Congrats to Sam Hornish Jr. for his win in yesterday’s IRL season opener at Homestead. Sam waged a great battle with Julio before taking the lead on the last lap in his first race as Julio’s team mate and collecting $115,800. Dan Weldon, Tora Takagi and Tomas Scheckter rounded out the top 5.
Once again the margin of victory was well under a second. There were 15 lead changes among 8 drivers. Robbie Buhl managed to come home in 10th, but for a long time it seemed like he might be a top 5. While watching the race we thought he was doing fine and the next thing you know he was 10th. Apparently the car lost a gear on their last pit stop. Buhl had a pretty good drive. He kept the car on the track and managed to finish on the lead lap. I’ve got to feel that the team will be a little disappointed with the finish, but they should be happy with the overall race and drive.
The real disappointment had to come from Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti. Dixon was fighting for the lead with Sam and Julio when the cars started to make green flag pit stops on lap 87. Dixon spun around coming into the pits and made a lot of contact with the pit lane attenuator spraying sand and parts all over the track. 17 laps later Franchitti slammed his racer into the 4th turn wall. Neither Dixon nor Franchitti were hurt in their accidents.
Alex Baron who started 2nd also found the wall on lap 126 and rookie Mark Taylor crashed the Menards car on lap 39. Both Taylor and Baron were uninjured as well.
Some other notable items were Scheckter keeping his car intact, little AJ moving up 4 spots only because of the crashes and having his engine expire 10 laps from the finish and polesitter Buddy Rice coming home 7th. As for Scheckter it is always news when he doesn’t hit anything. AJ might as well give up. Even if AJIV was up to the challenge, the cars aren’t. They are the worst team in the league with no prospects of getting any better anytime soon. They are pathetic.
Crowd wise it looked pretty good on TV. The main stands looked about 95% full and overall it looked like about a 65% turnout. The weather looked great and as usual, the IRL put on a great show for the fans.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment