Franchitti claims Iowa win22/06/2009

Target Chip Ganassi driver, Dario Franchitti, took advantage of a lengthy late pit stop by Ryan Briscoe (Team Penske) to win the Iowa Corn Indy 250 at the Iowa Speedway on Sunday 21 June. Franchitti finished the race 5.0132 seconds ahead of Briscoe to claim his first victory since the Streets of Long Beach race in April.

Briscoe, who led 85 laps of the Iowa race, settled for his third consecutive second place finish. Hideki Mutoh (Andretti Green Racing) finished third, whilst last year’s Iowa race winner Dan Wheldon (Panther Racing) finished fourth.

Franchitti’s tenth career victory on Sunday moves the Scottish driver into second place in the standings with 238 points. Ryan Briscoe currently leads the championship with 241.

Race winner Dario Franchitti, #10 Target Chip Ganassi Racing Dallara/Honda/Firestone, said:
"The Firestone tires are always great, and we keep throwing challenges at them. This track is one of the biggest challenges, I think, with the massive loadings that go through it and the fact we're trying to use a superspeedway tire on a short oval. These tires work fantastically well on all types of track, but because of the particular stuff that we put these cars through here, Firestone has to bring a superspeedway tire. That means that on cold tires, it's pretty interesting. But when they get up to temperature, they're perfect. As usual, Firestone came up trumps."

Joe Barbieri, Manager, Firestone Racing, said:
"The Iowa Speedway fans really support this event and they deserve a great show, which they saw today. There were lots of lead changes and magnificent racing action, topped off by the sensational last stop for Dario Franchitti that put him out front. Dario really had to lean on his Firestone tires on the critical in and out laps to get ahead of Ryan Briscoe, but they held up for him just as expected. We're quite pleased with the Firehawks' performance this weekend. As Dario mentioned, this short oval acts much more like a superspeedway when it comes to loading on the tires, so our Iowa tire is much more closely related to our superspeedway family of race tires. It's the second straight year we've run this specification at Iowa, and for the second straight year it showed very well."