Monday, Sept. 22, 2003 | 8:55 a.m.
FONTANA, Calif. -- With its side-by-side racing and extremely close finishes, the Indy Racing League has distinguished itself from other open-wheel racing series.
The battle for the series championship is no different.
Two-time IRL champion Sam Hornish Jr. won the fastest race in open-wheel history Sunday at California Speedway and, in the process, turned the championship battle into a true nail-biter.
Only 19 points separate the top four drivers in the standings and Hornish, who came into the race trailing series leader Helio Castroneves by 41 points, now is only 19 points out of the lead going into the final race of the season.
Scott Dixon, who finished second in Sunday's Toyota Indy 400, moved into a tie with Castroneves, who took sixth, for the points lead. Third-place finisher Tony Kanaan remained third in points, 14 off the lead, and Gil de Ferran slipped 30 points behind the leaders with a 15th-place finish.
After swapping the lead with Dixon several times late in the race, Hornish passed Dixon for the lead with 15 laps remaining and pulled away for a .356-second victory -- a sizable advantage in light of the IRL's recent close finishes.
Hornish averaged 207.151 mph and shattered the previous closed-course mark of 197.995, set by Jimmy Vasser in last year's CART Champ Car 500-mile race at California Speedway. Sunday's race was slowed by only one caution period for six laps.
"I read a couple articles, in some of the racing publications over the past couple months, saying 'The 200-mile-an-hour race is coming,' " Hornish said. "You know, it was great that I could be a part of it and actually win it.
"When it says 207-mph race in the record books, it will say that I won but it's really a team effort by all the guys out there on the track. They all did a great job today, knowing what the boundaries of what their cars were. You can't have a 200-mile-an-hour race if you're crashing cars every 20 laps. Everybody knew what the boundary of their car was today and drove within it."
Rookie Dan Wheldon was fourth and Thomas Scheckter, who led a race-high 112 laps, finished fifth. Castroneves, rookie Roger Yasukawa, Scott Sharp, Al Unser Jr. of Henderson and Alex Barron rounded out the top 10.
Richie Hearn of Henderson experienced handling problems in his first race for Hemelgarn Racing and finished 21st after completing only 133 of 200 laps.
Hornish, who has won three of the past four IRL races to thrust himself into contention for the championship, said he wasn't sure in the early stages of the race if his car would be near the front at the end.
"Everything that I pretty much planned today kind of went out the window at different points in time," he said. "The car was great today for the first 40 laps. The second 40 laps, the car was kind of a little bit too loose (and then) it pushed after the next pit stop.
"(After the last pit stop), the car was perfect again. A lot of different things happened out there today; the car had to be working good for the whole race."
Dixon couldn't disagree with that.
"I think toward the end, we didn't really have enough for Sam," Dixon said. "My car was really bad on the high line and his was really good. Then he actually started to use the low line and I couldn't go anywhere, so I couldn't really get any closer.
"But, you know, good job for him. It's good for the championship; hopefully, we can go to Texas and see if we can pick up some more points."
Kanaan, who trimmed his deficit in the points standings from 14 to seven points, said he accomplished one of his pre-race objectives.
"I decided to come here and cut the margin in half," Kanaan said. "That was the goal and I did it."
This is not the first time Castroneves and Kanaan have battled to the wire for a championship. In 1997, Kanaan trailed Castroneves by seven points going into the final race in the Dayton Indy Lights Championship and overcame the deficit to claim the title.
"I was seven points behind Helio in '97 and it ended up being good for me," Kanaan said. "So let's see what we can do in Texas."
archive
