 comments on “Power clinches Indianapolis 500 after Wilson’s fuel gamble fails”

  1. It looked tricky out there. Hopefully next year overtaking is a little bit easier. It wasn’t as exciting as last year I have to say.

  2. I’m going to be honest here, I am not in any way a Will Power fan. But today I couldn’t help but get tearful when he crossed the line and drove to victory lane. He has worked for it so long, and suffered a lot of disappointments along the way, he is such a deserving winner of this race. He drove impeccably, and it was absolutely clear how much it meant to him, his team and his family. I genuinely couldn’t be happier for him, and with Ricciardo’s win earlier in the day it really reminds me of why I am in love with this incredible, ridiculous, frustrating, exciting, hilarious, brilliant and unique sport.

    1. Also just want to say, what a drive from Rossi! On one restart he overtook 5 drivers all around the outside, and many others besides. He really is looking like one of the most exciting open wheel drivers at the moment. A younger me would have said “get him in F1” but honestly there is more high level motorsport than just F1. Rossi Will make it big whatever series he’s in.

    2. Two Aussies winning two of the most prestigious races on the calendar on the same day! It doesn’t get any better than that for Aussies.

  3. Duncan Snowden
    27th May 2018, 23:06

    A pretty good day for the Aussies, then.

    Still photos don’t do those cars justice. It’s not until you see them in a race that you realise how little (over-body) aero they’re running. The rear wings look almost like last year’s F1 T-wings.

  4. Congrats to Will. Well deserved and a long time coming. The tricky new cars were a handful in the super hot, humid conditions. I’m sure there will be a few aero tweeks for super speedways next year.

  5. The way Danica ended her career was fitting

    1. that was the first time she’d ever hit the wall at indy and something that was a rarity in her indycar career.

      i can’t speak for what she did in nascar but in indycar she very rarely went off track or had accidents, i think in the whole 7 years she spent in indycar she maybe only had 5-6 accidents & even fewer spins on road circuits that had her on grass/gravel.

      in 2009 for instance sher only retirements were mechanical & she ended up as the highest scoring andretti autosport driver in the championship & the first non penske/ganassi driver in the championship in 5th.

      1. Yes, very uncharacteristic of Patrick to make a mistake at Indy. She basically never put a wheel wrong in all her races there.

        The conditions and new aero kit were extremely tricky this year. When veterans and race-winners like Helio Castroneves and Tony Kanaan are losing the car in exactly the same manner, I don’t think one can attribute those crashes to a lack of talent or experience.

    2. Not sure how Danica’s retirement was ‘fitting’. I’m pretty sure that she holds some kind of Indycar record for consecutive finishes…

    3. Actually Danica is a very consistant driver when it comes to finishing. It is an ironic, unfitting ending to her career.

  6. @keithcollantine

    Hey Keith. This is only my second Indy500 (thanks to Alonso last year).
    I was watching BT Sport’s telecast and i will be honest–i was quite shocked and excited to see your name appear on the comms list. Although i couldn’t narrow down on which voice was yours, i must say that the commentary all along the 500 mile race was simply very good to say the least. There was a lot of shuffling between the US and the UK commentators, but both the teams along with the crew in the pits provided the right amount of information for the viewer at the right time. Nothing over the top (as some commies do, simply by raising their voice unnecessarily), for a viewer watching his second Indy500, i was guided throughout the race.
    The race as such was exciting with so many caution periods. That restart after lap 161/162 was particularly fun to watch. While last year, my sole focus was on Alonso, this year i wanted to know more abut the field and the race itself–provided good viewing. Its one thing to drive at 200mph, but overtaking multiple cars at that speed was awesome–brilliant driver from Rossi starting in the last row. And a clinical win from Will Power who never looked weak all along.
    One question: there was a lot of talk about how difficult it has become to drive these cars (Danica, Bourdais and Helio going off). Is Indycar undergoing an aerodynamic revolution of some kind ?

    Thank you very much Keith.

    1. Mark in Florida
      28th May 2018, 6:42

      Yes the cars are running totally different aero kits this year. They lost about a thousand pounds of down force from last year’s configuration. They are trying to generate more down force from the underside of the car. It seems though that the cars are very sensitive to go aero wash from the car in front. If their setup is off just a little bit it’s easy to lose the car especially in the turns as evidenced from cars suddenly spinning as another car cuts in front of it. I think that they need to adjust the cars a little bit and add a little bit of wing back.

  7. It is interesting that the cars weren’t able to closely follow each other anymore. Does anyone have an explanation why?

    1. It’s actually the other way around – they could follow each other closely. But it’s not about that.
      The new cars were designed to produce a smaller aero wake behind them to create less turbulence. This was indeed achieved. And they cut through air so efficiently that they do not produce a large slipstream though.
      So, the cars are able to follow each other more closely, BUT benefit very little from the preceeding car in terms of a slipstream.
      Because of that, in order to overtake, you have to get closer to your opponent solely based on your pace, rather than only get close enough where the slipstream would suck you in and help you overtake.

