Motorsport: Dixon off the pace

New Zealand's Scott Dixon has finished well off the pace in the opening race of the IndyCar season in St Petersburg, Florida.

Dixon was involved in an incident on the opening lap and failed to recover, finishing in 16th place.

Dixon's Chip Ganassi teammate and reigning IndyCar champion Dario Franchitti won the race ahead of Australian Will Power and Brazil's Tony Kanaan.

Franchitti grabbed the lead early on and was hardly challenged. The Scottish driver was nearly perfect for 100 laps on the scenic, 1.8-mile street course, beating pole-sitter Power to the finish line by more than seven seconds.

Kanaan, the 2004 series champion who joined his new team Monday, held off Simona de Silvestro over the final few laps for third. De Silvestro enjoyed her best finish in 18 career starts.

There was chaos early, but order was restored late as three of IndyCar's top drivers - Franchitti, Power and Kanaan - ended up on the podium.

Nonetheless, the start was what everyone was talking about afterward. There were four full-course cautions in the first 13 laps.

A few hours after teammates Sebastien Bourdais and James Jakes crashed during a warmup session, five cars - all of them from the sport's top three teams - found trouble in the first turn.

Penske teammates Helio Castroneves and Ryan Briscoe were involved, as were two-time series champion Dixon and Andretti Autosport teammates Mike Conway and Marco Andretti.

Andretti drove into Dixon from behind, sending Andretti for a wild ride. He flipped and landed upside down. He escaped without injury, walked toward his pit, paused to watch a huge replay board, then blamed three-time Indy 500 champion Castroneves for the melee.

"Helio just drove it in on all of us," Andretti said. "He missed his braking point by a decent chunk. It's unfortunate."

The race was stopped several more times on restarts, all of them coming under the sport's new rules. In previous years, the series used single-file restarts. But this season, IndyCar switched to double-file restarts similar to those in NASCAR.

Drivers thought those dicey situations would be attractive to fans and figured they also would cause attrition. They were right on both accounts. Fans cheered the first-turn frenzy and several cars sustained damage on restarts.

Andretti questioned the decision.

"That's what happens when you try to imitate NASCAR," he said. "Our cars have too much power to start right nose-to-tail, you know. It creates disasters. It's good for the fans; it's not good for me today."

Patrick ran into trouble before the midway point of the race. She drove into the rear of Justin Wilson on lap 44 and broke her nose wing. Her team fixed it, but she wasn't able to make up ground on the leaders.

Franchitti, meanwhile, was simply pulling away from his closest competitors.

Franchitti edged Power for the championship in last year's season finale and opened 2011 with another strong showing for Chip Ganassi Racing. He took the lead on the third lap, was dominant from there and seemingly could have slowed down over the final few laps to take in the sights on the waterfront drive.

It was Franchitti's first victory - and fifth top-five finish - in six starts at St. Petersburg.

- Herald online/AP