Strange IndyCar decision from five months ago could haunt Will Power

After a rollercoaster of a Sunday afternoon at the Milwaukee Mile, during which the driver running through the paddock with his gear 15 laps into the race ended up making up 36 points on his championship rival simply by getting back into the race, that driver, Chip Ganassi Racing's Alex Palou, finds himself 33 points ahead of his rival, Team Penske's Will Power.

Power entered the race 43 points behind Palou and was tracking three points ahead while leading the race following the electrical issues in Palou's No. 10 Honda before the race started.

But a slow pit stop, a bad restart, and then a spin on the ensuing restart knocked Power off the lead lap, and he could only recover for a 10th place finish.

Meanwhile, Palou was seemingly out of the race in 27th (last) place, but his No. 10 Honda was able to get back on track, and because of attrition, he was officially scored in 19th, 29 laps off the lead lap. As a result, he turned a 46-point swing into only a 10-point swing in Power's favor.

Had Power not been able to save the spin as well as he did and made harder contact with the wall, Palou could very well be staring at a second consecutive IndyCar championship clinched before the season finale, something that hadn't happened since 2007 before he pulled it off last year.

But in terms of points scored on the race track itself, Palou's 33-point lead could really be a 23-point lead.

Back in the March season opener on the streets of St. Petersburg, Power finished in fourth place and Palou finished in sixth. But six and a half weeks later, race winner Josef Newgarden and third place finisher Scott McLaughlin were disqualified for using the push-to-pass button when they were not allowed to do so on restarts.

Power was promoted to second place, which netted him eight points (40 points instead of 32), and Palou was promoted to fourth, netting him four points (32 instead of 28).

But despite the fact that he didn't, for lack of a better word, cheat, Power was still docked 10 points and ended up only taking 30 points away from the season-opening weekend instead of 40.

The push-to-pass system was inactive for all other teams on restarts, but it was discovered the following points race (six weeks later) in Long Beach, thanks to a fluke system outage, that it remained active for Team Penske. Although only Newgarden and McLaughlin used it, Power and the No. 12 team still incurred a penalty for that reason.

It may seem odd (at least on the surface), but penalizing Power when he didn't cheat actually did make some sense, in that IndyCar didn't want one Team Penske driver to effectively win a championship because of the team's own cheating scandal.

As it turns out, that decision could prove impactful.

In this particular case, Power gained eight points while Palou gained four, a net gain of four points in Power's favor thanks to the actions of his teammates. IndyCar presumably didn't want that to be the difference in the championship, irrespective of who ended up being in the title fight.

But instead of simply keeping Power's point total at 32, he ended up with a net loss of two points and only scored 30 with a 10-point reduction from 40. So Palou ended up with a net gain of six points over Power due to the scandal.

That 10-point penalty could very well play a role in determining whether it's the 43-year-old Australian or the 27-year-old Spaniard who becomes IndyCar's first three-time champion since Scott Dixon, now a six-time champion, in 2013.

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