Helio Castroneves regained his early season IRL IndyCar Series points lead thanks to victory in Sunday's rain delayed Firestone Indy 400 at the Michigan International Speedway.
After waiting more than two and a half hours while track officials attempted to dry the racing surface following early afternoon rain, pole sitter Castroneves went on to lead 61 of 200 laps for his fourth win of the season.
Coupled with his own success, poor results for erstwhile series leader Sam Hornish Jr and second place driver in points Scott Dixon helped catapult the cheery Brazilian back into the series lead with just three races remaining this year.
Once the track had been dried and racing had started Castroneves ceded the lead to his Marlboro Team Penske teammate Sam Hornish Jr before rare mechanical problems struck the defending Indy 500 winner shortly after one-quarter distance.
With Hornish Jr dropping out of contention, the only caution period of the race waved to allow the out-of-fuel Marty Roth to be towed back to the pits, which in turn gave everybody the chance to pit and handed the lead to Panther Racing's Vitor Meira, Vision Racing's Tomas Scheckter and Target Chip Ganassi Racing's Dan Wheldon for the remainder of the first 100 laps.
Castroneves didn't regain top spot until lap 134, by which time Scott Dixon had also seen his chances of victory disappear with a fuel starvation issue that left him two laps off the lead and while there would be no caution periods to bunch the field back up, the wide open nature of the two-mile Michigan oval still allowed for several more lead changes in the final quarter of the race.
Meira, Wheldon and Scheckter cycled through the lead one more time before Castroneves finally wrestled top spot away from Scheckter on lap 177, eventually opening out a two second advantage over second place finisher Vitor Meira by the time the chequered flag fell.
![Helio Castroneves, Marlboro Team Penske Dallara-Honda, St Petersburg. [Pic Credit IRL Jim Haines]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/204790.jpg)
