Power prevails at Indy 500
Will Power won the Indianapolis 500, yesterday giving the 37-year-old Australian his biggest victory on Indycar’s grandest stage.
Power took the lead with four laps to go when Oriol Servia and Jack Harvey had to pit for fuel. Power then held off pole winner Ed Carpenter over the final few laps for the victory.
It gave team owner Roger Penske a 17th win in the Indy 500 and it was Power’s second straight victory this season. He won the road-course event at Indy earlier this month.
With hot weather creating a slick, two-and-a-half-mile oval, new cars with less downforce proved to be handful.
And it cost a number of bigname drivers a shot at IndyCar’s most prestigious event. Defending race winner Takuma Sato, Danica Patrick, Sebastien Bourdais, three-time winner Helio Castroneves and Tony Kanaan lost control and wrecked.
Patrick, who shot to prominence by finishing fourth as a rookie in 2005, announced earlier this year that she would step away from racing after Sunday’s race. The race capped her “Danica Double,” which began at the Daytona 500, where she also crashed out well short of the finish.
Patrick has been a polarizing figure, and that only increased when she moved from Indycar to NASCAR. She struggled to run up front despite driving for a powerhouse Stewart-haas Racing team much of her career, and she wound up with just seven top-10 finishes.
Bourdais crashed a year after missing the race because of a harrowing, high-speed accident during qualifying. Castroneves was going for a record-tying fourth victory in the 500.