That was an entertaining and dramatic race. Good battles throughout and quite a twist of fate at the end for Will Power.

Congratulations to Colton Herta and the Harding Steinbrenner team. They have had this track figured out since the February test.  The win was a great team rebound from a rough Friday.

George Michael Steinbrenner IV looked stunned in the post race interview.

The rookies at fun to watch. What a great move O’Ward put on Rahal.

Great job for Jack Harvey with a second straight top 10. Meyer Shank Racing is doing a steady solid job this year.

Having the blend line right at the entrance to turn 1 made for some interesting moments.

Weird to see Ganassi struggle as a team like they did today. Yet somehow Dixon is third in points. He will be a factor by the halfway mark of the season.

Rahal had his best race in quite a while. This is the most comfortable I’ve seen him in the car since the UAK was introduced last year.

The no track limits call helped the racing and made for some great action. This rule can be COTA’s unique feature.

The caution period seemed to last longer than necessary.

O’Ward and Carlin need to practice pit stops. He lost at least two spots with his slow releases.

Power and Rossi got burned sticking to their strategy. This is not the first time Team Penske has been burned by a caution by not pitting early.  Rossi got caught out by this situation at Portland last year as well.

NBC Coverage

Great camera work on a very photogenic facility.

Does every pit stop by every driver need to be shown? A great pass was missed because NBC was showing a backmarker’s stop.

There were too many and too long replays of the start of the race and too many in race recaps. This isn’t F1 where there is nothing happening on track.

I like the side pylon where the whole field is shown at once. I like that the board shows the tire choices and the push to pass time remaining.  It’s way better than nothing than the intervals  all the time.

 

Look for my full race report tomorrow on Wildfire Sports. Back here next week with some Indycar news and another  Indianapolis 500 program feature.