Indy 500: Hélio beams, Simona struggles 🎥
STUPIDLY GONE After a typical mistake during the last pit stop, Simona de Silvestro finished her sixth Indy 500 in 31st position. Brazilian Hélio Castroneves won the record race for the fourth time. The Indy 500 in seven minutes. Simona de Silvestro's incident can be seen briefly from 4:10 minutes. As the scenes show, happened [...]
The Indy 500 in seven minutes. Simona de Silvestro's incident can be seen briefly starting at 4:10 minutes. As the scenes show, such a mistake also happened to others.
Starting from 33rd and last place on row 11, Simona de Silvestro never really got close to the midfield with the Dallara-Chevrolet from Paretta Autosport. Due to different pit stop strategies, the Swiss Missile briefly moved up to 19th position, but on average hovered around 25th to 26th.
The pitfalls of pacing
The Vaudois racer completed 169 laps out of 200 on her sixth Indy start before she made a mistake that some of her colleagues also made. On the approach to her female-dominated pit, the cold rear brakes locked up (the oval is practically full throttle), causing the V6 race car to go sideways and become immobile.
For the same reason, Stefan Wilson even crashed heavily into the inner wall on the first entry into the pit lane. The Briton thus triggered the first of only two caution phases. Former champion Will Power, who had started alongside Simona, spun for the same reason in front of his pit, but without hitting the wall and retiring.
Top ten would have been possible
For the 32-year-old Swiss, this was the end of the race. Because all competitors are classified, she is still listed 31st behind former Indy winners Power (2018) and Rossi (2016).
Sage Karam proved what would ideally have been possible from the back row of the grid. The U.S. driver made it from 31st on the grid to seventh place, which earned him the Most Improved Award. For the 26-year-old, this was by far the best result in seven Indy starts.
Fourth victory at 46
The man of the day at the 105th Indy 500 was Hélio Castroneves. 20 days after his 46th birthday, the Brazilian won the biggest race in the USA for the fourth time after 2001, 2002 and 2009. After 20 years with the Penske championship team close to Chevrolet, he drove a Dallara-Honda for the first time for Meyer Shank Racing, for whom it was the first ever triumph in the IndyCar Series.
Castroneves joins A.J. Foyt (1961, 1964, 1967, 1977), Al Unser (1970, 1971, 1978, 1987) and Rick Mears (1979, 1984, 1988, 1991) as just the fourth driver with four Indy wins and the fourth-oldest Indy winner since the inaugural event anno 2011. Unlike those legends, however, he never captured the championship title.
Double victory for Honda in the fastest race ever
With a bold and successful overtaking maneuver on the outside lane past 24-year-old Spaniard Alex Palou, Castroneves brought about the decision on the penultimate lap. His lead over his Chip Ganassi Racing brand colleague at the finish of the record-breaking race - averaging 190.69 miles (306.67 km/h) - was 0.4928 seconds.
Frenchman Simon Pagenaud in third (Team Penske) and Mexican Pato O'Ward (Team Arrow McLaren) in fourth also finished within the same tenth of a second over the 800-kilometer distance. Over the course of the two hours and 40 minutes, there were a total of 35 lead changes among 13 different drivers.
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