Andretti Green newcomer Hideki Mutoh finished a career-best sixth, improving on his debut eighth at Chicagoland last season.
“I was glad when the race started but, soon after, I didn’t really know what was happening since it was so hard to see," champion Dario Franchitti's replacement commented, "The team gave me a great car in the dry condition, so I did my best to manage the car in the rain. When it started to dry up, I was looking for an opportunity to move forward and was able to make a good pass in the end.”
KV Racing Technology pairing Oriol Servia and Will Power, and Rahal's NHLR team-mate Justin Wilson, underlined the Champ Car teams' potential on road and street courses by claiming seventh, eighth and ninth, with the third AGR entry of Danica Patrick rounding out the top ten.
“We had an up and down race day, but I am proud of myself for moving up in the positions at the end of the race," Patrick commented, "I was able to hold my own when we were on the wet tyres, and I think half the battle in races like these is just to stay out of the wrecks and to stay on the lead lap. We have some work to do - we need to fine tune our pit-stops and have to start putting it all together - or we are not going to win races.”
Aussie Power, meanwhile, recovered from the contact with Rahal, as well as a costly pit-stop strategy, to take his first top ten IndyCar finish, taking eighth after starting from second on the grid and spending much of the first half of the race dicing with the frontrunners.
“It was a pretty wild race because of the weather,” Power said, “and to come back and finish eighth was very good considering where we were at one point. I am very happy for the whole KV Racing Technology team and the Aussie Vineyards-Team Australia crew that we bought the car back in one piece for the second race in a row.”
![Graham Rahal celebrates victory in St Petersburg [pic credit: IRL/Haines]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/426258.jpg)
