Briscoe Wins Mid-Ohio IndyCar race

July 20, 2008 9:17 p.m. EST

Lexington, Ohio - (AHN) - Ryan Briscoe broke through with his first IndyCar win earlier this season and on Sunday he managed his second when he outlasted Penske Racing teammate Helio Castroneves in the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio.

Briscoe built over a nine-second lead in the waning laps and won by 7.2640 seconds over Castroneves, who scored yet another runner-up and closed the points gap by five on Scott Dixon. "What a weekend for Team Penske. It really couldn't be better. It just feels so good to get this win. It's been a rough couple of weeks in the lead up to here, and this one's sweet for sure,'' said Briscoe. "What a comeback. It's all strategy from Roger Penske himself. I don't know if it's momentum, because the two races in the lead up to this one weren't so good, but hopefully we'll keep some momentum from here." Castroneves led the first five laps, but relinquished the lead to Vitor Meira on Lap 6. Briscoe led 18 laps in the middle of the race and came out leading the pack as the competitors cycled through green flag pit stops from Laps 56-60. Dixon, the race's defending champion, ran third and now holds a 58-point lead over Castroneves in the points championship. "It was a good day for us. We started sixth. I knew we still had a car to win. Everything was really crazy today. We didn't get into any rhythm,'' said Dixon. "Everybody knew how it was going to play out and who was doing what, and then we had a bad pit stop when we tried to jump Helio (Castroneves) there, and that put us back a little ways. So it's frustrating, but still I think we only lost maybe five points in the championship." Teammates Will Power and Oriol Servia finished fourth and fifth, respectively, and were followed by Vitor Meira, Tony Kanaan, Darren Manning, Hideki Mutoh and Ryan Hunter-Reay. "This was a track I had never been to and we started well behind the eight-ball. We got the car better and better all weekend, made the right choice on tires early on in the race and had a good race strategy,'' said Power. "We had the pace to ride at the front and we did. I am just really happy that we got good championship points here, and hopefully we can do that again next weekend in Edmonton."