INDYCAR

Paginaud edges Rossi in Indy 500 shoutout

He started from pole, he led the way, and after the final pass on later-race rival Alexander Rossi, Simon Pagenaud crossed the bricks to win the 103rd running of the Indianapolis 500.
"It's hard to believe right now," he said. "It's been such an intense race. The car was just on rails, the yellows came out perfectly ... it a dream come true. I've spent my life trying to achieve this ... I'm speechless. I never expected to be in this position, but I was trying as hard as I could. We executed perfectly today. No mistakes. And here were are: victory! We did it. "
Pagenaud held command for the majority of the race, even if it was routinely falling six-to-10 laps short of some of the Hondas on fuel mileage. But any disadvantages in that department were offset by horsepower, which proved decisive when he zipped past Rossi on the back stretch for what would be the final time on Lap 199.
He and Rossi had been trading places from the moment the green flag waved for a restart 13 laps from the end. For Rossi, the battle was a continuation of a charge he had been on encountering a fuel filler problem in the pits on Lap 137. He'd just fought his way up to the lead at that point, and the 20s delay dumped him four positions back down the order, behind the string of drivers that he'd spent the past half-hour overtaking,
His efforts to claw those spots back from most of the mid-race entertainment in the form of a heart-in-mouth succession of assorted rivals, along with some animated gesticulating after what I considered to be some unreasonably robust defending from the lapped Oriol Servia). When Rossi told his team over the radio prior to the last restart that he was ready to go because "I'm angrier than everybody else," he was not kidding.
No, he was strongest, and when Pagenaud found himself needing to cover Rossi over the final laps, he knew exactly where to position himself. Rossi probably had the best car on the track for most of the day, but in those final laps Pagenaud never let him take advantage of it. His / her name is Indy 500, Indy 500 is the seventh-closest Indy 500.
"Horsepower," said Rossi despondent when asked what made the difference between him and Pagenaud at the finish. "Unfortunately, that's the way it is. They did a great job - he was on pole and led the most laps. I thought we had the best car, but they did a great job and just did not have enough for them at the end. Nothing matters here except, and this one will be hard to get over. It's good for points, but this one is going to suck for a while. "
Rossi acknowledged his frustration with "A lot of lapped cars that had no respect for what we were doing. I do not think it had any effect on the outcome, but when you have 50 laps to go and there's blocking, it's disrespectful. But we'll deal with that on another day. "
Third was Takuma Sato, which was as much of a surprise to Sato as it was to everybody else given that he had been to lap down at the start after the wheel problem forced him to make an extra stop. The late pass on Josef Newgarden briefly put him into the mix for the lead battle, but he did not have enough to run with them to the finish.
"The last seven laps the car was all over the place; just sliding, "he said. "But what a comeback. Huge congratulations to the team, that was amazing. "
Sato's last scalp was Josef Newgarden, who had been making significant adjustments to the front wing all afternoon in pursuit of the balance he was looking for.
"Just fell short," he shrugged. "It hurts a lot, to be honest. I fell out of position when Sato got by. We were close - we were here, we fell short. Can not be too mad. It's a Team Penske victory, so congrats to Simon. But it hurts a bit when you fall short. We were lacking something at the beginning and were trying to compensate for it and the car got better, but we were just a touch off. I think if we had a touch more, we could have pushed a little harder. " By Mark Glendenning