    2. @oni, the irony is that it is coming in part from the very thing that quite a large number of people seem to think is a universal panacaea for racing, which is a heavy reliance on sculpted floors.

      The problem is that, as Mark in Florida notes, they are now relying so much on the floor of the cars in the superspeedway spec that the cars have now become extremely pitch sensitive – a small disturbance to the airflow now leads to a much more sudden and unpredictable shift in handling and loss in performance.

      It’s not just a question of the reduction in downforce with the new regulations, but also about how the changes have now made variations in downforce when trailing another car less predictable than before. I am not surprised that has happened though, because the way that the regulations were changed made me think that they were creating the risk of making the floors of the cars too pitch sensitive and prone to localised stalling.

      1. I very much doubt they were stalling. The much lower overall downforce makes the balance that much more razer edge. Most of the spins were rather clearly not stalls. The announcers pretty much got that part right. The drivers barely overadjusted to counter understeer, and got caught on pure oversteer balance issues. The only one that looks weird weird, and /maybe/ a stall, was Karam.

        I much prefer this style of superspeedway racing over last year. This was driving; every corner every lap, the driver mattered. I do not want pack racing, generic slipstream passing, etc. I do not want a lottery pick drawn on the last restart. I don’t want artifical drama.

        I want this. This 500 was real. This was seeing real driving front and center.

        To get the extreme REAL drama like the end of 1982’s 500, you first need the cars to act like this.

    3. Everything @damon said is correct—about the road course and short oval kit.

      The issues with this year’s superspeedway kit were actually the opposite—the slipstream was significantly stronger this year, which you could see on every restart as the leader was a sitting duck and rarely held the lead.

      The issue is that getting rid of the rear wheel guards has increased drag, turbulence, and dirty air, creating the very problem the road course kit has managed to mitigate.

      I agree with @monkey that there is much to be said for racing like this—as it was before the DW12—when the pack is not kept artificially close and position changes represent a true difference in pace. But I also don’t like seeing cars going round with no hope of passing until a restart. And I can’t deny that the DW12-style races are visually spectacular and have been a major factor in the Indy 500’s resurgence. Hopefully IndyCar can find a happy medium.

      And if they wind up simply popping the rear wheel guards back on, I wouldn’t complain, either.

      1. I may be oversimplifying this, but I think the final piece of the puzzle is already planned.

        Power. More power. Enough power to make the right foot on restarts matter, and diminish the sitting duck problem. Also, more power, means even more spin potential, but it also means more aspect to use to you advantage to exectute an overtake if you have the car and skill to do so.

        Of course, be ready for the sudden loss of control on starts restarts, like, again, in the past, when there was more power than tire. Cogan. Guerrero. Etc. Nothing that takes skill comes without mistakes getting exposed.

  8. The cars looked very tricky to drive with the lowered aero levels. Reducing downforce has been cited as a way to increase overtaking in F1 but today’s Indy 500 sort of contradicted that. Is it just ovals that are particularly affected?

    1. f1 doesn’t do ovals though. the cars are trickier to drive this year at other tracks aswell, but it is producing great racing, and the drivers appreciate having to actually work in the cockpit instead of driving on rails. f1 is driving on rails.

    2. I think Indycars use Ground effects which causes less turbulence behind the car for an equivalent amount of downforce than getting similar downforce with wings. Not sure why F1, does not go back to he same as they had pre 1983. Are they afraid of following the Americans? I am sure the rules can be modified to prevent crazy cornering speeds which was the original reason for banning skirts etc.

    3. @stsj16 Actually the issue is not so much the reduced downforce, but the increased drag from losing the rear wheel guards that were part of last year’s car. IndyCar removed them because their aesthetics were unpopular—and because it was thought they were ineffective anyway at preventing wheel-to-wheel contact. But they did clean up the airflow, and removing them greatly increased the amount of dirty air. It also increased the slipstream effect, but the drivers reported in practice that were wearing out their tyres in trying to follow close.

      This, at least, is what Marshall Pruett has been reporting at Racer magazine:
      https://racer.com/2018/05/18/indy-aero-balance-proving-a-moving-target/

      1. Thanks for the link, I’m quite new to Indy so I didn’t know the rear wheels were no longer faired in. You always want to see the drivers at their best but that looked almost too tricky

  9. I remember when Will Power was winning Formula Ford races in Australia. Look at him now! Congrats, what a journey!

  10. And earned $2,525,454.00 for the win! Not a bad pay day.

  11. Will Power not only has the greatest name in sports, but he has seemed to have learned from his many mistakes over the years. His talent is really blossoming. And he is only 37 years old! I wasn’t a big fan of his, but he has won me over during the last two or three years with his maturity and growing professionalism. What a weekend for Straya!

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