PRUETT: Inside Rossi’s wild rise to Indy 500 glory

Tuesday, 31 May 2016


Marshall Pruett / Images by LAT
Reading through the lap chart from Sunday's Indy 500 and following Alexander Rossi's drive conjured mental images of a heartbeat rising and falling for three hours straight. And then there was Rossi's psychotic fuel saving. We'll save that incredible tale until the end.
Captured in compelling detail over 200 laps, the peaks and valleys in the Californian's run to Victory Lane was absolutely insane. Rossi started 11th in the No. 98 Andretti-Herta Autosport Honda, and during those 200 wild tours of the 2.5-mile oval, he was officially credited with holding 28 of the 33 positions in the field.
From as high as first to as low as 29th, Rossi held every spot between P1 and P29 at some point (barring, oddly, P17). If that sounds like the hallmark of an inconsistent rookie, it wasn't – not by a long shot. He completed two normal pit stops while holding station for the first 65 laps, ran mostly between P10-P13, and then had the third and fourth stops turn into emotionally shattering adventures on pit lane.
A stuck fuel probe on lap 66 surrendered seven positions as he pitted in P13 under yellow and left in P20. Rossi dug deep, fought his way back to P11, pitted again on lap 96, and watched as a horror show played out in his left-side mirror when the refueler encountered with the same connection problem. Pulling away under yellow in P25, he stopped once more on lap 101 to top up before the green and took the restart in P29.
Two consecutive stops, two fueling-related issues, 25 positions given away.
"I literally was in tears under [yellow] after I think it was the third or fourth pit stop," Rossi told RACER. "We had a fueling issue and that was after we already had a rough pit stop, and it was just like, 'What am I supposed to do here? I don't understand. I got us back and then we fell back again. I don't know how many times I can keep putting the car in the position I am to try and get us back to the front.'"
Team co-owner Bryan Herta left Rossi out during the next caution on lap 115 to correct the situation. His driver had already recovered six positions – moved up to 23rd – and set the race's fastest lap while starting an epic charge. Once most of the field cycled through the pits, Rossi was up to P2, then held P1 or P2 through lap 137. The combination of the team's smart strategy call and their driver's relentless push to move forward was making a difference.
Another stop on lap 138 saw Rossi plummet to P22 and then work his way back to P16, stay out during another yellow, rise to P8, and prepare to make his final, fateful pit stop on lap 164 under yellow. Restarting P9, Rossi rose to P7 before the leaders began to make their final stops.
When JR Hildebrand pitted from third on lap 185, Rossi moved to P6. Scott Dixon's stop while fifth on lap 191 moved Rossi to P5. Oriol Servia's stop from fourth on lap 194 moved Rossi to P4. James Hinchcliffe pitted from third and Josef Newgarden pitted from second on lap 195, which moved Rossi to second.
The final blow was dealt on lap 196 when teammate Carlos Munoz pitted for a splash of fuel and handed over the lead to Rossi.
Taking into account all of the positions Rossi lost in the pits, all of the spots he clawed back while setting the fastest lap, his efforts to drive a clean, rocket-fast race, and the masterful job he did of fuel saving to close the deal, it's fair to say the kid was hit with everything imaginable, yet didn't flinch on the way to the checkered flag.
Sure, it's always awesome to watch a five-wide finish at the yard of bricks, but when we look back on how the 100th Indy 500 was won, there's no question this rookie drove his ass off, dealt with overwhelming adversity, used his smarts, a ton of creativity, and refused to give up.
It's the classic American tale, played out in real life for the enjoyment of millions by a young American on a mission. Sounds like the perfect lead-in to Memorial Day to me.
And then there was that psychotic fuel saving, which, as Rossi conceded after the race, was something he had to learn in the second half of the Indy 500...

