IRL IndyCar Series Round 08: Iowa Speedway, Iowa
Birthday Boy Wheldon Wins Iowa
Target Chip Ganassi Racing’s Dan Wheldon celebrated
his 30 birthday in the best way possible for an IndyCar driver,
by winning Sunday’s Iowa Corn 250 with a calculated
gamble on fuel strategy, followed by a determined drive to
the checkers.
Wheldon, who ran in the lead pack all day, was one of three
front-runners who elected not to pit with the rest of the
field under caution on Lap 190. Andretti Green Racing’s
Hideki Mutoh and Danica Patrick also elected to stay out and
conserve fuel to the finish.
It was a gamble that paid off as Wheldon held off the advances
of Mutoh and Marco Andretti by just 14 thousandths of a second
in one of the closest green-flag finishes of the season. IndyCar
Series points leader Scott Dixon put on a late race charge
to finish fourth, while Vision Racing A.J. Foyt IV scored
a season-high fifth place. Battling understeer in the closing
laps, Patrick rounded out the top six finishers.
A total of 26 Honda-powered drivers ran 8,990 miles of practice,
qualifying and racing this weekend without a single engine-related
failure reported.
Two other potential race victors – Tony Kanaan and
Helio Castroneves – combined to lead 163 of the 250
laps, but neither was a factor at the finish. Team Penske’s
Castroneves led a race-high 92 laps, but faded late in the
race and then had to make an unscheduled pit stop for a deflating
rear tire, finishing two laps off the pace in 14th. Kanaan
led 71 laps, and appeared to be Wheldon’s strongest
challenger in the late laps, but spun and made hard contact
with the Turn 2 wall on lap 212 to end his day, fortunately
without injury.
Despite recent events in the region, including a series of
severe storms, tornadoes and flooding, a full house of more
than 40,000 fans turned out to pack the grandstands at the
.875-mile Iowa Speedway tri- oval, located some 40 miles east
of Des Moines.
Next week, the IndyCar Series goes to the east coast for
another short track event, at the 7/8ths mile Richmond International
Raceway on June 28.
Dan Wheldon (#10 Target Chip Ganassi Racing Honda)
Started 3, finished 1, 2 victory of 2008 and 15career IndyCar
win:
“I must say first and foremost, it was an amazing turnout
today, when you consider all the devastation that has taken
place in Iowa this year. The crowd was unbelievable. Our thoughts
and prayers go out to all those who have suffered with the
storms and floods. Hopefully they all enjoyed the show today
and it took their minds off their problems for just a little
while. I thought it was a great weekend for the fans and our
team. We had a bit of misfortune yesterday when I got caught
up in Bruno [Junqueira’s] crash, but the guys rolled
out the spare car and it was just fantastic. Maybe not perfect
on new tires, but it would just get faster and faster as each
stint went on, and the Honda engine had great power and fuel
economy as always.”
Hideki Mutoh(#27Formula Dream Andretti Green Racing
Honda) Started 7th, finished 2nd, career best IndyCar finish,
leads the series Rookie points and moves up to fifth in the
drivers’ championship standings:
“I’m very pleased. The final laps were exciting
for everyone. I didn’t want to block Marco [Andretti],
who is my teammate, but I didn’t want [Dan] Wheldon
to get away either, and I tried very hard to pass him. It
was a great finish for the team, and I hope to do even better
in the future.”
Marco Andretti (#26 Andretti Green Racing Honda)
Started 8th, finished 3rd:
“It was a completely different race from last year.
Our car worked well all day, especially in traffic, and there
was a lot of good, hard, clean racing today. It had to be
good for the fans, and it was definitely good from the cockpit!
This rookie [teammate Hideki Mutoh] is good. Hideki was definitely
‘on it’ today and he deserved second place. It
was a pretty good day for Andretti Green Racing, I feel like
we’re improving with every race.”
Roger Griffiths (Race Team Technical Leader, Honda
Performance Development) on today’s race:
“It was great to see such a large and enthusiastic crowd
here today in light of recent events in this area, and I think
we gave them a pretty exciting race today. I’m also
happy for Hideki Mutoh, as his second place was the best result
in IndyCar Series history for a Japanese driver. Previously,
it was a Toyota driver (Tora Takagi with a third place finish),
so it’s much better to have a Honda driver achieve this
goal! On the engine front, it was a relatively trouble-free
weekend for us, and everyone who finished the race today will
be using the same engine next week at Richmond, which is good
news as we begin this swing of six consecutive race weekends.”
IRL IndyCar Series
Round 08: Iowa Speedway, Iowa
1 Dan Wheldon (Target Chip Ganassi)
2 Hideki Mutoh (Andretti Green Racing)
3 Marco Andretti (Andretti Green Racing)
4 Scott Dixon (Target Chip Ganassi)
5 A.J. Foyt IV (Vision Racing)
6 Danica Patrick (Andretti Green Racing)
7 Ryan Briscoe (Team Penske)
8 Ryan Hunter-Reay (Rahal Letterman Racing)
9 Will Power (KV Racing Technologies)
10 Graham Rahal (Newman Haas Lanigan)
11 John Andretti (Roth Racing)
12 Justin Wilson (Newman Haas Lanigan)
13 Ernesto Viso (HVM Racing)
14 Helio Castroneves (Team Penske)
15 -Vitor Meira (Panther Racing)
16 Oriol Servia (KV Racing Technologies)
17 Enrique Bernoldi (Conquest Racing)
18 Tony Kanaan (Andretti Green Racing)
19 Mario Moraes (Dale Coyne Racing)
20 Jaime Camara (Conquest Racing)
21 Darren Manning (A.J. Foyt Racing)
22 Buddy Rice (Dreyer & Reinbold Racing)
23 Ed Carpenter (Vision Racing)
24 Milka Duna (Dreyer & Reinbold Racing)
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