Franchitti wins crash-filled Iowa race

Franchitti led all but four of the last 98 laps after taking the lead from Vitor Meira with a quick pitstop on the 152nd lap.

As the race developed into a two-car shootout, Franchitti stayed low around the seven-eighths-mile track, forcing Andretti to the outside.

As drivers predicted before the race, the outside line didn't offer any passing opportunities, and Franchitti's No. 27 Andretti Green Racing Honda/Dallara crossed the finish line 0.0681 seconds ahead of Andretti's No. 26 AGR Honda/Dallara.

"Marco tried the outside," Franchitti said. "On other half-miles, we can come around the outside of the corners and get a slingshot. It didn't appear to be working here, for whatever reason.

"I knew if I stuck to the yellow line, Marco was going to have a hard time getting around me. He was very smart. He just stayed right behind me and we tried to pull away from the pack."

The race was marred by problems, including three crashes, one spin and several mechanical breakdowns.

Among the trouble was a five-car pile-up that knocked four drivers out of the race, including defending IndyCar Series champion Sam Hornish Jr, and a spin that took Helio Castroneves out of the lead early in the race.

By the 86th lap, three of the top five in points had been involved in crashes or had mechanical problems, a statistic that didn't get past Franchitti and his strategist, John Anderson.

"When we saw those guys having issues, it wasn't lost on us," Franchitti said. "Even if we didn't win, we knew we just had to finish as well as we could and not do anything stupid. We've just got to keep doing that week in and week out."

The victory, Franchitti's second of the season and his fifth podium in the last six races, put him 51 points ahead of Tony Kanaan in the IndyCar Series standings after eight of 17 races this season.

It's Franchitti's best start to a season since he battled Juan Pablo Montoya down to the wire before losing the CART championship on a tiebreaker in 1999.

"It's been a good start to the season," Franchitti said. "Are we halfway yet? I don't even think we're halfway yet, so it's too early to tell."

Andretti overshot his pit box on the final stop, a miscue that may have cost him a win.

"I'm not sure I would have beat him out anyway," Andretti said. "It definitely hurt my chances, though."

Scott Sharp, who stayed on the trail of the two AGR cars throughout the final two stints, finished third. Sharp considered that remarkable, seeing as how he barely missed being the sixth car in the pileup on the 100th lap.

"So many cars were literally a foot or two sideways in front of me and somehow I avoided them," said Sharp, who moved up to seventh in the standings.

"It was a great day for points. Obviously we're picking up the pace. We qualified fourth and finished third, and we were able to run with the leaders all day."

The race began ominously, with a slew of crashes and spins. Dan Wheldon lost control on the first turn of the first lap and took Tomas Scheckter with him. "I'm shocked," Wheldon said. "Everyone at Target Chip Ganassi Racing has worked so hard. It doesn't seem like anything is going my way right now."

On the ensuing restart, Scott Dixon pulled in the pits with a steering problem, not to return for another 70 laps.

On the 74th lap, Helio Castroneves spun out while returning to the track from the pits, losing four laps while trying to get underway again. Twelve laps after Castroneves' spin, Kanaan spun, taking Jeff Simmons with him.

After the cleanup of that crash, Danica Patrick bobbled while between two cars on the restart, starting a chain reaction that took her out of the race along with Hornish, AJ Foyt IV and Kosuke Matsuura.

Ed Carpenter also was involved, but recovered and was running fourth behind Franchitti, Andretti and Sharp before running out of fuel and finishing sixth.

"It's frustrating because we had a better car than that," said Carpenter, who lost a lap during repairs. "But we were lucky to not get taken out earlier in the race, so we'll take it."

Drivers blamed a badly missed weather forecast and a hard tire for the troubles -- especially the early, cold-tire spins of Wheldon, Kanaan and Castroneves. Predictions were for sunny skies and highs in the low 90s, but the sun never shone and temps never got out of the mid-70s.

"It was weird," said Castroneves, who came back to finish eighth. "When we tested here before, it was warm and sunny. It felt much hotter.

"We wanted a safer tire because we knew we'd be putting a lot of loads on the tire at this track. As you started to go, the car started to stick to the ground. The steering became very heavy."

The most disheartening of the bad-luck episodes happened again to Vitor Meira, who led 71 laps and was running behind Franchitti and Andretti when the left front suspension on his No. 4 Panther Racing Honda/Dallara collapsed under braking on the 216th lap.

"It was the best car on the track today," Meira said. "It might not have been the fastest, but it was the best. The Panther guys have been working too hard and deserved better."

The victory was the 16th of Franchitti's open-wheel career with Honda, surpassing Alex Zanardi, who won 15 races with Honda power during his CART career.

This one could be consider one of the trickiest, as Franchitti and his crew overcame a green track, a mismatched aero package, a far-off weather forecast and a few spinning colleagues to claim victory.

"It was one restart after another, one yellow after another, and at one point we were four-wide going across the start-finish line," Franchitti said.

"I was pretty lucky. From then on, we knew we couldn't do anything stupid, so we just played a conservative game."

Pos  Driver              Laps
 1.  Dario Franchitti    250
 2.  Marco Andretti      250
 3.  Scott Sharp         250
 4.  Buddy Rice          250
 5.  Darren Manning      250
 6.  Ed Carpenter        247
 7.  Sarah Fisher        247
 8.  Helio Castroneves   246
 9.  Vitor Meira         216
10.  Scott Dixon         173
11.  Dan Wheldon         145
12.  AJ Foyt IV           99
13.  Danica Patrick       99
14.  Sam Hornish Jr       99
15.  Kosuke Matsuura      99
16.  Tony Kanaan          85
17.  Jeff Simmons         85
18.  Milka Duno           60
19.  Tomas Scheckter       0