Briscoe, who crashed out of the Indianapolis 500, and who has had a shaky season after finishing second in the championship in 2009, was relieved and excited to be back in Victory Circle.
“I needed that,” Briscoe told a VERSUS-TV reporter. “It was pretty miserable coming off of Indy the way we did. We just didn’t quite have it for Dario [Franchitti, Indy winner] and then I made that mistake at the end, so this win it definitely means a lot I want to thank the whole team the guys here for sticking behind me they gave me great pit stops all day long.
“I wasn’t sure about my car after warm-up last night we made a lot of changes going into the race today so this one goes to my engineer great job today giving me a car that was just so good in traffic on my own all day long—thank you.”
Briscoe’s main competition came from Andretti Autosports driver Danica Patrick, who qualified eighth and advanced to fourth by lap 44. After Struggling mid-pack—or worse—for most of this season, Patrick apparently got a car she liked and she made the most of it.
Ryan Briscoe took the lead on lap 171, with Patrick right behind her. Several laps later Patrick pitted, followed the next lap by Briscoe. Patrick with one lap’s more heat in her tires, decided it was time to pounce, and she attacked Briscoe as soon as he left pit lane.
Patrick actually led for a portion of a lap, but Briscoe managed to get back by her.
Patrick was clearly enthused by her finish, the best of the year for her.
“That first stint was really fun,“ she said. “Everybody was just slip-sliding around it was like shooting fish in a barrel in that first stint—it was just one by one by one.
“It was so great to get into the lead again. My engineer Eddy did a great job with the car—we hit it this weekend.”
Slip-Ups, Crashes, and a Major Flaming Disaster
Texas Motor Speedway is a short (1.5 mile) high-banked (24 degrees) oval with a wide groove, famous for side-by-side racing at 215 miles per hour. The Firestone 550K offered lots of that, with nonstop battling all through the field.
The race was full of good dicing, but it was also marked by some surprising pit-lane fumbles and some high-speed collisions.
Ryan Briscoe, Alex lloyd, and Ryan Hunter-Reay all missed their pits, and had to be pulled in by their crews. Briscoe was lucky in that he stopped mostly in his pit box, but Lloyd and Hunter-Reay missed badly and lost a lot of time. Marco Andretti’s crew failed to secure a right rear tire, and tried to send him out to race on three wheels.
Takuma Sato and Simona de Silvestro hit the wall, while Mario Moraes took out Helio Castroneves and Bertrand Baguette.
[youtube]CIatXMiyZ6w[/youtube]The most serious safety incident of the night occurred on lap 99, when HVM driver and Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year Simona de Silvestro’s car slammed the wall near Turn Two, bursting into flames. The burning car slid along the wall for almost thirty seconds, before finally coming to a stop at the bottom of the track.
The emergency team’s response was pitiful. One fire truck arrived at her car a few seconds after it stopped moving, but of the four safety workers on the truck, none of them grabbed a fire extinguisher. Three of them spent several long seconds unraveling a hose which did not deliver any water. Meanwhile, the flames spread from the engine compartment all along the right side of the car, engulfing the 21-year-old driver.
At this point another safety truck arrived and more firemen got out. One of them went straight to the car to help extract the driver, one grabbed a fire extinguisher, and two more went for the hose on that truck. Finally, 35 second after the first safety crew arrived, someone managed to get a little water on the fire.
A few seconds before the first firefighter managed to actually fight the fire, two safety workers managed to drag de Silvestro out of the car and off to the inner wall, where she collapsed.
Luckily, de Silvestro’s flame-retardant suit saved her from serious injury. She suffered burns on her right hand as she tried to push herself free of the fiery cockpit. Safety worker Mike Yates, who is primarily responsible for getting her out of the car, was burned on the face, but is fine.
Several off-duty drivers responded to the spectacle via Twitter. Veteran IndyCar driver Paul Tracy tweeted, “Fire first then the driver. I don’t know what that guy was doing with the hose. It’s a good thing the big guy jumped to get her. That was very scary, safety team did a very poor job.”
Indy Lights driver Pippa Mann tweeted, “OMG! Why did it take so long to get the fire extinguishers on her?!?! Hope @simdesilvestro is okay and no serious burns.”
NASCAR and sports car driver Max Papis sent, “Need to do better than that, @indycar.”
Keith Wiggins, HVM Racing Team Principal, said in an interview with Autopsport, “The safety crew should be ashamed of themselves.” In the same article, Imran Safiulla from Team Stargate Worlds, Silvestro’s primary sponsor, said, “I am completely speechless on what transpired after our car hit the wall. I am just glad Simona is okay despite that circus we saw.”
After a visit to the medical center, Simona de Silvstro seemed cheery and completely unfazed by her brush with death. Her first comments were apologies to her crew for wrecking the car.
