1. For the first half of this race, Colton Herta was hanging with Power and Rossi and it seemed like he could pull off his first career victory in his third career start. He faded in the third stint on primary tires but Herta made it to the pit lane before Felix Rosenqvist had an accident after contact with James Hinchcliffe exiting turn 19 while Will Power and Alexander Rossi didn't. Herta inherited the lead and it was over from there.
Herta had the third best car today and with Power and Rossi both caught off it is fitting Herta ran away with this one. Power and Rossi pulled away from Herta but Herta hung with them long enough that he had miles of space behind him and no one was pressuring him. He is now the youngest winner in IndyCar history. It has been composed and outside a last second debut at Sonoma Herta has never seemed out of his element in IndyCar, granted he has only done three races.
We need to be calm. He won his third career start but that doesn't mean he will be Scott Dixon. He turned 19 years old in six days. Herta still needs time and patience. He will continue to develop and mature. Today was just one great day for a teenager.
2. Josef Newgarden used tire strategy on the first stint to make up a handful of positions and it appears he would be doing the reverse of St. Petersburg. Instead of clawing the gap before making a pit stop, Newgarden was making up time after a pit stop. Unfortunately, he didn't have to legs to break into the fight for the lead but he got a break and went from fourth to second.
3. Ryan Hunter-Reay did well today but did not have the pace of his teammate Rossi and pseudo-teammate Herta. This is the kind of day he needed after St. Petersburg. After losing an engine in the first 20 laps it is good to have a podium finish come when it appeared he was going to be fourth or fifth. He had to pick up some points and some ground on his competition and he did just that.
4. Graham Rahal did not have an outstanding day but he was able to run longer on stints than most. That extended tire life worked out and he was able to make moves through the field despite time lost at the end of a stint. The caution helped him out but this was going to be a top ten result that turned into a top five.
5. This was a tough weekend for Sébastien Bourdais and it did not seem like he was going to break the top ten. He really wasn't making moves in the early part of the race but it seemed to come to him as the race went along. He again made a timely restart and what may have at best been ninth or tenth turned into a top five. Like Hunter-Reay, he needed this result.
6. Marco Andretti was making some moves but he didn't really have what it was going to take to race into the top ten, similar to Bourdais, but he got a sixth place finish out of it.
7. Takuma Sato was not in the top ten for most of this until the caution. It was not an impressive day but you take what you can get and he got seventh.
8. Patricio O'Ward did it again. Sure, he wasn't the best finishing rookie but he had zero seat time in this Carlin entry and zero seat time at Circuit of the Americas in an IndyCar and he was in the top ten for most of this race, running with the big boys. His pit stops let him down a bit and he faded on the final stint after the restart but eighth is a great day for him.
9. This was the second time in four races Alexander Rossi had a podium finish snatched from him because of a caution. Rossi probably would have won at Portland had it not been for a caution. He set himself up to fight for a victory today and it was taken from him again. Rossi deserves better than ninth. It is unfortunate the results are not coming for him but he is always at the front and with his pace the results will come to him.
10. Jack Harvey was at the back for most of this one but he made his pit stop at the right time and he got another top ten finish out of it. This was a nice turn around after he caused a red flag in qualifying.
11. Spencer Pigot and Tony Kanaan were 11th and 12th. That is it.
12. This was not Scott Dixon's greatest day but he fought through it and this was turning into a beautiful result. At the start, it seemed like Dixon was going to fall back, he was going to be lucky to get a top ten out of it but he is brilliant. He figured it out as the race went on and with plenty of young drivers around him; he picked them off as he dealt with degrading tires. It looked like he was going to get a top five out of it Unfortunately, like Rossi, Power was caught out by his teammates spin and he only has 13th to show for it.
13. If being caught out as the leader wasn't bad enough for Will Power, having a driveshaft break while making the final pit stop was salt in the wound. Power was set to be racing for a $100,000 bonus for the final 20 laps and instead he sat in pit lane, without an answer and all that cash and a truckload of points vanishing. It is another race with a mechanical component breaking on Power while he had a fast race car. He can't have it happen again but most seasons it appears to happen to him two or three times.
14. Quickly through the rest of the field: Ed Jones did well with a broken wrist. Marcus Ericsson would have been in the top ten and maybe gotten into the top five if it were not for an unsafe release into the path of Pigot on his final pit stop. Other than that, it was a great day for him.
James Hinchcliffe got into Rosenqvist and in turn it cut down his right front. Both could have finished in the top ten. Rosenqvist struggled as the tires went away and he will learn from this day.
Matheus Leist was doing well until the final caution shuffled him back. Kyle Kaiser finished on the lead lap. Simon Pagenaud tried to go off strategy but it didn't make a big gain for him. Then he had contact with Rossi in the final lap and it forced him to make another stop. It was not a great weekend for him.
I don't know what happened to either Santino Ferrucci or Max Chilton. Ferrucci could have finished in the top ten and Chilton lost a lap early. This was a promising weekend for Chilton.
Zach Veach spun on lap one and never made up the ground. To add insult to injury, he had contact with Dixon while a lap down and that damaged his front wing.
15. Track limits! I wish there was more grass around Circuit of the Americas and that would have prevented this conversation for the entire weekend but with FIA standards and this being a T1 circuit that hosts Formula One, it can't be that way. I think it looks ridiculous watching cars run 50-feet off track but IndyCar didn't want the headache of enforcing this and so be it. My worst fear occurred with the Hinchcliffe-Rosenqvist accident. Does IndyCar do something to make sure it doesn't happen again and try to prevent a driver or two from getting hurt?
16. I was critical of Circuit of the Americas for its ticket pricing and I stand by that but the track promoted this race and it stepped up for the inaugural race. It is hard to gauge a crowd at a facility this larger but if the track is happy then the track is happy. This was year one and it will learn. It needs a chance to grow and hopefully we see more people coming in 2020.
17. There is still part of me that wishes this race was Saturday afternoon after Formula One qualifying during the United States Grand Prix weekend because it would be in front of at least 70,000 people and in front of about 20 times the international media. It is a different race and I think it would catch the eye of people. If anything, IndyCar should run an exhibition race this year during the United States Grand Prix weekend to show the series to a group of people who otherwise would not consider it. There was plenty of jockeying for position. A 40-lap sprint race with 16 cars in November could bring more people back to the track in March 2020.
18. IndyCar didn't make Austin put a $100,000 bonus on the table if the pole-sitter won the race. The track choose to do that and I think that was a great decision. IndyCar needs these little things every now and then. It adds another element to the races and I wish more would do it. Austin has set the bar. It put an extra $100,000 toward an IndyCar race. What do other events do? What does Texas Motor Speedway do? Eddie Gossage has to be looking south. He is about to lose at his own game in what was formerly his backyard.
19. We end March and April will see IndyCar return to Barber, from one beautiful road course to another.
