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Rising star Hornish overshadows Penske debut, wins IRL opener
AVONDALE, Ariz. (AP) -- Team Penske flopped in its Indy Racing League debut while the open-wheel series found a new star in 21-year-old Sam Hornish Jr. The much-ballyhooed arrival of the Roger Penske's team from the rival CART series in Sunday's Pennzoil Copper World Indy 200 ended with series champion Gil de Ferran crashing out while leading and teammate Helio Castroneves blowing his engine while running second. "I think that we did well," said Penske, who brought his team to the race as a warmup for it's return to the Indianapolis 500 in May. "Both cars led the race. We were competitive." Hornish, whose best previous finish in his first eight IRL starts was third last spring in Las Vegas, is the youngest winner in IRL history. Buzz Calkins was 24 when he won the inaugural league race in January 1996. "To come to the first race and get all the jitters gone, it's great," Hornish said. "I hope we have a lot more of these."
The youngster started alongside polesitter Greg Ray, took the lead on the first lap and was able to dominate at times during the 200-lap event on Phoenix International Raceway's one-mile oval. He led 140 laps. Asked when he knew he had a chance at winning, Hornish grinned and said: "I think about lap 1 when I got in the lead passing on the outside. I knew we were going to have a good day." Driving in his first event for Panther Racing, Hornish slipped back to fifth after his first pit stop on lap 69, But he regained the top spot for good on lap 127 and drove his Oldsmobile-powered Dallara to a victory by 1.378-seconds -- about half the front straightaway -- over Eliseo Salazar. With leads that climbed to more than 5 seconds at time in the waning laps, Hornish had to keep working hard to the finish. "I was trying as hard as I could to concentrate," said Hornish, who averaged 125.072 mph in the race slowed by five caution flags. Buddy Lazier, the defending IRL champion and 2000 Phoenix race winner, finished third despite losing fifth and sixth gears midway through the race. He was followed across the finish line by Scott Sharp and Billy Boat, the only other drivers on the lead lap at the end of the attrition-filled event. De Ferran, runner-up to Cristiano da Matta a week earlier in the CART opener in Mexico, took the lead on lap 74 when he was able to remain on the track after most of the other front-runners pitted. As he slowed in the fourth turn to come into the pits on lap 77, Jeret Schroeder slammed into the rear of de Ferran and sent both cars hard into the concrete wall. Mark Dismore, coming up fast on the outside, then slid into the back of de Ferran's car. "Unfortunately, Gil got drilled coming into the pits," Penske said. "We were right on our strategy, running conservative on fuel." Schroeder was upset, blaming de Ferran for the accident. "I thought he was blocking or something,' Schroeder said. "We got into [turn] 3 together and I backed out of it and got in behind him. I was trying to bide my time and stay out of trouble. "Going under the bridge, all of a sudden, he got on the binders and was headed into the pits. It didn't look to me like he was trying to get into the pits before that. ... I was drafting him, and when he did that I had nowhere to go." Castroneves, who started 17th, worked his way steadily toward the front and found himself trailing Hornish by just over 1 second when his engine let go, spewing black smoke. Penske said his team and drivers needed this experience to prepare for their first Indy 500 since the IRL began competition. "We obviously need to get reliability up to where it needs to be," he said. "Hopefully, we got our bad luck out of the way here." Both Ray, the 1999 series champion, and Stephan Gregoire led the race before running into problems. Ray went out on lap 121 with a dropped valve, and Gregoire crashed after being slowed by Lazier, who was having trouble getting back up to speed on a restart on lap 131.
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