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It’s Hornish’s Night

AGR teammates finish 2-3-4 as Patrick posts career best

FORT WORTH, Texas ? Sam Hornish, leading by 6.6453 seconds on Lap 180, was content to leave the sparring to the second- through seventh-place cars (separated by less than a second). Unfortunately for the reigning IndyCar Series champion, there were 48 laps remaining in the Bombardier Learjet 550k.

A multi-car incident on Lap 197 on the high-banked Texas Motor Speedway oval, precipitated by a tire rolling across the racing surface, negated Hornish’s big lead. But not his advantage. The Team Penske driver, who started on the outside of Row 1, maintained the point and held off on for his first victory of the season.

Kanaan, the winner six days earlier at The Milwaukee Mile, finished 0.0786 of a second back. Patrick recorded the best finish of her IndyCar Series career (0.3058 of a second behind her Andretti Green Racing teammate). A third AGR teammate, Dario Franchitti, retained his hold on the points lead with a fourth place. Delphi Panther Racing’s Vitor Meira placed fifth for the second race in a row.

It was the 19th career victory for the reigning IndyCar Series champion, and the 22nd-closest finish in IndyCar Series history.

“It really feels good to be in the winner’s circle after starting off the season — not necessarily didn’t have any bad luck; we just couldn’t get things to go our way,” said Hornish, who led 159 laps. “So I’ve said all season, we’re right there. We’re right on the edge if we can get things to go our way.

“Tonight the car was so good. We just needed things to not go against us.”

The Lap 197 incident that involved the Nos. 10 (Dan Wheldon), 3 (Helio Castroneves), 9 (Scott Dixon), 20 (Ed Carpenter), 22 (A.J. Foyt IV) and 14 (Darren Manning) almost caught Kanaan, too. But he narrowly avoided the rolling tire and Foyt’s car between Turns 3 and 4.

“And that accident. I’m not going to brag about it. I have no idea how I went through. It felt kind of like ‘Days of Thunder’; kind of closed my eyes and went full throttle and went through. I think sometimes you’ve got to be lucky. We had a decent car. It wasn’t the fastest car out there. I don’t think we really had a car to finish second. We capitalized on people’s misfortunes. And I don’t think I had it for Sam, although I tried.”

Patrick’s previous best finish was fourth (the first time at Twing Ring Motegi), and Franchitti notched his sixth consecutive top-five finish. It’s the consistency and ability to challenge for the victory that pleases Kanaan the most.

“Great results for the team,” he said. “If you look back a year ago, we were really struggling on this type of track. So I have to really say thank you to my team owners to give us the tools and the money to develop the cars and the engineers that did a great job.”

Patrick, who started sixth, concurred. Though her No. 7 Team Motorola Dallara/Honda/Firestone didn’t have enough to catch Hornish (though on Lap 225 her car ran 212.338 mph to Hornish’s 211.125 and Kanaan’s 211.658), it was Patrick’s fourth top 10 in a row.

“It was a good day overall,” she said. “I thought that as a team we were really strong. It was just hard to pass around here. You saw it with Sam leading a lot of the race. We worked hard on the car and we took a bit of a gamble on the direction to go for the race, but it was OK.”

Jeff Simmons’ sixth place was a career best, while Rahal Letterman Racing teammate and pole sitter Scott Sharp finished seventh. Buddy Rice was eighth, Kosuke Matsuura ninth and Sarah Fisher 10th.

“I just wish we could have made things a little tougher for the other guys, but we’ll take the points and move on,” said Simmons, who led a career-high five laps and collected his fourth top 10 of the season.

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