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Montoya scores Toyota's first CART victory

Juan Montoya dominated the Milwaukee 225 to score a famous first CART victory for Toyota. The Target Ganassi driver started his Lola-Toyota from pole and led the most laps in Monday's race, which ran 24 hours late after a rain delay

It was a big result for the entire team which has won the last four CART championship titles. For the 2000 season, they swapped the favoured Honda power for the Toyota units which had yet to prove successful. Ganassi also moved away from Reynard chassis to Lola. Now, just six races into the season, Montoya has put their new package into Victory Lane

"I'm very happy to win here," said an excited Montoya. "We have been very close so many times this year, and now finally it has come good. The car has been very good everywhere we've been this year, and I must thank my guys for that, we just haven't always had the luck. But in racing you just have to keep working, working to make things better, and that is what we have done.

"I really wanted to win Toyota's first race in Japan last month, but we couldn't, so this is the next best. I'm sure there will be many more to come."

The Colombian, fresh from his victory in the Indianapolis 500, leapt up the points table with his maximum score, and he is now just 15 points behind series leader Paul Tracy. Tracy lost a points-scoring finish in the closing stages with a pit-lane violation penalty.

Second place at Milwaukee went to Michael Andretti in the Newman-Haas Lola-Ford. Andretti closed quickly on the Colombian in the closing stages, but ended up finishing just one second adrift of the winner.

Patrick Carpentier took third place on his return to racing after breaking his wrist earlier in the season.

Rookie Kenny Brack held off a late race challenge from Roberto Moreno, Dario Franchitti and Max Papis to take fourth place. Moreno's fifth spot moves him into second place in the championship behind Tracy.

Results
Pos/driver/laps

1/Juan Montoya/225
2/Michael Andretti/225/
3/Patrick Carpentier/225
4/Kenny Brack/225
5/Roberto Moreno/225
6/Dario Franchitti/225
7/Max Papis/225
8/Adrian Fernandez/225
9/Christian Fittipaldi/225
10/Tony Kanaan/225
11/Mauricio Gugelmin/224
12/Gil de Ferran/224
13/Jimmy Vasser/224
14/Cristiano da Matta/224
15/Paul Tracy/224
16/Helio Castroneves/224
17/Mark Blundell/224
18/Michel Jourdain Jr./224
19/Oriol Servia/222
20/Tarso Marques/180
21/Luiz Garcia Jr./117
22/Alexandre Tagliani/108
23/Shinji Nakano/71

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