It would be hard to beat the weekend Alexander Rossi just had. From earning the pole position at the Honda Indy 200 to leading all other competitors for 66 laps to winning the race by a staggering twelve seconds, everything seemed to go fittingly for Napa-sponsored racer from start to finish at Mid-Ohio on July 29th.

The details of Rossi’s accomplishment, when glossed over, may make it seem as though the man didn’t break as much as a bead of sweat during the 90-lap event, but it’s more than likely that the driver had a lot to nervously contemplate before the contest got underway. For one, he was the only driver in the event that had elected to go the distance using a two-stop strategy — for reference, since 2013, when the Honda 200 was expanded from 85 laps to 90, the prevailing wisdom had held that the three-stop approach was without question the superior method for anyone serious about contending for first place. It became clear, however, that though the three-stop strategy had worked for winners from years past, this daring break from conventional Mid-Ohio thinking was one of brilliance on the part of Rossi’s strategist, as he managed to largely avoid the hindrance posed by tire degradation that many of the other racers, all of whom were three-stoppers on the day, were forced to grapple with.

Rossi’s management of pace, timely pit stops — he nearly segmented his day into perfect thirds, making his first stop at exactly the thirtieth lap — and keen attention to his fuel levels were the keys to securing victory for Andretti Autosport and netting the blue ribbon total of 53 points for the team. Unlike those who went with the three-stop strategy, Rossi explained on the podium at his post-race press conference, there was no need to monitor the condition of his tires due to the comparably small amount of wear he was subjecting his vehicle to.

Even still, the unorthodox two-stop approach would have probably been unsuccessful had not Rossi’s timing of stops synced up beautifully with several on-track occurrences, or had Rossi not exhibited some truly superb manuevering along the way. Rossi fortuitously happened to hit stride when the then-leader, Schmidt Peterson Motorsports’ rookie Robert Wickens, was balked by the lapped car duo of Tony Kanaan and Takuma Sato. This delay allowed Rossi to take a lead that he never relinquished, and effectively disallowed Wickens from bagging his first Verizon IndyCar Series victory. From there it was more or less smooth sailing for Rossi, whose magnificent afternoon and nearly thirteen-second advantage in victory were marred only by a comically botched attempt at a victory donut which saw his car stall and get stuck between the track and infield — an indicator of just how close he was cutting it with his fuel levels by using two stops instead of three.

With Rossi finishing in the top spot, Wickens, a deep second, took home silver, largely due to an exciting sequence which saw him careen past Josef Newgarden and Will Power of Team Penske and teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay in a matter of moments. Power and Newgarden finished third and fourth, respectively, and Scott Dixon, the current points leader, took fifth. Ultimately, seven of the top ten finishers at the 2018 Honda Indy 200 were driving Honda-powered machines, and now it may be fair to speculate whether Dixon, who remains 44 points ahead of Rossi in the present standings despite his fifth-place finish, has done enough to remain in first place for points for the rest of the season.

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