Scott Dixon won IndyCar’s first Watkins Glen race since 2010, as a crash for Will Power that swung the championship momentum back in favour of Simon Pagenaud.
Having topped all three practice sessions and qualified on pole, Chip Ganassi Racing’s current champion Dixon stormed away to a seemingly untroubled win.
He had managed each of the first two pit phases well, before a crash between Power and Charlie Kimball on lap 39 of 60 prompted the final flurry of stops under yellow flags.
Carlos Munoz, Takuma Sato and Marco Andretti opted to stay out, but Dixon was able to ease his Dallara-Chevrolet past all three within a lap and a half of the restart, having also caught Helio Castroneves – who had jumped Dixon in the pits – napping at the green.
Castroneves had been holding his own and running in the podium positions for the final stint. Fuel was tight though, and he was forced to pit two laps from home, but James Hinchcliffe and Conor Daly ahead running out of fuel meant he ultimately finished third behind Josef Newgarden.
It was Power’s crash that stole the headlines, and helped Pagenaud put one hand on the title heading into the double-points Sonoma finale.
Power had been running in second ahead of Pagenaud in the first phase, but both were caught out when the race’s first caution for Mikhail Aleshin’s tyre blowout put Power in 14th and Pagenaud in 13th, as they had not already stopped before the yellow.
From there, Power went aggressive on strategy to go on the unfavoured red tyres for the second stop but couldn’t get past traffic.
Pagenaud meanwhile stayed out five additional laps and went on blacks, handing him fifth after the second pit phase.
Then with 21 laps to go, an ambitious move from Kimball on Power meant the pair touched and Power spun out of the race.
Pagenaud could only manage seventh, but crucially scored plenty of points.
Graham Rahal had a big hit a third of the way in while dicing with Kimball, a brief touch being the catalyst for plunging the Texas race winner into the tyres out of Turn 1.
