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Helio Castroneves ends IndyCar victory drought in St Petersburg

Helio Castroneves took an emotional win in the IndyCar season-opening race on the streets of St Petersburg

The Brazilian crossed the finish line 5.5 seconds ahead of Scott Dixon to end a victory drought that had extended back to Motegi in 2010, and claim a win in the adopted home city of close friend Dan Wheldon, who was fatally injured in the final race of 2011. Castroneves chose Turn 10, which is built on a street that was renamed in Wheldon's honour last week, to perform his trademark climb of the catch fencing after securing the victory.

On an afternoon dictated by strategy and fuel mileage, Dixon (Ganassi) and Castroneves (Penske) worked their way to the front relatively early, with Dixon taking the lead for the first time as the race approached quarter-distance.

Positions changed regularly as everyone played out their strategies, but Dixon and Castroneves remained close throughout. The Brazilian's attack eventually came in the form of a great pass around the outside at Turn 1 on the 73rd lap, and from that point he put down the hammer and opened a large gap that he would maintain to the end.

Ryan Hunter-Reay finished third ahead of Andretti team-mate James Hinchcliffe and Penske's Ryan Briscoe, while Schmidt-Hamilton's Simon Pagenaud made a great recovery from the grid penalty that forced him to start from 16th to cross the line just ahead of polesitter Will Power (Penske) in sixth. EJ Viso (KV), Charlie Kimball (Ganassi) and Justin Wilson (Dale Coyne) rounded out the top 10.

As expected, the first trial of the DW12 in race conditions was peppered with a few reliability problems - seven of the eight cars that did not finish were silenced by mechanical issues. Among the victims were Takuma Sato, who had run very strongly in the Rahal Letterman entry before being forced to pull out on lap 73, and Sebastien Bourdais, who had his Lotus-powered Dragon Racing entry (which had only been shaken down for the first time on Friday) in the top 10 before he too dropped out.

Rubens Barrichello (KV) spent much of his IndyCar debut in 13th place before being dropped to 17th by a late pitstop.

Results - 100 laps:

Pos  Driver               Team/Car                           Time/Gap
 1.  Helio Castroneves    Penske DW12-Chevrolet         1h59m50.9863s
 2.  Scott Dixon          Ganassi DW12-Honda                + 5.5292s
 3.  Ryan Hunter-Reay     Andretti DW12-Chevrolet           + 7.5824s
 4.  James Hinchcliffe    Andretti DW12-Chevrolet          + 10.6526s
 5.  Ryan Briscoe         Penske DW12-Chevrolet            + 11.7854s
 6.  Simon Pagenaud       Schmidt-Hamilton DW12-Honda      + 31.2623s
 7.  Will Power           Penske DW12-Chevrolet            + 34.6582s
 8.  EJ Viso              KV DW12-Chevrolet                + 35.5943s
 9.  Charlie Kimball      Ganassi DW12-Honda               + 43.1425s
10.  Justin Wilson        Dale Coyne DW12-Honda            + 44.3141s
11.  Josef Newgarden      Fisher Hartman DW12-Honda        + 44.8275s
12.  Graham Rahal         Ganassi DW12-Honda               + 45.1080s
13.  Dario Franchitti     Ganassi DW12-Honda               + 45.8468s
14.  Marco Andretti       Andretti DW12-Chevrolet             + 1 lap
15.  Alex Tagliani        Herta DW12-Lotus                    + 1 lap
16.  Oriol Servia         Dreyer & Reinbold DW12-Lotus        + 1 lap
17.  Rubens Barrichello   KV DW12-Chevrolet                  + 2 laps
18.  Ed Carpenter         Carpenter DW12-Chevrolet           + 2 laps

Did not finish:

     JR Hildebrand        Panther DW12-Chevrolet              96 laps
     Mike Conway          Foyt DW12-Honda                     75 laps
     Sebastien Bourdais   Dragon DW12-Lotus                   73 laps
     Takuma Sato          Rahal DW12-Honda                    73 laps
     Katherine Legge      Dragon DW12-Lotus                   59 laps
     Simona de Silvestro  HVM DW12-Lotus                      22 laps
     Tony Kanaan          KV DW12-Chevrolet                   21 laps
     James Jakes          Dale Coyne DW12-Honda               19 laps

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