The first quarter of the race looked like a high speed version of Nashville- poor judgment, messy restarts, and yellows breeding yellows.

I have never seen the championship battle change as quickly as it did last night. While Alexx Palou is still second, it looks like the title is between Josef Newgarden and Pato O’Ward. They both have momentum while Palou has two consecutive DNFs. Neither of the DNFs were Palou’s fault.

Romain Grosjean had a nice oval debut. He ran in the top 10 for awhile and made some good passes. He also had some moments drifting high as he exited turn 3.

Scott McLaughlin had his second oval top 5 of the season.

Rings VeeKay continues his downward trend. After his win in May on the IMS road course, he has gone backwards jn the standings.

I dknow what it will take for an Andretti car to win another race. Alexander Rossi and Colton Herta both had cars capable of winning, and neither saw the end of the race. Rossi’s car was not good after his last pit stop, and Herta had the race in control until his drive shift broke.

Palou’ s challenge-Get back to racing hard. His once comfortable lead allowed him tobe a little conservative on track, but now he needs to regain his early season form. He had moved up quite a bit before he was taken out of the race.

A one day show at this point I f the season in yesterday’s heat semed to take its toll on the paddock.

I miss the Friday night practice.

I will have a more detailed article tonight. I will be driving home in a bit, and I just wanted to get some thoughts out.

The point standings: