,
The caution set off another round of pit stops. As the field shuffled up, Max Chilton, who had been running 26th early on and was on the alternate pit strategy, inherited the lead.
The restart on Lap 142 only lasted a few short seconds. The mid portion of the field bunched up heading into Turn 1. As drivers checked up, Ed Carpenter lost control and began to spin, hitting Mikhail Aleshin. By bouncing off of Aleshin, Carpenter was able to save the slide and continue on, with only a broken front wing. Aleshin had a damaged right sidepod, but was also able to continue.
On Lap 147, the race went green again, the seventh restart of the day. Charlie Kimball had taken the lead before the caution for Carpenter and Aleshin, but Chilton would catch his Ganassi teammate within a lap’s time.
While Chilton lead comfortably, James Davison had overcome his dead last starting position, contact with Servia, and a subsequent penalty, passed Kimball, and made his way up to 2nd! Davison had been very fortunate in how the yellows fell. Lazier’s crash brought out a caution right as his front wing was about to fall off. He had to perform a drive through penalty when the race went green, and the debris caution on Lap 131 had allowed him to catch right back up. This all got him off sequence and he was able to leapfrog the leaders who had to pit under the caution for RHR’s engine. Now in 2nd though, Davison was showing real speed.
The race stayed green for 20 laps, Chilton leading, with Kimball, Davison, and Castroneves battling for 2nd through 4th. That battle came to and end the moment Kimball’s Honda engine came to its end. On Lap 167, his Honda also expired, an identical failure to RHR’s only 30 laps prior. Both failures looked to be the same as Hinchcliffe’s on Carb Day. Up and down pit road, Honda teams began pouring over their telemetry, hoping their engine wouldn’t be next. For Kimball, this would be his second engine related DNF in a row.
