As guessed based off of qualifying the drop of the green flag was filled with excitement till the very end of the race. The start had many of the guys pushing to move forward in the field and some three wide racing going into turn after turn. One thing that can be said about Ohio is that it was far from boring. First off, you had defending race winner Scott Dixon in the back of the field after the miscommunication during qualifying trying to race his way up to a victory. Everything seemed to be going Scott Dixon's way till him and Helio got together and battled for the same spot. Both drivers got on the push to pass button and ended up rubbing to the point that Dixon was knocked off the corner and into the grass with a broken suspension and brought out the first caution of the day.
In typically fashion they handed that off to the new steward system to review it and make a call on it and no call was called for either driver leaving fans in awe over it. I leave that to the big wigs who get paid more than I do to call things based on how the rules are. In the end, both Dixon and Castroneves ended up in the back fighting. Dixon came back out just to retire again due to the engine having problems.
The most shocking thing was that the caution helped a few guys out and got Marco Andretti up to second place for quite a few laps before ultimately having to pit and returning to the back of the field where he is known to end up being. Again, having the Andretti name doesn't mean you can race, just opens the door for you. In all fairness, I hope his luck does turn around and he can be one of the top guys in racing.
A few more cautions flew for on track accidents and cars just getting off the track and finding the wall or the tires. The second most interesting accident was on pit road that involved the mad Russian and left his hand a little sore. He may want to go ask Newgarden for the magic medication he has been taking for that broken right hand that gets more air time then how well he drives and his ability to pull off wins. Just food for thought there.
It also wouldn't be a race without someone being Sato'd and just when we think Sato isn't going to be involved in any racing accidents, he proves us wrong again and gets involved with Sebastian Bourdais sending Seabass into the sand trap which twitter has now dubbed him Sandbass. This comes with five laps to go and for the first time indycar made a good call and did a local yellow in that area and kept the cars racing. At this point Simon Pagenaud had a five second lead on Power after an amazing pass on a restart that had the two Penske teammates bumping and rubbing for the stop but Pagenaud had the better of Power and just ran away with the race from their out. At one point it looked like Daly would pull off a win, but fuel was not in his favor. Maybe he should go ask Alexander Rossi how to save fuel to pull out upsetting wins. In the end, Simon won his 4th race this year and extended his points lead on Power. Power is only 58 points behind Pagenaud so this championship is still anyone's.
