Texas IndyCar: Carpenter wins, Power denies Montoya second

Power had been in command for virtually the entire race on Saturday evening, but Carpenter's car had been steadily improving throughout the night and the owner-driver had caught the Australian with 60 laps to go.

A small bobble from Power was enough to allow Carpenter past, and quicker progress through lapped traffic allowed him to pull out a lead when the pair entered the pits for their final stop.

Quick service allowed Power to cut that gap in half as they rejoined the race, however in the process he was caught speeding in pitlane and forced to serve a drive-through.

His one saving grace was that so few cars were left on the lead lap that he was able to rejoin sixth, but after such dominant pace, it seemed like an opportunity wasted.

At that point, the top order was Carpenter leading by nearly 17 seconds from Montoya, Tony Kanaan, Scott Dixon, Simon Pagenaud and Power, and with only a handful of laps remaining, opportunities for any major changes seemed limited. And that was when Takuma Sato's car caught fire and brought out the yellows.

Mindful of how hard Texas is on tyres over a full stint, both Pagenaud and Power opted to make an additional stop, giving themselves the opportunity to rejoin without losing a position, and take the restart with new rubber.

It worked. Pagenaud was momentarily baulked by the Ganassi drivers running two-wide but managed to pass both for fourth; Power did even better by outdragging Montoya out of the final corner for second.

"I screwed it up and got another drive-through," Power said. "[Making that extra stop] was a great call. I just wanted to get back to second, and that was a great last lap."

Montoya was slightly disappointed not to have also stopped during the final caution ("They told me to do what the leaders does... so I did what the leaders did"), and even more disappointed by what he thought was an illegal restart by Carpenter at the end.

But given that he had needed to make a stop for a puncture on the second lap, he was pleased to recover to the podium.

"Overall our car was amazing today," he said. "We had a flat tyre and drive through the whole field, and that was fun. We're getting there."

For a race historically prone to cautions, Saturday's outing was relatively clean.

Marco Andretti and Sato both triggered brief yellows when their engines exploded, with the other coming when Justin Wilson and Sebastien Bourdais collided at Turn 4 midway through the race in the only accident of the evening.

Several drivers managed to earn themselves post-race penalties for their conduct on the final restart.

Ryan Briscoe, Charlie Kimball, Josef Newgarden and Sebastian Saavedra were seventh, eighth, 11th and 14th respectively across the line, but failed to observe the rule requiring lapped cars to fall to the rear when there is a restart with less than 15 laps remaining.

All were issued drive-throughs, but Saavedra and Kimball both received service whilst in the process of serving theirs, while Briscoe and Newgarden did not observe their drive-throughs at all.

The consequent 30s post-race penalties promoted rookie Mikhail Aleshin to seventh in just his second oval race.

Results - 248 laps:

Pos  Driver              Team/Engine           Time/Gap
 1.  Ed Carpenter        Carpenter/Chevy  2h01m25.5758s
 2.  Will Power          Penske/Chevy          +0.5247s
 3.  Juan Pablo Montoya  Penske/Chevy          +0.5771s
 4.  Simon Pagenaud      Schmidt/Honda         +1.1514s
 5.  Scott Dixon         Ganassi/Chevy         +2.1510s
 6.  Tony Kanaan         Ganassi/Chevy         +2.4464s
 7.  Mikhail Aleshin     Schmidt/Honda           -1 lap
 8.  Helio Castroneves   Penske/Chevy            -1 lap
 9.  Ryan Briscoe        Ganassi/Chevy           -1 lap
10.  Charlie Kimball     Ganassi/Chevy           -1 lap
11.  Josef Newgarden     Fisher/Honda            -1 lap
12.  Graham Rahal        Rahal/Honda            -2 laps
13.  Carlos Munoz        Andretti/Honda         -3 laps
14.  James Hinchcliffe   Andretti/Honda         -4 laps
15.  Jack Hawksworth     Herta/Honda            -4 laps
16.  Carlos Huertas      Coyne/Honda            -4 laps
17.  Sebastian Saavedra  KV/Chevy               -4 laps

Retirements:

     Takuma Sato         Foyt/Honda            238 laps
     Ryan Hunter-Reay    Andretti/Honda        136 laps
     Sebastien Bourdais  KV/Chevy              118 laps
     Justin Wilson       Coyne/Honda           118 laps
     Marco Andretti      Andretti/Honda          3 laps

All drivers use Dallara chassis