Indianapolis 500: Tony Kanaan finally earns Indy victory

In a race defined by constant slipstreaming and a record 68 lead changes, the KV Racing Technology driver took the lead for the final time when he passed Ryan Hunter-Reay on a restart with three laps left to run.

There should still have been plenty of time for any number of the cars around him to attack, but they were denied the opportunity when Dario Franchitti crashed and immediately brought the yellows back out. The final laps were completed under caution.

Rookie Carlos Munoz backed up his practice speed by finishing an excellent second for Andretti Autosport; the rookie having looked more than at home running among the leaders right through the afternoon.

Completing a great afternoon for the Andretti team was Ryan Hunter-Reay in third and Marco Andretti in fourth, although both will view the result as one that got away after spending a vast amount of the race trading the lead.

Justin Wilson was the first Honda-powered driver across the line in fifth, the Brit jumping ahead of Helio Castroneves in the final laps, while AJ Allmendinger drove a great race all afternoon on his way to seventh.

Simon Pagenaud, Charlie Kimball and polesitter Ed Carpenter, who started strongly but faded later in the race, completed the top 10.

The nature of defending race winner Franchitti's exit brought an early end to what had been a pretty difficult afternoon, with the Scot spending most of the race mired on the outer fringes of the top 20.

Until the late pair of cautions, the race had been run almost completely under green flag conditions. Indeed, with seven laps remaining, the average race speed was more than 7mph above the record. That dropped with the late yellows, but the race was still the fastest ever with a winner's average speed of 187.433mph.

The first caution came after just three laps when JR Hildebrand lost the rear of his car and hit the barriers; an accident that Graham Rahal did a good job of replicating to bring out the second-last yellow 194 laps later.

Rahal's crash ended a frustrating day for the Rahal Letterman Lanigan team, which also had both cars issued a monetary fine for breaching pitlane protocol, and then saw James Jakes dealt a drive-through penalty for an unsafe stop.

Meanwhile, Sebastien Bourdais took the prize for the most baffling incident of the day when he lost control and crashed into the wall in the pitlane.

Results - 200 laps:

Pos  Driver               Team/Engine             Time/Gap
 1.  Tony Kanaan          KV/Chevy           2h40m03.4181s
 2.  Carlos Munoz         Andretti/Chevy          + 0.1159
 3.  Ryan Hunter-Reay     Andretti/Chevy          + 0.2480
 4.  Marco Andretti       Andretti/Chevy          + 0.3634
 5.  Justin Wilson        Coyne/Honda             + 0.8138
 6.  Helio Castroneves    Penske/Chevy            + 3.0086
 7.  AJ Allmendinger      Penske/Chevy            + 4.0107
 8.  Simon Pagenaud       Schmidt/Honda           + 4.2609
 9.  Charlie Kimball      Ganassi/Honda           + 5.6864
10.  Ed Carpenter         Carpenter/Chevy         + 6.8425
11.  Oriol Servia         Panther DRR/Chevy       + 7.8633
12.  Ryan Briscoe         Ganassi/Honda           + 8.9216
13.  Takuma Sato          Foyt/Honda             + 10.2602
14.  Scott Dixon          Ganassi/Honda          + 11.3858
15.  Ana Beatriz          Coyne/Honda            + 12.2657
16.  Tristan Vautier      Schmidt/Honda          + 15.3045
17.  Simona De Silvestro  KV/Chevy               + 15.7201
18.  EJ Viso              Andretti/Chevy         + 17.8056
19.  Will Power           Penske/Chevy           + 22.5403
20.  James Jakes          Rahal/Honda              + 1 lap
21.  James Hinchcliffe    Andretti/Chevy           + 1 lap
22.  Conor Daly           Foyt/Honda              + 2 laps
23.  Dario Franchitti     Ganassi/Honda          + 3 laps*
24.  Alex Tagliani        Herta/Honda             + 4 laps
25.  Graham Rahal         Rahal/Honda            + 7 laps*
26.  Katherine Legge      Schmidt/Honda           + 7 laps
27.  Townsend Bell        Panther/Chevy           + 8 laps
28.  Josef Newgarden      Fisher/Honda            + 9 laps

* Not running at finish

Retirements

    Sebastien Bourdais   Dragon/Chevy             178 laps
    Pippa Mann           Coyne/Honda               46 laps
    Buddy Lazier         Lazier/Chevy              44 laps
    Sebastian Saavedra   Dragon/Chevy              34 laps
    JR Hildebrand        Panther/Chevy              3 laps

All drivers in Dallara DW12 chassis