The IndyCar series came to Fort Worth, Texas to run the Rain Guard 600 this weekend. It was a brutal race with countless crashes that ultimately finished with half of the field crossing the finish line under caution. Will Power took the victory under the lights notching his 31st career IndyCar win and his second at TMS.
Charlie Kimball is shown here in qualifying. He won the pole with a 222.556 mph lap, but would succumb to mechanical issues 41 laps into the race. , © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved Mikhail Aleshin has the track to himself during qualifying. He started seventh, but would end up being part of the 8 car pileup that thinned out the field. , © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved Tristian Vautier spins the tires out of pit lane to start his qualifying run. He would also end up being mixed up in the lap 151 crash that claimed almost half the cars running., © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved Ed Jones exits Turn 2 and heads down the straight past the safety trucks. The rookie was also a victim of the major pileup. , © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved All eyes were on Graham Rahal coming off of his double victories in the races last week in Detroit. He avoided the crash drama and finished on the lead lap, one spot short of the podium, after moving up from an eleventh place start., © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved Simon Pagenaud’s crew shows a tidy look on pit road prior to the race start. He had one of the strongest showings of the day. He started twelfth, but worked his way through the pack to finish on the podium in third., © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved Indy 500 winner Takuma Sato’s Honda sits ready as his crew lines up for the anthem. Sato was in the hunt, but exited 5 laps early due to a mulit-car incident late in the race. , © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved Sato and team owner Michael Andretti have a moment pre-race. , © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved An anomalous flyover, as prop-driven planes not even twice as fast as the cars on track punctuate the anthem. , © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved The starting filed, engines freshly started, prepare to pull out onto the track., © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved The reconfiguration of Texas Motor Speedway in the off season was expected to lead to less drafting and more wide open racing. But the race played out much differently. Drivers were tight on each other, and more willing to go three wide on the new surface. , © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved Powers, Vautier and Scott Dixon lead the rest of the field through Turn 2. , © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved An emergency worker checks on Helio Castroneves after he made contact with the wall on lap 90. After a few tense moments, Castroneves would exit the car and head off under his own power. , © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved Max Chilton managed to avoid the crashes. He started sixth and finished eighth., © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved The 8 car wreck on lap 151 led to an extended red flag. Marco Andretti and Conor Daly wait patiently in the pit lane for the restart. , © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved A member of Graham Rahal’s pit crew looks on during the extended red flag stop late in the race at Texas Motor Speedway. , © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved Power led more than two thirds of the race on Saturday. By the quarter point of the race, he had taken the lead. Being the front-runner proved to be the best strategy for avoiding all of the crashes that took out much of the field. , © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved Power leads the pack under the lights at Texas Motor Speedway., © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved One of Josef Newgarden’s pit crew watches the race unfold on Big Hss, the speedway’s enormous track-side TV screen. , © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved The safety crew represents Texas with the longhorns on the roll bar. The horns would see plenty of track time, as the crashes were the big story of the race., © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved Will Power and Scott Dixon spent the second half of the race battling for the lead. The two ran side-by-side for most of the latter part of the race. , © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved Power captures his second win in Texas, and his 31st overall IndyCar win. , © Rip Shaub – All Rights Reserved
