LEXINGTON, Ohio -- Graham Rahal blames a lack of respect between drivers. Will Power faults a misguided rule book. Both agreed that the fans at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course and those watching the Verizon IndyCar Series race on TV were robbed Sunday of a what could have been a thrilling ending.

Rahal, who finished third Sunday, and a few others drivers in the paddock have long bemoaned lapped or back-of-the-pack drivers fighting with frontrunners for position. They believe a driver who is lap down or running in the back should, in most cases, concede position to those drivers fighting for a race win. It’s about respect, Rahal often says. If he were driving a lapped car, he says he would yield.

This is a battle Rahal has been waging for a long time, so when last-place Carlos Munoz was using push-to-pass to keep Rahal -- in third place at the time -- from going around him, he became agitated. The time Rahal spent trying to get around a last-place car, he insisted, could have been used to try and catch second-place Will Power or eventual winner Josef Newgarden. Instead, he lost valuable seconds trying to get by Munoz, and Newgarden wound up running away with the victory.

“I lost -- how much time did I lose, 10 seconds, if not more (behind Munoz)?” Rahal said. “He was on overtake every single straightaway. It's like, come on. You know, come on.

“I think we need to have a talk behind closed doors with the drivers. ... I think everybody needs a little bit of a shakeup here with just the respect between drivers, but we'll go from there. I mean, I always get told I'm a whiner when I talk about those sorts of things, so I'll let Will talk about it.”

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Power doesn’t blame drivers, though, at least not in the case of Esteban Gutierrez. On a late restart, a lapped Gutierrez was positioned between the leader Newgarden and the third-place Power. As soon at the green flag flew, Gutierrez made a risky attempt to go around Newgarden to try and get back on the lead lap and nearly collided with the race leader.

“But it's actually not Gutierrez's fault,” Power said. “The rules for IndyCar is kind of ridiculous, that the team would tell him to stay and push and he's not even in the lead. He's not even leading. I understand if he was ahead of Newgarden because then, if it goes yellow, he gets his lap back.

“Yeah, I mean, IndyCar on one hand wants really good racing, but then you put a bunch of back markers, people a lap down in the mix. It ruined probably a very good battle at the end because Josef was on black tires and we were on reds.”

To be clear, neither Rahal nor Power was suggesting they definitely would have overtaken Newgarden. Both acknowledged the young Penske star had a great car and would have been tough -- if not impossible -- to catch.

But both would have liked the chance, and even Newgarden couldn’t fault them for being angry about being robbed of that.

“I think we would have held Will off, but it's impossible to say,” Newgarden said. “Maybe he would have gotten me. I have no idea.”

The ending undoubtedly would have been more exciting if he'd been allowed to find out.

Follow IndyStar Motor Sports Insider Jim Ayello on Twitter and Instagram: @jimayello.