|
Franchitti drinks the milk again at Indy
2.06.10
Dario Franchitti (Ganassi Racing) - he of Nashville and Edinburgh and husband of Hollywood actress, Ashley Judd - has become the first Briton to win the Indianapolis 500 for a second time after dominating an exciting and incident-packed race last Sunday. Dario previously won a rain-affected race in 2007.
It looked at first as though British drivers had locked out the podium (which would have been another 'first') but a terrible crash which befell Mike Conway (another Brit) led to the Isle of Man's Alex Lloyd (in a one-off drive for the evergreen Dale Coyne Racing) passing under a yellow and being demoted to fourth place behind Marco Andretti, after the race had finished. Previous Indy 500 winner, Dan Wheldon, originally from Milton Keynes came second. The end of the race was dominated by fuel issues (as was the F1 Turkish GP over the same weekend) and Ryan Hunter-Reay's sudden shortage of gas led to the rapidly closing Conway to plough into him, sending the Conway Dreyer & Reinbold machine skywards and demolished by the barriers. Conway sustained a broken leg.
Said Franchitti: "Until there were ten laps to go it was all pretty relaxed and then all hell broke loose, with the fuel saving [going on]. The car ran well in the first stint and I thought 'we're in the fight here'. At the end I was concerned about running out of fuel. I was managing the gap to Dan [Wheldon - Panther Racing] but he was coming on. I lifted off pretty early when I saw the yellow flags come out".
Danica Patrick (Andretti Autosport) came home 6th - the first of the four women in the race this year - and Simona de Silvestro stayed unlapped and finished 13th. Ana Beatriz finished two laps down in 21st place. Sarah Fisher was less lucky and retired with handling problems after 125 of the race's 200 laps.
So, the other top ten places were filled by Scott Dixon in 5th for Ganassi, Britain's Justin Wilson in 7th (Dreyer & Reinbold), Will Power and Helio Castroneves in 8th and 9th for Penske and Canadian Alex Tagliani for FAZZT in 10th.
Power currently leads the overall IndyCar standings from Franchitti, by just eleven points. Dixon is 13 points behind in the table.
|
 |
|
