300th Win for Penske

[Schwartz Fan]

Briscoe Earns 300th Win for Penske

RacingOne Report
Posted Sunday, June 1, 2008



Ryan Briscoe persevered through 225 laps on a crowded 1-mile oval at Milwaukee to earn his first career victory in the IndyCar Series and the 300th victory in motorsports for team owner Roger Penske.

Briscoe started 11th in the 26-car field. He doggedly made his way through the field, finally passing Indianapolis 500 winner Scott Dixon for the lead on Lap 177.

Briscoe relinquished the lead on Lap 194 when he was the first car to cycle through a final round of green-flag pit stops. By the time everyone had made a stop, Briscoe was back in the lead for good on Lap 207. He took the checkered on Lap 225 under caution after pole sitter Marco Andretti and Ed Carpenter made contact on Lap 223 in an accident that also collected Indy 500 runner-up Vitor Meira.

"It feels so good to win, my first IndyCar (Series) win, and it feels so good to do it here in Milwaukee," said Briscoe. "I'm really happy. Ever since Indianapolis, we had that get-together in pit lane, and it was really unfortunate. I was having a really good race and looking at a top-five (finish). We just had to put it behind us and move on to this race. It's a long championship, and it's just great. We were focused on this race. We knew we had a good car off of last year's results of Helio (Castroneves) and (Sam) Hornish (Jr.). Just stayed focused in the race. It's great to win my first race for Team Penske."


"Really, it shows the amount of work that has been done by so many people on the team, so many good drivers, so many good pit crews, all the way back," Penske said. "When we think about winning the first Trans-Am and Indianapolis, and you just go on and think of the drivers that have been with us. It's pretty exciting. And to see Ryan be able to race clean with the 9 car with Dixon, it's a great day."

Dixon, who led 147 laps, finished second, while two-time defending race winner Tony Kanaan was third. Dan Wheldon was fourth and Helio Castroneves fifth.

Dixon retains the IndyCar Series points lead with a 234-206 advantage over Castroneves as the series heads to Texas Motor Speedway for the June 7 Bombardier Learjet 550k.



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