Indy 500: The one positive takeaway for Alexander Rossi

By Asher Fair | Aug 29, 2020

Alexander Rossi, Andretti Autosport, IndyCar, Indy 500 (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images) /

Alexander Rossi’s chances to win a second Indy 500 were derailed when he was controversially penalized due to a pit lane incident, and his race ended in a crash shortly thereafter. But there was one positive takeaway for the 2016 race winner.

Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon took the lead of the 104th running of the Indy 500 from Andretti Herta Autosport’s Marco Andretti heading into the first turn on the first lap, and he was the clear driver to beat from that point forward.

But once the halfway point of the 200-lap race around the four-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval in Speedway, Indiana rolled around, he had company.

At one point, Dixon swapped the lead with Andretti Autosport’s Alexander Rossi eight laps in a row. Following a restart, the lead changed hands 11 times over the course of 23 laps leading up the next caution flag period, although not all 11 passes were counted as official lead changes since the leader at the start/finish line didn’t change each time due to where the passes occurred.

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The field made their way into the pits after Dale Coyne Racing with Team Goh rookie Alex Palou crashed on lap 122. That’s when Rossi’s chance to win the race flew out the window.

Upon release from its pit stall, Rossi’s #27 Honda made contact with the #30 Honda of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Takuma Sato, which was partially in both lanes due to the fact that the #5 Chevrolet of Arrow McLaren SP rookie Pato O’Ward was in the outside lane and Sato had to take action to avoid making contact with it.

No significant damage was done to either car; after all, Sato went on to win the race, becoming the 20th driver to win it twice.

But the stewards deemed that the release of the #27 Honda was an unsafe release, and they penalized Rossi by making him go to the rear of the field for the ensuing restart.

In a car not set up to run well in traffic, despite the fact that he had just made an impressive pass around four cars at once on the outside going into turn three, Rossi crashed on lap 144.

The 2016 winner, whose average finish at Indianapolis was 3.50 in four starts without a single result outside of the top seven, was into the wall in turn two with a result that matched his car number.

The penalty which put him in that situation — and the fact that he was the only driver to challenge Dixon up to that point — made this result even more bitter for Rossi, who has had a disaster of a 2020 season following two top three finishes in the championship standings in 2018 and 2019.

Three races into the season, he sat in 21st (last) place in the standings among the full-time drivers. He currently sits in 14th with seven races in the books and is nowhere near being a championship contender.

But there was one positive takeaway for Rossi from this past Sunday, August 23 that can’t be ignored.

For the first time in 14 races — and 14 months — he actually led laps.

It had been since Sunday, June 23, 2019 since Rossi last led a lap, with that most recent lap led coming in a dominant effort at Road America that netted him his second and final win of the 2019 season — his most recent victory to date.

Despite not leading any laps in the final seven races of the year, he still challenged Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden for the title, but he simply didn’t have what it took to run at the front.

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Before his fateful pit stop, Rossi had led 17 laps around the Brickyard after starting in ninth place, nearly matching his career-best of 23 laps led at the track from back in 2017.

Can he build on this success moving forward?