Australia’s Will Power held off a hard-charging Helio
Castroneves to win the Edmonton Indy on Sunday and narrow the gap on points
leader Dario Franchittiworld cup football shirts.Power started second, overtook polesitter and leader Takuma Sato a
quarter of the way through the race, then held off his Team Penske teammate to
win by eight-tenths of a second.”It was exactly the day we needed,” Power
said.Franchitti finished third, 1.2 seconds off the pace in the 80-lap race,
run under sunny skies on the road course at the 2.2-mile, 13-turn City Centre
Airport.
Power has 350 points in the championship standings, cutting
his deficit to Franchitti from 55 to 38 points with seven races
remaining.Franchitti said he threw away a chance for the win near the midpoint
of the race, when Mike Conway was leading the other cars on a double-file
restart.Conway Premier League football club teams didn’t accelerate as soon as the green flag came out.”I didn’t see
the green flag,” Conway
said. “It’s just something I’ve got to learn when up front.”Franchitti said he
thought he was supposed to wait until the end of the straightaway to
accelerate. “I screwed up. I lost a bunch of track position,” the 38-year-old
Scot said. “I’m disappointed in myself.”The Target Chip Ganassi driver got
caught up in the wash and fell back to 10th before working his way back up the
field.”I was catching Will and Helio really quickly, but unfortunately once I got
there I couldn’t do anything with them. But it was a nice recovery from the
whole team.”Power zoomed past Conway
on that restart to gain back a lead he had lost briefly on a pit stop
sequence.”I think that pass right there was the pass for the race win,” he
said.Castroneves said he was happy with second place, given his season of
mediocre finishes.”It was awesome,” the 36-year-old Brazilian said. “After the
season we’ve been having, this is like a victory.”Castroneves actually crossed
the finish line first at last year’s Edmonton event, but was black-flagged for
blocking Power and the race win was given to Scott Dixon.Tony Kanaan FC Real Madrid Football shirt and Justin Wilson rounded out the top five, Danica Patrick was
ninth and Sato ended up 21st after his promising start.Alex Tagliani was one of
four drivers issued drive-through penalties for failing to avoid contact.
Tagliani rear-ended Graham Rahal on the first lap and ended his day.
It seemed IndyCar officials, after a crash-filled race in Toronto two weeks ago,
were taking more of a zero-tolerance approach. Power RealMadrid home shirts said stricter enforcement is needed.”It will deter people from doing
it again,” he said.”They know if they’re going to hit someone, they’re going to
get a drive-through and they’re going to go to the back (of the field) as
well.”
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