Sato takes second Indianapolis 500
Unsatisfying yellow-flag finish leaves surging Dixon frustrated with rules
INDIANAPOLIS — At an eerily empty Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Takuma Sato snatched a second Indianapolis 500 victory Sunday in an odd and unsatisfying finish to “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.”
Sato held off Scott Dixon and won under caution after teammate Spencer Pigot crashed with five laps remaining in the race, held in front of empty grandstands for the first time in 104 runnings because of the pandemic.
Pigot needed medical attention on the track, the crash scene was a massive debris field and the cleanup time would have been lengthy. There were also just four laps left in the race, not enough time to allow for a proper restart.
If it had been a NASCAR race, a stoppage would have been immediate to set up a final shootout. IndyCar tends to avoid gimmicks and a late red-flag in the 2014 Indy 500 incensed purists.
Dixon, a five-time IndyCar champion who had dominated the race, asked on his radio if IndyCar was going to give the drivers a final shootout.
“Are they going red?” Dixon asked. “They’ve got to go red. There’s no way they can clean that up.”
The answer was no, turning the end of the race into a game of whatifs.
“It is a little silly to predict what might have happened. The reality is Takuma won,” said winning car owner Bobby Rahal. “This isn’t the first 500 to be flagged under yellow
and there was a hell of a mess out there.”
IndyCar said in a statement after the finish “there were too few laps remaining to gather the field behind the pace car, issue a red flag and then restart for a greenflag finish.”
Dixon was visibly disappointed after leading 111 of the 200 laps in pursuit of his own second Indy win.
“Definitely a hard one to swallow for sure. We had such a great day,” Dixon said. “First time I’ve seen them let it run out like that. I thought they’d throw a red.”
Dixon had figured he ultimately wouls run down Sato as Sato worked through lapped traffic, and he believed Sato’s team was cutting it close on fuel. Rahal said his driver had enough gas to get to the end.
None of it mattered in the end as Sato was able to coast around the speedway then ride the lift new track owner Roger Penske installed to take the winner to an elevated victory circle. Along for the ride were Rahal, the 1986 Indy 500 winner, and David Letterman, his mask buried in an unruly gray beard as the longtime comedian and TV host greeted Sato.
“Let me just say, if someone said to me this morning at the end of the Indianapolis 500 that Takuma Sato and Scott Dixon and Graham Rahal would be racing for the lead, I would say that’s a dream, that’s a dream come true,” Letterman said. “And I woke up and it turned out we won the Indianapolis 500.”
Sato became the first Japanese winner of the Indy 500 in 2017. Graham Rahal, Sato’s teammate at Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, was third behind Dixon.
Sato did not get the traditional ride around the speedway in the back of a convertible, being interviewed over the public address system with the crowd cheering the winner. He briefly removed his mask to kiss the yard of bricks; when the entire RLL team lined up for the smooch, the group did it wearing masks.
The Sato win helped Honda snap Chevrolet’s two-year Indy 500 winning streak. Santino Ferrucui finished fourth as Honda took the fist four spots.
Reigning series champion Josef Newgarden was fifth, the highest-finishing Chevrolet driver and best of the four-car Team Penske group. Chevrolet lagged behind Honda in speed the entire buildup to the 500 and had just one driver start in the front nine. Mired in traffic, the Chevy group never contended.