NAZARETH, Pa. -- 225 miles is not a long distance to begin with. So fitting in seven cautions and tricky weather and track conditions certainly changes the complexion of a race.

Sunday's Firestone Indy 225 had plenty of incidents but certainly lacked continuity.

	George Mack brought out the yellow flag twice at Nazareth Speedway.

A race which featured plenty of bizarre action -- and not all of it good -- fittingly ended with Scott Sharp, who gambled on fuel strategy early in the day, passing Gil de Ferran as the Penske driver ran out of fuel on the last lap.

But that was just the culmination of a crazy day.

"It was a busy race," said Eddie Cheever Jr., who finished seventh.

A record 116 of the 225 laps were run under caution. The longest green-flag run was lasted just 33 laps. And the frequent yellows didn't make it easy on many drivers.

"We should have finished third today, but the rain and the yellows really bit us," said Alex Barron, who finished sixth. "We ran good. We were fast all weekend."

Running so many laps under caution took its toll on Barron. "It was hard to (just) cruise around for so long. The track never got wet, but damp."

It's not only the number of laps under cautions that causes problems, but also the timing of the cautions.

"The car was good," said Cheever. "We were in fourth place, we were just going to settle down and pick away at (the leaders). I came in, did a tire change, got knocked back a little bit, and the it started to rain. It's just one of those races where we should have done better."

On a track at which the layout makes it difficult to pass, anyway, running more than half the laps under caution certainly doesn't help matters. De Ferran's Team Penske teammate Helio Castroneves led 51 laps, but he couldn't overcome the tight passing conditions after a pit strategy backfire all but dashed his hopes for a win.

"Unfortunately, in the end our strategy didn't play out as well as we had hoped," said Castroneves, who finished fifth and is now third in IRL points behind Sam Hornish Jr. and de Ferran. "On the last caution, we rolled the dice and decided to pit. If it hadn't started raining, it probably would have been the smart thing to do.

"Once it went green for the final time, I couldn't get passed lap traffic."

Each incident on Sunday was something different and a bit more bizarre than the previous, bringing about different consequences.

George Mack got himself into two separate incidents. Buddy Lazier and Hornish. took each other out of contention early. Jon Herb hit a wall. Jeff Ward made a strong charge to take third place shortly before blowing an engine. And Tomas Scheckter and Jaques Lazier made contact with each other and then the wall, sending both drivers out of the race and to a local hospital.

Early pit strategy put Al Unser Jr. in the lead seemingly out of nowhere. Then Sharp tried to take advantage of the impending rain by not pitting under caution and he took the lead. He did lead under caution when the race reached the midpoint and became official, but the drizzle subsided and the race resumed under green.

Soon Unser was fighting to stay on the lead lap and eventually let three drivers by -- including the Penske drivers -- but said "no way" on his radio when Team Cheever wanted Unser to let Eddie Cheever Jr. , who was running fourth, get by to continue challenging the leaders.

Then the rains did come with de Ferran in the lead, Sharp in second and Sarah Fisher in third. Some thought the race might end there, but it did resume with 19 laps remaining, leading to Sharp's charge at de Ferran and Felipe Giaffone's pass of Fisher and last-ditch effort to pass Sharp.

This recap brought to you by the "what the hell just happened" society.

No, it was not exactly the cleanest race. But it was wild. Though not totally unexpected, according to de Ferran, who ultimately finished third behind Sharp and Felipe Giaffone.

"In a way, I sort of expected a race like that. Last time we were here, it was this cold, it was really really difficult. Lots of yellows, stuff like that," said de Ferran, who raced at Nazareth while running the CART series. "I knew it would be a race where you had to have a lot of patience. Unfortunately, it turned out obviously the way we never like to see -- a lot of yellows. But that's the way it is."

It certainly went the other way for Hornish, who did maintain his points lead despite finishing 49 laps behind in 17th place. Even so, Hornish was stuck driving in the same conditions as the leaders.

"A lot of yellow laps today, fighting the rain, fighting the cold track," said Hornish, who now leads de Ferran by six points. "It was tough. It's tough to go out there and put on a good show. (But) I had a lot of fun out there while I was running."