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Staying out of trouble Lazier survives wild race for third win in four starts
GLADEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Buddy Lazier isn't giving up his Indy Racing League championship without a fight. Lazier cut into 22-year-old Sam Hornish Jr.'s lead by racing to his third victory in his last four starts Saturday night, leading the final 23 laps of the Harrah's Indy 200. The defending IRL champion, who has a series-record seven victories, celebrated by almost jumping out of his car as he took a victory lap. He now trails Hornish by 40 points with five races remaining and plans to keep pushing. "We've certainly got a lot of momentum," Lazier said. "There's a whole lot of racing left in this season. It seemed like a long shot. Now it's still going to be very difficult to catch him, but each weekend it doesn't seem to be that long."
Hornish led 86 laps but ran into problems with a fuel injector on his Dallara Oldsmobile. He finished sixth. "It wasn't something that would keep us from finishing, but when you go from 197, 199 mph to 187, people are going to start passing you in a hurry. I know I would have had him today," Hornish said of Lazier. Lazier avoided the engine problems at the Nashville Superspeedway that knocked several drivers out and a crash midway through the race that took out six others. He started sixth but showed the power in his Dallara Oldsmobile early as he took his first lead on lap 7. He was turning laps over 199 mph in a race with an average speed of 144.809. He took the lead for good by passing Billy Boat with the 11th and final lead change in turn 3 of lap 177. Lazier had the fastest car Saturday night and led 71 of the 200 laps as he ran away from the nine other cars that finished the race. Boat finished second for his best performance of the year. Jacques Lazier, who crashed after the finish, was third, followed by Robby McGehee, Scott Sharp, points leader Sam Hornish Jr., Shigeaki Hattori, Felipe Giaffone, Buzz Calkins and Donnie Beechler. Only one driver touched the wall during the past two days of practice, but Didier Andre became the first car out of the race after he brushed the wall in turn 4, damaging the right front suspension of his car, on the 18th lap. The first crash of the race just past the midway point on lap 103 and knocked out Eddie Cheever, Al Unser Jr., pole-sitter Greg Ray, Airton Dare and Mark Dismore. The collision started when Cheever, who had been running fifth, passed Ray on the right and then his car connected with Ray's. Both cars hit the retaining wall in turn 2.
Airton Dare hit Dismore's rear wheel, and his car got airborne with only one tire still on the ground as he crashed into the wall and slid along between the wall and Cheever. Beechler and Unser, who had moved from 19th to seventh, couldn't escape all the debris. Cheever took the blame for the accident. "I had to take the high side," he said. "I got up beside Ray, and all of a sudden I turned sharply into his car. Ray had no place to go. It definitely wasn't his fault. He could have let us all by on the straightaway, but that's irrelevant. It was my fault." Unser and his G-Force Aurora had been running very well, moving from 19th to seventh. "I almost got past it and then went into Donnie Beechler," Unser said. "We didn't have too much damage to the car, but it was enough to put us out of the race. It is a shame because we were really hooked up." The crash later claimed Robbie Buhl. He thought he had escaped by driving through the grass but apparently broke something in the rear of his car. Drivers worried that they wouldn't be able to pass on the new concrete surface at the 1.3-mile, D-shaped oval because only one groove had been worn into the track going into the race. It wasn't noticeable once the race started as the passing started in the opening laps. They even got three-wide going into the front stretch at one point.
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