{"id":4666,"date":"2011-03-28T05:52:28","date_gmt":"2011-03-28T10:52:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/?p=9076"},"modified":"2011-03-28T05:52:28","modified_gmt":"2011-03-28T10:52:28","slug":"franchitti-dominant-honda-grand-prix-st-petersburg-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/franchitti-dominant-honda-grand-prix-st-petersburg-victory\/","title":{"rendered":"FRANCHITTI DOMINANT IN HONDA GRAND PRIX OF ST. PETERSBURG VICTORY"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>FRANCHITTI DOMINANT IN HONDA GRAND PRIX OF ST. PETERSBURG VICTORY<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. &#8212; There are multiple advantages to starting on the front row on IZOD IndyCar Series road\/street course. In the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, one was avoiding the six-car pile-up in Turn 1 of the first lap.<\/p>\n<p>Dario Franchitti and pole sitter Will Power were among those who kept their cars&#8217; noses clean at the start and subsequent side-by-side restarts through 100 laps on the 1.8-mile, 14-turn street circuit by the bay, and that&#8217;s the way they completed the season opener.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nFranchitti made a strong start in his bid for a third consecutive series championship (only two others in Indy car history have accomplished it) by running away from Power and the remnants of the 24-car field to win for the first time at St. Pete.<\/p>\n<p>Power, the 2010 championship runner-up and Mario Andretti Road Course Championship Award winner, was 7.1612 seconds back. Tony Kanaan, who had four practice sessions in the No. 82 GEICO KV Racing Technology-Lotus car, finished third and second-year racer Simona de Silvestro finished a career-best fourth in the No. 78 Nuclear Clean Air Energy\/HVM Racing car.<\/p>\n<p>Also on March 27, Josef Newgarden, who started third in the No. 11 Robo-Pong\/Sam Schmidt Motorsports car, led teammate Conor Daly across the finish line by 0.8552 of a second to win in his Firestone Indy Lights debut.<\/p>\n<p>Peter Dempsey, who started fifth but jump to the point for the first 11 laps in the No. Pulse\/O2 Racing car, finished third and David Ostella advanced seven positions to finish fourth in the No. 16 Global Precast Team Jensen entry.<\/p>\n<p>Anders Krohn moved up two positions to finish sixth in the No. 9 Liberty Engineering Special for Belardi Auto Racing. <\/p>\n<p>Polesitter Esteban Guerrieri, driving the No. 7 Lucas Oil\/Sam Schmidt Motorsports car, who ran second to Newgarden from Laps 12-43, dropped to seventh as he was forced wide in Turn 1 on the second of two restarts in the 45-lap race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FRANCHITTI DOMINANT IN HONDA GRAND PRIX OF ST. PETERSBURG VICTORY ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. &#8212; There are multiple advantages to starting on the front row on IZOD IndyCar Series road\/street course. In the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, one was avoiding the six-car pile-up in Turn 1 of the first lap. Dario Franchitti and pole [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[195],"tags":[118],"class_list":["post-4666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-road-racing","tag-indy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}