Pagenaud out-duels Rossi to win Indianapolis 500

Alexander Rossi was chasing Simon Pagenaud around the four corners of Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday after the final cycle of pit stops ended in the 103rd running of the Indianapolis 500.

Pagenaud was holding the lead, but would need a caution in order to save enough fuel to race at such a fast pace and go to the end of the race.

With just over 20 laps to go, he got just that.

Pagenaud out-duels Rossi to win Indianapolis 500

Graham Rahal was squeezed by Sebastien Bourdais going into Turn 3 and bringing out an eventual red flag.

The delay racked up a double-digit amount of minutes before IndyCar got the race cars pacing around the track again.

When they finally went back around to take the green, 13 laps remained.

Pagenaud and Rossi battled through each of them. They traded the lead back and forth before Pagenaud got out to a bigger lead.

With three laps to go, Rossi went around Pagenaud and looked to have the race won. He started to pull away before the streaking yellow Menards car closed the gap back down.

Pagenaud got around Rossi as they took the white flag, and Rossi didn’t have the time to recover.

The win marks Pagenaud’s first ever in the 500 mile event and it couldn’t have come at a better time for the 2016 series champion.

Coming into the event, Pagenaud sat in fourth place in the standings, 44 points back of Josef Newgarden in first place.

Thanks to the 500 being a double-points event, Pagenaud jumped all the way up to first, taking command of the series.

Pair Sunday with the fact that Pagenaud captured a win in the IndyCar GP two weeks ago, and it’s evident that he has a strong hold on the rest of the series, right now.

The series will return to the track next week for a pair of back-to-back races in Detroit on Saturday and Sunday from The Raceway at Belle Isle Park. Both races are scheduled to start at 3:00 p.m. ET on NBC.

103rd Indianapolis 500 Results
1. Simon Pagenaud
2. Alexander Rossi
3. Takuma Sato
4. Josef Newgarden
5. Will Power
6. Ed Carpenter
7. Santino Ferrucci
8. Ryan Hunter-Reay
9. Tony Kanaan
10. Conor Daly
11. James Hinchcliffe
12. James Davison
13. Ed Jones
14. Spencer Pigot
15. Mattheus Leist
16. Pippa Mann
17. Scott Dixon
18. Helio Castroneves
19. Sage Karam
20. JR Hildebrand
21. Jack Harvey
22. Oriol Servia
23. Marcus Ericsson
24. Jordan King
25. Charlie Kimball
26. Marco Andretti
27. Graham Rahal
28. Felix Rosenqvist
29. Zach Veach
30. Sebastien Bourdais
31. Kyle Kaiser
32. Ben Hanley
33. Colton Herta