American driver tops Franchitti by .0098 of a second for first IndyCar win
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Score one for the underdog.
Ed Carpenter didn’t have an easy Sunday afternoon at Kentucky Speedway, as he was forced to drive one-handed for a time while also holding together his helmet visor. The American persevered and found himself in second place on the day’s final restart, but in order to claim his elusive first win in the IZOD IndyCar Series, he’d have to defeat championship contender Dario Franchitti to do it.
The two battled side by side over the final 15 laps, and then on the last lap, Carpenter activated his final push-to-pass overtake boost while rounding through Turn 4. It would help propel him to a .0098 second victory over Franchitti, the sixth-closest finish in series history.
After 112 races over nine seasons, Carpenter finally achieved victory. And how.
“I’d been setting it up the last 10 laps and got it to where I used my ‘push to pass’ twice,” Carpenter explained. “I think I had eight or nine left. I used it twice. Both times I used them, I beat him to the line. I felt pretty good, depending on how [Franchitti] was using his. I did two of them and it worked both times. They told me I had one more than him.
“I started using them once we got to that point, tried to run him out. I’m not sure when he used his last one. I did get a little worried out of [Turn 4]. He had his best run out of [Turn 4] than he had in a few laps. Once we got rolling down the straightaway, the Honda motor took over and the guys built an awfully slick car, so it did the rest.”
Franchitti admitted afterwards that he had to burn through his remaining overtake boosts just to keep Carpenter from clearing him.
“He had one more [boost] coming to the flag,” said the Scotsman. “That was it.”
But despite the narrow loss, Franchitti is heading to the season finale in two weeks at Las Vegas Motor Speedway with the series points lead after Will Power ended up on the wrong end of a run-in with Ana Beatriz during a pit stop.
“It’s certainly nicer than the position we were in last week, no doubt about it,” Franchitti said. “…It can change in a second. So we’ll just go next week with an open mind and see what comes of it.”
Power was coming in for a stop on Lap 49 and was heading toward his pit box while Beatriz was completing her own service. She got the OK to head out and went right into Power’s No. 12 machine, punching a hole in the left sidepod.
The damage robbed Power of precious speed and he wound up finishing 19th with what he called the best car he’d ever had on an oval. Now, with one race remaining in the season, he sits 18 points behind Franchitti and will be forced to come from behind in order to win his first title.
“Nothing we could do about that [incident],” said Power. “We lost 4 mph with the hole in the side of the car…The handling was still there, just no speed.”
Power’s calamity was not the only accident on pit road Sunday. On Lap 137, Simona De Silvestro was victimized by an overheated clutch that helped send her into the inside pit wall and also into KV Racing Technology crewman D.J. McMahon, who suffered a fractured knee.
That was followed three laps later by J.R. Hildebrand locking up while entering his pit box and hitting one of his Panther Racing crewmen, Eric Scheumann, who sustained a lower leg injury and was eventually airlifted to a hospital in Lexington, Kentucky for further evaluation. Almost at the same time, Alex Lloyd and Marco Andretti – who had been running up in the lead pack prior to the incident — made contact as Lloyd was trying to reach his pit box.
“I bogged getting out of the pit box and that allowed [Graham] Rahal to get up aside of me and what happened happened,” said Andretti. “They were coming in and I was going out – our suspension was damaged.”
As a result of Hildebrand’s misfortune, James Hinchcliffe was able to take advantage and leap to a six-point lead in their Rookie of the Year battle. The Canadian finished fourth in the race behind Scott Dixon in third.
“Certainly, it’s nice to go into the last race of the year a little bit up, but at the end of the day there is still a lot that can happen,” said Hinchcliffe. “As you can see, J.R. was ahead of us on track at one point during the day and so many things can happen to throw you off. It just proves how tough these races are; it’s really about being there at the end. We’ll take it.”
The final race of the season – the IZOD IndyCar World Championship presented by Honda – will take place Sunday, Oct. 16 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Coverage begins at 3 p.m. ET on ABC.
