Rossi delivered his first podium since Portland last year after charging up from 11th on the grid and running a brave three-stop strategy. After climbing to sixth in the opening laps, he made his first stop as early as Lap 4 in order to ditch the alternate-compound tires, so he could spend the remainder of the race on blacks.
The strategy worked well, because he was back up to fourth after he pitted with the two-stoppers around Lap 24-26. He then passed the Chip Ganassi Racing-Hondas of Alex Palou and Scott Dixon, who were running the alternate compound for their middle stint, on Laps 39 and 43 respectively, before pitting for the final time on Lap 46, while 19.4sec behind Power.
Following Power’s out-lap on his final stop, the gap was 16sec with 20 laps to go. It proved just enough for Power to win by 1sec as he nursed his alternate tires over the closing stint.
“I think one more lap would’ve been really interesting,” said Rossi to NBC. “But you’ve got give credit to the #12 guys and Will for what they did. It was really hard at the end to hang on.
“Huge thanks to all of the guys on the #27 NAPA / AutoNation Honda, it was amazing. Yet again, we came here with an amazing car but didn’t quite get the win.
“It was a good recovery from yesterday; that strategy was good. We’ll take it.”
Rossi has now gone 44 races without a win, and this week it was confirmed he had decided to move to Arrow McLaren SP-Chevrolet
“We’re finally just executing our potential,” he said. “It’s been frustrating for a lot of reasons, but the speed has been there, but it’s just been a lot of factors.
“In the past two weeks the team has just executed in a big way in pressure moments [he climbed from 20th to fifth at the Indy 500] and thanks to them we’re going to Road America, a place where we’ve had some success, so it would be fitting to come full circle with a win there, so we’ll try for that.”
Asked whether he considered himself still in the fight, now that he’s up to seventh in points, he replied: “Yeah, this team and who I am as a person, we’re going to try and win this championship. I don’t care about any of the external factors.
“We're here to win and we'll keep pushing.”
