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Indy Car St. Pete Grand Prix Results

*SPOILER ALERT*

The Indy Car Series started our their 2009 season with a race riddled with full-course yellows, and some surprising contenders at the front.

Briscoe shows poise to win in St. Pete
Ryan Briscoe kept his nose clean and piloted his Penske prepared Honda-Dallara to his fourth career Indy Car win. The Aussie crashed out of this race last year with a chance to win, but kept his cool in 2009. Ryan was a front runner for most of the race, and some great calls by Roger Penske put him within striking distance of the leader, Justin Wilson, in the closing laps.

AGR teammates Marco Andretti and Hideki Mutoh tangled near the end of the race which brought out the full course yellow and bunched up the field, setting the table for a restart shoot-out. Justin Wilson looked super quick all day, but seemed to lack the straight-line speed that some of the other cars had. That lack of straight-line speed was taken advantage of by Briscoe, who got by Wilson cleanly going into turn one on the restart. Ryan never looked back, and brought home yet another win for Roger Penske.

Autosport.com: Briscoe wins season opener at St Pete

Big finish for Dale Coyne
Justin Wilson’s run for a win was one of the most intriguing stories of today’s race. The Coyne team is a small operation, and really doesn’t have the technical program to run with the top teams, but they ran up front anyway. Wilson appeared to have the quickest car for the first two-thirds of the race, and it appear that the small-budget team could steal a big-time win today. Things didn’t work out that way, but Wilson’s third-place finish meant that Dale Coyne got his first podium finish in Indy Car racing. Wilson was fun to watch today and could be a factor again next week, since he has more experience at Long Beach than almost anyone else in the field.

Hunter-Reay posts a spectacular second place performance.
Ryan Hunter-Reay had a rough off-season fraught with obstacles and contractual pitfalls. After signing a personal services contract with IZOD, Ryan’s seat vanished into thin air as the Rahal-Letterman team folded up their tent for 2009 due to lack of funding. The Tony George owned Vision Racing team stepped up with only days to go to put Ryan in a car, and it sure paid off. Ryan drove a smart race, and really put in a performance that could have won the race under the right conditions. Considering the lack of testing and time with the Vision team, Ryan’s second place finish was more than remarkable.

Scott Dixon struggles while Dario settles for fourth
The 2008 series champ, Scott Dixon, had trouble getting speed out of his car all weekend. His problems continued during the race, and were compounded by a long pit stop where he got held up by Will Power. Dixon never really recovered, and ended up crashing in the latter part of the race.

Dario Franchitti put in a solid showing in his first race back from NASCAR, finishing fourth (and donning an amazing head of very big hair).

Rahal gets victimized by first lap mashup
Graham Rahal led the field to the green flag from the pole position, the youngest Indy Car driver to ever do so. But Graham started the race too conservatively, and left the door open for Dario Franchitti to make a dive bomb move in turn one. Dario’s move seem to bunch up the field, and Tony Kanaan ended up in the back of Rahal. Both Rahal and Kanaan needed new front wings ($cha-ching$) to continue, and both faced an all day battle just to get back inside the top 10.

In post race interviews (yes, VERSUS kicked butt), Rahal expressed his displeasure with Tony Kanaan, and his driving tactics. However, Kanaan claims that Dario’s move left Rahal with nowhere to go, and in turn, Rahal left him with nowhere to go. Perhaps Indy Car needs to put out the orange cones like they used to use at the Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland where first lap crashes became the norm?

Danica Patrick’s day ends in major crash with Matos
The biggest fracas of the day occurred when Raphael Matos tried a very difficult (i.e. impossible) move on Danica Patrick at the high-speed chicane section of the circuit. Matos and Patrick ended up at the same place on the race track at the same time, and result was more than eventful. From the looks of the temporary fencing and the port-a-potties that got rocked when the Dallaras clobbered the wall, they need to reinforce that area a bit more in 2010! I’m glad that there were no reports of any hurt track workers.

VERSUS: The kind of TV partner this series needs
The St. Pete GP was the first race on the VERSUS network, and their coverage was impressive. First if all, the HD picture quality was fantastic, and the production quality was very good. But more importantly, VERSUS didn’t cut away at the end of the race, but instead gave Indy Car fans bonus coverage and driver interviews deep into the field. The on-air talent did a professional job, and never got in the way of the racing. Considering that this was their first broadcast, it was fantastic.

Side note: As a former Champ Car follower, I’m just happy to have Jon Beekhuis back in the booth, and pit reporters that can are competent at interviewing and are comfortable in front of the camera.

VERSUS will be back with Indy Car coverage in two weeks at the Long Beach Grand Prix with a qualifying show on Saturday, and flag-to-flag coverage of the race on Sunday.

RACE RESULTS
For detailed box score from Indycar.com, click here.

1 	Ryan Briscoe
2 	Ryan Hunter-Reay
3 	Justin Wilson
4 	Dario Franchitti
5 	Tony Kanaan
6 	Will Power
7 	Graham Rahal
8 	Darren Manning
9 	Vitor Meira
10 	Alex Tagliani
11 	Robert Doornbos
12 	Stanton Barrett
13 	Marco Andretti
14 	Dan Wheldon
15 	Hideki Mutoh
16 	Scott Dixon
17 	E.J. Viso
18 	Ed Carpenter
19 	Danica Patrick
20 	Raphael Matos
21 	Mario Moraes
22 	Mike Conway

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