Dario Franchitti picked up his second straight IndyCar Series win by dominating the SunTrust Indy Challenge at Richmond International Raceway. Starting on the pole as the point leader when qualifying was rained out, Franchitti used an untested race set-up and wound up leading a record 242 of the 250 laps.

“I enjoy Richmond a lot. I think it suits my style because you have to feel what the car is doing,” said Franchitti, who now has a 65 point lead over second finishing Scott Dixon. “I have to say a big thank you to the engineering staff at AGR. We took some big gambles last night. Allen McDonald, my engineer, took an educated guess and it really worked out today.”

Franchitti set a new event record for this race, running all 250 laps on the three quarter mile track in just one hour and twenty four minutes for an average race speed of 133.408mph.

The race got off to a strange start as two-time event winner, Sam Hornish, Jr, spun when he accelerated for the initial green flag.

“I got a little bit of a decent jump on the start on the row in front of me,” said Hornish. “(I) tried to pull the car down to go in front of those guys and as soon as I did, the back end came around. All I can really say is I apologize to the guys who worked on my car. They do a great job and that was unfortunate - and the first time I've done that.”

Restarting at the end of the line, Hornish would later lose laps to Franchitti who was patiently working his way through the field and lapping cars.

“Traffic was difficult,” said Franchitti. “There were a lot of marbles tonight and nobody wanted to go off line. It seems we lost a lot of grip behind other cars. I didn't want to take those big risks and put my nose in somewhere and have it taken off.”

Franchitti would actually use the laps down Hornish to his advantage late in the race by placing the Hornish between himself and the pursuing Scott Dixon.

Dixon did not appreciate that move, but could get no help from race stewards as Hornish's pace was then as quick as the leaders. “Sam was trying to pass the leader but was two or three laps down. It was frustrating because it was obvious that he was (laps down), and I was basically trying to make a pass - he just took that away.”

Dan Wheldon had one of his best races in recent weeks to come home third, with Tony Kanaan fourth and Buddy Rice in fifth. Helio Castroneves had a bad evening go worse when he failed to blend correctly after coming off pit lane during a caution and picked up a drive through penalty. He would finish just eleventh.

For Rice, finishing fifth marks his second consecutive top five and this time he did not need all of the contenders to crash like they did in Iowa.

“Iowa is a bit of a ‘gimme',” said Rice who now moves to 11th in the points. “My car wasn't fast there at all. Pretty much stayed lucky in that whole deal. But here we came from 12th and were moving up. We've got to get a couple more pieces of the puzzle to run consistently towards the front.”

Rice actually got some pieces this weekend as Dreyer and Reinbold Racing received new parts from their underfunded by growing research and development program.

“We need more sponsorship to help our R&D and pick up on some of these programs that we really want to start working on - focusing on - that it will take to run with these guys. To make the next couple steps is going to take money and a few more of the pieces of the pie to be put together.”

Jeff Simmons had the only crash of the night on lap 156 when he slid high into the SAFER barrier at the exit of turn two. Hornish and Matsuura did make contact on lap 239 to bring out the caution, but both were able to keep going at the time. Matsuura would pull in to the pits a lap later with damage to his suspension and left sidepod.

Danica Patrick finished sixth after starting eighth, and running a solid, though unspectacular race.

Fellow female driver Milka Duno could hardly say the same thing. She was initially close to the race pace, but quickly fell off to speeds twenty miles per hour slower once traffic caught her. Duno got a little faster after she came in for new tires, and appeared fairly stable. Another pit stop would totally unwind that improvement as she was extremely slow getting back to speed and would be parked a few laps later after completing just 79 laps.

“Because qualifying was cancelled by rain, this was my first time back driving the car after my accident yesterday. And until I was racing I didn't realize how sore my right arm was,” said Duno who was also parked by IRL officials at Iowa Speedway. “This is a very physical track and it was very difficult to handle the car, and unfortunately we couldn't finish the race.”

Vitor Meira's Panther Racing car survived the event after having suspension failures at Iowa and then again in Richmond practice. He finished just ninth.

“The race we won was the Delphi Panther crew getting the car ready for the race after the crash,” said Meira. “We finished well today because of all their hard work yesterday. We needed to be smart and finish well, and that's what we did.”

After two straight short tracks, the IndyCar Series next event is the first natural terrain road course of the season on Sunday at the Watkins Glen International Raceway.

Richmond race results
1. (1) Dario Franchitti, Dallara-Honda, 250, Running $135,800
2. (3) Scott Dixon, Dallara-Honda, 250, Running $94,850
3. (4) Dan Wheldon, Dallara-Honda, 250, Running $78,750
4. (2) Tony Kanaan, Dallara-Honda, 250, Running $65,000
5. (12) Buddy Rice, Dallara-Honda, 250, Running $59,300
6. (8) Danica Patrick, Dallara-Honda, 250, Running $50,200
7. (10) Tomas Scheckter, Dallara-Honda, 250, Running $48,700
8. (7) Scott Sharp, Dallara-Honda, 250, Running $47,400
9. (9) Vitor Meira, Dallara-Honda, 250, Running $47,400
10. (15) Ed Carpenter, Dallara-Honda, 250, Running $45,900
11. (6) Helio Castroneves, Dallara-Honda, 249, Running $44,400
12. (14) Marco Andretti, Dallara-Honda, 249, Running $43,100
13. (17) A.J. Foyt IV, Dallara-Honda, 249, Running $41,800
14. (13) Darren Manning, Dallara-Honda, 249, Running $40,200
15. (5) Sam Hornish Jr., Dallara-Honda, 248, Running $38,900
16. (16) Sarah Fisher, Dallara-Honda, 247, Running $37,500
17. (18) Kosuke Matsuura, Dallara-Honda, 236, Contact $36,100
18. (11) Jeff Simmons, Dallara-Honda, 153, Contact $36,100
19. (19) Milka Duno, Dallara-Honda, 79, Handling $34,600

Race Statistics
Winner's average speed: 133.408 mph
Time of race: 1:24:19.6684
Margin of victory: 0.4194 of a second
Cautions: 4 caution flags for 33 laps
Lead changes: 2 among 2 drivers
Lap leaders: Franchitti 1-63, Kanaan 64-71, Franchitti 72-250.

Point standings: Franchitti 359, Dixon 294, Wheldon 287, Kanaan 287, Hornish 257, Castroneves 245, Sharp 223, Patrick 213, Meira 207, Scheckter 197.

ORS / CAPSIS International