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Some cars pitted under the yellow including Will Power, James Hinchcliffe, and Helio Castroneves. Unfortunately for Helio, he would be assessed a drive through penalty for passing cars before the green on the Lap 60 restart. He had already dropped from 8th to 22nd to replace his front wing following the Dixon and Howard crash (Helio had to drop onto the grass to avoid Dixon, and bottoming the car had damaged the front wing and also knocked the right rear winglet from his car, though the team elected not to replace the rear wing assembly), but this was just insult to injury. Fortunately, he would be able to stay on the lead lap. This would drop him to the tail end of the lead lap.
On the restart, Rossi slipped by Sato for the lead, but three laps later, RHR got a great draft into Turn 1 and took the lead for himself! The second quarter of this race was being dominated by the Andretti cars, with four of them now having lead the race.
The restart was clean, but the green flag racing would not last long. Only five laps of green flag running would be completed before one of Marco Andretti’s rear winglets decided to bail out and leave itself in the middle of the main straight. Under yellow, most of the field pitted.
Max Chilton had pitted during the caution for Conor Daly, so when the field cycled through, he ended up restarting second behind Will Power. On the restart, Chilton jumped Power and nabbed the lead: his first time leading the Indy 500 ever. Once again, Max’s lead would not last long as RHR on fresh tires overhauled him in three laps. RHR and Alexander Rossi would continue to trade the lead for the next 10 laps until…
…Helio got around both Rossi and Hunter-Reay in a single lap! Castroneves took the lead at Lap 96, and lead until Lap 104 when he needed to make his pit stop.
