Cheever Wins in Kansas

The IRL made their first appearance at the new Kansas Speedway near Kansas City on July 8th, and the race drew rave reviews from the capacity crowd of more than 75,000 in attendance. The Kansas heat proved to be beneficial to Eddie Cheever Jr., as he nudged out Sam Hornish Jr. by .1976 seconds, the closest finish in IRL history.

After the race, Cheever quipped that he and Hornish should head for the motor home, have a couple beers and relax. He said of their intense competition, "It wasn’t just the last few laps. Sam was running me hard the whole time. He gave me a lot of room. I gave him a lot of room. That’s the way the racing in the IRL is supposed to be." He attributed his success in Kansas to his Infiniti powerplant. "I had a secret weapon behind me today. It was the Infiniti. We’ve got it where we want it to be after two years." Cheever owns the only other IRL victory for Infiniti, which came last season at Pikes Peak Raceway in Colorado.

Actually the finish was even closer than described above, since Donnie Beechler finished third, just .9779 of a second behind winner Cheever. Beechler drives for Indy car legend A. J. Foyt and matched his IRL career best finish which came at Phoenix International Raceway.

Hornish's third consecutive second place finish helped him to expand his points lead over defending IRL champion Buddy Lazier, who finished 5th in Kansas. The fans got plenty of action, as twenty lead changes took place during the race and the finish wasn't the only close match-up, as much of the time there was close wheel-to-wheel racing between packs of three or four cars. A total of 44 laps of the scheduled 200, were run under caution. In the only major incidents of the day, Scott Sharp and Jeret Schroeder found the concrete walls of Kansas rather unforgiving, but fortunately, neither was injured.

The IRL takes to the track again on July 21 for the Harrah's Indy 200 at the Nashville Superspeedway. This 1.33 mile, all concrete oval should present some unique challenges to the teams as they prepare for the race. Greg Ray commented on the track during testing earlier this month that, "I was a little apprehensive about coming to a fast track that’s concrete because concrete doesn’t normally have the grip that asphalt does. The grip was pretty good. The upside of concrete is that it’s very consistent once you get in the window of operation." He continued, "It’s a fun, fast track. It’s very challenging. We’re very excited to be in a new market." The only other all concrete track that the IRL has competed on was a few years ago when they ran at Dover Downs on its one mile oval.

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