A.J. Allmendinger passed Sebastien Bourdais with seven laps to go, then held onto the lead after an extended red-flag delay to win the Champ Car Grand Prix of Road America on Sunday.
Allmendinger had prevented Bourdais from clinching his third straight Champ Car series title. Still, with two races remaining, Bourdais holds a commanding 58-point lead over Allmendinger.
One lap after Allmendinger's pass of Bourdais, rookie driver Katherine Legge of England was involved in a violent crash that brought the race to a halt for nearly an hour.
Legge's car lost its wing and veered out of control, slamming into a fence. The car burst into pieces, sending the cockpit portion tumbling down the track. But Legge was fully conscious and was able to walk into the infield medical care facility on her own.
"[I'm] a bit shaken, but I'm OK, as you can see," the 26-year-old rookie said in a television interview. "All my bits are intact."
The race was stopped to allow track safety workers time to clean up debris and fix a portion of the fence that was destroyed by the accident.
The race ended in a two-lap dash to the finish. Allmendinger darted away at the restart and drove unchallenged to the checkered flag.
Bruno Junqueira recovered from a first-lap crash to finish second. Bourdais finished third.
Bourdais took the lead from rookie Charles Zwolsman on lap five and dominated the early stages of the race, only to lose his lead during a round of pit stops near the race's midpoint.
Bourdais' first pit stop took slightly longer than those of some of his rivals as his crew took extra time to put more fuel in his tank. The pit strategy allowed Bourdais to retake the lead with 10 laps to go as other leaders were running out of fuel and had to come back into the pits.
RSS