SPEEDWAY, Ind. — Indianapolis Motor Speedway has never been particularly interested in making life easy. The long straightaways tempt a driver into thinking there is plenty of time to make something happen, then those flat corners arrive and remind everybody that track position is still expensive. Wednesday night’s Brickyard 250 became a 100-lap exercise in patience, and Morgan Anadell played it better than anybody.

Anadell started third, led a race-high 62 laps, won Stage 2, and took the victory with a spotless zero in the incident column. The number 8 Toyota Supra first moved to the front on lap 30, controlled much of the middle of the race, and then had to win it all over again after Dylan Vose came charging back late. When Anadell reclaimed the lead on lap 94, he kept it for the final six laps and closed out a 48-point night.

Vose certainly made him earn it. The polesitter led 31 laps, won Stage 1, and took the lead back from Anadell on lap 72 before losing it two laps later. He tried again on lap 87 and stayed out front until Anadell’s final move on lap 94. Vose finished third with 34 points, another strong night that pulled him much closer to the championship lead.

Sam Luebbers may have had the quietest excellent race in the field. He started sixth, finished second, scored in both stages, and never recorded an incident point. Luebbers did not lead a lap, but at Indianapolis he did not need to. He simply kept the car underneath him while trouble found other contenders and walked away with 35 points. That moved him to 269 for the season, still very much in the championship argument.

Benjamin Myrick delivered another useful run, climbing from eighth to fourth despite four incident points. Samuel Andersen followed in fifth after starting seventh, also with four incidents. Roy Schwalbach finished sixth, one lap down, but kept a clean incident sheet and scored in both stages. None of them had Anadell’s pace, but all three survived a place where survival tends to become valuable somewhere around the second half of the race.

David McSorley had one of his better drives of the season, starting 10th and finishing seventh with six incident points. He spent most of the night outside the stage-point picture, but at a track where passing can become a slow negotiation, moving forward three positions and bringing the car home was something to take with you.

Trevor McManus had considerably more to think about on the ride home. He entered Indianapolis leading the standings by 16 points, started second, led four laps, and posted the fastest lap of the night at 52.266 seconds. But speed never turned into a result. McManus finished eighth, two laps down, with eight incident points. “The #59 Chevrolet Camaro had plenty of speed,” McManus said. “We just didn’t have a Brickyard kind of day. You can be fast here and still spend half the night paying for one bad sequence.”

Brian Schwalbach had a similarly rough scorecard. He started fifth, finished ninth, and joined McManus and Brandon Selby with the race-high total of eight incident points. His biggest trouble came late, when contact with McManus on lap 96 put another mark on an already difficult night. “The #2 Chevrolet Camaro wasn’t terrible,” Brian said. “But every time we started making some ground, something else went wrong. By the end I think the bricks were the only thing we hadn’t hit.”

Selby had an unusual evening of his own. Starting ninth, he found himself leading on lap 27 and stayed there for three laps before Anadell took over. Selby eventually finished 10th after completing 70 laps, also with eight incident points. The early contact on lap 7 involving Selby, Myrick, and McSorley was one of the first signs that Indianapolis was going to collect a few souvenirs before the night was over.

The other big moment came on lap 30, when trouble involving Vose and Brian Schwalbach coincided with Anadell’s first move to the lead. From there, the race largely became a fight between Anadell and Vose. They traded the lead repeatedly late — Vose on lap 72, Anadell on 74, Vose again on 87, and Anadell for good on 94. Eight official lead changes and four cautions for 12 laps made it busy enough without turning the race into a demolition derby.

The championship picture is considerably tighter now. McManus still leads with 299 points, but Vose has cut the gap from 16 to just six. Anadell’s win moves him from fourth to third with 274 points, only 25 behind McManus, while Luebbers sits another five points back at 269. Three races remain, and the top four are separated by just 30 points. Indianapolis did not settle much. It mostly made the math more interesting.

Next week brings Martinsville Speedway, which is about as different from Indianapolis as stock-car racing can manage without putting dirt on the track. The Brickyard rewarded patience, clean exits, and keeping mistakes to a minimum. Martinsville brings brakes, bumpers, traffic, and several hundred opportunities to reconsider your opinion of the driver directly in front of you. Anadell leaves Indianapolis with the trophy. The championship leaves with everybody packed a little closer together.