Sunday, September 7, 2008

IRL race report: Helio wins a thriller, but Dixon is champ

Ooh baby, the two championship protagonists going wheel to wheel on the final lap with a photo finish, and in the end the closest finish in IRL history. Helio Castroneves finally, after several minutes of debate, won the race by 0.001 seconds from Scott Dixon after having started from the back of the field. There were the usual number of accidents, not surprising for a 28 car field, plenty of passing and close racing, some good runs by surprising sources, and an amazing finish. Ryan Briscoe started on the pole from Dixon and Kanaan with Helio Castroneves being demoted to last place after a dubious decision by the stewards after qualifying to send him to the back for repeated crossing of the white line below the track. Either way it did not matter as it made for an exciting first few laps as Helio scythed through the field like a hot knife through butter. By lap 10 he was up battling for the top 10 and by the time the first caution came out on lap 36 he was eighth. The first caution was for the fourth placed man Ed Carpenter who had a suspension failure and was pitched rather dramatically into the wall at the exit of turn 2. His fiery car came to a rest in the infield and an unfortunate Ed jumped out of his car uninjured. At the stops the Penske boys went to work and helped get Helio a couple of positions. At the restart the Brazilian continued to climb and managed to get the lead before Vitor Meira brought out the safety car again for an accident caused by a mechanical failure. At the restart Helio led and we had some great battles including three wide for the lead between Castroneves, Briscoe, and Dan Wheldon and other great battles that saw the likes of EJ Viso and AJ Foyt IV running in the top 5. The third caution was for debris and under said caution Graham Rahal blotted his copybook for the first time by stupidly running into Buddy Rice in the pitlane. Buddy was understandably infuriated and one starts to question whether or not Rahal is as mature as the pundits say he is. Later on he would bring out a caution for nudging the wall while running several laps down. After this restart we had more great racing as Dixon temporarily fell down the order, at one point Castroneves was mathematically leading the championship. Two cautions came out in the meantime, one for Sarah Fisher who had a mechanical failure and another for EJ Viso who just screwed up and crashed. The dust settled and we had just over fifty laps to go with Milka Duno, yes Milka Duno, leading at the restart. She was quickly overwhelmed by the drivers with talent and drifted back to 14th. The ding-dong battle at the front pursued with most of the top driver involved, including both Penske's, both Ganassi's, Tony Kannan and Danica Patrick, plus the surprising Mario Moraes, who unfortunately rubbed the wall late on and dropped back. This set up what would become one of the most dramatic finishes we have seen. For lap after lap Helio and Dixon diced it up, runnign side by side with Helio desperately trying to get around Dixon. COming around the final turn they were neck and neck and crossed the line side by side. At first the commentators thought that it was Dixon who won the race but the computers reveal the tiniest of secrets and a couple minutes later it emerged that it was in fact Helio Castroneves who had won the race, by the closest margin in IRL history. A great race brought to a close (well sort of) to the first merged season of open wheel racing since Tony George made his bone-headed split in 1996. Scott Dixon is a deserved champion for 2008 having won the most races, although Helio was consistend as hell, he did not get the wins he needed to take the title. There is always next year for him, but how many next years can a guy have? The top 10 was completed by Ryan Briscoe, Tony Kanaan, Will Power, Dan Wheldon, Darren Manning, Marco ANdretti, Ryan Hunter-Reay, and Danica Patrick.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can you 'splain what happened to Danica? She did a stop from 6th on lap 178 and rejoined in 15th, then gained 14th. Then there was a yellow and the front runers came in & I though Danica ought to be really up front since she didn't have to pit. She finished 10th They don't show intervils o' course, was she so far behind that the cars all returned in front of her?

Senor Soup said...

I am not entirely sure because the ABC/ESPN coverage is pretty lousy, but I think that Danica's problem was that when she pitted on lap 178 they did not change tyres to do a quicker stop. She came out and struggled on the restarts and faded. SHe ended up only three seconds behind Helio, but in a race like this three seconds mean a lot of places.

Mark said...

I think part of her problem might be restarts in general. It seems like she is always moving backwards, never forwards after the yellow.

Senor Soup said...

You have apoint there Mark. Danica is a decent racer on ovals but she needs to improve her tactics. During the off season I will be profiling the strengths and weaknesses of each team and giving them a grade for the year. I will probably do one or two per week.