MADISON, Ill – The crowd was so big on Saturday night at the World Wide Technology Raceway just outside of St. Louis that they had to open up the Turn 1 grandstands. The only reason that they’d do that is if the main grandstand was at or near a sell out.

Well, track officials estimated the attendance was around 42-43k as all those on hand wintessed a thrilling Bommarito Automotive Group 500.

Takuma Sato stole a win away from the field as he rebounded from being multiple laps down to narrowly hold off Ed Carpenter in what was the closest finish in Gateway history. The win was Sato’s fifth of his Indy Car career as three of which have occurred in the last calendar year with Rahal/Letterman/Lanigan Racing.

Speaking of that, RLL’s three wins now in this new car are just two shy of Chip Ganassi Racing for third most in this new era. Andretti Autosport is second with seven trips to victory lane while Team Penske has 14 themselves.

Those are the only teams with multiple race wins since the start of the 2018 season.

For Penske, everyone had thought that one of their trio of drivers would likely win on Saturday night. Instead, it was Sato and RLL. See, Penske had won on all four ovals this season and had five oval victories in-a-row. Furthermore, Penske had won three of the last four races on short ovals including the last four at Gateway. They’ve won 13 of the last 18 overall oval races.

From the beginning, it looked like it would be their race to lose too. They had three of the top four starting spots and ran 1-2 while Sato was three laps down early on.

In the end, Sato is celebrating in victory lane while Penske had just one driver in the top five.

For Will Power he finishes in the back for the second time in three tries at Gateway. He also went from winning this race last year and reaching victory lane last weekend in Pocono to last six days later.

For Simon Pagenaud, his fifth place result was the fourth time in the last five races that he outpaced his Penske teammate of Josef Newgarden which allows him to cut his once 60+ point deficit to now 38. With Alexander Rossi being on the wrong end of pit strategy at the end, Pagenaud moves past Rossi in the ponits standings and goes to second with only two races remaining.