Washington (AFP) – New Zealand’s Scott McLaughlin won an incident-packed second race of the Milwaukee 250 on Sunday, but Will Power missed a great chance to wipe out Alex Palou’s championship lead ahead of the season finale. Penske’s McLaughlin claimed his third win of the season, with his fellow Kiwi Scott Dixon of Chip Ganassi finishing second, 0.4558 seconds behind, and Andretti’s Colton Herta taking third.
But the drama was focused on the points battle at the top of the series standings, where Spaniard Palou could have clinched the title with a big win over Australian Power of Penske. Palou was dramatically left stranded in his car during the pace laps due to an electrical problem, and when he was able to return to the track, he was already 28 laps behind in the 250-lap race on the one-mile oval.
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That gave Power the chance to slash Palou’s lead, which was 43 points before this race, or even overtake him with a win. However, while Palou worked his way painstakingly through the field, Power spun badly on a restart on lap 132, his car veering out of control but avoiding contact. Power ended up finishing in 10th place while Palou finished in 19th spot, meaning he remains with a 33-point lead going into the September 15 final race at Nashville Superspeedway.
“God gave us a chance there and I kind of let it go, but that’s the season man. You just can’t have those mistakes,” said Power. “It was like a faster than normal restart…and I was in second gear and Oh, man, it caught me by surprise. Did not expect that. I was really happy to keep it off the wall. I could have hit anyone,” he added.
Palou was relieved to have not seen his top spot in the standings vanish. “I’m a bit sad and disappointed today. We just couldn’t really do anything. We tried everything to try and not lose many laps,” he said. “But we tried everything. We were getting happier and happier, getting more points, one point, one more point, one more point. So yeah, it was not a great day, but it could have been a lot worse. On to Nashville.”
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