Backstretch Motorsports

The new era of American open-wheel racing started with a bang with last night’s GAINSCO Indy 300. New Zealander Scott Dixon picked up right where he left off last year by notching another season’s first event win on his already impressive IndyCar Series resume. It is Dixon’s second victory on the 1.5 mile Homestead-Miami oval.

It wasn’t a cakewalk for the Target Chip Ganassi pilot with a continuation of last year’s battles swapping turns at the point with Andretti Green Racing’s Tony Kanaan from the drop of the green flag.

“Yeah, today was a tough race.” said Dixon, “I think early on we thought we had a pretty good car. We opted to go a little lighter on downforce than some of the others on the grid. In those longer stints, it started to hurt us. We couldn’t keep the car on the bottom or the middle, to be honest. I tried running high where the other guys were. I couldn’t keep the car down, especially in (Turns) 3 and 4. (Turns) 1 and 2, I didn’t have a problem.”

Dixon re-took the lead for the final time at lap 197 when Tony Kanaan, another former champion, ran out of luck.

Kanaan came out of the last round of green flag pit stops in the lead and appeared well on the way to a victory until Ernesto Viso, a rookie driving for one of the former Champ Car teams that just joined the IRL, punctured a tire and spun on the 193rd of 200 laps.

As Viso slid broadside across the track, Kanaan tried to duck around him and almost made it. But Kanaan hit Viso’s car with the right front of his Dallara Honda, knocking his tire askew.

Kanaan stayed out front for several laps behind the pace car, with his damaged tire barely touching the ground. But he slowly drove his damaged car into the pits as the green flag waved on lap 197, giving up the lead to Dixon, who won for the second time on Homestead’s 1.5-mile oval.

“You know, T.K. (Tony Kanaan) had a great pit stop there,” Dixon continued. “I think that’s what enabled him to jump us a little bit. We were catching him pretty quick, I think a mile an hour, two miles an hour a lap. So, what did we have, eight or nine laps to go. It would have been very close even if he didn’t have that incident. It was damn shame to see him have such a silly little incident to take him out of the race.”

Marco Andretti, Kanaan’s AGR teammate would take the company banner to a second place finish. Andretti was also the top lap leader in the event with 85 trips around the Homestead oval on point.

The newcomers making the transition from the Champ Car World Series to the newly unified IndyCar series were able to compete with the leaders, forecasts of disaster proved wrong and the newcomers generally stayed out of the way of the faster cars and out of trouble.

Top transition driver Oriol Servia managed a 12th place finish in the KV Racing Technologies Honda-powered Dallara. The Spaniard was pleased with finishing the race and felt it was a pure learning experince. “Yeah, I learned a lot. About the car, I learn how — what happens when you have five cars in front of you in a superspeedway and you have no downforce, these kind of scary feelings. I think there’s going to be plenty of those this season.”

“It was good fun and I can only imagine when we’re up to speed how fun it’s going to be.”

Homestead-Miami Speedway :: Sat, 29 Mar 2008
Pos. Driver/Car No C/E/T S Qual
Speed Laps XL LL Status Pts
1 Scott Dixon
Target Chip Ganassi Racing 9 D/H/F 1 213.341 200 3 67 Running 50
2 Marco Andretti
NYSE 26 D/H/F 4 211.838 200 3 85 Running 43
3 Dan Wheldon
Target Chip Ganassi Racing 10 D/H/F 22 0.000 200 3 9 Running 35
4 Helio Castroneves
Team Penske 3 D/H/F 5 211.581 200 1 4 Running 32
5 Ed Carpenter
Menards/ Vision Racing 20 D/H/F 24 0.000 199 0 0 Running 30
6 Danica Patrick
Motorola 7 D/H/F 2 212.129 199 0 0 Running 28
7 Ryan Hunter-Reay
Rahal Letterman Racing Team Ethanol 17 D/H/F 9 210.744 199 0 0 Running 26
8 Tony Kanaan
Team 7-Eleven 11 D/H/F 6 211.580 198 3 35 Running 24
9 A.J. Foyt IV
Vision Racing 2 D/H/F 25 0.000 198 0 0 Running 22
10 Vitor Meira
Delphi National Guard 4 D/H/F 10 210.315 197 0 0 Running 20
11 Buddy Rice
Dreyer & Reinbold Racing 15 D/H/F 11 209.486 196 0 0 Running 19
12 Oriol Servia
KV Racing Technology 5 D/H/F 14 209.021 195 0 0 Running 18
13 Darren Manning
ABC Supply Co./AJ Foyt Racing 14 D/H/F 12 209.319 194 0 0 Running 17
14 Franck Perera
Ares/ Opes Prime 34 D/H/F 13 209.230 194 0 0 Running 16
15 Justin Wilson
McDonald’s Racing Team 2 D/H/F 15 208.757 193 0 0 Running 15
16 Mario Moraes
Dale Coyne Racing 19 D/H/F 21 207.067 187 0 0 Running 14
17 Ernesto Viso
HVM Racing 33 D/H/F 18 208.101 183 0 0 Accident 13
18 Enrique Bernoldi
Opes Prime/ Sangari 36 D/H/F 17 208.130 149 0 0 Handling 12
19 Ryan Briscoe
Team Penske 6 D/H/F 3 212.108 126 0 0 Accident 12
20 Milka Duno
Citgo/ Dreyer & Reinbold Racing 23 D/H/F 16 208.308 122 0 0 Accident 12
21 Marty Roth
Roth Racing 25 D/H/F 8 211.458 53 0 0 Handling 12
22 Jay Howard
Roth Racing 24 D/H/F 23 0.000 50 0 0 Handling 12
23 Bruno Junqueira
Dale Coyne Racing 18 D/H/F 20 207.434 40 0 0 Handling 12
24 Hideki Mutoh
Formula Dream 27 D/H/F 7 211.508 32 0 0 Mechanical 12
25 Will Power
Aussie Vineyard-Team Australia 8 D/H/F 19 208.029 24 0 0 Mechanical 10

Key:
No: Car Number C/E/T: Chassis/Engine/Tire
S: Starting Position F: Finishing Position
XL: Times Led LL: Laps Led
Pts: Points