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Team Penske
Defending IndyCar Series champion Sam Hornish scored his first victory of the 2007 season, surviving a wild finish to win the Bombardier Learjet 550k at Texas Motor Speedway.
Leading by 6.6453 seconds less than 50 laps to go, Hornish was content to leave the sparring to the cars running behind him in second- through seventh-place. Unfortunately for Hornish, a multi-car incident on Lap 197, precipitated by a tire falling off A. J. Foyt IV’s car, negated Hornish’s lead, but not his advantage.
The Team Penske driver, who started on the outside of Row 1, maintained the point and held off Tony Kanaan on for his first victory of the season. It was the 19th career victory for the reigning IndyCar Series champion, and the 21st-closest finish in IndyCar Series history.
Kanaan, the winner six days earlier at The Milwaukee Mile, finished 0.0786 of a second back. Danica Patrick recorded the best finish of her IndyCar Series career in third. Dario Franchitti, retained his hold on the points lead with a fourth place. Delphi Panther Racing’s Vitor Meira placed fifth for the second race in a row.
SAM HORNISH JR. (No. 6 Team Penske Dallara/Honda/Firestone, winner, Bombardier Learjet 550): “We were really happy with the car after yesterday’s practice session. I thought we were going to have a good shot at the pole but it turned out that we didn’t have enough speed. We felt really good about the race going into Kansas. We thought we were going to have a day like we did tonight. When we got out there in the middle of the race, we were all over the place and we couldn’t do anything with it. We were cautiously optimistic tonight because we felt like we had a really good car that was capable of winning. Until the first couple laps of the race went by, we weren’t sure how good it was or if it would be good enough. It was strong all night long. My engineer did a great job picking out the gears. Team Penske has been doing an outstanding job in the pits all year long. They’ve been working really hard at making it the stops as short as possible. My hat is off to those guys. I’m definitely looking forward to going to the next two tracks. I think we’re going to have a good couple weeks here in the point standings. ”
