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IndyCar Running Blog: Scott Dixon wins Firestone Indy 200 at Nashville!

Rain is in the forecast tonight for the Nashville area and we’re getting a quick start here on ESPN as a result. Meanwhile, word’s out that Darren Manning’s No. 14 machine does not have an operational airjack — they will manually jack the car on pit road. Marty Roth is the lone Roth Racing entry as Jay Howard’s No. 24 car is not on the grid tonight, and as we mentioned earlier this week, E.J. Viso is out of action after getting the mumps virus. We wish him the best.

Lap 1: Let’s light this sucker. Helio Castroneves finally leads his first lap ever at Nashville. He deserves a cookie.

Lap 2: Ryan Briscoe and Marco Andretti crash into the SAFER Barrier between Turn 1 and 2. Andretti’s resting on the infield grass, while Briscoe sustains damage but keeps going. Briscoe gets four new tires and his team will survey his No. 6 machine…and Briscoe’s getting out of the car. He’s done. Andretti also emerges from his busted car.

Lap 4: On the replay, Marco’s No. 26 busts loose at the rear end, then washes up into the No. 6 of Briscoe and sends them both into the wall. The other cars behind them narrowly evade the danger, but ESPN’s Marty Reid says that Enrique Bernoldi may have caught some debris on his way out.

Lap 9: ESPN’s Jack Arute reports that Castroneves is worried that he may have tagged a piece of carbon fiber. Replays show that his front wing did indeed get hit with something.

Lap 12: RESTART. Danica Patrick slams the door on Scott Dixon heading into Turn 1 to keep second. Race Control tells her to cool it.

Lap 16: Tony Kanaan gets under Hideki Mutoh in the tri-oval to get fourth place.

Lap 18: Scott Dixon is telling his crew to check the telemetry out of fear that he’s having problems shifting gears. Arute says TCGR gave him the thumbs-up on that.

Lap 25: Helio Castroneves leads Danica Patrick, Scott Dixon, Tony Kanaan and Hideki Mutoh. Last week’s winner Ryan Hunter Reay has dropped two positions to sixth.

Lap 30: Castroneves is starting to hit lapped traffic. Next up on his hit list: Jaime Camara, currently 22nd.

Lap 33: Patrick’s getting closer as Castroneves starts to hit the traffic. The lead has dropped to four-tenths of a second as both contenders get by Camara.

Lap 34: Arute says that Castroneves is going to stretch out the fuel mileage as the rain will hit Nashville in about 30 minutes.

Lap 38: RHR’s first IndyCar win was even more important for him than we thought. ESPN’s Vince Welch just revealed that Hunter-Reay’s mother was diagnosed with cancer shortly before Watkins Glen.

Lap 42: Castroneves blocks Patrick heading into Turn 1 on the inside to keep the lead. Turnabout may be fair play, we’ll see if Helio gets a chiding from Race Control. He did.

Lap 45: Castroneves may have just done it again coming out of Turn 2, and Patrick had her momentum taken off as she tried to pass him. Scott Dixon and Tony Kanaan (on Lap 46) get by her and knock her back to fourth.

Lap 55: Castroneves is falling back through the field after Scott Dixon takes the lead coming out of Turn 2. Tony Kanaan, Danica Patrick and Dan Wheldon get by him as well.

Lap 57: Danica hits the pits for the first green-flag stop. 7.5 seconds for her.

Lap 60: Dan Wheldon enters the pits and gets a front wing adjustment. Ryan Hunter-Reay also pits.

Lap 63: Scott Dixon gets some great fuel mileage on the opening run, but he finally heads for pit road. Tony Kanaan and Helio Castroneves have made their stops.

Lap 64: Oriol Servia takes over control of the lead, while Enrique Bernoldi appears to have run his car dry as he heads for the pits.

Lap 68: Servia gets 61 laps on track before he heads to the pits.

Lap 71: Dixon leads Kanaan by three tenths of a second. Patrick is third, Wheldon is fourth, and Vitor Meira has climbed to fifth — he’s jumped ten spots, which sure ain’t easy at this place.

Lap 75: Meira gets by Wheldon for fourth.

