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Polesitter and winner of the race: Colton Herta takes victory again at the Monterey Grand Prix at Laguna Seca.
Colton Herta got off to a good start against Alexander Rossi, whose latter tried to squeeze out of turn two but couldn’t get there. Max Chilton supported the whole peloton, letting Arrow McLaren SP driver Felix Rosenqvist slip away; he managed to recover and resume the race.
After the first round, the the championship leaders placed fourth (Palou), fifth (Dixon), sixth (Palou) and 17th (Newgarden).
Rossi lost control on the second lap of the race, throwing himself into the barrier and into the dirt. He had tried to overtake Herta for first place, and the two made contact. The spin brought out a yellow flag.
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The green flag flew in the fourth round. O’Ward and Ericsson both tried to pass Dixon for fourth place, with the three drivers falling behind by three. No one finally made a pass. O’Ward then lost his position to Simon Pagenaud. O’Ward, however, was one of the only drivers in the top 10 to start on black tires, so his the performances were expected. Newgarden stopped early on lap 9 of 95, followed by teammate Power a lap later, complaining of engine power issues. This kicked off the early stops for other drivers like O’Ward, who was in desperate need of a position on the track, although Newgarden’s early stoppage put him ahead of O’Ward.
On lap 16, Rosenqvist spun again, this time hitting the pavement, once again by pulling off a full 360 before getting back on the track.
Leader Herta waited in the pits until lap 19, where he would switch to black self-adhesive tires. He returned to the track very comfortably in front of Palou.
During a commercial break, Takuma Sato grabbed the sidewalk and took off; as he was backing up he collided with Scott Dixon. He then rolled forward, nearly colliding with Ed Jones.
O’Ward chose to return to the pit on lap 40 to switch to black tires after a stint over the reds saw him struggle. Meanwhile, Alex Palou maintained his second place. At this point, the peloton was very separated, with Herta maintaining a lead of almost 30 seconds over Palou until the refueling. At this point, Palou was less than a second behind Herta, the closest to the drivers in the entire race.
The two drivers then found themselves caught by the doubled traffic, allowing O’Ward, third, to begin to widen the gap of 20 seconds between him and O’Ward.
Palou took a dive from the second to lap 67, followed immediately by O’Ward. Both drivers had comfortable and quick saves that would allow the two championship contenders to fight for the championship, but O’Ward lost a place to Rahal in the stoppage.. Herta pitted the next round; it was another good stop for Herta, and he came out behind provisional leader Romain Grosjean.
With 15 laps to go, Grosjean won behind O’Ward, passing for fourth place and pushing O’Ward down. Three laps later, Grosjean passed Rahal for a podium and continued to reduce the time between him and Palou, second and leader Herta. With seven laps to go, a doubled Johnson was asked to put Grosjean to work for it; the Frenchman made a huge lunge on Johnson, the two making contact. Johnson sank into the grass and Grosjean continued.
Herta cleared the checkered flag with ease, leading the majority of the race. Palou took second place, followed by Grosjean. O’Ward was fifth and Newgarden sixth.
As the final race of the season nears Long Beach, there will only be three drivers vying for the championship. Alex Palou leads, with O’Ward at 35 points and Newgarden 49 points behind. Newgarden will need a victory with his two other competitors who will not finish the race to secure his third championship, but it is not impossible.
Tto 10:
- Colton Herta
- Alex Palou
- Romain Grosjean
- Graham rahal
- Pato O’Ward
- Marcus Ericsson
- Josef newgarden
- Simon pagenaud
- Oliver crooked
- Ed jones
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