Power Wins IndyCar Baltimore Grand Prix, Cuts Points Gap to Five

Will Power is almost tied with Dario Franchitti for the 2012 IndyCar championship after Power dominated at the inaugural IndyCar Baltimore Grand Prix, winning the pole and the race and leading almost every lap to garner maximum points.

Power now trails Franchitti by only five points with three races left on the schedule.  

“That’s a championship run, that one,” Power told Versus in Victory Lane. “That was me thinking in my head, ‘I want to win this championship.’”

Power, who led a Team Penske podium sweep at last week’s IndyCar Grand Prix of Sonoma, showed the same speed on the brand new Baltimore circuit. He lost the lead in the first turn when Graham Rahal made a brave but risky outside pass, retook the lead in Turn Three, and was never challenged again.

According to Power, the race wasn’t as easy as it looked—particularly the laps after the second caution, when he had to open enough of a gap over the rest of the field to allow him to pit without losing too much track position.

“That was the toughest race I’ve done all year. Honestly. Never driven so hard in my life. They said, ‘You’ve got ten laps to get a gap.’ I’m exhausted,” Power told Versus in Victory Lane.

The only hitch in Power’s race came after he short-cutted the Turn 13 chicane on lap 24. Race officials ordered him to give back three seconds, or risk more severe penalties. On lap 27, Power deliberately slowed down, which let the pursuing Graham Rahal close to within half a second. The Penske driver simply stepped on the gas and drove away, preserving his lead.

Rahal’s Newman-Haas teammate Oriol Servia took second with a strategy gamble, pitting near the end of a long caution period (laps 37–48) and stretching his Firestone Red tires long past their service life to avoid pitting again, while the rest of the leaders had to stop in the final fifteen laps.

Servia was brimming with confidence at the post-race press conference on indycar.com. “Nobody has doubts. There's a reason why Newman/Haas Racing has over 100 victories. Here we are again. We're fourth in points and fighting for the podium every race, and there's more to come."

Tony Kanaan, whose care was totaled in a 190-mph wreck in morning warmup, started 27th and worked his way up to third. Kanaan used the same strategy as Servia, gained three places on the restart, worked his way up to fifth, and gained two places when the leaders had pit.

“I can't thank the Geico KV Racing team enough,” Kanaan told Indycar.com. “We made a mistake this morning, but fixed it and gave me all the support. The guys from Geico, it's their hometown race so it's nice to have a podium for them. A great comeback.”

Dario Franchitti finished fourth, earning 32 points—21 fewer than his rival. He might have made it to the podium, but a communication error cost him.

“We were a third place car. Graham [Rahal] looked very strong, and Will [Power], it was the same thing with him; the other cars were just a little bit quicker.

"It looked like we had everyone else covered, but there was a miscue on strategy, they called me into the pits when we had about 10 car lengths past it, so that was unfortunate,” Franchitti told Indycar.com.

Franchitti, fighting for his fourth IndyCar championship and his third in a row, said he was not worried by how close the points spread had gotten in just two races. “What's the point in getting concerned?” he asked. “It doesn't make you any quicker.”

IndyCar heads to Japan for its next race the Indy Japan 300 run on the road course at Twin Ring Motegi, in Motegi, Tochigi Prefecture. This race is normally run on the oval, but that track was damaged by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

The race will air live on Versus with coverage starting at 11:30 p.m., Saturday, September 17.

Tickets to the race are supposedly available through the Twin Ring Motegi website, but it is all in Japanese—good luck with that.