Will Power continued his dominating performance on road/street coures in 2011 in the IZOD IndyCar Series at the initial Baltimore Grand Prix.
And his performance leaves Power and Team Penske just five points behind the season championship points.
But the road warrior (he's won 11 of the last 19 street/road races) of the IZOD IndyCar Series admitted that the Sunday drive around the Baltimore street course wasn't easy.
"That was the toughest race I've done all year," Power said. "I'm just exhausted, but that was a championship run."
Despite being off sequence on pit stops, Power made a late stop and was still able to come out of the pits in front of Oriol Servia and win by a 10.2096. It was Power's sixth win in 2011.
"I gave it absolutely everything I had. That was an unbelievable result. One of my best races ever. That's exactly what we needed. We're closing in (on Dario Franchitti)."
The IZOD IndyCar Series heads to Japan with just five points separating Power and points leader Dario Franchitti with three races remaining. Power has a 14-point lead in the Mario Andretti Trophy competition for road/street courses with one race remaining.
The Sept. 17 race at Twin Ring Motegi was moved to the road course because of track damage from the spring earthquake.
The final two races, Kentucky on October 2 and the IZOD IndyCar World Championship event at Las Vegas October 16 are on ovals.
Servia almost turned Baltimore into Oriol Park at Camden Yards Sunday with a second place finish for Newman-Haas.
“The Orioles’ wings were with Oriol today. Nobody has doubts. There’s a reason why Newman/Haas Racing has over 100 victories, they just had a tough season last year. Here we are again. We’re fourth in points and fighting for the podium every race, and there’s more to come. We never gave up. I crashed in qualifying but we never gave up. The car was great and the strategy was even better," Servia said. "Newman/Haas always works hard and we are bringing Telemundo to the podium which is great. I knew if I didn’t make any mistakes, the podium was ours. Since we pitted early in the first stop we knew we were kind of committing to that strategy. We were hoping for more yellows but we had just enough fuel.”
The run of the day came from Tony Kanaan, who was forced to start 27th after a horrific crash in the morning warmup. Kanaan landed the No. 82 GEICO - KV Racing Technology - Lotus in third.
"I can't thank the Geico KV Racing team enough," Kanaan said. "We made a mistake this morning, but fixed it and gave me all the support. The guys from Geico, it's their hometown race so it's nice to have a podium for them. A great comeback. There's always going to be drama, and then the happiness at the end."
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