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| | Sunday, September 26 | |||||
| Results
LAS VEGAS -- Sam Schmidt wasn't going to be rushed out of
Victory Lane. It took him years to get there, so he made sure to
savor every moment.
Schmidt slipped inside Kenny Brack with three laps remaining and
went on to win his first Indy Racing League title Sunday in a
caution-filled Vegas.com 500 on his hometown track.
"I'm just jumping out of my skin," Schmidt said. "We worked
so hard for this and to get it finally, it means so much. This has
been a long time coming. You never know when you're going to get
another one."
With six laps to go, Brack led Schmidt by four car lengths.
Schmidt, who started on the pole for the first time, pulled
side-by-side with Brack, dipped inside the Swede on the third turn
and zoomed out to a lead of six car lengths.
"I really had to take a big risk to get around Kenny, but we
didn't come here to finish second," said Schmidt, who was second
here last year. "I stopped breathing the final two laps, I
swear."
In Victory Lane, many of the 100-strong contingent of Schmidt's
family and friends wanted their picture snapped with the IRL driver
who most resembles Elvis. Schmidt's dyed jet-black hair and long,
pointy sideburns have been the butt of friendly jokes all week.
Now that he's won, expect Schmidt to keep the look.
"We do have a few superstitious guys on the team so they said
I'd have to keep this at least the next few weeks," he said.
Schmidt averaged 124.936 mph in his G-Force-powered Oldsmobile
Aurora on the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in front of about 30,000
fans. He completed 208 laps in 2 hours, 29 minutes, 50.204 seconds,
.617 seconds ahead of Brack. Brack, third-place finisher Robbie
Buhl and Scott Sharp, who was fourth, all finished on the lead lap.
The 11th and final caution of the race came on lap 197 when
Eliseo Salazar spun coming out of the fourth turn at the back of
the pack. When racing resumed under green five laps later, Brack
led Schmidt into the first turn, but Schmidt closed in quickly on
the backstretch.
Brack said Schmidt would have caught him even without Salazar's
caution.
"He had quite a lot of extra speed. I was flat out," Brack
said.
Schmidt picked up 53 points and moved from 12th to third in the
IRL standings with 225 points. Greg Ray, who had won three of four
previous races, including two straight, retained his lead in the
standings despite finishing 21st.
Ray has 255 points -- 13 ahead of Brack and 30 ahead of Schmidt.
Sharp moved into fourth with 209 points and Goodyear dropped from
second to fifth with 207. Goodyear wound up 25th out of 26 drivers
after hitting the wall on lap 48.
The series title and a $1 million bonus will be decided Oct. 17
at the Lone Star 500 in Texas.
"We're going to have to go to Texas with our guns blazing,"
Ray said.
Just 13 of the 26 cars were running at the finish. Nine drivers
were knocked out in accidents and the 11 cautions totaled 70 laps.
Brack led for 118 laps, with Schmidt in front for 35 as track
temperatures reached 132 degrees.
"I knew we had the car to beat all day. It just took us a while
to get back up there and contend for the victory," Schmidt said.
The race's biggest crash occurred on lap 110 when John
Hollansworth Jr. and Billy Boat made contact in the first turn and
slid into the outside wall. Mark Dismore, who started second, hit
Boat and also went out of the race.
Ray got out of the racing groove on lap 105, causing the sixth
caution of the race just before the three-car crash.
"Unfortunately, Mark Dismore had a hard time with turn four. I
had a run on him, but he blocked me low," Ray said. "I have no
idea why he came into me. He just moved up and bumped me. We came
in and changed the front end, but for some reason the impact broke
the timing chain. It's hard that something like that will affect
our championship run."
Eddie Cheever, who started from the 18th position, led for 32
laps and then settled in behind Brack for what he thought was a run
to the finish. But his hopes of a second IRL victory this season
ended on lap 138 when his engine failed.
"When I passed all those cars in the beginning to take the
lead, I can't tell you how much fun that was," Cheever said. "I
really thought we had it today."
Willy T. Ribbs, a two-time Indianapolis 500 starter and the
first black to start in an IRL event, lasted just 18 laps before
spinning 180 degrees and hitting the wall in the fourth turn. He
wasn't injured.
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AUDIO/VIDEO   Sam Schmidt comes home a big winner in the Vegas.com 500.avi: 1890 k RealVideo: 56.6 | ISDN | T1  Sam Schmidt says his long day was well worth it.wav: 186 k RealAudio: 14.4 | 28.8 | 56.6  | |||||