The downhill hairpin left-handed Turn 5 follows a long climb from Turn 2, and it is notoriously difficult to judge the ultimate braking distance for the corner while on a cold set of Firestone’s harder primary compound tires.
VeeKay led the first two stints of the race from pole position but on the in lap for both he and the pursuing O’Ward, the gap between them shrank from two seconds to virtually nothing, partly a result of VeeKay getting held up by a backmarker. As they departed the pits, O’Ward was so close that he even took a look down the inside of Turn 2, before slipstreaming the Ed Carpenter Racing car up the hill.
VeeKay moved left to defend the inside line into Turn 5, but the Arrow McLaren SP-Chevy driver outbraked him on the outside, took a wide radius to the corner and assumed the lead. Two laps later, Alex Palou emerged from his final stop into the gap between O’Ward and VeeKay, at which point the AMSP car and Ganassi car dropped the ECR.
VeeKay nonetheless came home third, his best result since he finished runner-up (again to O’Ward) at Detroit Race 1 last year.
Said VeeKay: “The weekend has been pretty good. We started out the first two-thirds of the race very strong, leading, saving a lot of fuel. Very happy with that.
“Unfortunately I got held up a little bit before getting into my second pit stop, so Pato was on me, really on me. I did beat him out of pit lane but coming into Turn 5 I just took it a little bit too conservative, and he got around me. Yeah, he drove away basically. Lacked a little bit of pace on the last set of tires.
“Pato and Alex were a little bit too fast for me to hang with. Yeah, I think third place is pretty good still… Unfortunately I didn't push enough on that out lap. Another lesson learned – unfortunately the hard way.”
Asked why he had been conservative, VeeKay replied: Well, I have screwed myself a few times in the past braking a little too deep, locking a tire, yeah, basically destroying my whole last stint.
“I did not know Pato was going that deep. I was looking in my mirrors a lot – maybe that distracted me a little bit, I don't know. If I could go back, I would go way deeper and stay ahead of him. I was also struggling a little bit more on my last set of tires. Yeah, he was definitely faster on that last stint. Deserved win for him. Fortunately I still got a podium out of it.
VeeKay admitted that he felt “bummed” and “surprised” by Palou emerging in front of him adding: “I think I could have made a run for him, but I came out of Turn 5 fully sideways, that's kind of where I lost touch with him.
“I did not really expect that to happen. It's IndyCar – anything can happen! The level is extremely high. You weaken a little bit for one second and you're being passed for the lead.”
VeeKay said the first two stints of the race saw him “in his element”, controlling the gap back to O’Ward.
“I was managing the gap a little bit, especially on the reds,” he said. “I tried to keep it around two, two-and-a-half seconds. Yeah, I think also that second run I felt very good just saving fuel. I was all the time saving a little more than the team asked me to.
“We always had a little bit of a buffer if we needed to go an extra lap or anything. I felt pretty good, good rhythm.”
