Peerless

This is how you put on a Greatest Spectacle, in case the NASCAR posers and Indy-Ain't-The-Same deniers are wondering. You give 'em a duel for the ages at America's loudest, fastest historic landmark.

You flood this ancient place with the population of a mid-size city, and you put in a heavenly call to Tony Hulman and put him in charge of the weather ("Outta the way, Mr. Accuweather Forecast.  Lemme show you how it's done"). Then you bring it down two determined men and two rocket ships: Simon Pagenaud, who owned May like few have in recent memory, and Alexander Rossi, who ran the wheels off it in as breathtaking a charge as Indy has seen in ... well, 103 years.

Then you let 'em settle it in a 15-lap dash to the finish, after the one big crash of a mostly clean day shut things down for awhile.

In the end, Rossi caught Pagenaud with three laps to run, and Pagenaud blew back past him on the outside in turn three on lap 199. Then Pagenaud, who had been masterful all day (and all month), masterfully kept the flat-footing Rossi in his wake by weaving back and forth on lap 200, breaking Rossi's draft and keeping him from getting one final run.

You wanna talk defensive driving? That, boys and girls, was defensive driving on steroids.

Like all great Indy duels, this one stirred echoes of other duels on other days. It was Rodger Ward and Jim Rathmann swapping the lead time and again in 1960. It was Rick Mears almost-but-not-quite chasing down Gordon Johncock in 1982. It was Ryan Hunter-Reay and Helio Castroneves going into the grass to pass as the laps ran down in 2014; Emmo punting Al Jr. into the wall in turn three in 1989; Junior and Scott Goodyear drag-racing to the yard of brick three years later.

Now you can add Pagenaud and Rossi to the collection. Celebrate them both, because as with all great duels it took both to make the moment -- and because both put on peerless drives that made this day.

Pagenaud broke the pole jinx -- it had been a full decade since the polesitter wound up in victory lane -- by putting everyone in his mirrors and keeping them there, leading more laps (116) than any driver in nine years. Rossi, meanwhile, drove like a man possessed by either demons or road rage, passing people high and low and in places no earthly soul would have thought to pass people.

The dominant images of his day?

Pounding his hands on the steering column in frustration tration when his fuel hose malfunctioned on a pit stop. Taking one hand off the wheel -- at 220 mph -- and shaking his fist at back marker Oriol Servia, who for reasons known only to him kept blocking Rossi during Rossi's mad dash to the front, even though Servia was a lap down.

Riveting stuff. And, yes, even the predicted storms stayed away, the Speedway doused instead by a downpour of sunshine as an overcome Pagenaud took the checkers, stopped on the yard of brick to salute the fans, and then dumped an entire bottle of milk in his own face.

Bathed in white, it looked briefly as if his face had been etched in marble. Which seemed fitting, somehow.

After all, not too many days from now, his face will be etched on the Borg-Warner Trophy.