2018 ABC Supply 500

Qualifying was held at 1:30 p.m., giving teams just an hour and a half after practice to prepare. Will Power won the pole with a speed of 219.511 mph. It was the slowest pole speed since IndyCar's return to Pocono in 2013. Power's Team Penske teammate, Josef Newgarden, qualified second at 218.802 mph. Andretti Autosport teammates, Alexander Rossi and Ryan Hunter-Reay qualified third and fourth.

It was the 53rd time that Power had won the pole position for an IndyCar race, moving him into a tie for second all-time, tied with A.J. Foyt.[6]

Power had won the Pocono 500 in 2016 and 2017. And by winning the 2018 Indianapolis 500, Power was looking to become the first driver since Al Unser in 1978 to win three consecutive 500 mile races if he could win at Pocono again in 2018.

An afternoon rain shower cancelled the afternoon practice session. IndyCar chose not to reschedule the final practice, meaning teams would have to start the race with no practice for their race setup.

The start of the 2018 ABC Supply 500

As the field was approaching the green flag, the rows of cars were stacked too closely together and a crash occurred before the race began. Starting 18th, Graham Rahal accelerated and ran into the back of 16th place starter, Spencer Pigot. Pigot spun into the inside wall and suffered major damage to the rear of his car. He would only complete 17 laps before retiring from the race. Rahal suffered a broken front wing and slight damage to his suspension.

As a result of Pigot's crash, the first six laps were run at slow caution speeds. When the green flag was first shown on lap seven, Alexander Rossi passed Will Power entering turn one to take the lead. Robert Wickens passed Simon Pagenaud and Josef Newgarden on the outside in turn one to move into fourth place.

Carrying a lot of speed, Wickens moved to the inside of Hunter-Reay and attempted a pass entering turn two. Wickens' front wheel was alongside Hunter-Reay's rear wheel as they entered turn two. The cars made contact and spun Hunter-Reay at a 90 degree angle to race traffic. Wickens' front wheels climbed over the nose of Hunter-Reay's car and impacted the outside wall roughly three feet off the ground. The car continued to climb up the wall and impacted the catchfence with the nose of the car. The car caught a fence post and rotated several times, landing back on the racing surface and spinning seven times before coming to a stop against the inside wall. Takuma Sato, James Hinchcliffe, and Pietro Fittipaldi were involved in the crash as well.

Robert Wickens on pit road before the 2018 ABC Supply 500

45 minutes after the accident, IndyCar VP of Communications, Curt Cavin, announced that Wickens was "awake and alert" and transported by helicopter to Lehigh Valley Hospital. Wickens list of injuries included "thoracic spinal facture, spinal cord injury, neck fracture, tibia and fibula fractures to both legs, fractures in both hands, fractured right forearm, fractured elbow, four fractured ribs and a pulmonary contusion."[8]

The race was stopped for 1 hour and 56 minutes. In the aftermath of the crash, the quality of the repair work on the fence was debated. Sébastien Bourdais said, "The construction guys said thumbs-up; I’m glad nobody tried it because I’m not sure that would have been satisfactory. It’s just tough moments. When we saw the extent of the damage I had a pretty good idea that it wasn’t gonna get fixed properly, and it wasn’t. The cables were loose, and it was just like, it was pretty lousy. So I wasn’t happy with it at all."[9]

Bourdais' view was disputed by IndyCar president, Jay Frye, who said, "He was not at the scene. He was doing it from a visual perspective. A couple of angles you looked at it, it was different-looking, but another angle it looked fine. It's just how you looked at it."[10]

When the race resumed, Alexander Rossi pulled away from the field. The only challenge to Rossi's domination came from Will Power. During green flag pit stops on lap 135, Power overtook Rossi. However, on lap 140, Rossi repassed Power for the lead going into turn two. Rossi led 180 laps, a new record for the Pocono 500.

Following the resumption of the race from the Wickens crash, the event was very clean with the final 189 laps run without cautions. Tony Kanaan dropped out after 16 laps with throttle issues. With 34 laps remaining, Conor Daly lightly hit the turn two wall with his right-side wheels. Daly entered pit road and the race continued without interruption.

Unlike the 42 lead changes in the 2017 Pocono 500, there were only 11 lead changes in 2018, the majority the result of green-flag pit stops.

Pos	No.	Driver	Team	Engine	Laps	Time/Retired	Pit Stops	Grid	Laps Led	Pts.1
1	27	Alexander Rossi	Andretti Autosport	Honda	200	2:36:49.1128	6	3	180	53
2	12	Will Power W	Team Penske	Chevrolet	200	+4.4982	6	1	16	42
3	9	Scott Dixon W	Chip Ganassi Racing	Honda	200	+41.3557	7	13	3	36
4	18	Sébastien Bourdais	Dale Coyne Racing with Vasser-Sullivan	Honda	200	+42.0120	6	8		32
5	1	Josef Newgarden	Team Penske	Chevrolet	199	+1 lap	6	2		30
6	26	Zach Veach R	Andretti Autosport	Honda	199	+1 lap	6	7		28
7	98	Marco Andretti	Andretti Herta Autosport with Curb-Agajanian	Honda	199	+1 lap	6	11		26
8	22	Simon Pagenaud	Team Penske	Chevrolet	199	+1 lap	7	5		24
9	23	Charlie Kimball	Carlin	Chevrolet	199	+1 lap	7	19		22
10	20	Ed Carpenter	Ed Carpenter Racing	Chevrolet	198	+2 laps	7	15	1	21
11	4	Matheus Leist R	A. J. Foyt Enterprises	Chevrolet	197	+3 laps	7	20		19
12	10	Ed Jones	Chip Ganassi Racing	Honda	197	+3 laps	7	12		18
13	59	Max Chilton	Carlin	Chevrolet	196	+4 laps	7	21		17
14	15	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	Honda	196	+4 laps	8	18		16
15	88	Conor Daly	Harding Racing	Chevrolet	162	Contact	7	22		15
16	21	Spencer Pigot	Ed Carpenter Racing	Chevrolet	17	Contact	0	16		14
17	14	Tony Kanaan	A. J. Foyt Enterprises	Chevrolet	16	Mechanical	1	14		13
18	28	Ryan Hunter-Reay W	Andretti Autosport	Honda	6	Contact	0	4		12
19	6	Robert Wickens R	Schmidt Peterson Motorsports	Honda	6	Contact	0	6		11
20	5	James Hinchcliffe	Schmidt Peterson Motorsports	Honda	6	Contact	0	9		10
21	30	Takuma Sato	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	Honda	6	Contact	0	10		9
22	19	Pietro Fittipaldi R	Dale Coyne Racing	Honda	6	Contact	0	17		8
OFFICIAL BOX SCORE

Notes: ¹ Points include 1 point for leading at least 1 lap during a race, an additional 2 points for leading the most race laps, and 1 point for Pole Position.