“The car was a little bit loose and I just lost it coming out of Two. It’s a shame for the team, because we really improved the car during the whole race. It was getting better. You know, it happens. I feel bad.”
She minimized her injuries and had no criticism for the safety crew.
“It was pretty crazy, you know, the fire wasn’t going away. It was just getting worse and worse so it was a little bit scary but the guys did a good job of taking me out
“I just pulled a little bit on the sidepod where it was on fire and burned my hand a little bit but we should be all right. I hope the blisters will be gone for Iowa. If not we will just have to drive with it.”
De Silvestro sounds as mature as any of the drivers in the series. If she can escape from an inferno like that and be thinking about her next race, she should have a very successful future in IndyCar.
Moraes Takes Out Two
The rest of the race was not without incident. On lap 132, Helio Castroneves, who had been fighting an ill-handling car all night, was passing Mario Moraes on the outside when Moraes, plainly either unaware or unconcerned that anyone might be coming, slid right up the track and into Castroneves, wrecking both cars.
Poor Bernard Baguette, another rookie with a promising future, suddenly saw two spinning cars blocking his route. He tried to brake and steer between them, but clipped a car with his right front corner, so the accident ended up eliminating three drivers.
When asked what happened, Castroneves explained, “I got a good run on him and somehow he just kept going up and going up, and I’m like, ‘What are you doing? ‘After that pit stop, I did not have a radio, so I was always running outside to make sure I had everything covered on the outside” [be sure no one was passing on the right.]
Moraes blamed his spotter. “My spotter didn’t tell me he was outside and to my right rear, so when I saw him he was in the wall already. I was looking at the car in front of me, I was pretty close to the car in front of me”
Baguette, who has had good cars at the past three races but hasn’t been able to get good results, said, “It was so quick the cars just came on me I tried to go between the two but it was impossible.” Bad luck for the rookie; by now, everyone should know to be careful around Moraes.
IndyCar moves on to Iowa next for the Iowa Corn Indy 250, Sunday June 20. Iowa is the shortest track on the schedule, a banked 7/8 mile oval; tight racing is guaranteed.
The race will be televised on Versus-TV at 1:30 p.m. EDT. Tickets are available online from the Iowa Speedway ticket web page.
IZOD IndyCar Firestone 550K | ||||||
|
| # | Driver | Laps | Points | ||
| 1 | 6 | Ryan Briscoe | 228 | 53 | ||
| 2 | 4 | Danica Patrick | 228 | 40 | ||
| 3 | 26 | Marco Andretti | 228 | 35 | ||
| 4 | 9 | Scott Dixon | 228 | 32 | ||
| 5 | 10 | Dario Franchitti | 228 | 30 | ||
| 6 | 11 | Tony Kanaan | 228 | 28 | ||
| 7 | 37 | Ryan Hunter-Reay | 228 | 26 | ||
| 8 | 19 | Alex Lloyd | 228 | 24 | ||
| 9 | 4 | Dan Wheldon | 228 | 22 | ||
| 10 | 14 | Vitor Meira | 228 | 20 | ||
| 11 | 8 | EJ Viso | 228 | 19 | ||
| 12 | 06 | Hideki Mutoh | 228 | 18 | ||
| 13 | 24 | Tomas Scheckter | 227 | 17 | ||
| 14 | 12 | Will Power | 227 | 16 | ||
| 15 | 67 | Sarah Fisher | 227 | 15 | ||
| 16 | 2 | Raphael Matos | 226 | 14 | ||
| 17 | 34 | Mario Romancini | 226 | 13 | ||
| 18 | 77 | Alex Tagliani | 225 | 12 | ||
| 19 | 22 | Justin Wilson | 225 | 12 | ||
| 20 | 3 | Helio Castroneves | 129 | 12 | ||
| 21 | 32 | Mario Moraes | 129 | 12 | ||
| 22 | 36 | Bertrand Baguette | 129 | 12 | ||
| 23 | 18 | Milka Duno | 116 | 12 | ||
| 24 | 78 | Simona de Silvestro | 97 | 12 | ||
| 25 | 5 | Takuma Sato | 56 | 10 | ||
| 26 | 66 | Jay Howard | 37 | 10 | ||
| Championship Points | ||||||
|
| Driver | Points | Gap | |||
| 1 | Dario Franchitti | 246 | 0 | |||
| 2 | Will Power | 243 | -3 | |||
| 3 | Scott Dixon | 235 | -11 | |||
| 4 | Helio Castroneves | 211 | -35 | |||
| 5 | Ryan Briscoe | 208 | -38 | |||
| 6 | Ryan Hunter-Reay | 201 | -45 | |||
| 7 | Justin Wilson | 179 | -67 | |||
| 8 | Tony Kanaan | 179 | -67 | |||
| 9 | Marco Andretti | 169 | -77 | |||
| 10 | Dan Wheldon | 164 | -82 | |||
