Sharp: Kentucky my Greatest Win
Scott Sharp reckons his IRL victory yesterday at Kentucky Speedway was the most meaningful of his career
The 37 year-old ended a 40-race winless streak with the victory in the AMBER Alert Portal Indy 300 passing points-leader Dan Wheldon on lap 134 (of 200) and fending off fierce challenge from Victor Meira.
Despite having won eight races before and securing the title in 1996, Sharp believes that the quality of the drivers in the current IRL field means that the win was more special.
"It's the biggest race I've won in the IRL," said the American. "I was in contention all day and we've raced our way to the lead and won the race. That's how you dream about winning races.
"Being around as long as I have, certainly guys look at your early wins. People look and say, well, there's only six or seven cars that were really legitimate contenders and therefore they negate a little bit some of the accomplishments. But I look at the current field and it's as deep as deep gets.
"Definitely any time you can get a win feeling like you're racing against the best that there is, it feels that much more we regarding and then that much more proven. I'd much rather take a win right now than take it two years ago, especially after all that's gone on with people saying I was done and I couldn't do it anymore."
Sharp took the victory a year on after his current team owner Adrian Fernandez broke his IRL duck at the same venue. The Mexican then went on to take two further race victories at Chicagoland Speedway and California Speedway, and Sharp is optimistic of repeating the feat.
"Luckily the tracks the team won last year I really like such as Chicago," he added. "I knew we were going to good tracks for them and obviously they have a good setup for here, so you just do the best that you could do.
"I really felt after three or four races after Indianapolis we were going to win some races pretty quickly and it has not come as fast as I thought it would. In July, we seemed to maybe lose a little bit to some of the other teams, but we never stopped working and I knew we were going to come to some really good races for the team and good races for me."
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