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2004 INDYCAR IRL: FONTANA

• Brazilian Driver Tony Kanaan wins 2004 championship. With 3 race wins and 3 poles this season his 2nd finish gave him enough points to claim his first Indycar title with 1 race to go. Kanaan made his Indycar debut last season with the newly formed Andretti Green Racing team.
  KANAAN (ANDRETTI GREEN): "... I did some doughnuts over in Turn 2 for Greg Moore; he's still in my heart. This is a dream come true and now I can relax a little bit"
• ANDRETTI (team owner): "... I'm proud of Tony. I'm proud of the whole team .... Tony drove like a champion from the first race. He drove like that last year too. He deserved this one. The whole 7-Eleven team did. It was a team effort and everybody contributed from all four teams. They all love each other and they are really great friends."
  
  
  FERNANDEZ WINS RACE
• Adrian Fernandez's 3rd win in his "rookie" season. He moves up from 7th to 4th in championship standing ahead of Castroneves, Hornish Jr. and Franchitti.

ROUND 13, FONTANA   2004 Season

RACE: OCT 3, 2004

• Indy 400
• 200 laps / 400 miles

CIRCUIT:

• California Speedway, 2 mile oval
• RACE:
• 2003 winner: Sam Hornish Jr
• 2003 pole: Castroneves, Toyota 31.7521s, 226.757mph
• 2002 winner: Sam Hornish Jr

RACE RESULT:

OCT 3, 2004

• 1 Adrian Fernandez, 200 laps
• 2 Tony Kanaan +0.01s *** 2004 champion ***
• 3 Dan Wheldon +0.2
• 4 Sam Hornish Jr. +0.3
• 5 Buddy Rice
• 6 Dario Franchitti
• 7 Helio Castroneves
• 8 Scott Dixon
• 9 Townsend Bell
• 10 Mark Taylor
• 11 Sharp 12 Carpenter 13 Matsuura 14 Takagi
• DNF: Scheckter, Enge, Herta, Barron, Foyt IV , Giaffone, Meira

QUALIFYING:

GRID, OCT 2, 2004

• 1 Helio Castroneves , Penske 33.107s, 217.479mph
  (vs 2003 pole Castroneves, Toyota 31.7521s, 226.757mph)
• 2 Scott Dixon +0.18s
• 3 Sam Hornish Jr. +0.21
• 4 Darren Manning +0.25
• 5 Adrian Fernandez +0.33
• 6 Vitor Meira
• 7 Buddy Rice
• 8 A.J. Foyt IV
• 9 Bryan Herta
• 10 Dario Franchitti
• 11 Carpenter 12 Taylor 13 Scheckter 14 Wheldon 15 Sharp 16 Barron 17 Bell 18 Matsuura 19 *Enge 20 Giaffone 21 Takagi 22 Kanaan

PRE RACE QUOTES

*ENGE DEBUT
Tomas Enge's debut with Patrick Racing: "... I've driven on tracks in Europe that had a lot of high- speed corners, but nothing like this. My goalis to finish the race and try to stay with the pack."

KANAAN, championshi[p leader: "... California Speedway is the first oval I ever raced at; it's fast, wide and is where I won my first major championship, so I have good memories about Fontana and I want to win there really bad. Championship- wise, I want to keep my string of top-five finishes alive and make it 14 straight. I know that if I can get another top-five finish then I'll probably clinch the championship. But, I'd like to win the race"

WHELDON, 2nd in standing: "... California is going to be a good race. You expect it to be side-by-side like a superspeedway, but it doesn't always pan out that way. I think the Klein Tools/Jim Beam team will have to adjust our strategy accordingly, but we've been doing pretty well on the superspeedways lately. From an engineering standpoint, I think we need to find a little more outright speed to be able to contend for the win"