Alexander Rossi knew it would be a long-shot to come back into title contention after clashing with team-mate Marco Andretti at the start of the Grand Prix of Sonoma.
As the green flag fell and the field hurtled into Turn 1, Rossi got caught out by Andretti slowing slightly in front of him and hit the back of the #98 US Concrete car damaging his own front wing which then caused a front right puncture.
The Californian driver was left a long way from the back of the field after making a pit stop to fix his #27 NAPA Auto Parts Honda, even going a lap behind at one stage after abandoning a fuel-saving strategy to try one less stop than the rest of the field.
"I knew it was probably a 1% shot at getting anything done at the end of the day," said Rossi.
"I just tried to attack it, move up as many positions as we could. If Scott did have some sort of failure or something, we still needed to be towards the top six or seven. That was the goal.
"Once kind of the final round of pit stops came, we kind of chose to come in earlier than everyone else in hopes there would be a yellow, it would cycle us to the front. But it didn't come. They all covered me in case that happened, which was the right thing to do.
"Yeah, from once the final pit stop kind of happened, there was no yellow flag immediately, I knew it was pretty much the day done."
Once back on the lead lap, Rossi admits he had a lot of fun at being able to charge through the field, passing drivers wherever he could to climb through the order, most notably Josef Newgarden at the Turn 5 hairpin at the top of the hill.
"Yeah, I mean, it was more just kind of trying to save a situation, put ourselves in a position to maybe capitalize on something," he added.
"It wasn't fun at that point. It was more of just pure necessity to try to get it done. I think we had a fast racecar. I don't know if we had a fast enough one to beat Scott and ultimately win.
"For sure, it was a car that was quick enough for the podium had the turn one thing not happened. Yeah, I mean, there's always would have, could have, should haves in scenarios like this, in this sport.
"Can't focus too much on it. Just got to take the things we didn't do well this weekend and make sure that doesn't happen again, we can improve upon it if we're in this position again next year."
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