Green flag conditions resumed with 28 laps to go and saw the lapped cars of Gabby Chaves, Indy 500 winner Alexander Rossi and Mikhail Aleshin separating third-running Castroneves from leaders Hinchcliffe and Carpenter.
Four laps later, however, Hinchcliffe would lose his main opposition after Carpenter lost a right rear tire exiting turn four and spun — collecting Castroneves as the two smacked the outside wall and slid through the double-dogleg.
Hinchcliffe would have a huge challenge from Tony Kanaan on the restart, but another yellow with 16 laps left for a multi-car crash that collected Aleshin and Jack Hawksworth set the stage for a final, frenetic nine lap dash for glory.
On older tires, Hinchcliffe led the way as Rahal, Kanaan, Castroneves and points leader Simon Pagenaud came barreling down on him in a three-wide and, at one point, four-wide frenzy.
Somehow, amid all of the chaos, Pagenaud held the lead until four laps to go when Kanaan edged him out at the line, but Pagenaud found his way back to the front the next time by off a push up the outside by Rahal.
From there, it was a mad scramble through the final six miles — with Rahal’s over-under maneuver through the final half-lap defining a night dominated by Hinchcliffe and leaving the Canadian gutted despite the runner-up result being his best finish of the season.
“There’s no describing what I’m feeling right now,” Hinchcliffe said. “To lead all day and come up short, it sucks. … We had some good racing with some good guys. Those yellows at the end just killed us. Where we made our night work was on the long runs. Huge credit to TK and Graham for racing us clean there, and congrats to Graham. That was a great race.”
“I just hate it. We led them all, except for the one that mattered. It’s tough … to be this disappointed with our best finish of the season. We picked up where we left off in June but we just didn’t have enough on that last lap.”
Kanaan came home third, with the podium covered by less than one tenth of a second at the checkered flag.
Pagenaud and Castroneves completed the top five, the last cars on the lead lap. Will Power was seventh in a third Team Penske-prepared entry.