Lap 81: Scott Dixon’s pit box is glued on the radar, which is flashing all sorts of bright colors (reds, purples). But he’s not going full-tilt, he’s saving fuel. Meanwhile, Tony Kanaan has been told to go nuts and catch Dixon before the rain comes. Remember, Lap 101 is the halfway point and the point where this race is official.

Lap 92: Tony Kanaan has taken the lead and he’s opened up a good gap on Dixon. Lapped traffic played a role to allow Kanaan to pass Dixon through the middle with Dixon on the high line and the car of Mario Moraes down low on the backstretch.

Lap 100: CAUTION — Ryan Hunter-Reay is in the wall out of Turn 4 and the right side of his No. 17 car is flattened.

Lap 101: Looks like as he was trying to pass Will Power, his outside wheels got caught on the high line and sent him on a one-way ticket to the SAFER Barrier.

Lap 103: The leaders come in and Kanaan dusts everybody at the pit line. Kanaan, Dixon, Patrick and Meira stay in the top 4, while Helio jumps one spot to the top five.

Lap 104: Give a shout-out to Darren Manning, who is currently eighth after starting 18th. It appears his runner-up finish at the Glen last week has given him and his whole Foyt Racing team a boost of confidence.

Lap 107: Marty Reid is getting spooked about the dark clouds coming up toward the frontstretch of Nashville Superspeedway. I don’t blame him, they look mean.

Lap 111: RESTART.

80 to go: Kanaan leads by nine-tenths of a second. The top five positions have not changed since the restart.

75 to go: Hideki Mutoh enters the pits for a green-flag stop.

70 to go: The lead has grown to almost two seconds for Kanaan over Dixon. Patrick reports that there’s “a lot of lightning” around the track over her team radio.

61 laps to go: CAUTION. Rain is coming down and the exodus begins for the crowd as they try to evade the precipitation by hiding under the grandstand.

60 to go: Right before the yellow, Danica Patrick was forced to go up high in order to avoid the lapped car of Justin Wilson. She saved the car, but ceded third to Vitor Meira.

57 to go: The rain is actually a light sprinkle, not even approaching a drizzle even. But it’s still enough to keep this race under yellow. The cars are going around the track at caution speed.

53 to go: The pits are open and Kanaan relinquishes the lead to go on pit road. Meanwhile, Dixon has stayed out and so has his teammate Dan Wheldon. Meira falls four spots to seventh after problems ensue on his pit stop involving a nut on one of his left wheels.

51 to go: The rain has stopped. Let’s see how long it takes before we go back to green.

50 to go: Your top five: Dixon, Wheldon, Kanaan, Castroneves and Patrick. Dixon and Wheldon cannot make it to the end on fuel.

48 to go: RESTART. Castroneves gets by Patrick and Kanaan to take third on that lap. His pass of Kanaan was on the high line too — gutsy move.

44 to go: Meira has moved up one position to sixth, while Rice has climbed to seventh.

40 to go: Dixon and Wheldon are praying for rain very soon. We’ll see soon enough if the gamble pays off. If not, Castroneves, Kanaan, Patrick and Meira are going to settle this.

34 to go: CAUTION. The rain is back and it’s coming down much harder than it did the first time. TCGR is smiling, but the folks in the Tony Kanaan pits are bummin’.

31 to go: The track has remained in play; it appears the rain has dialed down in its intensity to a drizzle. The cars are still on the track at caution speed.

29 to go: The red flag is waving at the starter’s stand as the rain picks up now. All the cars are now on pit road. If we end it here, Dixon’s edge over Castroneves will increase to 63 points in the IndyCar championship battle.

Most of the drivers are now getting out of their machines.

Turns out that Dixon staying out longer on the track (I assume this was on the last run of the race) was actually “a miscommunication” according to the driver between himself and his team strategist Mike Hull. Moral of the story: Sometimes, kids, making mistakes can be good.

Red Flag (9:53 p.m. ET) — THE RACE IS OVER. Mother Nature and a great gamble has given Scott Dixon his third straight victory at Nashville Superspeedway.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 12th, 2008 at 8:56 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.