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Wilson Wins, Championship Battle Lives On
By Andrew Cutler September 1 2008
From day one of the merger, everyone expected that Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing would be the strongest of the former CCWS squads making the move over to the IndyCar Series. While the KV Racing Technology team has actually outperformed them on a week-to-week results/points basis, NHL has picked up two wins, the second comming this weekend at Detroit/Belle Isle.

Britian's Justin Wilson captured the checkerd flags at Sunday's race, the last road/street event - save Surfers Paradise, which is a post-season exhibition event - on the 2008 schedule. As his teammate, Graham Rahal, won in early April on the streets of St. Petersburg, FL, this means that NHL has "bookended" the road/street portion of the IndyCar season.

A strong starting position (4th) and good pit strategy put Wilson in contention for the lead late in the going. After his attempt to pass race leader & championship hopeful Helio Castroneves was foiled when the Brazilian moved all the way across the track to block him, Wilson inherited the spot when the IRL forced Helio to give way under treat of a blag flag penalty.

"Helio was racing hard. The first yellow, I was right behind him and that's how it goes. It was just hard racing. The second time I got a good run out of (Turn 12) and started to overlap and I had the inside for the next corner. Before we got halfway down the straight he started to come across and I had to lift or we both were going to crash. I was a little upset at the time, but I was relieved when the officials put it right."

Castroneves finished second and, more importantly, three positions ahead of championship points leader Scott Dixon, who once again couldn't seem to make his pit strategy work correctly. Still, Dixon leads Castroneves by 30 points going into the final (regular season) race, next weekend at the Chicagoland Speedway, a 1.5 mile oval.

Here are the complete results from Detroit/Belle Isle: http://www.indycar.com/stats/boxscores/2008/belleisle_08312008.pdf

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Re: Wlison Wins, Championship Battle Lives On
Posted by: sessions (IP Logged)
Date: 01/09/2008 16:54

Good for Justin, and the tribute to Newman.
The blocking call was ( JUSTINfied) in my opinion, what do you guys think ?

Sessions



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008:09:01:16:55:09 by sessions.

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Re: Wlison Wins, Championship Battle Lives On
Posted by: IndyAndy (IP Logged)
Date: 01/09/2008 18:19

Comming out of Turn 13, Helio picked the left side of straitaway because it was the logical place to set up for Turn 14. He clearly did not move over to the right until Justin had already committed to try & pass him from the right - that's blocking. Then he didn't move back to the left to set up for the turn until Justin had moved left - that's a second block; by default if not by intent.

My take on the "warning for the first block" is that IRL will give the drivers the benefit of the doubt if there is ANY chance that they could argue that they were simply chosing their line. IMO, the IRL was right to call for Helio to move over, because there is no reasonable way that Helio/Penske could make that arguement in light of Helio moving infront of Justin like that TWICE.

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e114/IndyAndy/keepBourdais.jpg
http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e114/IndyAndy/July08.jpg



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2008:09:01:18:34:53 by IndyAndy.

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