Will Power wins 2018 Indianapolis 500: 3 takeaways

What can we learn from Will Power’s win at the 2018 Indianapolis 500? Here are our takeaways from IndyCar’s 102nd Indianapolis 500.

The 2018 Indianapolis 500 was every bit as big as Verizon IndyCar Series fans expected it to be, right down to the heartwarming ending. But what does this huge race tell us about the rest of the 2018 IndyCar season?

Sunday’s 102nd Indianapolis 500 started with talk about the big name not in the race and ended with a big name winning it. But in between there were plenty of twists and turns to keep IndyCar fans interested, not to mention looking down the line to the other 12 races left this year.

Here’s what we learned from the 2018 Indianapolis 500:

1. Will Power is underrated

Now that he’s an Indianapolis 500 winner, can we start talking more about how good Will Power is?

It seems bizarre to say when Power just lifted the Borg-Warner Trophy, but it’s always felt like he hasn’t gotten all of the respect he deserves. He fought and scrapped to finally win an IndyCar title in 2015, then saw an Indy 500 victory slip away the next year. And that’s always been the “but” in conversation—yeah, he’s great but he hasn’t won the Indianapolis 500.

Power’s an Indy 500 winner now. He scored Team Penske’s milestone 200th IndyCar victory in the last race. And he’s now the IndyCar championship leader. So let’s just take a minute or two today and appreciate how good he is, and has been.

He might have had to wait a while to drink the milk, but he’s always been one of IndyCar’s best drivers and now he can get a round of applause that he so richly deserves.

2. Alexander Rossi cannot be scared

Alexander Rossi won the Indianapolis 500 in 2016, but what he did Sunday might have been an even better performance.

Everyone was shocked when Rossi qualified 32nd out of 33 cars for this year’s Indy 500, but there was a universal feeling that he was still going to be a threat to win the race. He proved us all right this weekend, carving up cars on the outside (including his own teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay), and sliding into the Top 5. At one point he was leading the race!

Though he didn’t wind up with a second Indy 500 victory, Rossi still came home with a more than impressive fourth-place finish—and valuable points that allowed him to stay second in the hunt for the 2018 IndyCar championship. Oh, and by the way, that’s five out of six races where Rossi has finished in the Top 5.

3. The new aero kits are tetchy

The big question going into the Indy 500 was how IndyCar’s new aero kit would react to the race, and we answered that—not in a good way. Of the handful of accidents on Sunday all but one were single-car spins.

No one was immune, either, as the yellow flag came down on front-runners like Tony Kanaan and Sebastien Bourdais, as well as the exiting Danica Patrick. It didn’t matter where you were or how much experience you had; these cars proved themselves to be very touchy, willing to go sideways at the slightest misstep.

We’ll have to see if anything is learned from this going forward because there are still more oval tracks left on the calendar. Not to mention that Ed Jones is now a question mark for the next two races, as he was complaining of head and neck pain after his wreck.

Next: Watch Danica Patrick's Indy 500 crash

The next Verizon IndyCar Series races are the Dual in Detroit on June 2-3. For complete coverage of the 2018 IndyCar season, follow the Motor Sports category at FanSided.