100th Indianapolis 500 - The Live Blog

From Road & Track

4:00 PM: Alexander Rossi, as a rookie, has won it all. Here's more on his fight to the top, and how he won today. The archived live blog is below.

3:32 PM: Alexander Rossi has won the Indianapolis 500 as a rookie!

3:30 PM: Stunningly, Andretti now passes Ed Carpenter Racing on both strategies. Is it Munoz with the fuel, or Rossi on the ultimate gamble? The white flag is out.

3:28 PM: Munoz comes out ahead of Newgarden by one second. Just Rossi remains on the fuel conservation strategy with three to go.

3:27 PM: Hinchcliffe and leader Newgarden now pit. Rossi comes one lap later. Rossi now leads.

3:25 PM: Kanaan and Scott Dixon abandon the fuel conservation strategy with eight to go. Both come out ahead of Hildebrand.

3:23 PM: Munoz leads. Tagliani went 37 laps on fuel in a Honda earlier, can the Andretti Autosport driver make it to the end without the aid of a caution?

3:21 PM: Lead Honda Munoz is just 2/10ths of a second behind Newgarden, who is seemingly committed to staying out. The Ed Carpenter Racing pair have committed to opposite strategies and each lead their respective group.

3:19 PM: Leaders swap again as JR Hildebrand finally makes his inevitable stop. Carlos Munoz moves to second over Kanaan and Hinchcliffe.

3:18 PM: 20 to go as Kanaan gets past Newgarden again. Hildebrand moves past Hinchcliffe and is catching the leaders.

3:16 PM: Josef Newgarden passes Tony Kanaan and leads again. They have a one second lead on JR Hildebrand and polesiter James Hinchcliffe.

3:10 PM: Up front, Tony Kanaan leads under significant pressure from Josef Newgarden. The leaders are said to be five laps from their fuel window, while Simon Pagenaud is on a full conservation strategy in 20th after stopping on the last lap of that final caution.

3:08 PM: On the restart, JR Hildebrand quickly falls back to third. Ultimately, the main thing he gained on that exchange was a commitment to pitting once more and going all-out from here while others consider fuel mileage.

3:02 PM: Sato lightly into the wall in turn 4, bringing out a caution sparing Castroneves from having to stop for repairs under green. As we enter the upper limits of the fuel window, the entire field save JR Hildebrand pits for what may well be the last time.

3:00 PM: A loose bumperette has Castroneves falling quickly as a significant portion of his downforce is replaced by drag.

2:59 PM: Josef Newgarden makes a few wild moves to get on the outside of Kanaan from third in turn 1, then takes the lead into 3. Kanaan takes it right back, but a battle has been established as his teammate JR Hildebrand moves into fourth over Castroneves.

2:58 PM: Back to green as the powerhouse Penske and Ganassi entries of Castroneves and Kanaan try to hold off a flurry of smaller teams behind.

2:51 PM: The lucky stoppers on the lead lap at the time of that caution include Castroneves, Kanaan, Josef Newgarden, James Hinchcliffe, Sebastien Bourdais, JR Hildebrand, Will Power and the still off-strategy Alexander Rossi. Munoz leads those who stopped under yellow in ninth. Notable among that group up front are Hildebrand, who charged from 22nd to the top ten o that last run, and Power, who fought back from an earlier penalty to be back in the top ten and on the primary strategy.

2:45 PM: A loose tire from Buddy Lazier brings out a yellow just as Helio Castroneves and Tony Kanaan hit the pit lane. The timing of the caution will lead to a jumbled grid on the restart.

2:40 PM: Rossi and Tagliani stop, bringing Helio Castroneves to the lead. The recently-appearing sunshine seems to agree with his Chevrolet, while engineers for James Hinchcliffe are hoping for the return of the clouds he ran so well under.

2:35 PM: As the legendary saying goes, Andretti is slowing on the backstretch. If Marco can't recover from this issue, attributed to tire pressure, it leaves just Alexander Rossi on the off strategy and Carlos Munoz on the primary strategy left for the strongest team in practice all Month long.

2:32 PM: Rossi passes Tagliani for the race lead, while behind them both Helio Castroneves and Tony Kanaan have moved past James Hinchcliffe to lead the group of those who pitted under the last yellow.

2:30 PM: Bell makes an extraordinarily aggressive move to get past leader Alex Tagliani and stay just one lap down. He needs a yellow to get back in this, but if he gets it soon, can get back on the lead lap with a wave-around.

2:28 PM: Bell is awarded and served a stop and go penalty for his role in the incident, putting him two laps down and potentially ending his bid to win the Indianapolis 500.

2:24 PM: Bell and Hunter-Reay stay on the lead lap after brief stops to change aero components. Castroneves elects not to stop again, as Penske Racing seems comfortable with the car's suspension. He'll start in third, behind Alex Tagliani and Alexander Rossi, who stayed out to split strategies with their teammates.

