Homestead: Hornish thrills

The new banking at Homestead produced some excellent wheel-to-wheel action, albeit none of the potentially dangerous 'pack' racing of a superspeedway. It also spawned a brilliant late-race, five-way scrap between the Penske duo and Dan Wheldon, Tomas Scheckter and Tora Takagi.

After running three-wide with Wheldon, Castroneves grabbed the advantage when he snookered Hornish behind the lapped car of Bryan Herta. They ran nose-to-tail to the flag, leaving the other three to battle over the places.

Castroneves put a huge block on Hornish on the exit of Turn 2 with three laps to go, but was too late to cover Hornish's daring lunge to the inside of Turn 1 on the final lap. With just millimetres separating them, Hornish held Castroneves off over the last three quarters of the lap to take a sensational win on his Penske debut - and lay to rest the misnomer that he can only pass opponents on the outside.

Hornish also became the first driver in the 37-year history of Roger Penske's outfit to win his first race with the team.

"I woke up this morning and started thinking about that," Hornish said. "I wonder if anyone has ever won their first race with Roger."

The answer is not until Sunday, anyway. In fact, few have won races for Penske in such dramatic, final-lap style, especially against a team-mate. As Castroneves led Hornish into the first turn on the final lap, Hornish did something uncharacteristic. He went low.

"I thought, 'You know what? This guy is not going to beat me on the outside,'" Castroneves said. "If I let him by on the outside, I would not be sleeping tonight. If he was going to beat me, it was going to be on the inside."

Hornish had been stalking his team-mate for the previous 10 laps, trying several angles of attack without success. On the final lap, as the cars headed into the first turn, Hornish went low. Castroneves, guarding attack from the outside, was forced to give his team-mate just enough room to make the inside move work.

"When it came right down to it on the last lap, he just wasn't going to give me that outside line," Hornish said. "He gave me enough room to maybe get a car width in there, but I wasn't able to time it right. I just decided I was going to go for the inside on that last lap."

It worked for Hornish's third victory in four races at Homestead. In his 800 laps at the track, he has led for 39 percent. "It just worked out," Hornish said. "Sometimes you just kind of walk into it, I guess."

Wheldon finished third, despite stalling during his penultimate pitstop, ahead of Takagi, Scheckter, Darren Manning (who was lucky to escape a clash with Alex Barron) and pole sitter Buddy Rice.

Wheldon, who wisely backed out of a three-abreast situation when swamped by the Penske duo, said: "I couldn't tell which one was which. They both look the same, especially when they come at you from either side. It was important just to keep my cool. That could have ended ugly."

It was a bad day for the other Brits. Rookie Mark Taylor's maiden IRL race ended prematurely when he recorded the first crash of the season. He spun into the SAFER wall at the final turn just after quarter distance, but was unharmed.

Following Scott Dixon's bizarre exit into the pitwall, Dario Franchitti was the next to crash out. He hit the wall after running on the high side of rookie Kousuke Matsuura, who drifted up the track and pushed him into a spin, but Dario was able to walk away from his wrecked Andretti Green Racing-run Dallara-Honda.

"He came further and further up the track on me," said Franchitti. "It's unfortunate. It's his first race, but when it understeers you should get off the gas. I'll have a little word with him about it later."

Tony Kanaan, Scott Sharp and Robbie Buhl rounded out the top 10.