Colton Herta claims a third career NTT IndyCar Series victory in the second race at Mid-Ohio ahead of team-mates Alexander Rossi and Ryan Hunter-Reay as Andertti Autosport sweep the podium.
The 20-year old led the field away and had to defend from a chasing Santino Ferrucci, but heading into Turn 4 Ferrucci would become a passenger on the wet grass and take out his Dale Coyne team-mate Alex Palou and Felix Rosenqvist.
Herta led for the majority of the race ahead of Rossi, but it was a very uncharacteristic mistake from Dixon on lap 22 – spinning out of Turn 1 after touching the grass allowed Ryan Hunter-Reay to take third place from the Kiwi.
Rossi and Hunter-Reay would take their fight to flag as neither would give each other a quarter.
The last time Andretti swept the podium places was at the Honda Grand Prix of St.Petersburg in 2005 where Dan Wheldon led home a team 1-2-3-4 ahead of Tony Kanaan, Dario Franchitti and Bryan Herta.
Graham Rahal was able to sythe his way through the field from 12th on the grid to cross the line in fourth.
Chip Ganassi’s Marcus Ericsson would equal his second-best result of the season in fifth place, making up several places from starting 15th.
Simon Pagenaud was unable to make any progress through the field and would finish where he started in sixth place, but would be locked in a close battle with Penske team-mates Will Power and Josef Newgarden who finished behind the Frenchman in seventh and eighth respectively.
After another qualifying mistake in damp conditions, Pato O’Ward pushed his way through the field from 21st to end his afternoon in ninth for Arrow McLaren SP.
Dixon fell to the back of the field after his error, but would switch to a set of sticker Red Firestone tyres to push as hard as he could on a long middle stint in clean air to try and make up as much time as possible.
The championship leader would stop for a set of the harder black-walled tyres with 15 laps to go and pushed his way back into the top 10, easing the points loss to Newgarden. He even claimed the fastest lap of the race in the process.
Check out the latest points standings by clicking here.
Dixon’s lead over Newgarden is now down to 72 with just three races to go. IndyCar will return to the Indianapolis road course for the Harvest GP double-header on October 2-3.
| # | Driver | Gap (seconds) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Colton Herta | 01:34:17.3968 |
| 2 | Alexander Rossi | 1.3826 |
| 3 | Ryan Hunter-Reay | 2.4965 |
| 4 | Graham Rahal | 3.0853 |
| 5 | Marcus Ericsson | 9.9175 |
| 6 | Simon Pagenaud | 14.1918 |
| 7 | Will Power | 15.3292 |
| 8 | Josef Newgarden | 17.2532 |
| 9 | Pato O’Ward | 22.9474 |
| 10 | Scott Dixon | 30.5093 |
| 11 | Rinus VeeKay | 31.7181 |
| 12 | Jack Harvey | 36.7526 |
| 13 | Max Chilton | 37.6521 |
| 14 | Santino Ferrucci | 46.5834 |
| 15 | Oliver Askew | 47.3665 |
| 16 | Conor Daly | 60.7058 |
| 17 | Zach Veach | 62.6716 |
| 18 | Takuma Sato | 65.2570 |
| 19 | Charlie Kimball | 66.2089 |
| 20 | Marco Andretti | 1 lap |
| 21 | Dalton Kellett | 4 laps |
| 22 | Felix Rosenqvist | 71 laps |
| 23 | Alex Palou | 73 laps |
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