Will Power believes his crew made a strategic mistake as he slipped from pole position to sixth in the Gateway IndyCar race.
In live terms, the Team Penske driver was set to extend his series lead even as he took the second and final restart following a two-hour rain delay in fourth spot.
However, having then lost positions to Dale Coyne Racing team-mates David Malukas and Takuma Sato by the time the chequered flag flew, Power instead left St Louis with a reduced, three-point margin in the standings, over race-winning team-mate Josef Newgarden.
While those overtakes had the effect of costing Power four points, the bigger blow was Newgarden passing Scott McLaughlin for the lead on the restart lap.
In improving from second to first, the two-time IndyCar champion gained another 10 points, meaning the swing in the 36 green flag laps to the end of the race was 14 points.
What looks critical, however, was what happened about 80 laps earlier, under the first Caution period of the race.
All of the key runners were only about a third of the way into their third stints, and would have needed another pit stop before the end regardless, assuming the race ran to its full distance.
Of course, the threat of the rain which did indeed come to pass raised the possibility that the race might not reach its prescribed 260 laps anyway, and thus crews were faced with a major strategic quandary, especially that of second-placed Power.
Among the eight still on the lead lap when Jack Harvey had hit the wall, only McLaughlin, Newgarden, and then-leader Sato were called to pit under that yellow, and hence they resumed in that order in sixth onwards.
However, once the green flag flew again on Lap 158, Newgarden took only eight laps to scythe his way to the lead, and McLaughlin was into second place on Lap 177, all the while having also earned slightly greater strategic flexibility than those around them.
Power, on the other hand, had dropped from the lead to fourth and would only lose more ground by the time the race eventually reached its conclusion, more than four hours after it had begun.
Despite the disappointment about not pitting, the 2014 champion was still happy overall with banking another 31 points (including one for leading at least one lap and two for leading more laps than anyone else).
“Once again, it was a good day with P6,” he said.
“Obviously, we wanted more. We made a mistake and didn’t take that yellow. That’s IndyCar, it’s never straightforward. You expect that in the championship.
“It might come back to us in the next two in a different way. That’s how it is.
“We’ve got some good tracks coming up. Like I predicted, it will be a tough battle all the way to the end. I’ve been around a long time and know how these things go.
“The best thing about today is that we finished in the top six, so that’s still pretty good.”
Much of the pre-race talk had been about the merits/feasibility of a three- versus four-stop strategy.
Speaking during the rain delay, Power already had an idea that not using the first Caution to pit was the wrong call, explaining he was not told his fuel numbers at the time.
“I thought the yellow would help us but the team didn’t tell me the number that we would have to get if we didn’t pit,” he said on the NBC telecast which is carried by Stan Sport.
“If they told me what it was, I would have said, ‘No, we should pit.’
“But, it is what it is and we’re trying to make the most out of the situation.
“If we can finish P4, that’s really good; that’s definitely the goal here.”
While Malukas only pitted three laps before the second Caution, and hence had better tyres than Power, among others, what was especially costly for Car #12 was getting held up by traffic, particularly former team-mate Simon Pagenaud.
Malukas was able to use the #60 Meyer Shank Racing entry as a pick, and Sato also capitalised when Power lost his momentum.
“Pagenaud’s guys, I don’t know what they were doing, but they sent him out in that battle a lap down,” recalled the Queenslander.
“He came out and was just in the way. He was on the line I was, and I lost the [clean] air and lost a couple of positions.
“I don’t know what they were doing there, but that’s how I lost those. Otherwise, we were going to be looking pretty good.”
It could have been even worse for Power given he and Sato made contact as the Japanese driver blazed past.
He survived, and stays on top of a bunch of five drivers covered by just 43 points at the head of the series standings with two races to go.
The next takes place at Portland on the weekend of Sunday, September 4, with live and ad-free coverage on Stan Sport.
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