Penske drivers downplay red flag opportunities

While the late-race red flag enabled Team Penske's Josef Newgarden and Will Power to close up on leader Graham Rahal for a sprint to the end of Race 2 of the Detroit Grand Prix, neither driver felt particularly optimistic about their chances even before Rahal broke clear to complete a rare sweep of an IndyCar doubleheader. Newgarden and Power settled for second and third, respectively.

Asked at the post-race media conference whether, during the 18 minutes he spent sitting behind Rahal under the red flag, he had thought to himself, 'I've got him right where I want him,' Newgarden replied: "Honestly, no.

"It was going to be difficult to do anything on that restart. Power had twice as much 'push to pass' than I did. He couldn't do much with me because with two laps to go, there's so much pickup on the tires, you're trying to hold onto the thing at that point.

"We stayed single file. Wasn't much to do. I was looking for a mistake. That's the one thing I was looking for – for him to mess up, I would capitalize. It just didn't present itself."

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Power agreed with his teammate, while also acknowledging he felt the need to take advantage of the opportunity for a strong finish.

"I was hoping the two guys in front would race pretty hard, giving me an opportunity. Also, you know, I wanted to keep my third. I needed good points," he said. "Really, I didn't get a good enough exit out of [Turn] 2 on the restart to have a go at Josef.

"Graham got a good start. I was kind of close to Josef, but he's a teammate so you don't want to take a risk. I needed to get some good points, in a good finish, so that's all I could do."

Power had been able to jump Takuma Sato for third on the final restart by the narrowest of margins, which he acknowledged was a satisfying moment.

"It was definitely important to get him, because we were quicker than he was. He seemed to be struggling a little bit," Power said of the Indy 500 winner, who'd started on the pole and led the early laps. "Yeah, that first pit stall [which Power had for this race] is great under yellow, not so good for out-laps because the other guy is already at 50 when they let off that button, so they get a good exit. That's the difference. But, yeah, it was good enough to get Sato."

Newgarden was philosophical after feeling for the second day running he had left something on the table.

"It was a good day. Similar to yesterday, I think we had a winning car," he said. "We started too far back. It really comes down to qualifying on the No. 2 car, which I attribute a lot to my own fault. I had a better lap this morning. I messed up on the final lap. We had some trouble getting up to speed before that with some other things going on.

"If we could have qualified in the top five, I think we would have had a better opportunity to maybe race Graham better. But we had a great car all weekend. The team did a great job. We really weren't missing anything at all from a strategy or pit stop standpoint at all or racecar. It was all there. We just started too far back. That's all we really needed to work on. I'm going to work on that personally next time."