We'll put it this way: Juan Pablo Montoya certainly took a circuitous route to winning his second Indianapolis 500.
Montoya passed teammate Will Power with three laps remaining and held him off the rest of the way, kissing the bricks for his second time in three races at the hallowed speedway. Of course, Montoya's first victory came all the way back in 2000. His 15-year gap between wins is the biggest in history.
"That was fun," Montoya said, per Mark Glendenning of Autosport. "I knew I had a good car when I came through the field. But the fight at the end was hard. It's awesome. I'm looking for the words; it's too much."
Power, who battled all day near the top of the leaderboard, finished second. Charlie Kimball, Scott Dixon and Graham Rahal rounded out the top five. Starting on the pole, Dixon was dominant for most of the race, leading 84 laps and doing his best to fend off the two Team Penske cars at his heels.
Dixon's car sputtered late, particularly on turns. He was barely able to stay in the top five after the final restart due to consistent problems with the car.
"We didn't have enough speed. We kind of went back and forth on ignition settings," Dixon told reporters, via The Associated Press' Dan Gelston. "The car was overheating a bit and just too much understeer is what it came down to."
Tony Kanaan and Ed Carpenter were among the notable drivers who got into trouble. Kanaan led 30 laps before being involved in a crash on Lap 153. He spun into the wall and wound up finishing 26th. Carpenter went into an Indianapolis wall for the second time in three weeks and finished 30th.
Montoya, meanwhile, found the right settings at the best possible time. The No. 2 car led just nine laps on the day. He got past Power with three to go and wound up taking the race by .1046 seconds, one of the closest results in history.
"You give that guy the bit and put it in his mouth and he doesn’t give up," Penske said, per Dave Lewandowski of IndyCar.com. "It’s a great day for Team Penske. I knew we had two up there, but the worry was Dixon and the 83 (Charlie Kimball). At the end of the day, they played fair. Good passing and we won the race.”
The win proved a stark contrast to Montoya's first Indy 500 triumph. In 2000, Montoya led 167 of the 200 laps. It was among the more dominant performances in race history and came during a period of international ascent for the Colombian. From 1999-2006, Montoya took 18 open-wheel races and became known as perhaps the best all-around driver in the world.
That dominance sparked an invite to make the transition to Sprint Cup, where he spent nine largely unsuccessful seasons. He returned to the open-wheel format last year when he joined Penske, a move that's already paying huge dividends. Sunday's win was his third since joining the IndyCar Series and second of the 2015 season.
Montoya currently leads Power by 25 points in the standings. He's the only driver with multiple victories this season and has finished inside the top five in five of the six races thus far. After an up-and-down decade-and-a-half, it appears Montoya's using the Indy 500 to once again reclaim his status as the best open-wheel racer on the planet.
"2000 was the start of my career," Montoya said, per Autosport. "I was really young. We came here, had a really good car, we dominated. That was an easy race. But this was a lot of work. When you have to work for it that hard, it's exciting."
The task now will be carrying that momentum over for the remainder of 2015. The IndyCar Series heads to Detroit next for the Dual over the weekend. Last year, Montoya finished 12th and 13th, respectively, in those races and could never quite figure out the track.
But after that, the schedule heads to Montoya's bread and butter. He earned top-five finishes at Fontana, Texas and Milwaukee last season. Each race is an opportunity for him to get a third win and extend his points lead even more.
Given his stellar performance Sunday, we may have witnessed the true beginning of Montoya's first IndyCar championship run.
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