INDIANAPOLIS – Before the final caution that flew with 23 laps remaining in Sunday’s 103rd Running of the Indianapolis 500, Alexander Rossi thought that he was sitting in a pretty good position to earn his second career ‘500 win, both coming in the last four years.

See, Rossi knew that he was getting better fuel mileage. Pagenaud, pit for the final time with 33 laps-to-go. His first stint, he made it only 32 laps. That’s about all Pagenaud was making it on a run.

So, for him to go the final 33 laps without pitting, it would be close.

Rossi, hit pit lane for the final time two laps later. He was consistently getting much better fuel mileage than Pagenaud all day and knew that he could make it to the end. So, when Rossi took over the lead with 23 laps-to-go after closing in and passing Pagenaud, he thought that if this race went caution free, he was in the catbirds seat.

Unfortunately, Graham Rahal, Sebastien Bourdais, Felix Rosenqvist, Zach Veach and Charlie Kimball all crashed in Turn 3 bringing out the fourth and final caution of the day. Now, Pagenaud no longer had to save fuel. The caution meant he could ride it out until the end.

“That last yellow really hurt us because we were doing a lot better on fuel mileage than he was, so that was the first kind of nail in the proverbial coffin,” said Rossi after a runner-up finish. “We didn’t have the speed out front I mean, I was flat for the last 15 laps, and there’s not much more you can do.

“I mean, it was pretty inevitable. I mean, I think you saw on the last restart, like he just drove by us. There was the opportunity there to get the lead. I had been working on it for 12, 13 laps, and it finally came, and I didn’t have a choice, I just had to hope that maybe he would lose so much behind me and that Takuma (Sato) or Josef (Newgarden) or whatever would get him, and I would be able to have enough of a cushion for the final two laps. But I passed him in 1 and he was straight back by me into Turn 1, so there was nothing I could do.”

Pagenaud though, doesn’t agree. He thinks he was good on fuel no matter what and didn’t have to be conservative. Furthermore, he thinks the yellow actually helped Rossi instead.

“No, not at all,” said the race winner. “No, I mean, the thing is with — it actually helped him. The crash happened, it was such a big crash, they needed to clean the track. So if they didn’t go red flag, we would have had an eight-lap shootout, so I had plenty of fuel for that, no problem. And when I went by I was planning on saving fuel to attack him at the end, and as you could see, no problem re-passing him. No, I don’t think so. I think he — obviously it was a position race. You had to be assertive when you needed, and we just had a better package today.”