It seemed like Alex Palou was well on his way to winning Sunday’s (August 24) Snap-On 250 at the Milwaukee Mile and notching up his ninth NTT IndyCar Series victory of the 2025 season.
Mother Nature then promptly said, “Hold my Spotted Cow,” and dropped a small sprinkling of rain down in West Allis, Wisconsin. Palou had a two-second lead over Scott McLaughlin with Josef Newgarden a further second behind his Team Penske teammate.
With just over 40 laps remaining of the race’s scheduled 250, teams had a decision to make on whether they would pit under what might be the race’s final caution period or stay out for track position.
For the top three, they stayed out. The rest of the field played a strategic wild card with a set of tires they all had been saving in case such an event played out.
That included Christian Rasmussen, who was in seventh when race control called for the yellow flag. The No. 21 Ed Carpenter Racing crew called Rasmussen in, and they barely beat Scott Dixon and the lapped car of Felix Rosenqvist off of pit road.
As the field headed back to green, the restart order was Palou, the lapped cars of Robert Shwartzman and Marcus Ericsson, McLaughlin, the lapped cars of Sting Ray Robb and Kyffin Simpson, Newgarden, Pato O’Ward, Alexander Rossi, Christian Lundgaard and then Rasmussen.
With the top three on tires 17 laps older than the rest of the field behind them and several lapped cars in the mix, it was anybody’s guess what would happen over the final 28 laps.
After one lap of green flag racing, Rossi was up to fourth with Rasmussen in sixth. With 25 to go, Rasmussen snatched fifth from O’Ward by going around the outside in turns 3-4.
Rossi could not hold off Rasmussen in turn 2 and Newgarden fell victim to the Dane just one and a half laps later. As Palou began his 230th lap, Rasmussen hit his Chevrolet engine’s rev limiter due to his gearing not being optimized for drafting.
It didn’t matter. The 2023 Indy NXT champion went around McLaughlin on the high side. Second place belonged to the 25-year-old, and there would be 20 laps to go next time by.
With no other cars between the 2025 Indianapolis 500 winner and the youngster, the lead began to dwindle. From two seconds down to 1.78 seconds, 1.45 seconds, 1.19 seconds, .718 seconds and then .365 seconds.
The race was on. With the watchful spotter eye in the sky guiding his charge, Rasmussen went outside of Palou and slammed the door shut on the four-time IndyCar champion.
The job wasn’t over yet. There were still 15 laps to go and lapped traffic was still going to be on track. Rasmussen had to navigate around Graham Rahal, Rosenqvist, Jacob Abel and Louis Foster.
As the car kept twitching over the old concrete surface, the message finally came through from the spotter stand after Rasmussen put two cars between himself and Palou.
“You don’t have to pass anybody else.”
And Rasmussen didn’t en route to scoring his first IndyCar win, the 302nd driver to do so in Indy car racing history.
Rasmussen has had an affinity for ovals dating back to his days in the ladder system, having won four races between 2020 and 2023. His first IndyCar podium came back in June at World Wide Technology Raceway and many felt it was only a matter of time before he found victory lane.
Rasmussen’s charge was impressive. With most of the lead lap cars on fresh tires, one would think that there were many positions that changed hands. However, when one looks at the running order on the final caution lap and compares it to the finishing order, it’s wild to think how few cars on new tires actually changed their positions.
Rasmussen went up six positions while Rossi, David Malukas, Colton Herta, Kyle Kirkwood and Santino Ferrucci all gained a position. Dixon and Rinus VeeKay each lost a position, while Conor Daly lost two positions after the restart.
Rasmussen was the driver who capitalized the most with his new tires. And that’s why he won the race.
Christopher DeHarde has covered IndyCar racing and the Road to Indy for various outlets since 2014. In addition to open wheel racing, DeHarde has also covered IMSA and various short track racing events around Indiana. Originally from New Orleans, DeHarde moved to the Indianapolis area in 2017 to further pursue a career as a motorsports writer.