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Climbing to the top Castroneves wins second consecutive Detroit GP
DETROIT (AP) -- If Helio Castroneves has his way, the fence-climbing has just begun. Spiderman made yet another appearance Sunday after Castroneves won the Detroit Grand Prix for the second consecutive year. Pumping his arms into the air, the excitable Brazilian knew just what to do after winning his third race of the season, including the Indianapolis 500. He scrambled from the cockpit of his Honda-powered Marlboro Team Penske Reynard and loped to the nearest wall, leaping atop the 3-foot concrete barrier and climbing nearly to the top of the wire mesh fence above. It is a victory tradition that began here last June and has continued after each race that Castroneves has won since.
"We started here and we're going to continue here," said Castroneves, who started from the pole and never relinquished the lead in the 72-lap race on Belle Isle's 2.346-mile street circuit. More important than the fifth win of his CART career, a sweep of the maximum 22 points for the weekend moved Castroneves within five points of series leader Kenny Brack, who finished ninth. Dario Franchitti, who struggled through a miserable 2000 season and hadn't managed a top-five finish this season, made a daring pass on Patrick Carpentier on a restart with seven laps remaining to grab second place. Roberto Moreno followed Franchitti and got alongside Carpentier before the two bumped, sending Carpentier almost into Michael Andretti on his outside. Carpentier wound up eighth. Franchitti finished 0.702-seconds -- about eight car-lengths -- behind the winner. "It was messy but it worked," he said of the pass. "I had marbles under my tire and thought, `Maybe I'm not going to make this.' So I banged it in second gear." It wasn't enough to get his first win since 1999, though. "Helio was too strong," Franchitti said. "Unless he made a mistake, I wasn't going to go by him." Moreno held onto third, followed by Andretti, Christian Fittipaldi, reigning series champion Gil de Ferran and Cristiano da Matta, the early season points leader who had crashed out of his two previous races. The crowd, at what might be the last Detroit Grand Prix if a new contract cannot be negotiated among CART, promoter IMG and the city administration, went wild as Castroneves leaped from his car and dashed to the wall. "I'm getting better and better at it," he said of his climbing. "This is my town." Although he never fell behind, Castroneves rarely was more than a second ahead as he was chased first by teammate de Ferran, then Carpentier and, finally, Franchitti. "Most of the race, I was under pressure," Castroneves said. "But I was doing quite well and I had no problem at all. The car was handling well. In the straightaways, I had the fastest car. "I was trying to just stay cool, save the tires, save me and save the equipment. What a great result, huh?"
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