Dario Franchitti dominated Sunday’s Motorola Indy 300 at Infineon Raceway, but contact with teammate Marco Andretti with only 11 laps remaining resulted in the victory going to title rival Scott Dixon, who now assumes a narrow four-point lead in the intense championship battle with just two races remaining in the 2007 IndyCar Series.
Starting from the pole, Franchitti led 62 of the 80 laps around the hilly, 11-turn Infineon road course, dropping out of the lead only during the exchange of routine pit stops. But it was just after the last of those stops, as Andretti exited pit lane, that the pair made light contact entering the uphill Turn Two. Andretti retired on the spot, while Franchitti continued with damage to his left front wing that would hamper his handling for the remainder of the race.
When the green flag waved again on Lap 72, second-place Dixon made quick work of Franchitti, passing him in Turn 3, and Helio Castroneves relegated Franchitti to third just six turns later. Castroneves made several passing attempts on Dixon in the final laps – interrupted by one last three-lap caution on Lap 75 for contact between Scott Sharp and A.J. Foyt IV– but Dixon remained in control to score his fourth race win of 2007.
It was another weekend of perfect Honda performance and reliability for the Indy V8 engine, with the 18 series regulars totaling nearly 6,363 miles in practice, qualifying and racing around the demanding Northern California road course without a single mechanical failure.
Franchitti, with an assist from fourth-place teammate Tony Kanaan – who held off several potential podium finishers in the closing laps – held on for third. Dixon, Franchitti and Kanaan are the only remaining contenders for the IndyCar Series drivers’ championship, after Castroneves, Dan Wheldon and Sam Hornish Jr. were all matematically eliminated this weekend.
Following Kanaan came a tightly-packed group including Hornish, who recovered from a mid-race spin to finish fifth; Danica Patrick, continuing to show strong road-course form in sixth and Wheldon in seventh. Tomas Scheckter held off Vitor Meira for eighth, with Kosuke Matsuura rounding out the top 10 finishers, all on the lead lap.
The 2007 IndyCar Series continues next week with the penultimate race of 2007 on the streets of Belle Isle Park in downtown Detroit on September 2, followed by the season-closer a week later on the 1.5-mile Chicagoland oval in Joliet, Illinois.-Honda
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