Rossi leads from start to finish
Captures Honda Indy 200 for second 2018 win
LEXINGTON, Ohio – Street courses, short ovals, superspeedways, road courses. A Verizon IndyCar Series champion must master all of them if he wants to walk away from Sonoma Raceway with the championship Astor Cup.
Up until this weekend at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, Alexander Rossi said he and the No. 27 Andretti Autosport team were in the thick of the title hunt but not yet deserving of wearing the crown. While they had found success on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida, Long Beach, California, (win No. 1 this season) and Detroit, as well on the short oval in Phoenix and the superspeedways in Indianapolis and Texas, they had not yet asserted themselves on a permanent road course.
But that all changed this weekend. After a couple of solid practice sessions, Rossi unleashed a mammoth lap during qualifying to topple his championship competitors for what he’d considered a truly “special” pole run. Considering the fierce competition within the series, edging the likes of Will Power, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Josef Newgarden and Scott Dixon — all series champions — was a terrific accomplishment, an elated Rossi said Saturday.
And so was what he did Sunday. After struggling at the permanent road courses of Barber Motorsports Park and Road America — the locales of two of just three finishes outside the top 10 this year — Rossi put those troubles behind him and cruised to a dominant victory at Mid-Ohio.
“I haven’t had a road course that I was that comfortable with since (Watkins Glen) last year,” Rossi said. “We needed this one just to kind of reassure ourselves that we were better on road courses as well as other types of tracks.
“Crazy thing about this championship, so many different elements you have to be good at. Each track requires a different approach and a different philosophy, different mind-set. I think that now, after this, we’re pretty comfortable on all forms of racetracks. Hopefully that bodes well for the last four races.”
The beginning of Sunday’s race got off to an interesting start as Rossi caused some waves and even a review by race stewards after he started unusually slowly, then suddenly took off, putting a gap between himself and the rest of the field. Race control opted against penalizing him, but some of his competitors considered Rossi’s tactics, as runner-up Robert Wickens put it, “cheeky.”
“Alex definitely changed the speed before he accelerated,” Wickens said. “He obviously had a much shorter first gear than anyone else around us. He just took off. I thought it was cheeky.”
Upon hearing Wickens’ comments, Rossi first responded by saying that the Schmidt Peterson Motorsports rookie “complains a lot,” then explained his strategy as such: “I knew, based on being around people in pit lane, what first gear they had. I knew I had a better gear. We used it to our advantage.”
Following the dramatic start for Rossi, however, there was very little excitement ahead of his win. The only driver to pull-off a two-stop strategy, he was eventually able to pull away from Wickens, third-place finisher Power and the rest of the field.
With 20 laps to go, the caution-free race was all but decided. Rossi was in complete control as he sealed his dominant win by a margin of nearly 13 seconds.
“For me, that’s a boring race, and that’s the best race you can ever have,” Rossi said with a smile. “Not often you get those in the Verizon IndyCar Series. You take them when you can have them.”
Rossi will surely enjoy his victory for the next couple of days, but then his at- tention will turn to the Aug. 19 race at Pocono Raceway and his continued pursuit of championship leader Dixon, who did well to recover from an unlucky starting spot of ninth to finish fifth on Sunday.
Still, finishing four spots back of Rossi caused his lead over the Andretti driver to slip to 46. That’s a margin Rossi feels can be overcome with four races to go, but he knows he’ll need to go toe-totoe with the driver know as the “Ice Man” to get it done. While many have failed at that endeavor in the past, Rossi is confident he can achieve the feat.
“All I heard about coming into this weekend was how he won five times around here,” Rossi said. “But you got to capitalize on your good days and his not-so-good days, which unfortunately are slim — and for him means finishing fifth. ... I don’t expect him to make a mistake. The pressure is on me to deliver the results, to deliver under pressure.”