Milwaukee Mile rain delay leaves 410 laps to run on Sunday
Rain stopped race one after 90 laps with O'Ward leading. Here is Sunday's running order, start times and what is still at stake.
Rain got the final word at the Milwaukee Mile on Saturday, and the result is a Sunday that carries far more racing than the schedule ever intended. The first race of the Snap-on INDYCAR Weekend doubleheader was red-flagged after 90 of its 250 laps, which leaves 160 laps still to run before the second 250 even starts. Add it together and up to 410 laps of NTT INDYCAR SERIES racing could be decided in a single day.
Pato O’Ward was leading in the No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet when the red flag flew, which means he restarts Sunday morning with the race in his hands and no idea how many laps he will actually get to defend it.
Why race one was red-flagged at the Milwaukee Mile
Rain arrived over the historic 1.015-mile oval on Saturday afternoon and stopped the Snap-on Makers and Fixers 250 at the 90-lap mark. The rain itself passed. The problem was what it left behind.
An oval is not ready to race on simply because the racing line has dried. The pit lane and the access lanes have to be dry too, and INDYCAR and track officials judged there was not enough daylight left to get all of it to a safe standard. Once you lose the light, you lose the argument, however hard the jet dryers work.
When race one resumes, and the deadline that could end it early
Race one restarts at 9 a.m. ET on Sunday and will run either the full 250-lap distance or until 10:25 a.m. ET, whichever comes first. That is a window of 85 minutes to complete 160 laps.
Run cleanly and that is comfortable. Run it with cautions, and it is not. Every yellow eats into the same clock, so the possibility of a timed finish rather than a full-distance one is real, and it changes how a leader has to think. O’Ward does not just have to hold the lead, he has to hold it without knowing exactly where the finish is.
FS1, FOX One and the INDYCAR Radio Network pick up live coverage from the restart.
Milwaukee Mile Sunday schedule and start times
Three races in one day, and the timings matter if you are watching from Europe. INDYCAR publishes its schedule in Eastern Time, while the circuit itself sits an hour behind that in Central Time, which is where a lot of confusion comes from.
- Race one resumes — 9:00 a.m. ET / 15:00 CEST / 14:00 BST
- Race one time limit — 10:25 a.m. ET / 16:25 CEST / 15:25 BST
- Indy NXT by Firestone — 11:00 a.m. ET / 17:00 CEST / 16:00 BST
- Race two, the Snap-on Milwaukee Mile 250 — 1:00 p.m. ET / 19:00 CEST / 18:00 BST
The Indy NXT race runs as originally scheduled, and so does race two. Nothing else on Sunday has moved.
Palou starts race two from pole, a day after the penalty
The second race gives the weekend its neatest piece of symmetry. Alex Palou took a nine-place grid drop for the first race, one of five drivers penalised for an unapproved engine change. For the second, the reigning and four-time series champion starts on pole in the No. 10 DHL Chip Ganassi Racing Honda.
Penalised on Saturday, front row on Sunday. It is the kind of swing that makes a doubleheader worth the trouble, and it means the championship picture could look very different by Sunday evening than it did on Saturday morning.
Live coverage of race two is on FOX, FOX One and the INDYCAR Radio Network.
What Sunday actually decides
Two 250-lap races on a short oval, run back to back, with one of them starting from a mid-race restart and a clock running against it. Tyre life, fuel windows and traffic all behave differently when a race is picked up cold at lap 91 instead of rolling off the grid.
For O’Ward there is a win sitting there that he has already done the hard work for. For Palou there is a pole and a chance to answer a penalty on the track rather than in the stewards’ room. And for everyone watching from this side of the Atlantic, it is an afternoon and an evening rather than the usual late night.
Update: race one was postponed again on Sunday morning and finally completed after race two. Pato O’Ward won both, and Alex Palou clinched the title. The full report is in O’Ward sweeps Milwaukee as Palou clinches a fifth IndyCar title.
Photo: IndyCar.com
