INDY 500: Rookie Rossi wins 100th Running
Sunday, 29 May 2016
Alexander Rossi held off Andretti stablemate Carlos Munoz to earn a shock win in the 100th Running of the Indianapolis 500.

A long spell under green during the final stint turned the race into a battle of fuel mileage, and Rossi, who’d been hovering on the outside of the top five, spent the final laps watching the cars around him peeling into the pits for a top-up and wondering whether he’d need to do the same.
It was close – his car came to a stop shortly after crossing the yard of bricks – but by then the job was done. Rossi backed off so much at the end that his final lap was 40mph slower than race pace. But it was enough.

“We did it,” he said in disbelief. “We did it. I have no idea how we pulled that off. We struggled a little in the pit stops, but Bryan [Herta] came up with an unbelievable; strategy. I just can’t believe we’ve done this. I didn’t know [if we’d make it]. It’s an amazing result.”

Munoz, who completed the Andretti one-two, was among those who’d had to make a late stop for a top-up – just five laps from the finish, he’d been leading.
“I know I could have had that one,” he said. “To be half a lap short of fuel … it is what it is.”
Josef Newgarden had been among the front-runners all afternoon, but ultimately had to settle for third and best of the Chevys, with Tony Kanaan and Charlie Kimball rounding out the top five.
The result was an amazing reversal of fortune for Andretti, which had earlier watched what had looked like its two best prospects for the race drop out of contention in a friendly fire incident. Townsend Bell, who ran strongly at the front during the middle period of the race, was released from a pit stop into the path of Helio Castroneves, hit the Penske, and then bounced back into Ryan Hunter-Reay. Consequently, both Andretti cars lost time in the pits undergoing repairs. Bell eventually finished 21st; Hunter-Reay 24th.
It was a similarly dramatic afternoon for another of the big teams, with all four of Penske’s cars striking some sort of misfortune. Will Power was sent to the back of the field early on for an unsafe release in the pits, and Simon Pagenaud later suffered the same fate, and then had his problems compounded with an intermittent engine problem. Helio Castroneves was strongly-placed in the late stages until he had a rear pod knocked off by JR Hildebrand, and defending race champion Juan Pablo Montoya was the first to the showers when he lost the rear of his car at Turn 2 and crashed into the wall on lap 63.
A similar fate awaited Sage Karam, who’d climbed up to sixth only to crash while trying to run side by side with Townsend Bell through Turn 1, and Mikhail Aleshin, whose spin into the wall was followed immediately by Conor Daly spinning right behind him and clouting the stricken SPM car.
Elsewhere, Ed Carpenter was eliminated by an undisclosed mechanical problem, and Buddy Lazier by a very visible one – his left-front wheel fell off as he was exiting the pits after a stop. The 1996 winner had earlier endured a delayed start to the race after spending the opening 30-ish laps in the pits having a throttle problem dealt with.