Rahal holds on to win IndyCar in Fontana
FONTANA, Calif. — Graham Rahal held on to the lead out of a caution with three laps left to earn his second IndyCar win, closing out a wild, record-setting day at Auto Club Speedway on Saturday.
“That was nuts, but it was fun,” said Rahal, of Rahal Letterman Lannigan Racing.
Cars slingshotted past one another at an average of 205 mph and raced up to five-wide around the 2-mile oval.
“We shouldn’t be racing like this,” reigning Indianapolis 500 champion and points leader Juan Pablo Montoya said. “This is full pack racing and sooner or later somebody is going to get hurt. We don’t need to be doing this.”
The 500-mile race eclipsed the season high for lead changes — 37 at Indianapolis — by the midpoint and had 80 overall, topping the IndyCar record of 73 set at Auto Club Speedway in 2001.
Rahal went in front late and stayed there after a late red flag, winning under caution after Ryan Briscoe went airborne in a collision with Ryan Hunter-Reay. Rahal’s first victory was at St. Petersburg in 2008.
Tony Kanaan finished second, Marco Andretti was third and Montoya fourth.
After three years as the season finale under the lights, the Fontana race was moved to June with a daytime start. The heat of inland Southern California — it was close to 90 degrees at the green flag — made it tougher on teams to get the right setup and put a premium on drivers finding the right racing grooves on seam-filled Auto Club Speedway.
Adding another dimension, IndyCar has a new aero kit configuration for this season, putting much more downforce on the cars than a year ago at Fontana.
Some drivers, including Montoya, were concerned the extra downforce would lead to pack racing at Fontana, which is entertaining for the fans but dangerous for the drivers.
That’s what happened, at least in part of a frenetic day of racing.
Drivers began swapping spots from the drop of the green flag, sometimes going four-wide around the corners. Much of the action was up front, with 32 lead changes in the opening 100 laps.
Despite the chaos, the first caution didn’t come until the lap 136, when Helio Castroneves went into the wall after being squeezed between Will Power and Briscoe.
Castroneves, who entered the race fourth in points, had led the most laps to that point (43), but he was unable to return after the crew tried to fix his car.
“They just closed it up; Briscoe didn’t have to do that,” Castroneves said. The chaos continued. Cars darted and dashed around one another at more than 200 mph, occasionally touching tires in what looked like video-game racing at times. The cars went five wide with fewer than 50 laps left and there were two rows of four-wide racing a few minutes after that.
Power took the lead after a caution with 30 laps left, but Briscoe went around him. Rahal managed to squeeze past Briscoe by inches just before Power and Sato came together with nine laps left, bringing out a red flag.
Several drivers made a run at Rahal, but the third-generation driver held them off to earn the victory.