LEXINGTON, Ohio — In the greatest victory of his life two years ago, Alexander Rossi thought his race strategist was kidding. Rossi had to be convinced he could get the necessary fuel mileage to win the Indianapolis 500.
On Sunday, Rossi showed just how far he’s come. He was the only driver to make two pit stops and conserve enough fuel to win the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio.
Perhaps the best part about his fourth career Verizon IndyCar Series win is the fact that Rossi was the one who had to do the convincing to sell his Andretti Autosport team that he could get the mileage out of the No. 27 NAPA AUTO PARTS Honda.
“There was a lot of discussions (Saturday) night about it, a lot of discussions,” said Rob Edwards, Andretti Autosport’s chief operating officer and Rossi’s race strategist. “He had to convince us. He thought he could do it.”
As the 90-lap race unfolded on the 13-turn, 2.258-mile permanent road course, Rossi and his crew committed early to the strategy and kept hitting the fuel numbers. The pole sitter widened his lead to as much as 25 seconds and stayed off his push-to-pass button to conserve fuel — Rossi still had 126 of 200 seconds of the overtake assistance left at race’s end. He finished 12.8285 seconds ahead of Schmidt Peterson Motorsports’ Robert Wickens.
“He just convinced us,” said engineer Jeremy Milless. “We were leading and, of course, we’re going to try and see if we can do a two-stop strategy because we’re leading. We started hitting the fuel number and nobody else was, so we went with it. I bet we were one of the only cars to try it in practice.”
Rossi credited Edwards for calmly talking him through the strategy.
“It was a little bit up to me to see if we could manage it,” Rossi said. “When we were able to hit it pretty easily, then, yeah, we committed.”
The big picture factored into the equation, too. Everybody is chasing points leader Scott Dixon of Chip Ganassi Racing. He began the day five races away from a fifth series championship with a comfortable 62-point lead on Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden. And Dixon is a Mid-Ohio force with five wins.
By day’s end, Rossi moved past Newgarden into second with 448 points, 46 behind Dixon.
“If we’re going to beat Mr. Dixon, we’ve got to do something special,” Edwards said. “Today was the day to do something special.”
And he repeated that superlative when asked what it says about Rossi that the 26-year-old Californian has learned so much so quickly and ascended into the ranks of the series elite in just his third season.
“He’s special,” Edwards said.
The triumph was particularly meaningful for Milless, who is from Lithopolis, Ohio, a southeast suburb of Columbus.
“It’s my home track,” Milless said. “I’ve never won here before.”
Milless correctly surmised that Dixon, one of the best at squeezing the most out of a full tank, probably could have made it a two-stop race, too. But Dixon was stuck in a pack behind Wickens, Will Power and Newgarden.
“Just where he was, he chose to come in and try to get track position,” Milless said of Dixon.
After finishing fifth, Dixon admitted two stops was the way to go – especially in a race that ran caution-free.
“There’s no doubt he did a good job,” he said of Rossi. “We should have probably opted for the two-stop (strategy). We kind of pitted in that no-man’s land of about four laps away. I think we could have done another two or three and probably could have made the margin on the next two stints.
“It’s easy when you pull it off correctly, but a yellow (flag) could have turned it the other way. You put yourself in a bit of danger doing that, but yeah, huge credit to him. He did it.”
Dixon’s lead is 46 points over Rossi, 60 on Newgarden, 87 on Power and 95 better than Ryan Hunter-Reay after 13 of 17 races. The next event is the ABC Supply 500 at Pocono Raceway, where Power is the defending champion. The race airs live at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 19 on NBCSN and the Advance Auto Parts INDYCAR Radio Network.