Hornish breaks through
Sam Hornish Jr. finally got in front and the defending IndyCar Series champion stayed there to get his first victory of the season in Fort Worth, Texas.
Hornish led 159 of 228 laps in a dominating race and held off a late charge from a lucky Tony Kanaan and Danica Patrick to win the Bombardier Learjet 550 on Saturday night – his IndyCar Series-best 19th career victory.
“It feels awesome, especially to come to a place like Texas, where I’ve had so many good memories,” said Hornish, who won by only 0.0786 seconds. “We weren’t having a bad year. We just didn’t get the things to click.”
While he was one of only three drivers with top-10 finishes in the first six races in his No. 6 Team Penske car, Hornish had led only five laps before getting to the 1 1/2-mile high-banked Texas track. He is the first three-time winner at Texas Motor Speedway, but hadn’t won at the track since 2002.
For Patrick, her career-best finish came after all the hype this week surrounding her postrace confrontation on pit row with Dan Wheldon a week ago.
Tony Kanaan, Patrick’s teammate with Andretti Green Racing, somehow slid unscathed through mangled machines and a flyaway tire created by a multicar crash on the backstretch on the 197th lap.
Sarah Fisher’s car was running slow on the bottom of the track to avoid the car of A.J. Foyt IV, whose right rear tire had popped off and was bouncing on the track. Ed Carpenter, Foyt’s teammate with Vision Racing, moved up and made contact with Scott Dixon.
In the chain reaction that followed, Dan Wheldon – the Target Chip Ganassi teammate of Dixon who had been running near the front all night – and Helio Castroneves of Team Penske were knocked out of the race.
Hornish maintained the lead on the restart – and there was mostly a 1-2-3 line to the finish with Kanaan unable to get enough of a push to get past the leader.
Before his final pit stop on lap 188, Hornish had nearly a 7 1/2-second lead. Patrick took over the lead for a couple of laps before she made her last stop.
NASCAR
Carl Edwards raced to his fourth NASCAR Busch Series victory of the season, easily beating Clint Bowyer in the Federated Auto Parts 300 at Gladeville, Tenn., for the Nextel Cup driver’s third straight win at Nashville Superspeedway.
Following the race, Edwards – the runaway leader in the season standings – executed his signature backflip off of his car, this time landing on all fours.
Edwards took the lead with 33 laps to go and beat Bowyer by 1.656 seconds. Jason Leffler was third, followed by Scott Wimmer and Regan Smith.
The victory was the second of the week for Edwards and third in eight days. He won the Busch Series race last Saturday at Dover, and took the Nextel Prelude to the Dream dirt race Wednesday night at Eldora Speedway in Ohio.
•David Gilliland was in an upbeat mood when he arrived at The Edelweiss for dinner Friday night in Long Pond, Pa.
After all, the Robert Yates Racing driver had the fastest Ford in qualifying for the Pocono 500 at Pocono Raceway.
The only problem? Gilliland will start 16th in today’s race, and his qualifying time of 53.918 seconds was a whopping .96 seconds off Dodge driver Ryan Newman’s pole lap of 52.922 seconds.
Ten Chevrolets, three Dodges and two Toyotas comprise the top 15 qualifiers for today’s race.
Formula One
Mercedes McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton, 22, started his F1 career with five consecutive podium finishes – a third in the opener in Australia followed by four straight seconds.
The first black driver in Formula One history took another big step, winning his first F1 pole ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal.
He took the pole with a lap of 1 minute, 15.707 seconds in the last of three 15-minute qualifying sessions.
“At the end of the day, I didn’t make a mistake and I’m just thrilled,” said Hamilton, who never stopped smiling after stepping out of his car.
Teammate and two-time series champion Fernando Alonso had a lap of 1:16.163, which was just 0.456 seconds slower than Hamilton’s final effort.