Photo credit: Indycar.com/Chris Evans
Alex Palou found his way to the front on the first pit cycle and immediately put a vice-grip on the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio, leading 48 laps and taking his third straight win and fourth in five races. Scott Dixon was 5.0242 seconds behind to make it a 1-2 finish for Chip Ganassi Racing, who also saw Marcus Armstrong deliver his third top-ten finish of the season, coming in ninth.
Will Power led Team Penske with a third-place finish, with Rahal Letterman Lanigan driver Christian Lundgaard tying his and his team’s best finish of the season in fourth and Penske driver Scott McLaughlin coming in fifth, his first top-five since winning at Barber Motorsports Park.
At the start, as Colton Herta and Graham Rahal led the field, there was chaos behind as Marcus Ericsson, who lost his car on the inside and ran over the front of Felix Rosenqvist at turn 6. Rosenqvist would continue, but went down a lap and finished 25th, while Ericsson limped back to the pits and spent spent most of the rest of the race getting repairs, officially placed 27th.
The race resumed on lap six, with Herta, Rahal, and Kyle Kirkwood holding the top three positions. Palou challenged Kirkwood, who spun on lap 19 at the Keyhole turn; the cars behind had to take evasive action, but there was no contact, and Kirkwood continued on, ultimately finishing down in 17th.
Pato O’Ward, who spun in qualifying and started 25th, had moved halfway up the field when he started the first round of pit stops on lap 18; ten laps later, the leaders came in, in their running order: first Herta, then Rahal, and then Palou, who made a quick in-lap to come out ahead of both cars.
Palou quickly built up an eight-second lead, but lost half of it to Herta as Benjamin Pedersen stubbornly refused to be lapped for several laps. Ultimately Palou did get around the lapped car; meanwhile, the AJ Foyt Racing rookie would be a moving chicane for several drivers over the course of the race.
The second pit cycle sequence began on lap 51, with the leaders beginning to come in on lap 54 with Palou, and then on lap 55 with Herta. While Palou’s stop went without a hitch, Herta came in too fast and had to serve a penalty, sending the polesitter–who also led 26 laps–down to an 11th place finish. Rahal worked his way back up into the lead group, but had a long stop and finished seventh, as Palou regained the lead for good on lap 58.
With the win, Palou holds a 110 point lead–just over two races’ worth of points–over second place Scott Dixon, who leapfrogged Ericsson, O’Ward, and Josef Newgarden (finished 12th) with his second place finish.
The series goes to Toronto in two weeks, and while Dixon has four wins at Exhibition Place–including two of the last three races there–Palou has developed a knack for getting to the front and staying there, and the field at large has not figured out a way to stop him.
