Santino Ferrucci stormed back from an early penalty to finish a season-best sixth in the opening race of the double-header weekend for the IndyCar Series at Iowa Speedway on Saturday night.
The 26-year-old started eighth in the No. 14 AJ Foyt Racing Chevrolet and was up to seventh shortly after the start of the race, which was impacted with an early caution for a multi-car crash.
After an extended caution, the race restarted on lap 19 of 250, which saw Ferrucci jump to the outside and quickly surge up to fifth.
However, on lap 39, Race Control handed him a drive-through penalty as a result of being out of line on the restart. He didn’t adhere to the penalty right away, which resulted in a harsher stop-and-go penalty that ended up being served and he dropped a lap down to 22nd.
When a caution came back on lap 80, it allowed Ferrucci a chance to get back on the lead lap and charge forward from 20th. He clawed back to 11th with 60 laps to go.
Ferrucci got by the Arrow McLaren duo of Alexander Rossi and rookie Nolan Siegel to break into the top 10 with 29 to go. He then vaulted to seventh the next lap after pulling off a stout outside pass on Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood before diving to the inside of Chip Ganassi Racing’s Marcus Armstrong.
Another restart with 12 laps to go allowed Ferrucci to pick off the No. 28 Andretti Global Honda of Marcus Ericsson for sixth, where he was left to run despite applying pressure on Ed Carpenter Racing’s Rinus VeeKay for fifth.
It is the seventh top-10 in 10 points-paying races for Ferrucci, who sits 13th in the championship standings.
“We were a yo-yo of emotions today,” Ferrucci told Motorsport.com. “Lap 1 in qualifying, up. Lap 2, down.
“Start of the race, up. Drive-through (penalty) and stop-and-go, down and down. And then, you know, the drive-through, if IndyCar is calling it then obviously, you’re in the moment, you probably did something wrong, let’s be honest.
“I think that there’s a problem with the timing between when they go full throttle and the lights turn green, you’re supposed to go green immediately. And I noticed that a few times tonight once I was looking out for it.
“Other than that, that’s kind of what put us back and we just drove the shit out of it. No other way to put that one.”
