IndyCar: Ed Carpenter wins Texas shootout

It looked like plain sailing for Ed Carpenter until a late caution bunched the field behind him. But the series' only owner driver pulled away from his pursuers over the final two green-flag laps to score Ed Carpenter Racing's second win of the year.

For much of the night, it had looked like Will Power was going to notch up his third victory of the season. However, Carpenter kept working on his car, and it looked stronger than the No. 12 Team Penske car in traffic. When Power lost momentum behind backmarkers on lap 183 of the 248-lap race, Carpenter was there to shoot through into the lead, and the pair continued to pull away from their immediate pursuers. On a night when tire degradation rather than need for fuel defined pit stop strategy, Power and eventually Carpenter were often able to lap 2-3mph faster than their rivals by the end of stints.

On what was the final scheduled stop, with the cars about 1.5sec apart, Power blew through the pitspeed limiter and incurred a drive-through penalty. However, the lead pace had been so strong and the caution periods so few, this dropped him only to sixth. When Takuma Sato's engine blew eight laps from the end, the field bunched up once more.

With Power the last driver on the lead lap, he had nothing to lose by pitting for more fresh rubber under yellow,  and in the final two green-flag laps he blew past Chip Ganassi Racing pair Scott Dixon and Tony Kanaan, and in the final turn also grabbed second from teammate Juan Montoya. Nevertheless, Montoya scored his first podium since his comeback and looked at least as impressive as he had at Indy. A very early pit stop for a puncture fortunately coincided with Marco Andretti's Honda engine letting go in a major way.

Schmidt Peterson Hamilton Motorsports' Simon Pagenaud, who also stopped for fresh rubber in that last caution period, also vaulted ahead of the two Target Ganassi cars to take fourth., with Dixon holding off Kanaan for fifth and Ryan Briscoe and Charlie Kimball finishing ninth and tenth in the other Ganassi entries.

While Pagenaud's performance was typically impressive, battling in the top five for most of the night, his rookie teammate Mikhail Aleshin also caused a stir with several bold passes that belied the fact that this was his first race at Texas Motor Speedway and his first on a banked oval. He was classified seventh, ahead of last year's Texas winner Helio Castroneves, who was never able to make good enough progress from his midfield starting position to get into the thick of the fight at the front.

If Penske's pace was excellent, and Ganassi's was solid, Andretti Autosport suffered a terrible evening, with the fast cars of Andretti and Ryan Hunter-Reay suffering engine problems, Hunter-Reay's just past mid-distance. Meanwhile Hinchcliffe was never a factor, handling difficulties shortening his stints and sending him four laps down by the end. Carlos Munoz was 13th after spinning his way into pit lane at half-distance.

Josef Newgarden, who started on the front row, eventually drifted back to 11th, despite having a fast car in the early stages of the race. 12th went to Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing's Graham Rahal who recovered well from a poor qualifying session.

Aside from the mechanical failures on Andretti's and Sato's cars, the other yellow-flag period came on lap 121 when Justin Wilson's Dale Coyne Racing No. 19 car and the KVSH Racing car of Sebastien Bourdais collided. Wilson blamed it on Bourdais squeezing him down below the white line onto the apron, and then spinning as he went back up the transition onto the 24-degree banking. Bourdais said he wasn't sure where Wilson was until the DCR spun and collected him.

RESULTS

1. (5) Ed Carpenter, Dallara-Chevy, 248, Running
2. (1) Will Power, Dallara-Chevy, 248, Running
3. (4) Juan Pablo Montoya, Dallara-Chevy, 248, Running
4. (6) Simon Pagenaud, Dallara-Honda, 248, Running
5. (7) Scott Dixon, Dallara-Chevy, 248, Running
6. (3) Tony Kanaan, Dallara-Chevy, 248, Running
7. (11) Mikhail Aleshin, Dallara-Honda, 247, Running
8. (14) Helio Castroneves, Dallara-Chevy, 247, Running
9. (13) Ryan Briscoe, Dallara-Chevy, 247, Running
10. (15) Charlie Kimball, Dallara-Chevy, 247, Running
11. (2) Josef Newgarden, Dallara-Honda, 247, Running
12. (21) Graham Rahal, Dallara-Honda, 246, Running
13. (10) Carlos Munoz, Dallara-Honda, 245, Running
14. (9) James Hinchcliffe, Dallara-Honda, 244, Running
15. (20) Jack Hawksworth, Dallara-Honda, 244, Running
16. (22) Carlos Huertas, Dallara-Honda, 244, Running
17. (19) Sebastian Saavedra, Dallara-Chevy, 244, Running
18. (16) Takuma Sato, Dallara-Honda, 238, Mechanical
19. (12) Ryan Hunter-Reay, Dallara-Honda, 136, Mechanical
20. (18) Sebastien Bourdais, Dallara-Chevy, 118, Contact
21. (8) Justin Wilson, Dallara-Honda, 118, Contact
22. (17) Marco Andretti, Dallara-Honda, 3, Mechanical