MADISON, Ill. – Alexander Rossi’s championship battle took another hit in Saturday night’s Bommarito Automotive Group 500. He finished 13th in the NTT IndyCar Series race and dropped to third in the standings, 46 points behind Josef Newgarden.

Having to switch from a fuel conservation strategy, to making a pit stop that would ensure they would make it to the finish in the final portion of the race dropped Rossi from contender to out of the top 10.

Combined with Newgarden’s seventh-place finish, Rossi lost 10 more points in the championship battle with just two races remaining.

“We had a car and drove it up to P3 on pace and that is just the way it works,” Rossi said on pit lane after the race. “It’s the way the yellows fall sometimes. The whole 27 NAPA Andretti Honda team put a fast car together and we were able to get from 11th to third and could run the same pace at Josef, if not Josef.

“It’s unfortunate. The series is difficult. We have two more races to go and we’ll try to get them in Portland.”

In the moments leading up to the start of Saturday night’s race, Rossi’s team discovered something was amiss with his No. 27 Honda. A pre-race data check determined the gear stack had an issue.

“We did a check, saw the data in the computer and decided it needed to be replaced,” Andretti Autosport CEO Rob Edwards told NTT INDYCAR Mobile. “It’s all good now.

“If we had gone into the race like that, it wouldn’t have been good, for sure. But our guys know what they are doing.”

The team hurriedly went to work while the car was on the grid. The gear stack was removed and replaced in just seven minutes.

“I’m not happy about it,” team owner Andretti told NTT INDYCAR Mobile. “It’s something in the gearbox. That’s all I heard.”

After the race, Rossi was more concerned with the way the strategy fell, then with his gear stack issue.

“I wasn’t nervous at all,” Rossi said.

Eric Bretzman is technical director at Andretti Autosport and described the quick change on the gear stack.

“The guys did pretty good, they did it in seven minutes,” Bretzman told NTT INDYCAR Mobile. “It was a checklist thing that we finally got around to it, unfortunately it was close to the race, but we finally got around to it.

“We were able to pick it up on the data in the warmup. We didn’t miss out on anything at the start, it was the way the cookie crumbled on the pit strategies. You had a couple of guys who were nowhere and had all kinds of problems and fell into the right strategy. But that was good for us, because it took points away from Team Penske from winning.

“It was not a good time for bad timing.”