Herta suffered a late shock after running over an animal and asked his team to check his front wing for damage – but the Andretti Autosport driver got the all-clear.
He just had to stay ahead of Palou, who struggled with traffic and a resurgent Romain Grosjean for the second half of the race as the former Haas F1 driver put on a dazzling performance at the Monterey circuit.
With the warm weather and curvy nature of the track, tire management was critical to a three-stop strategy for the race, with the harder tire playing a bigger role as most had expected most of the race to be on the softer red tire would be driven.
After Alexander Rossi had suffered damage from the front row of the grid in an unsuccessful attempt to overtake Herta on the second lap, Herta cleaned up on the sole restart and withdrew a few seconds from Will Power, who was suffering from engine problems.
Herta’s neatly curated gap was then heavily attacked by Palou during the middle part of the race, with the gap dropping to a second, but the Andretti driver managed to stay ahead as the two got stuck in line behind Max Chilton, Jimmie Johnson and Felix Rosenqvist.
While Herta managed to sort out Rosenqvist and Chilton, Palou had little control over them before deciding to make his final stop to get rid of the two.
Alex Palou, Chip Ganassi Racing Honda
Photo by: Art Fleischmann
After the pit stops, however, Palou found himself behind Chilton and Johnson – and hesitantly had to prevail as he tried to keep life in his tires.
This gave Herta the chance to extend their lead again, while Palou acted more conservatively as players like Graham Rahal and championship rival Pato O’Ward slowly closed the gap.
Then Grosjean produced a series of mind-blowing overtaking maneuvers to speed up the job and sent a number of cars to the corkscrew in the early stages of the race.
The Frenchman swerved around the outside of O’Ward at Turn 4 to move up to fourth with 15 laps remaining, then sat behind Graham Rahal for a place on the podium.
This put pressure on both Herta and Palou and although Grosjean’s daring antics nearly ended with contact with Johnson at the Corkscrew, the two got through in one piece and let the Dale Coyne Racing driver continue his pursuit of the top pair.
Grosjean’s pace, however, began to wear off slightly over the final laps, easing pressure on Herta and Palou to ensure the trio crossed the finish line just 3.7 seconds apart – Herta won by 1.974 seconds.
Romain Grosjean, Dale Coyne Racing with RWR Honda
Photo by: Art Fleischmann
Rahal finished fourth, 10 seconds behind the fast Grosjean, while O’Ward was another 10 seconds behind in the end – and his championship hopes were further hit when Palou was ahead.
Marcus Ericsson finished in sixth place ahead of Josef Newgarden, who stayed with four stops on the place that had been outside the title after the Swedish driver left the fight for the title.
Newgarden’s Penske team-mate Simon Pagenaud finished the race 0.6 seconds back, while Rahal Letterman Lanigan impressed part-time worker Oliver Askew with his run in ninth place.
Ed Jones completed the top 10 as he failed to translate a similar pit strategy into the same exploits as DCR teammate Grosjean.
Scott Dixon’s hopes for a seventh IndyCar title in 2021 were largely dashed after he was caught by a wandering Takuma Sato spinning on the corkscrew and rolling across the track to collect the Chip Ganassi Racing driver. Dixon, who finished the race in 13th place, is now mathematically out of the fight for the title.
IndyCar Laguna Seca Race Results – 95 Laps
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