DETROIT, Mich — For the second time this season, Will Power benefitted from going off strategy from most of the field at the beginning of the NTT INDYCAR SERIES race. In Barber, he and his Team Penske teammates went on a different tire strategy and it paid off for a podium finish that day.

Same thing in Sunday’s Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix.

Coming into Sunday’s race, 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 was one of five drivers in the 27 car field to start on the blacks. With the alternates falling off around Lap 10, Power did his work. He 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.

“Yeah, very satisfied. Good strategy,” Power said. “I mean, starting on the blacks, everything played out as we thought.”

What helped Power the most was when he was on his green stint, he was aided by two cautions for crashes. It kept his tires from falling off as much as those that started on those tires did for which kept him up front too.

Power got by Alex Palou for the lead on Lap 55. He’d lead the next 10 laps before Palou’s primary tires got by Power’s alternate ones. However, that was the start of the final pit sequence for which helped Power stay within the clutches of Palou’s Honda.

It was just the fact that Palou was too strong. Despite three late race restarts inside of 13 to go, Power never could get the lead back.

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

On the ensuing restart, Power got Rossi back for second. He just didn’t have enough to catch back up to Palou.

“I guess we were worried when the yellow came,” said Power. “Everyone packs up. But then we got a yellow again, so that kind of helped us. We had 10 laps to push hard. I got Palou on the restart. Then they went off, he got me back. Yeah, I couldn’t get him. I tried everything.

“I think my one chance was when Dixon got into me a little bit, I was trying to switch back and get a run, get him into four. Apart from that, yeah, the next restart was in third so I didn’t have another shot at him.

“Very good job. Man, you’re never looking back on seconds as a bad day. Although the guy I was needing to close points to was the guy that won. We limited the damage.”

It was Power’s 96th career podium in his 275th career starts including 125 top five finishes too. In fact, he now has 68 top two finishes (41 wins, 27 runner-ups).

This was a much-needed shot of momentum because his Month of May didn’t go to plan. He qualified 12th for both races at Indy and finished just 12th and 23rd respectively in those pair of races at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. As a result of that, he went from seventh in points (-26) leaving Barber to now eighth (-101) leaving Detroit.