Last year’s finish to the IndyCar race at Texas was one of the closest and most thrilling you can imagine. This year the event didn’t quite go down to the wire in the same way, but it was still incredibly exciting.
The high banking and high speeds at Texas Motor Speedway mean that the cars spend most of the race together in one big pack. Unsurprisingly that leads to the odd massive accident, or in Nascar terms, ‘the big one’.
The inevitable huge crash happened on lap 154 when Tony Kanaan, James Hinchcliffe and Mikhail Aleshin got together.
The slight contact quickly turned into an eight-car pile-up and brought out the red flag, although thankfully none of the drivers were injured. Tony Kanaan was deemed at fault for the incident and given a 20-second stop-and-hold penalty.
After the race restarted the traditional Texas pack racing continued, and as the laps clicked down drivers started to really go for it.
The battle for the lead in the closing laps was starting to look very juicy and it was looking set for a repeat of the 2016 race. However Indy 500 winner Takuma Sato then went full-Sato by clipping the grass and spearing into Scott Dixon with just a few laps to go. You can’t lunge on an oval, Takuma!
Unfortunately the race finished under yellow, with Will Power winning having led for most of the race. Kanaan recovered to finish second whilst Simon Pagenaud took third in an attritional race which saw only nine cars still going at the end.
That’s classic Texas though, and that’s why it’s often one of the most exciting races on the IndyCar calendar.
