Will Power wins wild Indy season opener in Brazil

Will Power’s late pass of Ryan Hunter-Reay gave him the lead and the win for the first IndyCar race of the season on the new street course in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

The race seemed to be cursed from the beginning. In the first turn of the first lap there was a five-car pileup that left Mario Moraes’ car on top of Marco Andretti’s. Scott Dixon and Helio Castroneves were also caught up in it.

The wreck was caused by poor visibility from a cloud of concrete dust. Track officials used diamond grinders Saturday night to fix problems with the concrete but a lot of dust remained.

Dario Franchitti led much of the race but the skies opened up and drenched the course. The race was red-flagged because even with rain tires the standing water was too much.

There were also problems with power outages as the timing and scoring function was down for a while. And, of course, if you happen to be a DirecTV customer — and thus unable to watch the Versus broadcast — you likely had a hard time if you were trying to watch the race online.

A decision was made to switch to a timed event instead of the scheduled 75 laps. After the restart Hunter-Reay had the lead but was passed by Ryan Briscoe. But then Briscoe put his car into the tire barrier, giving the lead back to Hunter-Reay.

Power, driving for Penske, passed him with just a couple laps left to win. Hunter-Reay was second, followed by Vitor Meira, Rafael Matos, Dan Wheldon, Scott Dixon, Dario Franchitti, Mike Conway, Helio Castroneves and Tony Kanaan.

Ana Beatriz, driving before her home country fans, finished on the lead lap, but Danica Patrick did not.

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