Wilson maintained his lead after the pit stops cycled through, but the new Bridgestones agreed with the Allmendinger car as he ripped off three of the fastest laps of the race in whittling his teammate's lead down to less than three seconds. Behind Allmendinger, the huge Mexico City crowd began to take notice of another fierce battle as Roshfrans Rookie-of-the-Year Timo Glock ran down Dominguez for third, Dominguez having gotten a great stop from his Forsythe squad to move into third.
Glock and Dominguez went nose-to-tail for three laps before Glock decided to make his move inside of turn one with 12 laps to go. Unyielding to the challenge of the rookie, Dominguez held his ground and the two cars had contact in the centre of the turn, resulting in a Dominguez spin that ended the Mexican's chance for a hometown podium finish.
Wilson again slipped away from the field on the lap 61 restart while Tracy quietly picked his way up to the eighth spot and Bourdais closed on da Matta for fifth. Closing on the 2002 series champion ended up closing out the season for Bourdais, who had contact heading into turn one with the rear of da Matta's PKV Racing, sending both of them spinning into the gravel trap. The contact broke the front wing of Bourdais' machine and left him nine laps shy of making the finish for the first time this year.
That caution set up the final restart and brought Allmendinger up to Wilson's rear wing for one final shot at the win. Wilson got another strong run on the restart and snapped off two consecutive fastest race laps in sealing the deal on his win.
“You know, I mean, as Justin and I would admit, we've probably given away a couple 1-2 finishes this year we should have had,” commented Allmendinger. “To finally give Carl a 1-2 finish, I think it's absolutely fantastic. You see the tears that come down his face after we do well, you can see how much he cares. For us as a team, I think it's important to know that your team owner is behind you that much. I've been with him from the start. He's just been a hundred percent behind this team.”
“It feels great,” added Wilson. “I just want to carry on from what AJ was saying. Friday we really struggled. AJ was fantastic. I saw his set-up. We kind of evolved each other and were able to work together like that to try different things, see if it works. If it doesn't work, we got the other car to back up on. That's what we did this weekend. It's great. The team have done a fantastic job, like AJ said. They really deserved the 1-2. Hopefully we can get a few more next year.”
Tracy made his final restart of the year count in a big way as he passed Servia and Glock heading into turn one and stole the third spot, making his way to the podium after one of the most eventful days of his 236-start series career.
“Probably the end result didn't come out as well,” remarked Tracy. “You know, it was a frustrating day for us. I made a good start, got by AJ. I was in second place. Somebody touched me in the back tyre, punctured it. I came in, changed it and that put us three-quarters of a lap behind. We got a pit stop out of the way. The yellow came out, which really played into our hands.
“On the restart with Rodolfo, we were fighting and ended up touching. I gave him a flat tyre. That kind of led into me blocking AJ on the track and trying to keep him behind me. After that, pretty much thought we were out of it. Then we started to catch up. Passed some guys. We got a couple lucky yellows at the end. I had a lot of 'push to pass' left, was able to make positions back. So good result. “
Servia outlasted a challenge from Glock for fourth, leaving Glock to content himself with his second top-five run of the year. Veteran Jimmy Vasser ended up in the sixth slot with Nelson Philippe closed his year with a career-best seventh-place finish.
