Ryan Briscoe bounced back from a dismal Indianapolis 500 to win tonight’s Firestone 550K at Texas Motor Speedway from the pole position.
On Lap 193, Briscoe was passed for the lead by Danica Patrick shortly after his final pit stop. But on the next lap, the Australian was able to re-take the point and steadily pulled away over the final laps to take the checkered flag by 1.4629 seconds. With the victory, he moved himself from seventh to fifth in the IZOD IndyCar Series championship.
“I needed that,” said Briscoe in a post-race interview with Versus reporter Lindy Thackston. “I was pretty miserable coming off of Indy the way we did, and we just didn’t quite have it for Dario and then I made a mistake in the end. This win definitely means a lot.”
As for Patrick, she quickly showed to be a strong contender from the beginning and was able to stay up front throughout the night — which wasn’t without incident, as she appeared to chop teammate Tony Kanaan on the backstretch at one point during the race.
In the end, however, she was able to post a great result, even though she wasn’t quite able to hang with Briscoe’s pace in the late stages.
“At Kansas, we were a little shy on downforce and here, we were like, ‘Hey, we better make sure we’ve got enough,'” she said to Versus reporter Robbie Floyd. “That maybe have played into Briscoe going around the outside, because I couldn’t go around the outside of anybody. Those lead cars are so good. They can run the white line the whole time.”
Marco Andretti continued his strong momentum as well, finishing third for the second straight race. Scott Dixon came home fourth and Dario Franchitti had to settle for fifth place after leading for a solid amount of the race.
MORE TO COME…
