In RACER Magazine: Man of the Century

The 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 was widely forecast to be one for the ages. It delivered – but that was about the only pre-race prediction that anyone got right.

Alexander Rossi’s Month of May began with sports books touting his odds at 75/1, and ended with a sandwich at Jimmy John’s. In between, he won the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500. And he did so in a way that proved that even after 99 previous contests, the Speedway has not lost its ability to surprise.

A trouble-free run over the opening couple of stints was thrown sharply out of orbit by pair of slow pit stops, both the result of a stuck fuel probe. Combined, they cost him 25 places. But those setbacks also forced Bryan Herta, who was calling Rossi’s race from the pitwall, to put his charge onto a seemingly impossible fuel strategy; one that would require him to go 10 miles further than his rivals on the same fuel load.

What happened next will become part of Indy 500 folklore, be it for the early 1970s throwback pace of Rossi’s final lap as he willed his completely dry car to roll across the finish line, or for the radio transmissions that accompanied his final laps. The phrase “clutch and coast” entered the IndyCar vernacular, and a guy who rarely featured in any of the pre-race conversations joined the milk shower honor roll.

“Whether I was going 170 miles an hour or 230 miles an hour, that was always going to be the longest stretch of Turn 4 to the start/finish line that I had ever experienced,” says Rossi.

“I drove it down to the wall so I could cover the least amount of distance possible, and I had the clutch in and was looking at the yard of bricks, then my right mirror, then bricks, mirror, bricks, mirror… just praying that a car didn’t go by me at 230mph. I was almost pulling myself up with the steering wheel, trying to look at the nose of the car to see when it would actually hit the line.”

Even at 230mph, 500 miles is a journey, and this one took Rossi to a number of places that he’d never been. While the 24-year-old had previously dealt with the same catalog of mid-race setbacks that every driver encounters, he admits that being dropped to near the back of the field twice in consecutive pit stops was a greater mental challenge than anything he’d faced in a racecar before.

And then there was that fuel strategy, a term which, used in isolation, does the feat performed by the No. 98 team a disservice, as if the victory was simply a matter of catching a lucky yellow. Yes, a caution period certainly provided a springboard, but there was way more to it than just that. Needing to find a way to regain track position after the twin pit stop disasters, Herta instructed Rossi to stay out when the bulk of the field pitted under yellows on lap 115. At that point the team had already committed to trying to finish with just two more stops, which meant Rossi was driving with one eye on his fuel numbers for almost half the race.

Central to making this work was finding opportunities to save fuel by catching tows from others, and in this he was lucky to have a number of willing dance partners within Andretti’s multi-car fleet. However, catching tows wasn’t enough in itself. Getting Rossi over the line with what the team had repeatedly calculated would be an insufficient fuel load was also the product of a masterclass in improvisation.

Herta had already instructed Rossi to be as miserly as possible in his use of the throttle, but when leaning the fuel mixture out as far as it would go would still leave them short, he took the unprecedented step of switching Rossi’s engine map to the fuel-sipping mode usually reserved for running at a reduced pace under yellows. The kicker is, right up until the last two laps, Rossi was juggling all of this while still maintaining a front-running pace.

“I came on the radio and said, ‘You want me to do what?’” Rossi recalls. “I didn’t really understand it. But you have to go with what these guys tell you."

Get the complete version of this story in the Legendary Races Issue of RACER, on sale now. Click here to take a video tour of the issue.

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