Will Power wins as Pesnke dominates at Sears Point

Power led virtually the entire race, only relinquishing the top spot briefly during the pitstops. At times his advantage over Helio Castroneves extended to several seconds, but the gap was eroded when Ho-Pin Tung triggered the first and only caution period by hitting the barriers with 10 laps remaining.

The restart came with seven laps to go, and Power was able to see off a final challenge from Castroneves to secure back-to-back wins at the northern California circuit.

Ryan Briscoe completed the 1-2-3 with third place, and admitted later that his priority during the final laps had been on keeping the pursuing Ganassi cars at bay than trying to mix it up with his team-mates.

He succeeded, leaving Dario Franchitti to settle for fourth ahead of Scott Dixon.

Giorgio Pantano was one of the stars of an afternoon that was largely bereft of overtaking, working his way up from 11th to sixth across the line for Dreyer & Reinbold, but the former GP2 champion was issued with a penalty for blocking Sebastien Bourdais on the final lap and relegated to 17th.

Bourdais consequently took sixth place ahead of James Hinchcliffe, with Graham Rahal, EJ Viso and Ryan Hunter-Reay completing the top 10.

Tung aside, the only other non-finisher was Tony Kanaan, who was forced to pull out on lap 38 after his KV Racing entry developed throttle problems.


Pos  Driver               Team                            Result/Gap
 1.  Will Power           Penske                        1h47m29.7619s
 2.  Helio Castroneves    Penske                              3.2420s
 3.  Ryan Briscoe         Penske                              6.4494s
 4.  Dario Franchitti     Ganassi                             7.6540s
 5.  Scott Dixon          Ganassi                            14.4755s
 6.  Sebastien Bourdais   Dale Coyne                         17.1257s
 7.  James Hinchcliffe    Newman/Haas                        17.2713s
 8.  Graham Rahal         Ganassi                            17.7900s
 9.  Ernesto Viso         KV                                 21.6276s
10.  Ryan Hunter-Reay     Andretti                           22.1731s
11.  Oriol Servia         Newman/Haas                        22.9512s
12.  Martin Plowman       AFS/Sam Schmidt                    24.2602s
13.  Ana Beatriz          Dreyer & Reinbold                  29.7207s
14.  Sebastian Saavedra   Conquest                           41.1146s
15.  Simon Pagenaud       Dreyer & Reinbold                  41.7526s
16.  Mike Conway          Andretti                           1m.2912s
17.  Giorgio Pantano      Dreyer & Reinbold                1m14.2922s
18.  Takuma Sato          KV                                  + 1 lap
19.  James Jakes          (Dale Coyne)                        + 1 lap
20.  Alex Tagliani        Sam Schmidt                         + 1 lap
21.  Danica Patrick       Andretti                            + 1 lap
22.  Vitor Meira          Foyt                                + 1 lap
23.  JR Hildebrand        Panther                             + 1 lap
24.  Marco Andretti       Andretti                            + 1 lap
25.  Ed Carpenter         Sarah Fisher                        + 1 lap

Retirements

     Charlie Kimball      Ganassi                             66 laps
     Ho-Pin Tung          Sam Schmidt Dragon                  63 laps
     Tony Kanaan          KV                                  38 laps