EDMONTON  25th July 2010 - A late-race restart, teammates battling for victory and a ‘blocking’ call from race officials combined to produce an unlikely finish to the Honda Indy Edmonton.

 With Target Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon passing Team Penske’s Will Power in a multi-car scrum on a restart with just two laps remaining, then taking the victory when a penalty was handed down to race leader Helio Castroneves for blocking Power.

Dixon claimed his first road-course victory of 2010, while Castroneves was penalized by series Chief Steward Brian Barnhart with a time penalty, moving him back to a 10th-place finish, after he failed to heed a black flag penalty for the block.

Power, who dominated much of the race, finished second, with Dario Franchitti rounding out the top three in his Target Chip Ganassi Racing Honda Dallara.

For the 11th consecutive race weekend in 2010, all 25 drivers completed the event without a single failure of the Honda Indy V-8 engine. This weekend, drivers and teams logged a total of 9,290 trouble-free miles around the challenging temporary circuit set up at the Edmonton City Centre Airport.

Starting from the pole, Power looked to be in command of the 95-lap event until the final round of pit stops on Lap 73 when Power’s Penske team sent him back out on the harder “primary” tires while teammate Castroneves elected to go with the softer, but less durable, alternate “red” compound tires.

Castroneves passed Power in Turn One on Lap 77 and held that advantage until a late-race caution flag on Lap 88. When the green waved for the final time at the start of Lap 93, Power got a jump on his teammate and the pair headed into Turn One side-by-side, with Castroneves on the inside. The pair never made contact, but Power was forced off-line to the outside, allowing Dixon to slip past for second a move that became the winning pass when Race Control ordered a black flag for Castroneves’ defensive move against Power.

Almost lost in the commotion, Andretti Autosport’s Ryan Hunter-Reay passed veteran Paul Tracy on the same restart to finish fifth; while Tracy led home a 6-7-8-9 place result for KV Racing Technology, their best team finish of 2010, as teammates Mario Moraes, E.J. Viso and Takuma Sato followed Tracy across the line.

After back-to-back temporary circuit events in Canada, the IZOD IndyCar Series will take a one-week break, then returns to the U.S.A. and the challenging 2.25-mile Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course for the August 8 Honda Indy 200.

Scott Dixon: “It definitely was not what I expected to happen at the end. It feels pretty strange to only lead two laps but actually win the race. It was a long, tough day and we fought oversteer through the early part of the race. But the car was much better near the finish. On the last restart, it was ‘all on’ and you could definitely see that something was going to happen there [involving the lead cars]. I went down to the inside and when Will [Power] slid to the outside, that was my chance. We finally got the monkey off our back this year with a road-course win.”

RACE RESULTS:

Pos  Driver                                 Team                                   Gap
1.  Scott Dixon                    Ganassi                       95 laps
2.  Will Power                      Penske                       + 2.6688s
3.  Dario Franchitti               Ganassi                       + 3.2831s
4.  Ryan Briscoe                  Penske                       + 8.8652s
5.  Ryan Hunter-Reay          Andretti                       + 11.1482s
6.  Paul Tracy                     KV                              + 11.9091s
7.  Mario Moraes                 KV                              + 16.9015s
8.  EJ Viso                          KV                              + 18.2206s
9.  Takuma Sato                 KV                              + 21.5880s
10.  Helio Castroneves        Penske                        + 42.6011s
11.  Marco Andretti              Andretti                       + 1 lap
12.  Tony Kanaan               Andretti                       + 1 lap
13.  Raphael Matos             De Ferran Dragon         + 1 lap
14.  Bertrand Baguette        Conquest                     + 1 lap
15.  Danica Patrick              Andretti                       + 1 lap
16.  Vitor Meira                   Foyt                            + 2 laps
17.  Hideki Mutoh               Newman/Haas              + 2 laps
18.  Alex Lloyd                   Dale Coyne                  + 3 laps
19.  Tomas Scheckter         Dreyer & Reinbold          + 5 laps
20.  Dan Wheldon              Panther                        + 5 laps
21.  Justin Wilson               Dreyer & Reinbold         + 7 laps

EDITOR - Mark Cox