DETROIT, Mich — While Alex Palou and Honda dominated the NTT INDYCAR SERIES race in Chevrolet’s backyard, at least Will Power and two of the Arrow McLaren Racing drivers gave the bowtie camp reasons to celebrate on the doorstep of the GM world headquarters.

Chevy drivers took 2 of the 3 spots on the podium with Felix Rosenqvist netting his fifth career podium finish in Sunday’s Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix.

“Yeah, that was an awesome race,” Rosenqvist said. “I have to say, I was really impressed what GM and Chevy have done to make this happen. There was some criticism to start the weekend, but it all played out really nicely. I have to say it was a fun racetrack, it raced really well.

“That long straightaway, we picked a low downforce option and we were able to pass on cars at the end of the straight. Yeah, it was awesome. I thought it wasn’t going to be a lot of passing, but it raced super well. Big thanks to GM and Chevy.

“Yeah, good race. I thought it was good to be back on the podium. It’s been a while. We’ll take that.”

Rosenqvist and others in the top five at the end of the 100 lap street fight in Motown were greatly helped by tire strategy at the beginning of the race.

Coming into Sunday’s seventh race of the 2023 season, no one truly knew what strategy was going to be the winning one. Due to the practice carnage, there wasn’t enough clean laps available to know not only what the right tire choice would be, but what kind of setups would work best for the two options of tires.

So, most of the field elected to start the race on the Firestone alternates. There were a few that elected to go off strategy and onto the Firestone primaries instead. That paid off massively.

Power, the three Arrow McLaren drivers, Rinus VeeKay, David Malukas and Graham Rahal were on the blacks at the start. Power quickly rose going from his 7th starting spot to 3rd by Lap 20. Two laps later, he was in second.

Power cut the gap from 10 seconds to 2 seconds before pole sitter Alex Palou hit pit lane for the first time on Lap 29. Power would take over until he pit on Lap 33. He’d cycle to second after that first pit sequence and remain there the rest of the way.

The McLaren’s followed the same strategy.

Rosenqvist started ninth and was fourth after the first stint. Alexander Rossi went from 12th to fifth. Pato O’Ward would have been there if not for an issue on his stop.

The trio would stay in the top five the rest of the way.

On the Lap 91 restart, Power went for the lead going outside Alex Palou for the top spot. Power was too wide and got into Scott Dixon. Rossi meanwhile, benefitted the most in going from fifth to second while Power slid into third and Rosenqvist remaining in fourth.

On the ensuing restart, Power got back by Rossi for second. Rosenqvist battled back and hip checked Rossi to snag his fifth career podium while Dixon got back by Rossi to finish fourth in the aftermath.

Rossi said he would talk to Rosenqvist privately about that move. Rosenqvist said he’d oblige.

“I mean, we race hard, but I think we also race fair,” he said. “Obviously we like each other. We don’t have any intentions to put each other in the wall.

“But, yeah, it was tight. I think the move wasn’t really high-risk. I was completely alongside him into three. Yeah, just gets tight, man. It’s so close. He squeezed me a little bit on entry, I squeezed him a little bit on exit.

“I think it’s a good problem to have. The Arrow McLaren cars have been up there every race. You’re going to find yourself in a situation where you’re fighting teammates. I think it’s something we’ll discuss internally if we can manage it differently. Obviously there were no team calls on this one, which is cool. They let us battle it out on the track.

“Yeah, I mean, I think he actually hit the wall, but I think he got out in the marbles. I think it’s a good thing he was able to get back in.

“I have to say, I pretty much didn’t have any more room on entry. I was just trying to not go into the wall on apex. After that, I just tried to get out of the corner as quick as I can, give him the room he needed.

“As I say, we’ll talk about it. No biggy. I’m just happy we both finished up front.”

Still, while it wasn’t a win, it was a good momentum keeping day for the overall camp.

McLaren had two cars in the top five for the second time in three races.

“It was a fun race,” said Rosenqvist. “Felt like we were just quick all through it. We went up every stage of race. We were in a position where we could maybe win it in the end. Yeah, it was a bit dicey on the restarts in the end. The second to last there, Dixon went wide. I had to grab the clutch. I think Will had the same. That potentially could have cost us a bit.

“I’m happy to finish on the podium after all the close calls.”

For Rosenqvist, he now has four top 10 finishes over the last five races including a pair of top fives in the last three. He had three total top five finishes in 2022 and already has two in the first seven races in 2023.

In fact, the Swedish driver is really starting to find his groove. That all started in last year’s GMR Grand Prix.

Prior to that, he had no top five finishes, just two top 10’s and 14 laps led in his first 18 starts with McLaren. Over his last 20, he’s had 14 top 10 finishes, five top fives and 65 laps led.

Is it enough to keep his job with the team? Speculation is that Alex Palou is coming over and both Pato O’Ward and Alexander Rossi are in the midst of multi-year deals. With Kyle Larson running the Indy 500, is Rosenqvist doing enough to salvage his job with this team?

Right now, he’s making it hard for them to not keep him. Next up is the spot of his lone INDYCAR win – Road America.

“I think we needed it,” Rosenqvist said of this podium finish in Detroit on Sunday. “We’ve been pretty much up there every weekend. We had three DNFs which hurt.

“It seems this year in the championship a lot of the top runners have had tough races as well. I think we can recover if we keep the momentum going.

“It’s nice. I think all the boys and girls on the 6 car, Arrow McLaren, really deserved it. We’ve been up there sniffing for a long time. Hasn’t worked out.”

The momentum is equally building for Rossi. He just scored his fifth top 10 finish of the season already including four of which being in the top five. He was third in the GMR Grand Prix, fifth in the Indy 500 and fifth again on Sunday.

By comparison, he had just three top five finishes with Andretti in 2021 and five each for the 2020 and 2022 seasons. He’s nearly had as many top fives in 7 starts with McLaren than he had in full seasons with Andretti.

With having momentum now, I was curious his thoughts on in a series as difficult as this one, is it harder to get momentum or keep it?

“That’s a good question. Probably keep, you know, I think I think every driver and team can like look back on weekends of like, you can pull positives out of anything, right?” he told me. “And so like internally, that can be good momentum, even if like the result doesn’t show it like take RLL for example. Like I think as a three car group, they probably have a lot of good momentum. So it’s definitely harder to keep you know, the series is so competitive and you can go one weekend from thinking you’ve got everything sorted out to the next beam. absolutely nowhere. So it’s challenging.”