» IndyCars: Conway scores win in Detroit opener!

Dale Coyne Racing has never been so dominant in nearly 30 years of involvement in American open-wheel racing, as part-time driver Mike Conway crushed the opposition to win Race 1 of the Detroit double header.

Starting in second place behind EJ Viso – another surprise frontrunner, who earned pole position via a penalty issued to the fastest qualifier, Dario Franchitti, for an unauthorised engine change last weekend at Indianapolis – Conway got the jump on the Venezuelan at the start of the race.

The English quickly proceeded to lead, but further back, the action was hot – too hot for AJ Allmendinger. The Penske driver got a little too racy too quickly and squeezed out Scott Dixon, sending his car flying over the side of the Ganassi machine and into the tyres. While Allmendinger was out of the race on the spot, Dixon pitted for a new rear wing and promptly went on his way.

Up front, Conway and Ryan Hunter-Reay were duelling it out. Viso was suffering from engine boost problems and was being passed quite quickly and fell down to the midfield before too long.

After quite a bit of green flag running, during which Dixon, Kanaan and Franchitti were each powering towards the front, the next caution came courtesy of Sebastian Saavedra, who was bumped into the tyre wall at Turn 6 by Marco Andretti. While the pace car toured the field around, Saavedra made a point of waiting around until the field passed by in order to vent his frustration in the form of a double finger salute to the Andretti driver and former teammate.

On the restart, Conway opened up another gap from Hunter-Reay – who opted to run his middle stint on the red-walled Firestone tyres – while a little further back, Dixon and Justin Wilson were fighting it out for the final podium place, a battle that was ultimately resolved in Wilson’s favour to give Dale Coyne Racing a double-podium finish.

Other highlights of the day included Dario Franchitti knocking one of the tyre markers on the apex of corner out of place but not into the racing line. James Hinchcliffe must have had the same idea as an effort to shave a tenth off his lap time, however it didn’t work for him as the tyre marker became stuck under his car (pictured) and had to be removed by his pit crew.

So Conway kept his car out of trouble for the rest of the afternoon and took a comprehensive victory. In the post race victory interview, Conway reiterated that he was still not comfortable racing on ovals and was happy with the super-sub label.

2013 IndyCar Series Chevrolet Indy Dual in Detroit – Race 1 Final Classification (70 laps):

No.	Driver	Entry / Team	Laps	Result
1.	Mike Conway	Dale Coyne Racing – Honda	70	1:48:45.4309
2.	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti Autosport – Chevrolet	70	+ 12.9707
3.	Justin Wilson	Dale Coyne Racing – Honda	70	+ 25.2606
4.	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing – Honda	70	+ 25.3590
5.	Hélio Castroneves	Team Penske – Chevrolet	70	+ 26.0549
6.	Dario Franchitti	Chip Ganassi Racing – Honda	70	+ 26.4918
7.	Josef Newgarden	Sarah Fisher Hartman – Honda	70	+ 35.2019
8.	Will Power	Team Penske – Chevrolet	70	+ 40.8273
9.	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan – Honda	70	+ 44.1836
10.	James Jakes	Rahal Letterman Lanigan – Honda	70	+ 47.3852
11.	Tristan Vautier	SPH – Honda	70	+ 59.8249
12.	Simon Pagenaud	SPH – Honda09	70	+ 1:02.8527
13.	Tony Kanaan	KV Racing Technology – Chevrolet	70	+ 1:03.6549
14.	Charlie Kimball	Chip Ganassi Racing – Honda	70	+ 1:03.9390
15.	James Hinchcliffe	Andretti Autosport – Chevrolet	70	+ 1:06.1779
16.	Simona de Silvestro	KV Racing Technology – Chevrolet	70	+ 1:07.2664
17.	E.J. Viso	Team Venzuela – Chevrolet	70	+ 1:10.1976
18.	Ed Carpenter	Ed Carpenter Racing – Chevrolet	69	+ 1 lap
19.	Takuma Sato	AJ Foyt Enterprises – Honda	68	+ 2 laps
20.	Marco Andretti	Andretti Autosport – Chevrolet	67	+ 3 laps
	Not Classified
DNF.	Ryan Briscoe	Panther Racing – Chevrolet	66	Accident
DNF.	Sebastián Saavedra	Dragon Racing – Chevrolet	32	Collision
DNF.	Alex Tagliani	Barracuda Racing – Honda	28	Contact
DNF.	Sébastien Bourdais	Dragon Racing – Chevrolet	19	Mechanical
DNF.	AJ Allmendinger	Team Penske – Chevrolet	0	Collision