O'Ward Charges From 16th To Take Win In Second Detroit Race

Calum Gill 20:16 13/06/2021

Arrow McLaren SP's Patricio O'Ward has taken his second win of the IndyCar season, with a brilliant drive from sixteenth on the grid.

After a disappointing run in qualifying, the Mexican had made good progress, and was lying in fifth at the time of the final restart, which came about due to Jimmie Johnson spinning and stalling at turn 1, and requiring to be fired up again by the trackside marshalls.

O’Ward had tremendous pace as the green flag dropped and cleared Graham Rahal and Álex Palou almost immediately, which allowed him to go after the leading pair of Newgarden and Colton Herta. O’Ward then picked off Herta a lap later, and immediately cut down the gap to Newgarden – chasing the Penske driver down to set up a final showdown.

With three laps remaining, Newgarden’s soft tyres began to lose performance and handed O’Ward an opportunity to dive past at Turn 7, which the 22-year-old took gladly and immediately scampered up the road to cement victory. O’Ward becomes the first repeat winner of the season in IndyCar, and moves ahead of Alex Palou in the drivers’ standings – albeit by a single point.

Newgarden held on to second, with Herta losing his spot on the podium thanks to a late lock-up, that allowed Alex Palou past into third. Graham Rahal was fifth, with Will Power reducing the hurt of losing an almost certain win yesterday by finishing sixth. Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon survived a first-lap scuffle with Alex Rossi and Romain Grosjean, in which he was tagged by both at the first corner, to finish seventh, as Simon Pagenaud grabbed eighth.

Race 1 winner Marcus Ericsson made use of an early pitstop to climb up to ninth, after running out of fuel in qualifying, as Santino Ferrucci recovered from a qualifying crash to complete the top 10 in one of Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s spare cars.

2021 Grand Prix of Detroit Race 2 Classification (USA unless stated)(70 Laps)

1st. Patricio O'Ward (MEX)

2nd. Josef Newgarden

3rd. Álex Palou (ESP)

4th. Colton Herta

5th. Graham Rahal

6th. Will Power (AUS)

7th. Scott Dixon (NZ)

8th. Simon Pagenaud (FRA)

9th. Marcus Ericsson (SWE)

10th. Santino Ferrucci

11th. Ryan Hunter-Reay

12th. Takuma Sato (JPN)

13th. Alexander Rossi

14th. James Hinchcliffe (CAN)

15th. Conor Daly

16th. Sebastian Bourdais (SUI)

17th. Ed Jones (UAE)

18th. Rinus VeeKay (NED)

19th. Jack Harvey (GBR)

20th. Scott McLaughlin (NZ)

21st. Jimmie Johnson

22nd. Max Chilton (GBR)

DNF: Dalton Kellett (CAN) (Lap 61)

DNF: Romain Grosjean (FRA) (Lap 57)

DNF: Oliver Askew (Lap 46)