INDYCAR: Kanaan Breaks Through at Richmond

IndyCar

INDYCAR: Kanaan Breaks Through at Richmond

Castroneves and Dixon round out the top-three in Saturday night wreckfest.

Jeff Olson | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted June 28, 2008 Richmond, Va.

Tony Kanaan celebrates after picking up his first victory of 2008. (LAT photo)

Tony Kanaan outlasted a record-setting mess to win Saturday’s SunTrust Indy Challenge on Saturday night at Richmond International Raceway, ending a streak of bad luck and getting him back in the hunt for the championship.

Kanaan held off Helio Castroneves, Scott Dixon and Dan Wheldon to win the crash-filled race, which was interrupted by a record nine caution periods that sidelined more than half the 26-car field. More than one-third of the race -- 102 laps -- was run under caution, the second-highest number of caution laps in one race in IRL history.

The win was the first this season and first since Detroit last September for Kanaan, the 2004 IRL champion and 2005 runner-up. Just six days before, Kanaan crashed after leading at Iowa.

“When those kinds of things happen, I have a tendency to have more strength to turn the situation around,” Kanaan said. “I think I work better when I put pressure on myself. I came in determined to win this race, and it worked out.”

The win was critical to Kanaan’s championship hopes, moving him 18 points closer to Dixon, the series leader. “We’re coming,” Kanaan said. “Scott’s been doing what he should be doing, scoring points, but we’re going to be right there chasing him.”

Dixon now holds a 43-point lead over Castroneves and a 52-point lead over his Target Chip Ganassi teammate, Dan Wheldon, after nine of the 17 races this season. Dixon has finished on the podium for all but one of those nine races.

“Tony had a good run tonight, but we still had a good run,“ Dixon said. “I just messed up on my first pit stop and we dropped back to about eight or ninth. It was good to come away with third.“

Kanaan, who started from the pole, led 166 of the 300 laps -- a distance 50 laps longer than the usual 250-lap race at RIR. He kept his patience through all of the restarts; just 12 of the 26 cars that started the race were running at the finish.

“There was a lot of action, definitely a lot of yellows,” Kanaan said. “We benefited from being in the front, for sure. This was a typical Richmond race, very difficult and very long. At one point I looked and it was Lap 245 and I wondered if it was five laps from the end. It was a tough race.”

So was the previous race. On Sunday at Iowa Speedway, Kanaan led 71 laps before crashing out in what he called “the hardest hit of my life.” The mistake only inspired him to try harder; five days later, he was on the pole at Richmond.

“I knew I had to keep fighting,” Kanaan said. “There was nothing else I could do. If you’re going to have the season you expect every year, then it‘s going to be pretty boring. I knew it was going to turn around. I thought it was going to be last weekend, and then I made a mistake.”

Castroneves also made a strong comeback, going from 18th starting position to finish second and gain slight ground on Dixon, who finished one spot behind Castroneves.

“I was driving the wheels off it,“ Castroneves said. “I was trying everything I could to make up spots. The only chance I got was mostly on restarts. I wanted to win so bad.“

Oriol Servia also was impressive, taking the No. 5 KV Racing Technology Honda/Dallara from 10th to fifth. "When we unloaded the car, right away we said we had a top-five car,” Servia said. “Fortunately we were able to go out there and prove it. Obviously everybody expected us to do well on road and street courses, but I really wanted to prove that the team is capable of doing a good job on ovals.”

Jaime Camara, who shares space in Kanaan’s office in Miami, led 44 laps before Marco Andretti passed him for the lead. Andretti later got out of sequence on his pit stops, leading the race until he was forced to pit with 94 laps remaining.

Servia finished fifth, followed by Danica Patrick, Justin Wilson and Townsend Bell. Marco Andretti and E.J. Viso rounded out the top 10.

The series resumes next weekend at Watkins Glen International.

SUNTRUST INDY CHALLENGE RESULTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeff Olson

SPEEDtv.com

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