Bourdais wins wild and whacky Detroit Race 2

Sebastien Bourdais benefitted from a string of late race cautions to claim an against-the-odds victory in the second IndyCar race at the Dual in Detroit.

The French driver diced with running out of fuel as the stoppages conspired to help him cross the line in his KV Racing Chevrolet.

Bourdais managed to hold off Takuma Sato (AJ Foyt) with Graham Rahal grabbing third.

The four-times Champ Car champion inherited the lead with 15 laps remaining when Conor Daly pitted to replace his wet tyres with slicks on a drying Belle Isle circuit.

It was green momentarily when the fourth caution was ordered for an incident at Turn 3 between Sage Karam and Stefano Coletti.

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Soon after the green Charlie Kimball turned a sharp left searching for dry track only to punt his team-mate Scott Dixon into the wall.

With nine laps remaining another caution was flown for debris.

Then disaster struck Team Penske with six laps left as Castroneves and Power took each other out exiting Turn 2 with IndyCar pulling a red flag to clean up the debris and ensure a green flag finish.

After a 10-minute stoppage the cars filed back onto the track ready for a restart with officials deeming it a timed race.

Bourdais fired away from the green flag with 3:20s remaining.

As the white flag was shown Bourdais had pulled a sizeable gap on Sato in win or burst tactics.

“It’s a heck of a feeling. We couldn’t get it more wrong yesterday. We did everything right today,” Bourdais said who took the chequered flag on lap 68 of a scheduled 70.

“The management of the fuel, the pit stops…Chevrolet in Detroit man.”

Tristan Vautier finished strongly to claim fourth ahead of Marco Andretti, Daly, Jack Hawksworth, Ryan Hunter-Reay and Gabby Chaves.

Series leader Juan Montoya had shown the way at the front in the opening 21 laps from pole ahead of Power but in the end the changing conditions and strategy caught him short on fuel.

Running just behind the leaders at the final restart, Montoya slipped back to eventually limp home in 10th.

His team-mates Power and Castroneves were 18th and 19th respectively.

Power’s race was compromised earlier when he had to pit for a new steering wheel when water fouled up the electronics and he was unable to find gears.

Race 1 winner Carlos Munoz was an early retirement pulling off down an escape road with a smoking rear engine on lap 6.

See below for full results

Pos.	No.	Driver	Manufacturer	Laps	Running / Reason Out
1	11	Sebastien Bourdais	Chevrolet	68	Running
2	14	Takuma Sato	Honda	68	Running
3	15	Graham Rahal	Honda	68	Running
4	19	Tristan Vautier	Honda	68	Running
5	27	Marco Andretti	Honda	68	Running
6	5	Conor Daly (R)	Honda	68	Running
7	41	Jack Hawksworth	Honda	68	Running
8	28	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Honda	68	Running
9	98	Gabby Chaves (R)	Honda	68	Running
10	2	Juan Pablo Montoya	Chevrolet	68	Running
11	83	Charlie Kimball	Chevrolet	68	Running
12	8	Sage Karam (R)	Chevrolet	68	Running
13	10	Tony Kanaan	Chevrolet	68	Running
14	22	Simon Pagenaud	Chevrolet	68	Running
15	7	James Jakes	Honda	67	Running
16	4	Stefano Coletti (R)	Chevrolet	67	Running
17	20	Luca Filippi	Chevrolet	66	Running
18	1	Will Power	Chevrolet	64	Contact
19	3	Helio Castroneves	Chevrolet	64	Contact
20	9	Scott Dixon	Chevrolet	58	Contact
21	67	Josef Newgarden	Chevrolet	49	Contact
22	18	Rodolfo Gonzalez (R)	Honda	35	Contact
23	26	Carlos Munoz	Honda	5	Mechanical

See below for points standings

Pos	Driver	Points
1	Juan Pablo Montoya	315
2	Will Power	294
3	Scott Dixon	252
4	Graham Rahal	246
5	Hélio Castroneves	245
6	Sébastien Bourdais	228
7	Marco Andretti	224
8	Josef Newgarden	206
9	Simon Pagenaud	193
10	Charlie Kimball	187
11	Carlos Muñoz	180
12	Tony Kanaan	174
13	Ryan Hunter-Reay	171
14	Takuma Sato	166
15	Gabby Chaves	133
16	James Jakes	132
17	James Hinchcliffe	129
18	Jack Hawksworth	128
19	Luca Filippi	120
20	Stefano Coletti	104
21	Sage Karam	77
22	Simona de Silvestro	66
23	Conor Daly	63
24	J.R. Hildebrand	57
25	Tristan Vautier	55
26	Sebastian Saavedra	47
27	Francesco Dracone	38
28	Ryan Briscoe	36
29	Townsend Bell	32
30	Carlos Huertas	31
31	Alex Tagliani	27
32	Rodolfo González	27
33	Justin Wilson	25
34	Pippa Mann	16
35	Bryan Clauson	10
35	James Davison	10
35	Oriol Servià	10
35	Ed Carpenter	10