Running alternate tires, Andretti Autosport-Honda’s rookie De Francesco had moved up past five places from the start of the race when he tried to tackle Power on the harder-compound primary tires on Lap 7, following a second restart.
He took a look down the outside of Power, who had qualified only 15th, heading into Turn 3, which was destined not to work and the erstwhile championship leader’s left rear wheel made contact with DeFrancesco’s right-front.
DeFrancesco backed out of the soon enough not to lose momentum, and he then hung onto Power tail for the long downhill run to Turn 5. Thanks to that blast containing ‘Turn 4’ which is a barely existent curve, Power could legitimately say he took the racing line, then moved left to occupy the inside line for left-handed Turn 5, to force DeFrancesco the long way around. Instead the rookie was not dissuaded, waited until Power moved back to the center of the track to take a faster line through the 90-degree turn, and spied a car-width’s gap.
Unfortunately, he misjudged the moment when he popped out from behind the Penske, and caught his front wing on Power’s left-rear. The hit was hard enough to spin the #12 car over to the right and with slight contact into the wall, breaking the nosecone and wing.
The AMR Safety Team were able to bumpstart Power and remove the broken nose, so that he was able to get around to the pits for a new assembly and a checkover without losing a lap.
DeFrancesco was issued a stop-and-hold on pitlane penalty and would also require a new front wing.
Following the final restart, Power tried an outside pass on Rinus VeeKay’s Ed Carpenter Racing-Chevrolet at Turn 6 but was elbowed wide, so that he dropped two places – including, ironically, to DeFrancesco.
On the radio following the shunt, Power had languidly told his strategist Ron Ruzewski, “Just you wait until I see DeFrancesco,” and on the cooldown lap, the 2014 champion pulled alongside the #29 PowerTap-sponsored car and gave it a Power-tap on the sidepod with his rear wheel to register his displeasure.
However, out of the car Power maintained his 2022 cool, telling Peacock livestream: “I haven’t seen him. Obviously made our day way harder, nothing I could do about that one. That is IndyCar.
“Not the best day. You have ’em. Just move on to the next one.”
Asked whether his very deliberate mentality shift for 2022 helped him in frustrating circumstances, Power replied: “You can’t really do much about it. He’s a young guy and he’s made some big moves this year that have resulted in some incidents.
“I got ran off [the track] near the end there too, so maybe we could’ve finished a bit higher. We had plenty of push-to-pass left, couldn’t do much about it.”
DeFrancesco, too, kept his head over the matter, despite feeling he’d been blocked.
“He had a bad run out of [Turn] 1, and I had a run on him going into T3 and I went to go on the outside of him and we banged wheels a little bit.
“Then I had a big, big run going into T5, and he went to the inside which he has a complete right to do, so I went to the outside and I saw him move back over to the right side, so I went to divebomb him – I had made that move a couple of times earlier in the race – and we made contact.
“I need to look at it, but that’s what I saw from my vantage point…
“We were making moves, slicing and dicing through people, making those split-second late dive-bombs, and that one didn’t pay off, but I need to look at it a bit more to see what happened. You could say I made contact with him, which I did. But from my vantage point it did look like he moved but we need to look at it better.
“But yes, I did make contact with him.”
Power’s 19th place finish drops him back to second in the championship, 27 points behind Indy 500 winner and Road America runner-up Marcus Ericsson of Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda, and only five ahead of today’s winner, teammate Josef Newgarden. Power was lucky not to lose more places in the title race, since two of his main challengers Pato O’Ward retired with a dead engine, and Alex Palou was classified last after early contact with Ericsson sent him off the road at Turn 5.
