IRL Texas: Hornish survives carnage

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Sam Hornish escaped an enormous pile-up at the Texas Motor Speedway – and clung on to win from the resurgent Andretti-Green cars of Tony Kanaan, Danica Patrick and Dario Franchitti.

Franchitti, winner of the Indianapolis 500 two weeks ago, maintains his lead in the Indy Car series.

His closest rivals, Team Ganassi drivers Dan Wheldon and Scott Dixon, were eliminated in the lap 198 crash that was triggered by the errant wheel of AJ Foyt IV’s car. Also taken out were Helio Castroneves, Darren Manning, Ed Carpenter and Sarah Fisher.

Hornish led at the start but Wheldon moved ahead later on and held first place for 52 laps. The Penske driver was doubly fortunate to escape punishment after he and a few other drivers overtook the safety car.

Vitor Meira, fifth, was unhappy that the others had not been punished while he had obeyed the safety car instruction.

Marco Andretti failed to finish once again. He made contact with Tomas Scheckter early on, sending the South African spinning out of the race. Andretti later retired with engine problems.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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