2016 Firestone 600 Results: Rahal Wins In Texas

The Verizon IndyCar Series completed the 2016 Firestone 600 on Saturday night, with a half-race at Texas Motor Speedway providing a full dose of action.

Fans may have only seen part of the 2016 Firestone 600 on Saturday, but there was certainly more than enough to talk about as IndyCar completed the race that was originally begun back on June 11.

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It was Graham Rahal who walked away with the victory after getting a good break at the literally last opportunity, after the race seemed cut and dried.

Schmidt Peterson Motorsports’ James Hinchcliffe resumed the race at the front and dominated the majority of the event, at one point with a more than eight-second lead over second place. But late cautions undercut his advantage.

The trouble began on Lap 213 of 248 as Scott Dixon, one lap down, tried to get around Ed Carpenter in hopes of reaching the front of the pack. Dixon and Carpenter made contact that sent Dixon spinning off track.

Ten laps later it was Carpenter going for a ride. Then nine laps after that, Mikhail Aleshin lost control of his No. 7 SMP Honda and collected Jack Hawksworth, who had nowhere to go but head-on into the side of Aleshin.

“This just wasn’t our year,” Carpenter said afterward. “Not sure exactly what happened. I know Scott [Dixon] was a little upset, but I thought I’d given him room…I’m pretty sure we cut a tire and that’s what led to the next accident.”

On the final restart, only four cars were on the lead lap – Hinchcliffe, Rahal, Tony Kanaan and Simon Pagenaud – and they battled consistently through the last handful of laps, sometimes going three and four cars wide.

Hinchcliffe found himself getting edged on the last lap by Rahal, who claimed his first win of 2016 by a razor-thin margin of 0.008 seconds. That was the closest margin of victory in IndyCar history since the 2009 race at Chicagoland.

Kanaan completed the podium and also moved up to third in the IndyCar title chase, while Pagenaud’s fourth-place finish increased his championship points lead over Will Power by eight points to a 28-point advantage.

But all the talk afterward was about how Rahal had managed to sneak past Hinchcliffe to steal what had been a seemingly certain victory.

“There’s no describing it,” a dejected Hinchcliffe lamented once the results were official. “Those yellows at the end just killed us…We led them all except the one that mattered.”

Rahal was gracious in earning his fourth career win and third in the last two seasons: “He deserved to win this thing. He led it start to finish,” he said of Hinchcliffe. “You’ve just got to lead that last lap.”

Below are the race results from the 2016 Firestone 600, with each driver’s starting position in parentheses, as well as manufacturer, laps completed and reason out of the race (if applicable):

1. (13) Graham Rahal, Honda, 248, Running
2. (10) James Hinchcliffe, Honda, 248, Running
3. (8) Tony Kanaan, Chevrolet, 248, Running
4. (6) Simon Pagenaud, Chevrolet, 248, Running
5. (3) Helio Castroneves, Chevrolet, 248, Running
6. (15) Charlie Kimball, Chevrolet, 247, Running
7. (1) Carlos Munoz, Honda, 247, Running
8. (7) Will Power, Chevrolet, 247, Running
9. (17) Juan Pablo Montoya, Chevrolet, 246, Running
10. (18) Sebastien Bourdais, Chevrolet, 246, Running
11. (9) Alexander Rossi, Honda, 246, Running
12. (12) Marco Andretti, Honda, 245, Running
13. (11) Ryan Hunter-Reay, Honda, 245, Running
14. (22) Gabby Chaves, Honda, 245, Running
15. (19) Max Chilton, Chevrolet, 243, Running
16. (16) Mikhail Aleshin, Honda, 231, Contact
17. (20) Jack Hawksworth, Honda, 227, Contact
18. (14) Ed Carpenter, Chevrolet, 223, Contact
19. (2) Scott Dixon, Chevrolet, 211, Contact
20. (4) Takuma Sato, Honda, 160, Mechanical
21. (21) Conor Daly, Honda, 42, Contact
22. (5) Josef Newgarden, Chevrolet, 41, Contact