2:20 PM: Drama between two of the fastest three cars all race long! A dangerous release for Townsend Bell sees him spinning off Helio Castroneves and into teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay. The result is damage and significant delays for the Honda cars, while Castroneves escapes with no visible issue. He took a pretty major hit to the left-front corner, however, and may have to worry about suspension damage.

2:16 PM: Another crash, this one between Conor Daly and Mikhail Aleshin on lap 115. Townsend Bell is your leader on the restart as Aleshin gets out of his car under his own power. Daly continues with significant damage, having spun into an already-wrecking Aleshin who lost control out of turn 1. It's the end of a quietly great day for Aleshin, who was running in the top ten most of the race and had both the speed and patience to make it into the top five by race's end. For Daly, it's a major setback in a race that became better than his 2015 effort when he made it through lap one without an engine failure. Townsend Bell is your leader as the field comes into the pits.

2:11 PM: Tony Kanaan pushes to the lead, his first of the Month. Seems that he's had no adverse effects from his pit lane contact with Will Power early in the race.

2:08 PM: Hunter-Reay back to the lead on a wild restart, while Tony Kanaan moves up to third for Chip Ganassi Racing after a flurry of passes. Notable at this point in the race are the top five and top ten appearances, respectively, of Marco Andretti and Graham Rahal, two quick Honda drivers who have proven their speed here time and time again.

2:04 PM: Clauson pits, so Helio Castroneves will lead this restart at just past halfway.

1:57 PM: With alternate strategy runner Will Power trapped a lap down by the timing of the caution, only Bryan Clauson, one lap down early in the race, stays out as the field pits. These are the first laps led at the Speedway by the Sacramento native and Noblesville resident.

1:53 PM: Sage Karam follows the narrative he set last season to a tee, putting an incredible move on Townsend Bell to move into fourth only to lose control attacking on the outside of turn 1 and ending his incredible charge early. Impressively, he didn't panic as he lost control, instead letting his car slowly wash up into the outside wall and riding it all the way around turn two, dissipating plenty of energy while leaving his car completely out of the racing line.

1:49 PM: Castroneves to the lead! He's the first leader for Chevrolet, and by extent Penske Racing, under green. Sage Karam briefly moves all the way up to fourth in his Dreyer & Reinbold entry, while Power and, intriguingly, top ten runner Mikhail Aleshin have moved onto an alternate strategy. Schmidt-Peterson joins Penske in splitting the strategies of their top cars, while Andretti Autosport contues to leave all five of their entries on the lead strategy.

1:48 PM: Castroneves moves to second as Hinchcliffe pushes Hunter-Reay out of line. Are we about to have our first Chevrolet leader under green?

1:45 PM: Helio Castroneves breaks up the Honda top three as Hunter-Reay and Hinchcliffe continue to trade the lead. Four of the top five have stayed stale all race as Josef Newgarden continues to quietly linger in fifth.

1:38 PM: Back to green as James Hinchcliffe quickly dispatches Will Power to move into the lead yet again. It's mutually beneficial, as Power can now save fuel further back in the pack and could still gain track position on this gamble. Further back in the field, Ed Carpenter is wheeled into the garage with an undisclosed issue. Your top three is a familiar trio, with Hinchcliffe being joined by Hunter-Reay and Bell.

1:33 PM: Green flag waived off for moisture on the south end of the track. Simon Pagenaud makes an unexpected stop under the additional delay, looking for some additional fuel for what could be a long green flag run. Penske has three cars left in the race and has all three on a unique strategy: Castroneves is following the leaders in fourth, while Pagenaud is gambling on a few laps of additional fuel and Power hasn't stopped since the last yellow half a stint ago.

1:30 PM: As we wait for the restart, series regular Ryan Briscoe has some opinions about Townsend Bell's aggressive defensive line in turn 1.

1:26 PM: Hinchcliffe regains the lead of those that stopped as most of the field pits. Helio Castroneves moves into third under the cycle of stops, now the top Chevrolet and leader of the Penske contingent among that group. Your leader on the restart is his teammate Will Power, who stayed out in a bid to regain the track position he lost after his previous penalty.

1:21 PM: Our first wreck of the day comes on lap 64 and the second caution is out. It's defending race winner Juan Pablo Montoya, who loses control into turn two and spins into the outside wall from a relatively anonymous 17th. The cars behind successfully avoid him, but his race is likely over.

1:20 PM: Further back in the field, low starters Graham Rahal and Sage Karam have moved into 18th and 11th, respectively, the first flashes of speed of the day for two of the best on big ovals last season.

1:17 PM: Two laps after taking the lead, Townsend Bell falls back to third. He crowds Newgarden tightly into one to hold the spot, an extremely aggressive defensive move at a point in the race where drivers are pushing hard but generally happy to let a faster car by rather than risk anything with a blocking move.

