Santino Ferrucci’s good results in the Indianapolis 500 continued on Sunday, with the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing driver climbing up the order to finish an excellent sixth.
In his third Indianapolis 500 start – he finished seventh in his first outing back in 2019 before taking fourth last year – Ferrucci was able to recover from an early penalty to stretch out the fuel in the middle of the race, and then attack when he needed to at the end.
The penalty was a result of entering a closed pit lane to top up on fuel after Stefan Wilson crashed his Andretti Autosport machine entering the pits. Ferrucci was forced to take the restart at the back of the pack but made some great ground thereafter to be in contention for a top ten finish.
Ferrucci, who moved away from full time racing in the NTT IndyCar Series at the end of 2020 to focus instead of making a career in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, drove the wheels off his #45 Hy-Vee Dallara Honda, and he was rewarded by finishing inside the top seven for a third consecutive year.
“It feels incredible. We had a great race!” insisted Ferrucci, who led a couple of laps midway through the race as he stretched out his fuel window. “We were really quick, we just couldn’t get lucky on the starts and restarts.
“Strategy played a big part in this race, and we were able to save enough fuel to run as hard as we could at the end there. We were slowly reeling in the lead group, just needed a few more laps.”
Ferrucci ended 9.0876 seconds behind eventual race winner Helio Castroneves, while team-mates Takuma Sato and Graham Rahal ended fourteenth and thirty-second overall, the later after retiring following a crash on lap 118 whilst exiting the pit lane.
