2008 IRL Rd. 3A--Bridgestone Indy Japan 300

[mlittle]

Shades of Chicagoland? Race control reporting that Dixon's team is telling him to dial it back a bit in an effort to conserve ethanol......

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168 laps in the books....................
Dixon, Kanaan, Wheldon, Briscoe, Hunter-Reay in the top-5; looking at when they took their last stops, IMO I don't believe any of those five, barring another caution, can make it to the end.........which could potentially mean the fight for the lead and the win might just be between Castroneves, Patrick and Carpenter, who are in 6th, 7th and 8th

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176 laps in the books as the Target cars are now battling for the race lead, Dixon in 1st and Wheldon in 2nd at the moment

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Race control reporting Briscoe white-walled the car exiting turn 4 but the race remains under a green flag situation, but he is way off the pace at the moment

Top-5 w/181 laps
Dixon, Wheldon, Kanaan, Hunter-Reay and Carpenter
(of the five, Hunter-Reay will likely have to stop; will Dixon, Wheldon and Kanaan have to stop also?)

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15 laps remaining; speeds have picked up, but everyone is wondering.....who will blink and have to pit for fuel?

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13 laps remaining; no change in the leaders

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.....and Hunter-Reay blinks first, falling out of the top-5

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Bell pits from 10th; the leaders are probably sweating now, but I don't think they got the fuel to make it; will they have to enter pitlane also?

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Manning pits from 9th; surprisingly, Carpenter can't make it to the end as he pulls into pitlane also!

Fuel strategies, it seems, are going out the proverbial window!

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....and Dixon pits for fuel! The leader's in; Wheldon and Kanaan also break for pit lane as well..............Castroneves inheirits the lead, Patrick is in 2nd and Briscoe, assuming everything shakes out, should be 3rd

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Brief update from Motegi....................


A combination of fuel strategy in the last 50+ laps and one of the ballsiest passes in recent memory resulted in a historic race at the Twin Ring Motegi as Andretti-Green Racing's Danica Patrick becomes the first woman to win a major top-level open-wheel race.............

[Southernman]

Great to see Danica Patrick win. It should stop her being refered to as the Anna Kournikova of motorsport.

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Sometimes a picture is truly worth a thousand words.......and with that, a brief rewind of the Bridgestone Indy Japan 300.


It may have been only three laps on the timing and scoring charts, but it was the three that counted as Andretti-Green Racing's Danica Patrick became the first woman to win a major AOWR event, this weekend's Bridgestone Indy Japan 300.

At the drop of the green, polesitter Helio Castroneves got the jump on everyone, leading through lap 93 when he was beaten off of pitlane by the #9 Target car of Scott Dixon, who proceeded to check out for about 50 or so laps until a caution and strategy played themselves out.....first the caution. On lap 141, Roger Yasukawa brought out the fourth caution of the race when the brakes on his Dallara/Honda seized up, bringing him to a stop on the frontstretch. Everyone dives into pitlane for fuel and tires.....now the strategy part.

Motegi, for some reason, has become a fuel-strategy race for some reason as every year someone tries to gamble on fuel...if they're successful, victory could well be the result. If not.....just ask then-Panther Racing's Tomas Scheckter, who ran out of fuel with less than a lap left back in 2005(in fact, three drivers ran dry on the last lap that year..... ). As everyone's circling around on lap 148, three drivers...Ed Carpenter, Helio Castroneves and Danica Patrick, dive onto pitlane for a quick splash of ethanol. The question buzzing through pitlane, Could they make it to the end on fuel?

Lap 150, the green comes out with Dixon continuing to lead, but it's clear that, barring a late caution, he and everyone in front of Ed, Spiderman and Danica would have to make a late splash-n'-dash, so the question became, which of the three gamblers' would win? With 11 laps left, Ryan Hunter-Reay peels off for the pits for fuel, followed a lap later by Townsend Bell and then, a lap after by Darren Manning......then, surprisingly, Ed Carpenter has to dive into the pits for ethanol. On the very next lap......both of the race leaders, Dan Wheldon and Tony Kanaan, dive onto pitlane, their chances of a win as dry as their fuel tanks probably were. This left the two remaining gamblers, Castroneves and Patrick, to fight for the race victory.

Then, it happened. Having caught the draft off of Spiderman's car entering turns 1 and 2, Patrick, who had saved fuel throughout that final stint of the race, executes a slingshot, high-side pass around Castroneves entering turn 3 and that, as they say, was that; no one could catch her the last two laps as she held on for the victory, winning by 5.85 seconds over Castroneves, who ran out of fuel on the cool-down lap after the checkered flag flew..... In the end, though, it was an American woman who won in the Land of the Rising Sun. Congratulations, Danica, on your first IndyCar Series win!


Top-10 from a historic race at Motegi.........................
1st} #7 Danica Patrick.....................................200 laps
2nd} #3 Helio Castroneves...............................-5.859 sec
3rd} #9 Scott Dixon.........................................-10.056 sec
4th} #10 Dan Wheldon.....................................-13.112 sec
5th} #11 Tony Kanaan.....................................-16.073 sec
6th} #20 Ed Carpenter.....................................-16.827 sec
7th} #17 Ryan Hunter-Reay..............................-17.159 sec
8th} #14 Darren Manning.................................-1 lap
9th} #6 Ryan Briscoe.......................................-1 lap
10th} #23 Townsend Bell..................................-1 lap