2018 Indy 500 countdown: 2 years ago – 2016 Indianapolis 500

With just two days to go until the 2018 Indianapolis 500, let’s take a look back at the 2016 Indy 500, which took place two years ago.

After it had not happened since 2005, the winners of the last four Indy 500 races coming into the 100th running of the Indy 500 in 2016 had won IndyCar‘s most famous race after starting in 11th place or lower.

Alexander Rossi pulled it off after starting in 11th place in the 2016 Indy 500, thus becoming the fifth straight driver to win the race after starting in 11th or lower. He pulled it off with a sizable gap of 4.4975 seconds back to Carlos Munoz in second, but that gap was shrinking extremely quickly, as Rossi barely had enough fuel to make it to the finish line.

Here is a video of that remarkable finish.

Rossi led just 14 of the race’s 200 laps around the four-turn, 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana, but he led the most important lap, the lap that delivered him an Indy 500 victory in just his first career attempt in the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing”.

Aside of Rossi, 12 other drivers led at least one lap of the race. Among those drivers was Ryan Hunter-Reay, who led a field-high 52 laps before he was involved in an accident on pit road toward the middle of the race that caused him to finish the race several laps down despite the fact that he was still able to continue after the accident.

In fact, Hunter-Reay helped give Rossi, his teammate, a tow toward the end of the race to help him save fuel so that he could make it to the end of the race as the race winner.