After taking the lead from Helio Castroneves on Lap 77, Tony Kanaan is your leader at the halfway point of the Iowa Corn Indy 300 at Iowa Speedway.
Kanaan led Castroneves by 1.1 seconds at halfway, with Ryan Briscoe in third, Will Power in fourth, and Sebastian Saavedra a surprising fifth.
Under threatening skies, the race began around 8:30 p.m. ET with Scott Dixon and Kanaan, both from Target Chip Ganassi Racing, on the front row.
Dixon narrowly held off Kanaan for the lead on the opening lap, but Kanaan went high and cleared Dixon off Turn 2 on the next lap.
He held the point all the way up to Lap 34, when a small shower began to fall on the 7/8-mile bullring. Five laps later, the caution went to a red flag and cars were brought down to pit road.
Luckily, the shower was a short one and after a bit of drying, engines were refired after a 26-minute delay. The pits opened at Lap 41, and in the ensuing wave of stops, Castroneves was able to beat Kanaan out for the lead.
The field was set for a Lap 49 restart but at the rear of the field, rookie Mikhail Aleshin went below the yellow line, lost control and took Takuma Sato into the wall to bring out the yellow again.
Aleshin and Sato had contact with each other during Race 1 of the Houston doubleheader at the end of last month. Sato’s car owner, A.J. Foyt, was frustrated after that Houston incident and he was of the same disposition after this one.
Both Sato and Aleshin were checked, cleared, and released from the infield care center, but Aleshin was spotted holding a bag of ice on one of his wrists. However, the Russian told NBCSN that there was “nothing serious.”
The green returned at Lap 64 with Castroneves holding off Kanaan for a time. But on Lap 77, Castroneves was held up by the lapped cars of Jack Hawksworth and Carlos Huertas.
That gave Kanaan the opportunity to strike, and he pulled to the inside of Castroneves on the front stretch before completing the pass in Turn 1.
While Kanaan took control of the race, Pocono winner Juan Pablo Montoya had the left rear wing endplate come off of his car. The endplate landed on the inside of Turn 3, and on Lap 89, the caution came out for the debris.
The leaders pitted again in this yellow, and this time, Kanaan was able to beat Castroneves out and retain the point. But Montoya had a slow stop, causing the Colombian to gesture noticeably from his cockpit before he finally left his pit box.
After two waved-off starts on Lap 98 and 99 (Lap 98 for a slowing Sebastien Bourdais, Lap 99 for a bad single-file formation), the field went racing again at Lap 100.
Kanaan quickly pulled away from Castroneves, who had to stave off a good challenge from Power for second. Briscoe was eventually able to drop Power for third, and a few laps before halfway, Sebastian Saavedra was beginning to put pressure on the Australian for fourth.
