2016 Honda Indy 200 Race Results: Pagenaud Steals No. 4

Simon Pagenaud was back in Victory Lane after the 2016 Honda Indy 200, but only through hard driving and a stroke of bad luck for Mikhail Aleshin.

Victory No. 4 of the 2016 Verizon IndyCar Series season happened for Simon Pagenaud at the Honda Indy 200, but it wasn’t easy.

The No. 22 Team Penske driver battled a pre-existing back injury and his teammate Will Power to claw out the win at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course on Sunday.

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Pagenaud earned the victory by making a tough pass on second-place Power – so tough that the two repeatedly made contact in the going – before simply waiting for then-leader Conor Daly to make his final pit stop. Still, he had to be physically helped out of his car at the end of the race.

“I can’t feel anything right now so it’s all good,” Pagenaud quipped through a league statement, thanking the IndyCar medical staff. “It was an awesome battle with Will there. I knew that was my chance on that restart, it was time to go.

“It was a pretty interesting lap, fun driving like that. That’s racing. It was fair, it was clean, it was hard racing and I’m just glad I won, really.”

Even with everything Pagenaud went through, the 2016 Honda Indy 200 should have belonged to Mikhail Aleshin if not for a terrible call from the Schmidt Peterson Motorsports driver’s team.

Aleshin – who is in a contract year with SMP – had a lead of some ten seconds over Pagenaud and Power on the final round of pit stops, but was released from his box too early and collided with the incoming car of Josef Newgarden.

A crew member for Juan Pablo Montoya‘s team, Vance Welker, was also hit by Aleshin’s car in the tangle but was okay.

“I think the incident was unfortunate. I don’t want to discuss it though,” Aleshin said after the race. “I want to just say that sometimes these things happen in the race. We’re ready to win but we just got a little bit unlucky today.”

Pagenaud and Power were the only two championship contenders not to have problems in the Honda Indy 200. Helio Castroneves collided with Scott Dixon, effectively finishing Dixon’s race for him, before going off track himself.

Dixon returned to the track simply to finish out the last few miles left on his engine, and his last place finish puts his hopes of a repeat championship even further in doubt.

“Helio was coming out of the pits on the pit exchange and we were trying to go off sequence,” Dixon explained. “He was off pace and we caught him on the exit of Turn 1. I got alongside him and he kept edging me over until I just had nowhere to go.

“I braked when I was alongside him and then he just turned in. Had we had a little more room I think we could have gotten through there just fine.

“It was definitely an aggressive move but I should have known better trying that with Helio,” he lamented. “It usually ends like this with him.”

Castroneves said he was in the dark about the incident.

“I don’t understand yet what happened with the No. 9 in Turn 2. Obviously, I went to move to the inside,” he told IndyCar after the race. “He was on the push-to-pass. I was on the push-to-pass. Unfortunately, I felt a big hit on the back. I didn’t move anything.

“It is a shame. Not sure what happened. I have to ask him what happened.”

Another driver in a contract year, Indianapolis 500 runner-up Carlos Munoz, completed the Honda Indy 200 podium in a big plus for Andretti Autosport.

Defending race winner Graham Rahal was fourth, followed by James Hinchcliffe, who rebounded for a Top 5 after being sent to the rear for a pit speed penalty.

Below are the complete race results for the 2016 Honda Indy 200:

1. (1) Simon Pagenaud, Chevrolet, 90, Running
2. (2) Will Power, Chevrolet, 90, Running
3. (15) Carlos Munoz, Honda, 90, Running
4. (6) Graham Rahal, Honda, 90, Running
5. (9) James Hinchcliffe, Honda, 90, Running
6. (22) Conor Daly, Honda, 90, Running
7. (19) Spencer Pigot, Chevrolet, 90, Running
8. (5) Charlie Kimball, Chevrolet, 90, Running
9. (20) Takuma Sato, Honda, 90, Running
10. (3) Josef Newgarden, Chevrolet, 90, Running
11. (8) Juan Pablo Montoya, Chevrolet, 90, Running
12. (14) Tony Kanaan, Chevrolet, 90, Running
13. (21) Marco Andretti, Honda, 90, Running
14. (12) Alexander Rossi, Honda, 90, Running
15. (7) Helio Castroneves, Chevrolet, 90, Running
16. (13) Max Chilton, Chevrolet, 90, Running
17. (10) Mikhail Aleshin, Honda, 90, Running
18. (4) Ryan Hunter-Reay, Honda, 90, Running
19. (18) RC Enerson, Honda, 89, Running
20. (16) Sebastien Bourdais, Chevrolet, 86, Off Course
21. (17) Jack Hawksworth, Honda, 60, Contact
22. (11) Scott Dixon, Chevrolet, 27, Mechanical