The MAVTV 500, second leg of the IndyCar's triple crown of 500-mile races, was arguably the best race of the current Verizon IndyCar Series season. A breathtaking nail-biter from beginning to end, the 11th round of the 2015 championship will live forever not just in the fans’ heart and memory, but also in the series' record books.

The 250 lap race featured 80 lead changes, a new Indy car racing record, surpassing the 73 set at the same Auto Club Speedway in 2001. Throughout the race, 14 drivers led laps: Will Power, Helio Castroneves, Juan Pablo Montoya, Simon Pagenaud, Scott Dixon, Tony Kanaan, Sage Karam, Takuma Sato, Marco Andretti, Carlos Muñoz, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Ryan Briscoe, Ed Carpenter and race-winner Graham Rahal.

Will Power, driving the No. 1 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet, ended up with the extra points for most laps led, with 62. Helio Castroneves, Power’s teammate, managed to lead 43 laps before contact with Ryan Briscoe ended his day early. The race winner Graham Rahal finished with only 15 laps completed ahead of the competition, including the last nine – among those, the most important of all the 250 laps of the 500-mile race: the last one.

Rahal also set a new record on his own, snapping a 124-race winless streak, between his win at his series debut at St. Petersburg in 2008 triumph and Saturday. The driver of the No. 15 Mi-Jack Honda Rahal Letterman Laningan Racing team won for the first time in Champ Car’s last ever race before the merge, driving a Newman-Haas entry.

The previous record winless streak between wins belonged to Johnny Rutherford, who between the 1981 Phoenix and the 1985 Montreal Grand Prixes went 97 starts before seeing checkers ahead of everyone else again.

And if the tight, old school pack racing wasn’t enough to bring back nostalgic memories of the glorious days of CART, the MAVTV 500 result was responsible for putting well known surnames from the past into the spotlight again. With Graham Rahal winning the race and Marco Andretti finishing third, two of the most traditional families in American motorsport shared the glory of a podium again, for the first time in almost two decades.

The last time a Rahal and an Andretti shared an IndyCar podium was at the Molson Indy Vancouver event, a street course round way back in 1996, when Marco’s and Graham’s dads, Michael and Bobby, raced to a 1-2 finish. Overall, Fontana marked the 42nd time drivers of the families finished on the podium together.

The MAVTV 500 also marked the 21st win by a car owned by Bobby Rahal, and the first since July, 2008, when Ryan Hunter-Reay drove one of his entries to victory at Watkins Glen. As a team owner, Rahal is now only three victories shy of tying his win totals as a driver.

Next up for the Verizon IndyCar Series is the ABC Supply Wisconsin 250 at the famed Milwaukee Mile. Follow @VAVELIndyCar on Twitter for coverage leading up to and during the race weekend.

Pete Liguori is the editor of the VAVEL USA Racing section. Follow him on Twitter at @PeteUSSports.