1:15 PM: Simon Pagenaud gets passed on either side from second on the restart as Ryan Hunter-Reay, Josef Newgarden and Townsend Bell pull away in first, second and third. Newgarden quickly gets passed by two of the three dominant Hondas, Bell and James Hinchcliffe, while Bell gets past Hunter-Reay for the lead half a lap later.

1:12 PM: Going back to green. Will Power is moved to the back of the grid for an unsafe release.

1:07 PM: Ryan Hunter-Reay leads out of the pits as Tony Kanaan and Will Power share minor contact. The #10 Chip Ganassi Racing car won last time it took damage in the pits in this race, when Dario Franchitti ran it under the number 50 in 2012.

1:03 PM: 47 laps into the race and the first caution of the race is called for debris on the backstretch. Buddy Lazier finally joins the race so 33 healthy cars are running, but the potential for a completely green race is gone as cleanup of visible metal on the racing surface begins. The entire field pits, and the 28 on the lead lap will be on the same strategy yet again.

1:00 PM: On lap 42, Bell moves into the race lead for the first time in 2016. He's been an Indianapolis 500 one-off expert for nearly a decade now, and this is in all likelihood the best car he has ever driven here. Rookies Spencer Pigot and Matthew Brabham become the next two cars a lap down, joining Clauson and Mann, while Buddy Lazier has still yet to join the race.

12:58 PM: The jostling behind Hunter-Reay continues as Townsend Bell puts on an impressive charge to move into second. Hunter-Reay has some draft help from the early lap traffic (the Dale Coyne Racing entries of Bryan Clauson and Pippa Mann), but Bell is back within a few tenths of the lead. James Hinchcliffe, meanwhile, has been told that his slow stop was due to a fueling error.

12:53 PM: After the first set of stops (which ended with Sage Karam the last to pit on lap 32), your leader is Ryan Hunter-Reay by a race-high gap of two seconds. It likely won't last, as Simon Pagenaud is pressing from second, as is Josef Newgarden in third.

12:50 PM: Leaders Ryan Hunter-Reay and James Hinchcliffe stop for the first time on lap 29. Both burned a significant amount of fuel leading and taking their pace laps, so we don't yet have an idea of the relative mileage between Chevrolet and Honda that has decided many a big oval race in the past.

12:46 PM: Two big moves in the top five as Simon Pagenaud gets past an impressive Mikhail Aleshin to move into fifth, while Josef Newgarden gets past Townsend Bell and James Hinchcliffe to take second. He'll immediately begin pressuring the leading Ryan Hunter-Reay, who has repeatedly shown that he will happily cede the lead to a charging car but will contest just as hard to get the spot back.

12:43 PM: Simon Pagenaud fell to 12th from his 8th place starting position early, but has quickly moved up the field and is now in sixth. He's already second-best of Chevrolets and leader of the four-car Penske contingent that so dominated this race last year.

12:40 PM: Three more swaps between the leaders, Hinchcliffe up front now. Early movers include Hunter-Reay's teammate Townsend Bell, up to third, and Marco Andretti, up to tenth. Falling back is Graham Rahal, who was widely expected to quickly move up from 25th but has instead fallen to 27th sixteen laps in.

12:34 PM: Entering lap seven and the polesitter and outside front row starter have already put a combined six lead changes on one another. The record is 68, set a few years ago in a spectacular race run under mostly green conditions. With a clean start early, we may be headed for a similar result.

12:32 PM: Just a lap into the race and Alex Tagliani's already made contact into turn two, made a dramatic save, and avoided tapping the wall. Hinchcliffe and Hunter-Reay trade the lead twice more, the Andretti driver still leads.

12:30 PM: Green into turn 1. Polesitter James Hinchcliffe pulls away from the three-wide start to lead, but Ryan Hunter-Reay passes him just two corners in to take the lead at the end of lap one.

12:28 PM: 1996 race winner Buddy Lazier pits with a stuck throttle during the warm-up. He fought hard to get his program together for this race, but will have to make up a lot of ground to get a good finish out of his efforts.

12:22 PM: Engines are fired and, on AJ Foyt's signal, cars are rolling. 202 laps from now, the Indianapolis 500 will have it's hundredth winner.

12:08 PM: The invocation has been given, drivers introduced, the patriotic songs sung. Just Back Home Again In Indiana and a command from a Hulman-George remain before the race begins.

12:00 PM: Say what you will about IndyCar, the state of American Open Wheel Racing and the still-lingering effects of the split. At the end of the day, there is still nothing in all of auto racing like the Indianapolis 500, and with an estimated 350,000 in attendance at today's sold out 500 Mile Race, one of these 33 drivers will have the biggest day of their career. An IndyCar championship is nice, but in this year perhaps more than any other, nothing beats a win at the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.