The China Mail - Spanish points-leader Palou wins IndyCar Road America title

The 26-year-old Spaniard overtook US leader Colton Herta with seven laps remaining and cruised to the finish to capture the 55-lap feature on the 4.014-mile, 14-turn permanent road course at Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.

Palou won last month's Indianapolis road race, settled for fourth in the Indianapolis 500 then won two weeks ago on the streets of Detroit before adding Road America to his trophy haul.

"I'm super happy," Palou said. "We're going to try and keep it rolling."

Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden of the United States, last year's Road America winner, was second with Mexico's Pato O'Ward third, New Zealand's Scott Dixon fourth and pole-sitter Herta fifth.

Palou leads the season points race on 324 points with Sweden's Marcus Ericsson falling from 51 to 74 points adrift in second. Newgarden is third, 81 adrift, with Dixon and O'Ward 98 back.

"We're good on points so far but IndyCar, you never know," Palou said. "We're going to focus on every race and keep going on it."

The triumph followed a practice crash that forced the team to rebuild Palou's car for qualifying and the same mechanics formed the pit crew that got him refueled quickly to set up the pivotal pass.

"It has been an amazing weekend," Palou said. "We started with a lot of speed, big mistake by my part in practice.

"It was amazing. They had only an hour and a half to rebuild all the car. We went back on track and it was even better than in practice. They gave me the pit stop that gave us the win as well. Cannot thank them enough."

Herta led most of the race, Palou grabbing a brief lead on a lap-29 pit stop before Herta quickly overtook him.

Herta made his final pit stop with 15 laps remaining while his rivals stayed on the course one more lap before pitting.

Herta won the race back for track position just ahead of Palou, who lurked until making the most of his first chance with seven laps to go and went by on the outside then raced ahead to the end.

"He was really quick and I thought I was not going to catch him," Palou said. "Kept on pushing, put on some pressure and we finally made it happen."

Herta fell back late trying to save fuel to reach the finish.

"It's frustrating," Herta said. "We had the best car and we were cruising the whole time. I had so much more in it and i never got to show it because we were always trying to save fuel and go that lap later. That's a killer."

I.Taylor--ThChM--ThChM