"We knew we had pace – we knew that if we got the track position back we had plenty to win this thing," he said. "It just became a race about conserving fuel. That was one of the hardest things I ever had to do in a racecar, to drive around here – on a lap where you are normally flat out, to drive [at] 30 percent [throttle] sometimes.
"It is all new to me. I was figuring it out on the fly and trying a lot of different things over a 70-, 80-lap period. And some things worked... I actually stumbled upon what worked the best and I actually almost ended up in the wall in Turn 2 and I had to bail out."
Instructed to avoid using the throttle at all costs, Rossi took to drafting behind other cars to use their aerodynamic tow and save fuel. And then it almost ended in disaster behind 2008 Indy 500 winner Scott Dixon.
"The front of the car just took off; I got a bit close to Scott [Dixon], actually," Rossi continued. "Yeah, and the front took off and had a huge lift, and I came across the line and the fuel [saving] number was massive. I was like, 'Oh, all right, I can do this, actually.' Because, before that point, I was trying a lot of things (to save fuel) and I couldn't get to where I needed to."
Just as Rossi was learning on the fly in the cockpit, the team responsible for coming up with the race-winning strategy and coaching were scrambling for their ideas of their own. Herta and company had to find a plan to help their driver stretch a tank of fuel to 36 laps – four laps more and 10 full miles longer than anyone else.
"We decided we needed to get track position somehow," Herta (left) said of the initial mid-race decision to start saving fuel. "Really, it was right then that we decided we were going to make the race on two more stops and we didn't think a lot of people would or could. We went right into that.
"If you noticed, even when we stayed out on that yellow to get the track position, [Andretti teammate] Townsend [Bell] was the car in front of us, at that point he had his problem [and was] two laps down. But Alexander just got in his tow and was saving fuel. Even then when we were leading the race, we were lucky to have a teammate who was on track right in front of us so we could draft. We were running lean; we were saving fuel even then."
To eke 10 extra miles of distance from the same allotment of fuel the rest of the field had, Rossi would need to continue drafting Bell, Dixon, and anyone else he could find. On the timing stand, and on Rossi's digital dash, a numbers game started. With 36 laps to complete, and the need to move forward...and the added need to save fuel, he would have to hit a moving fuel mileage number each lap to make it to the finish.
Imagine being on fumes and trying to make it to the gas station before running out, but also being in the closing stages of the Indy 500 and lapping at over 200mph. The faster he went, the more he would have to save – but if he slowed too much to save, he'd lose positions to faster cars. It's also worth remembering this seemingly impossible task was being hurled onto the shoulders of rookie.
If Rossi's performance from lap 164-200 wasn't impressive enough, wait until Herta reveals the crazy challenges the kid was forced to overcome.
"So then when that last yellow came out, we were still on the strategy to make one more stop," he said. "That yellow came out like four or five laps before we were scheduled to stop, at least. That put us in a really, really tight fuel bind situation. But I guess because we had already been thinking that way, we just doubled down and said, what is the [fuel mileage] number? And then everybody agreed we couldn't possibly get that number. And then we said, OK, but we're going to try anyway. It was a big number. It was daunting but we just committed that we were going to find a way to do it.
"By our calculations, as we were running late through that last tank, the closest we ever got to making it was a half a lap [short] from the finish. At no point were we ever calculating that we were ahead on fuel that we could finish. The closest we got was [running out] a half a lap from the finish. I literally thought, 'Look, if we run out on the back straight we're going to coast to the finish line but we are not going to stop. We're going to run out of fuel but we won't stop. We are going to ride this in because this is our chance to win the race. If we run out and we finish 17th, then that is how it is going to be.'"

