Yahoo Autos Scott McLaughlin Wins, Alex Palou Fails to Clinch IndyCar Championship at Milwaukee
The hunt for the 2024 IndyCar Series championship will go to the season’s final race after calamity ruled in Sunday’s Hy-Vee Milwaukee Mile 250.
The race, the second part of a doubleheader, was won by Scott McLaughlin, who held off a fierce last-lap charge by Scott Dixon, who was.455 of a second behind in the runner-up spot. Colton Herta, who battled McLaughlin for the lead over a fierce series of laps near the end, completed the podium.
The real drama hung on the point race, however.
Alex Palou entered Sunday with a 43-point lead over Will Power, but Palou met trouble even before the race began. His car stalled on the pace laps, forcing IndyCar to put the field under caution. Five laps later, the field got the green flag as Palou looked to return to the track. His engine failed again, however, and he was off-track until lap 29.
Palou finished 19th, a result that could have opened a big door for Power, whose car was among the fastest Sunday. But Power also found trouble, spinning on a restart on lap 132. He lost a lap in the pits, turning what seemed like a certain top-five run—he led 64 laps—into a 10th-place finish.
The bottom line entering the Sept. 15 Nashville Superspeedway finale is a 33-point lead for Palou over Power. It’s not an insurmountable edge, but Palou certainly has put one foot in the throne room. Power admitted his chances are “a long shot.”
McLaughlin, who remains mathematically eligible to win the championship, grabbed the lead on lap 218 and was in front the rest of the way. Dixon hounded him over the final laps but couldn’t produce a pass. The win was McLaughlin’s third of the season. “We burned the house down,” he said of one of his best runs of the year.
Newgarden’s Lost Weekend
Josef Newgarden perhaps would have had a more profitable weekend at the Wisconsin State Fair as opposed to the Milwaukee Mile.
He left town Sunday with two days of miserable results.
In Saturday’s race, Newgarden and Marcus Ericsson crashed about halfway through the race while racing side-by-side for second place. Both drivers parked for the day, socking Newgarden with a 26th-place finish.
On Sunday, Newgarden’s day ended early as an accident that also involved Linus Lundqvist and Marcus Armstrong left the Team Penske driver with a 27th-place finish.
O’Ward: From First to Frustrated
Pato O’Ward won Saturday’s first race of the doubleheader in fine style, but he was largely an afterthought in Race 2.
A gearbox issue forced O’Ward off-track only 38 laps into the race, and he finished 24th.
O’Ward was a central figure all weekend at Milwaukee as he and IndyCar officials bounced comments back and forth about the lack of an IndyCar event in Mexico, O’Ward’s home country.
