First Indycar race of the 2018 season! Wow!!!!
St. Petersburg Amazing venue with many places to passe.
Pole sitter Robert Wickens starts the season being a rookie in this open wheels series but we all know he, not a rookie, he is a race winner many times over.
Starting the race in a very dominant way gapping his lead to second in just 3 laps to an impressive 5 seconds.
Then the first of 7 full course caution’s backed him up on the rest of the field but at the restart Robert and his experience paid dividends. But the caution handed the chance to Sebastian Bourdais the chance to pit earlier and change strategy and come from 14th on the grid to challenging the lead and actually taking the lead for a while but ultimately giving it back to Wickens and suckling back to 3rd.
You can see that these cars are very loose at the back as you can see the drivers making instinctual changes at every corner and you can see that this car really suits Rober Wickens driving style.
Rossi not giving up, lapping nearly 1 second faster then Wickens with 22 laps to go.
An exciting battle for the last 18 laps between Rossi and Wickens 9 seconds clear of third place sitter Sebastien Bourdais.
Hinchcliffe in a big battle for fifth after having badly qualified had made up a lot of places.
Claman de Melo had a great start to the season running top 5 for the first part of the race.
Rossi going straight on in one turn and literally given the win to Wickens.
Full course yellow with 7 laps to go and Rossi gets his second chance with Wickens, with restart being on lap 4 with a lot of drivers gunning for first place.
Restart and a stalled car brings out the safety car and restart the race with 2 laps to go, Wickens, makes contact with Rossi that was going larger because of the loose back end, gives the lead to Bourdais and Caution finish for Bourdais with Wickens stalling on the track.
What a crazy race!!!!!!!
Full Race results here:
Sebastien Bourdais
Graham Rahal
James Hinchcliffe
Ryan Hunter-Reay
Scott Dixon
Josef Newgarden
Ed Jones
Marco Andretti
Will Power
Takuma Sato
Simon Pagenaud
Gabby Chaves
Spencer Pigot
Zach Veach
Robert Wickens
Max Chilton
Charlie Kimball
Jordan King
Jack Harvey
Matheus Leist