Indycar at Road America was the Greatest Race I've ever watched

This Race seemingly had it all, strategy, multiple cautions to change things up, penalties, fights for positions up and down the order, and a shock winner.

First I want to talk about strategy, and how MSR threw away a potential 1-2 through poor strategy. As soon as Alex Palou came in they should have had Rosenqvist in a lap later, but they didn't, took the risk, and got caugh out by a caution from Romain Grosjean's tire coming undone and leaving him stranded out on track. They did play it right, however, with Marcus Armstrong, who was on the same strategy as Palou and inherited the race lead after Palou's speeding in the pitlane penalty.

Image Credits: Motorsport.com

Also on strategy, Kyffin Simpson, Alex Rossi, and Graham Rahal were all able to catapult up the order after the cautions , putting themselves into a situation where they would be able to fight for the podium with Will Power.

The multiple cautions really gave this race some extra spice, first coming from Romain Grosjean who had his rear left tire come flying off after an issue on his pitstop.

The second caution came from Christian Rasmussen's car coming to a halt on the start-finish straight due to a hybrid issue, surprise, surprise.

Image Credits: Motorsport.com

The issues with the hybrids have been very prevalent this season and if the regulations are going to be changed in 2028, the hybrid should be the first thing they look to amend, because the amount of issues we have right now is just unacceptable for a series as big as this one is. I am aware that Indycar has made adjustments to the hybrid system going forward to try to reduce these issues but as we saw in this race, there has been no real improvement and even the drivers have said that it feels the same and basically is the same.

Then once we got racing again, we had a lap that felt like an entire race with how much action was going on.

First, Marcus Ericsson decided it was a good idea to pick as many fights as he could nad ended up dropping a ton of places through the 2nd sector. Then Rosenqvist decided to pick a fight with Schumacher, ran wide at the carousel and lost a ton of places there with a preceding caution for debris.

Lundgaard seemingly came out of nowhere after a lap 1 incident with Scott Dixon Sent Lundgaard all the way to the back of the field and a lap down only to come back into contention with 15 to go after an incredible strategy call by the Arrow McLaren team and a thrilling battle with David Malukas for 2nd.

The most heartbreaking thing to happen all race was with 3 to go when Marcus Armstrong's engine blew and crushing his hopes at a first win when he had a very comfortable gap to Lundgaard behind. It seems Armstrong cannot catch a break this year, with the Indy500 going the way it did and now here a Road America, it's gutting to see someone with so much pace and so much promise get punished weekin and weekout for things out of his control.

Image Credits: frontstretch.com

So after his DNF we got a 1 lap shootout for seemingly everything possible out on the track.

Lundgaard pulled away from Malukas, Newgarden spun Siegel to end the Californian's incredible day running in the top 10 and looking for a promising result, and Power, Rahal, Simpson, and Palou duked it out for the last podium position like it was make for break for their careers, ending in Power and Rahal's collision at the end of the final straight, initially inheriting Simpson the podium, but since there was a caution thrown before Simpson overtook Power, Power took the podium.

Image Credits: frontstretch.com

I have a gripe with how this played out, because it seems that Indycar tried to manipoulate this result a bit. I say this because when Newgarden spun Siegel, no caution was thrown, granted Siegel got back starting again, but if there is no caution at that point in the lap to try and see if there is a battle for the lead and make things more exciting, then they shouldn't have thrown a caution for the Power-Rahal incident because it led to an exciting finish that was hampered by the caution call. And in the end, everyone avoided Rahal and would have if the caution wasn't thrown, and Simpson would have been on the podium.

Ultimately, this was the greatest race I've ever watched, and I was standing infront of my TV almost the entire time because of how nail biting everything was. There's no championship battle, but at least the on track action is first class.

Image Credits: Motorsport.com

Lundgaard is goated, pulling off a win from last on lap 1 is in fact goat activity, and I am so excited for the rest of this season.