Wilson's misfortune allowed Tracy, Pagenaud and Rahal to move up into the top five, and the trio continued to jockey for position, along with PT's rookie team-mate David Martinez, in what was otherwise a largely processional opening period.
However, when Bourdais and Power pitted, having swapped positions when the Frenchman caught his rival napping on lap 24, it was Servia who assumed the lead, his early pit-stop allowing the PKV car to run marginally out of sequence with those around it. The tactic, just as it had for Junqueira in Europe, allowed Servia to climb through the field to put himself in position for a podium in the closing stages.
Martinez lost his opportunity to give the home crowd a top five finish when he ran into gearbox problems that cost him six laps before Forsythe returned him to the fray, but countryman Mario Dominguez was doing his best to give them something to cheer as he hauled the lead Pacific Coast entry from a disappointing 15th on the grid up into the top ten, battling with Junqueira and a subdued Neel Jani despite suffering the after-effects of pneumonia.
Bourdais' run to victory number 31 appeared assured when he emerged from his second and final pit-stop well ahead of Power, but race control threw one last obstacle in his way by calling for a debris-related yellow on lap 54, with about 20 minutes remaining on the event clock. The decision erased Sebas' eleven-second lead and left him potentially a sitting duck as Power closed up behind with a lot more power to pass in the bank after a pre-race penalty had cut a third from the Frenchman's allocation.
