INDIANAPOLIS —While the Byrd brothers ended up with a good finish after their early pit problems, with James Davison coming in 12th, the other race team with Johnson County ties, Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, had to overcome a few issues of its own.
Drivers Sage Karam and J.R. Hildebrand finished together, with Karam taking 19th place and Hildebrand 20th.
Both drivers had some issues, with Karam finding it hard to pass other cars while Hildebrand received a late race penalty for excessive speeding in the pits.
“I got stuck behind guys that were too slow for too long,” Karam said. “It was impossible to pass today unless you were the leader or in second.”
Karam also said some bad luck on pit strategy cost him a couple of laps.
All in all, though, both drivers brought their cars home in one piece and will look forward to racing here again next time.
“Both cars are in the garage, all four wheels are on them,” Karam said. “The boss (Dennis Reinbold) is happy, the sponsors are happy. That’s the main thing.”
Hildebrand blames himself for his penalty, saying he hit the pit lane too quick.
“I thought I was a gear down when I hit the pit lane. I just didn’t get the gear down quickly enough, and I was speeding into the pits,” he said. “I then locked up the rears, and I slid into the pit lane.
“I think we were running with guys who were hovering in the top 10 at the checkered flag. We could have been knocking on the door for the top 10 had we kept everything together. So I’m a little disappointed in myself with the penalty.”
Reinbold, who was in his 20th year at the race, felt the team had good cars, but agreed that traffic issues and the penalty were too much to overcome, even when getting some excellent fuel economy and an ability to stretch the pit stops.
“Usually here, you can get your lap back pretty easily,” Reinbold said. “But the timing just didn’t go our way today. Then, we pitted Sage one lap too early when the big crash happened in turn three. That yellow was one lap too late for us.
“I just thought the timing hurt today because we had better cars.”
Penske does it again
Simon Pagenaud’s win was the 18th Indianapolis 500 for Team Penske on this, the 50th anniversary of Penske Racing’s Indianapolis debut. Pagenaud is the 13th different driver to win the Indy 500 for Penske.
Pagenaud became the first Frenchman to win the 500 since Rene Thomas in 1914, and he was the third Frenchman to win overall, after Jules Goux and Thomas.
Narrow victory
Pagenaud took the checkered flag by only 0.2686 of a second over runner-up and 2016 winner Alexander Rossi. That marked the seventh closest finish in race history.
Takuma Sato, who won the 2017 race, was third, only 0.3413 of a second behind.
International affair
For the 10th consecutive year, there was at least one foreign driver who was on each of the 11 rows of the race. The last time there was an All-American row was in 2009, when three American drivers (A.J. Foyt IV, Scott Sharp and Sarah Fisher) filled up Row 7.
It’s also the first time that a row has been entirely filled by English drivers. Row 9 was comprised of Jack Harvey (Bassingham), Jordan King (Warwick) and Ben Hanley (Manchester).
There were four Brits total including Pippa Mann (Ipswich), who was also the only woman in the race. Mann was a credible 16th, her highest-ever finish at the Indianapolis 500.
“Our goal coming into this month was to be smart, do the right things and have an error-free month,” Mann said. “I feel like we went out there and we executed that plan.”
