Castroneves claims Iowa Corn 300 victory

Climbing the Iowa Speedway fence for the first time in 11 Verizon IndyCar Series races was pure joy for series veteran Helio Castroneves. He is one of only four active IndyCar drivers who have competed in all 11 series races at the Newton track.

“We’ve been close (to winning) so many times, and finally luck was on our side,” Castroneves said after winning Sunday’s 2017 IndyCar Series Iowa Corn 300. “We’ve been working so hard together, but the Hitachi Chevy was on rails. We had a little bit of an issue in the beginning, but after we set up the car it was great. What a great finish. It’s just like the first time.”

Castroneves is known for climbing track fences following a victory. He hadn’t been able to do that during a three-year, 54-race drought. Race fans witnessed Castroneves climbing the Iowa Speedway fence.

“I thought maybe the fence climb might be more difficult now, but it wasn’t. To see all those faces of the fans was tremendous,” Castroneves said after claiming his 30th career IndyCar Series victory.

Sunday’s win was his first win of the 2017 season. It was the first IndyCar win at Iowa Speedway by Team Penske.

“I always come here believing this is the year I was going to win here. I always wanted this trophy,” he said about winning at Iowa Speedway.

JR Hildebrand was driving last year’s winning car — the Ed Carpenter Racing’s No. 21 Chevrolet. Three-time Iowa Speedway race champion Ryan Hunter-Reay was on Sunday’s podium in third place. Hunter-Reay powered his way through the laps, coming from the 15th starting spot to finish third.

Pole winner Will Power of Team Penske ran fourth. The 2016 race winner Josef Newgarden finished sixth, also of Team Penske.

Castroneves is fourth all-time in laps led, passing Al Unser. With the 217 laps led of Sunday’s 300-lap race, Castroneves has 5,947 career laps led. It was his 30th career victory on the circuit.

On a hot summer day in Iowa, there were 13 lead changes as the main leaders Power, Castroneves, Hildebrand traded off and on throughout the race. Power used his pole position to lead the first 19 laps, but Castroneves took over then Hildebrand, Power, Castroneves and that’s how it went.

Castroneves went to the front for good on Lap 268 as he moved past Hildebrand then overtook race leader Marco Andretti, who had not gone in for a pit stop as most of the field had.

“It feels good,” said Hildebrand, who qualified a career-best second on Saturday and led 38 laps in the race. “I definitely think that, under some slightly different circumstances, we had a car to win out there. The guys made a great call to pit early and get out into the lead at the end and try to hustle all the way.

“I think if we’d been on equal tires with Helio, we’d have had something for him there at the end. But all in all, really excited for the Fuzzy’s Vodka crew to get on the podium here again.”

Hunter-Reay said it was a tough drive for him on Sunday but his team just made the car better and better through the whole race. He said the credit goes to his team and engineer, Ray Gosselin, for putting the right setup on the car.

“We finally got it to where I like it — some remnants of the past. A little more straight-line speed and we could’ve given these guys a run for their money. Congratulations to Helio,” Hunter-Reay said. “It’s great to see him win again. He’s been right there knocking on the door for so long. Thank you to all the Iowa fans, we love coming here. Hopefully we can come back here at night some time, because that is my favorite.”

Castroneves hadn’t won since the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix on June 1, 2014. He unofficially closed within eight points of series points leader Scott Dixon, who finished eighth.

“It’s great momentum to carry on for the championship, and this is exactly what we need,” said Castroneves. “Now we’re going to Toronto to another place that we run really well in the past, and I am really looking forward to that one.”

There were three cautions in the race and a 13-lap stoppage under a red flag because of a rain shower. Castroneves said it smelled like rain and his helmet visor was picking up a lot of rain drops. The stoppage was the right thing to do, he said.

Three drivers — Mikhail Aleshin, Carlos Munoz and Conor Daly — were each eliminated in single-car crashes, though none was injured.

Iowa race fans were treated to a day of open-wheel racing with two of the developmental series for IndyCar on the 7/8-mile track before the Iowa Corn 300.

In the Indy Lights Series Mazda 100 Sunday, Matheus Leist went to the front of the field on a restart after 31 laps and stayed there. Leist won the race, but the battle for second was intense.

The car was just perfect today,” said Leist. “The Carlin boys won the race here the past two years, and yeah, the car was just perfect and [I] managed to use the high line and it worked very well.”

Indy Lights Series points leader Kyle Kaiser was in second then Dalton Kellett made the pass to take over the second-place spot. In the final stages of the race, Santi Urrutia charged past cars to get in a side-by-side battle with Kellett.

Urrutia went high then made his move to get past Kellett. He finished second because no driver was going to catch Leist. Kellett found himself in third on the podium. Leist stays at No. 2 in the points standings behind Kaiser, who finished fifth.

Urrutia crossed the finish line in second place, it was the Uruguayan who wound up doing celebratory “donuts,” mistakenly thinking he won.

“You know, I just saw the guys running there and I saw that I was quick,” said Urrutia. “When I passed (Dalton Kellett) because I never saw Leist on the front, so, OK, I’m leading the race, so I slow down a little bit just to save the [tires] and everything. So, when I finished the race I came to the front straight and did donuts and everything and my engineer came on the radio and said, ‘What are you doing?’ I’m celebrating the race, we won. ‘No, you didn’t win, we finished second.’”

Three rookies finished on the USF2000 Championship Mazda Iowa 60 on Sunday. Oliver Askew maintained his points lead in the series with a wire-to-wire victory in the only oval race for the USF2000 series. The race took a little more than 24 minutes on the Iowa Speedway track.

It was the first oval race for most of the drivers. It was for Askew, second-place finisher Rinus VeeKay and third-place finisher Calvin Ming. Askew won by 3.8 seconds ahead of VeeKay.

Askew claimed his sixth victory in nine races this season. VeeKay now trails championship leader Askew by 34 points with five races remaining this season.

Iowa Speedway concludes its racing season on July 28-29 when the NASCAR K&N Pro Series and the NASCAR Xfinity Series come to Newton.

Contact Jocelyn Sheets at
641-792-3121 ext. 6535 or jsheets@newtondailynews.com