Although Rossi never had a need to learn fuel-saving techniques in GP2 or Formula 1, or even during his one appearance at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Andretti-Herta team spent some time during the pre-season showing their new driver the common ways to save fuel on road and street courses. It's done by lifting and coasting into the braking zone, but with no braking or serious slowing required on the Indy oval, Rossi was on his own to figure it out while dialing his Honda engine down to fuel-sipping mode.
"We have the switches where we can lean the engine out in the car, but we couldn't lean it out enough to make that number on its own," Herta continued. "He had to do what we call 'driver fuel saving' too, which is techniques with the throttle when you lift, how much you lift. It is a really hard thing. You know, people think that when you are saving fuel you're just cruising around, and it really couldn't be farther from the truth. You're driving your ass off. It is so hard to go fast and save fuel.
"He did it. Like I said, we were lucky, we had Townsend earlier in the race to pull us around. And [Andretti teammate Ryan] Hunter-Reay was up near us on the track and we asked him to pass us and let us draft and he did that for a while too. But by the end of the race we were completely off the book because we got where we were at, I think, more than a lap of fuel short of making it."
Destined to run dry before the finish, Rossi got the call to try something crazy. Leaning out the fuel mixture is a common way to save fuel, which he did, but it wasn't enough. The one electronic option left was to use the fuel map designed to use little more than drops of fuel while running at reduced speeds behind the pace car. Take the tiny amount of fuel provided for puttering around at 75mph, then try holding position with it while racing well over 200mph, and you have Rossi's reality as the 500 sped toward its conclusion.
"So...we were running our yellow map, which normally you only run around for yellow," Herta admitted. "Yeah, we were running our yellow map."
Racing on the yellow map is a perfect way to get swallowed by a pack of angry cars, but Herta wasn't done. If that task sounded impossible as the finish line drew closer, the next instruction to arrive over the radio was on a whole new level of crazy.
"The last few laps, because we still weren't going to make it, I don't know...divine intervention...what put it in my head, but I started telling Alex, 'I want you to clutch the engine and coast down the straightaways,'" he added. "And he said, 'You want me to what?' I said, 'Trust me, drive the corners and then clutch and coast on the straight. Clutch and coast.'
"So he started doing that, which was really eerie. I had a lot of people come up to me, corner workers, marshals, they were watching the car because at different times he would come by basically sounding dead stick, like the engine wasn't running. They kept thinking, we have to go yellow because he's not running. Then he would go again and they couldn't figure out what the hell was going on.
"So he started clutching and coasting. And Alex was asking – because the more we did that the slower we were going – he's like, 'But we're going so slow...'
In only a matter of days, a myth has gained momentum regarding Rossi's final laps that led to victory. His final lap, lap 200, was indeed completed at a snail's pace, provided snails can average 179.784mph in 2.5 miles. Rossi's 199th lap was also run at an unimpressive speed – just 202.650mph. But those were the only two that were noticeably compromised to save fuel.
Lap 198 was at 212.594mph. Lap 197 was at 214.594mph, and lap 196 was a 216.017mph tour of the Speedway.
From the moment the race returned to green to the final lap, Rossi's best – all while drafting, lifting, leaned out, or running in the yellow map – was a 220.363mph on lap 174, which isn't that much faster than what he produced on lap 196...
Sure, the kid and his team beat the entire field by saving fuel, but let's not pretend they won by stroking it over all 36 laps on that final tank. Once the field got up to speed after that last yellow, Rossi averaged 217.198mph from lap 168-198 before going into drastic fuel-saving mode.
As much as I feel for the drivers who were ahead of Rossi and had to pit in the last laps, the ones who suggested their loss was undeserved – a fluke, thanks to a fuel-saving ploy by the Andretti-Herta team – are being disingenuous. Ed Carpenter Racing's Josef Newgarden was especially gutted to lose the 500, and rightfully so, but if we take his average speed from lap 168-198, and even subtract the two slow laps he turned while pitting for a quick fuel stop, he was only at 219.850mph to Rossi's 217.198.
Knowing how fast Rossi shot around the Speedway while working his magic to save fuel, averaging just 2.652mph less than Newgarden until lap 199-200 is a testament to his incredible speed up to that point, not its absence.
"It was clear at that point nobody else could make it," Herta said. "So we knew if we could make it, that was going to be the difference. Finally, on the last lap after the white flag, in Turn 2, the [fuel] pressure dropped in the engine, which means it was about to shut off. That's when, I guess they had it on the race broadcast, you could hear the [in-car] audio: 'Full throttle, full throttle.'
"At that point we knew it was about to run out. We were only going about 130 miles an hour at that time, so I wanted him to gain as much speed as he could, so when it ran out we could clutch and make it back to the finish line. That is what happened. He was only running 135 when he crossed the finish line, the checkered flag. If the finish line had been on the back straight, we wouldn't have made it there."
Rossi led the last four laps after Munoz pitted, and all totaled, he held first or second place for 26 of 200 laps. He spent 33 laps inside the top five, 83 inside the top 10, and had two horrendous pit stops to recover from prior to saving fuel.
Yeah, coasting across the line to win involved some luck, but for a kid who started 11th and spent almost half the race inside the top 10, I'd say luck took a backseat on Sunday to hard work and awesome speed.
Rossi's triumph at the 100th Indy 500 was so much more than those two visibly slow laps. The real brilliance took place in private, in a war with inexperience, that went against his instincts, and while fighting ridiculous odds from lap 168-198.
The next Indy 500 can't get here fast enough.

 

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