Posted By Castroneves Racing PR
on April 15th @10:27PM
in the English Category

Helio Castroneves knew it would be filled with difficulties the Grand Prix of Long Beach, held on Sunday in California and stage for the third race of the IZOD IndyCar Series. The penalty for changing engines of all users of the Chevrolet engines put him in the 18th place on the grid, a situation aggravated by the fact that the race happened on a street circuit with few known points of overtaking. Nevertheless, the 9th place he held on the last lap, after a two-stop strategy could be considered a good result, if it wasn’t for an accident on the last minutes of the race.
A compact group formed by Rubens Barrichello (8), Castroneves (9) and Justin Wilson (10) was heading for the finish line, when he met lapped-down cars from the front, among them Katherine Legge that despite noticeably slower, went around the hairpin in front of everybody, forcing Barrichello to brake sharply to avoid a collision. On the curve before that, Wilson tried to overtake Castroneves, and the Brazilian stood on the inside lane of the hairpin, trying to defend the position. Concerned about the attacks of the British driver, Castroneves didn’t have time to react to the reduced pace of the front and could not avoid touching on the car of Barrichello.
In the pileup, he ended up in 10th, but dropped to 13th after being penalized by the race officials by 30 seconds. “This weekend was all complicated and it was a shame what happened on the last lap. I do not agree with the penalty because it was not my fault at all, it was one of those racing incidents, “said Castroneves, who now occupies the second place on the championship. “But race is like that, we will raise your head and move on very motivated, especially since the next race is in Brazil,” said three-time winner of the Indy 500, referring to Sao Paulo Indy 300 on June 29 in April.