Helio Castroneves just won the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg for the second year in a row. He celebrated with his trademark exuberance, running across the track, climbing the fence, doing donuts, kissing his car, and generally playing to the audience. He dominated the race, and while a few drivers made runs at him it was pretty much his to win or lose. With two races down that's one for Ganassi and one for Penske, which is not too surprising. Scott Dixon came in second for Ganassi. That combined with his second place finish in last week's Homestead-Miami race puts Dixon into the overall points lead with Helio and last week's winner Dan Weldon right at his heels. The top five was rounded out by Andretti Green drivers Tony Kanaan, Marco Andretti, and Dario Franchitti. Teammate Danica Patrick finished in eighth, ahead of 2005 champion Dan Weldon and behind 2006 champion Sam Hornish. Good company no doubt, but I'm sure they all would rather have been in the top five.
A few notes: Tony Kanann's third place finish is all the more impressive when you know that he wrecked the car yesterday and all four AGR teams worked on it into the night to get it ready for today. Impressive job.
Another impressive job was the one by Darren Manning and A.J. Foyt Enterprises. Manning spun out late and didn't finish in the top ten, but he was in the mix for most of the race. As he gets older Super Tex gets stronger.
Sarah Fisher achieved her goal of finishing the race. Back when she used to drive Indy cars the IRL was an all oval series. This was her first road/street course. There will be four more this year.
I don't want to get negative, but from what I've seen Jeff Simmons is just not all that good a driver. I think Kosuke Matsuura had good cause to blame him for that accident he had.
And did Kosuke say what I thought he said?
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