Barron

	Castroneves

MOTEGI, Japan -- Usually, Marlboro Team Penske leaves an Indy Racing League IndyCar Series event celebrating either a victory or at least a podium finish.

But during Sunday's Bridgestone Indy Japan 300 at Twin Ring Motegi, team owner Roger Penske walked out of the paddock after seeing both of his race cars damaged in separate crashes.

Helio Castroneves was the first when Roger Yasukawa spun out in the second turn on the 46th lap. Castroneves had nowhere to go and ran into Yasukawa's car. Later, Alex Barron crashed on the front stretch on the 46th lap. Castroneves finished 22nd and Barron 17th.

"Without a doubt, it's been a while since we've put two of them on the trailer like this," said Penske Racing president Tim Cindric. Barron was filling in for the injured Gil de Ferran, who was involved in a brutal crash at Phoenix International Raceway last month.

"I came into Turn 4 and the car went straight," Barron said. "I don't know if it was oil or what. Then, Tomas Scheckter hit after I did. I guess he went high. Prior to that, we were picking them off one by one and I think we could have done well at the end. We had a real good balance. The track was coming to us. We were in good shape."

Barron has driven for Penske before, but never on a regular basis. He used this weekend as another opportunity to gain experience with one of the most successful teams in Indy car racing history.

"You always learn a lot," Barron said. "You realize how things can be run properly. It's always an education to be involved with someone like that. The weekend went flawless. In the race, we had some problems. Scheckter hit me and took the wing off, but we were able to make the change. We were moving up fast. It's a shame."

That left Penske anxious to leave the paddock, and get out of Japan so his team can regroup in time for the biggest race of the year, the Indianapolis 500 on Memorial Day weekend.

"It was a tough race," Penske said. "Unfortunately, we were in the way when 55 spun into Helio and we don't know what happened with Alex Barron. It was just a tough day.

Reverting to old form
Tomas Scheckter's rookie season in the IRL last year was known for its blazing speed and torn up race cars. Scheckter reverted to form on Sunday, leading the race for 36 laps before crashing in the fourth turn on lap 168 while in the lead. That was reminiscent of his crash while leading in last year's Indianapolis 500 with 17 laps to go.

"I had the race in the bag and threw the thing away," Scheckter said. "We had a good car and did an unbelievable job. It was an easy race on my part to drive. Fortunately, we have to look forward to Indy and make sure I follow through there."

Scheckter was involved in a fierce battle with Tony Kanaan when he went to the outside. He got high in the turn and lost grip, which sent him into the wall.

"It started the lap before that, Tony Kanaan was fairly racey. I got understeer, Kanaan got on my inside, we were in three and four, I didn't hear the yellow being called on my radio and I tried to run up," Scheckter explained. "Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't."

Scheckter served notice that he is a threat to win at Target-Chip Ganassi Racing after spending last season with Cheever Indy Racing.

"The car was good, I was driving it as hard as possible," Scheckter said. "I wasn't really concentrating on who I would be fighting with. I could pull away when I wanted to. It's unfortunate neither one of us were able to finish the race because we were both able to get to the front rather easily."

Go fish
Kevin Blanch, the team manager at Pennzoil Panther Racing, is a competitive fisherman who hopes to one day compete on the BASS Masters professional fishing tour. On Monday, the man who prepares the race cars for Sam Hornish Jr. will fish on a lake in Japan, about 30 minutes from Mito.

"I'll stay there as long as they let me," Blanch said.

Sending back the parts
Craig Baranouski is the chief mechanic at A.J. Foyt Enterprises and had a reason why the $1,591,000 race purse was larger than for a typical IRL event other than the Indianapolis 500.

"The reason the purse is so big is they only have to ship back half as many cars," Baranouski said, referring to the large number of crashed race cars in Sunday's race as 11 of the 24 cars in the race were involved in crashes.

Blocking back
Kenny Brack had his best finish in his return to the IRL when he was second behind race winner Scott Sharp on Sunday.

"Second is better than third, at least," Brack said. "We really had a fast car today, but we had a puncture early on our second set of tires. That put us out of the pit sequence for the rest of the race. We had to conserve a lot of fuel. We just ran out of laps at the end of the race.

"I'm pretty confident I could have caught Scott (Sharp) at the end with a few more green laps. I was able to run up front early, and the puncture caused us to come way back in the pack."

While many of his former CART drivers were criticized for blocking in Sunday's race, Brack didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

"I didn't see any blocking; I just saw a lot of action where they didn't know they had a car on their side," Brack said. "Yes, I got blocked once or twice, but that's kind of normal. It's one thing to keep a guy from passing and another to not know there is someone on your side."

Well done, old chap
Dan Wheldon of England finished seventh in his first IRL race of the season. He was driving for Dario Franchitti, who is recovering from injuries suffered in a motorcycle crash in Scotland last week.

"Today was a great experience for me," Wheldon said. "I think for my first race, it didn't go too bad. I certainly need to relay to the engineers how to get a better race car, because I was not expecting the track to change the way it did. I definitely learned a lot and enjoyed it. Now I have to concentrate on getting ready for the Indianapolis 500."

Ray returns
Greg Ray competed in his first IRL race this season for the team that he co-owns and scored a top-10 finish when he brought his Honda-powered G Force in ninth place.

"We are very pleased with our team, with only 50 miles of testing prior to our first race here at Motegi," Ray said. "We are happy to be running a G-Force/Honda combination, but unfortunately, it seems we had some sort of setback with every testing session and never got our rhythm. We had our fair share of gremlins. With our new car, we had a throttle cable stretch and only had 80 percent. All in all, our pit stops went well, and to be a new, small team to finish in the top 10, it's a good step toward Indy."

Kelley scores two top-fives
In addition to Scott Sharp winning for Kelley Racing, Al Unser Jr. finished fifth to give team owner Tom Kelley two cars in the top five.

"The whole Kelley Racing team is very proud of the job Scott did today," Kelley said. "There were quite a lot of wrecks out there. Everybody was taking their chances, but I'm glad that on our side, the Corteco car ran brilliantly today, and we made it through the carnage.

"I like Motegi. I think it's got great challenges. It's very unique in its configuration and its setup. It presents different challenges than any of the ovals that we have in America. It's been a fun time, and I'm really looking forward to the Indy 500 coming up."

One for the home folks
Tora Takagi's eighth-place finish was the highest a Japanese driver finished in the race. The enthusiastic crowd of fans in Japan wildly cheered Takagi, along with Shinji Nakano, Shigeaki Hattori and Japanese-American Roger Yusukawa.

"That was a tougher day than I was expecting, but I am happy to finish with an eighth-place result," Takagi said. "My car seemed to be very strong at the start, and then we had the problem on our first stop that really set us back. We got a penalty because of that, and it was going to be very difficult after that.

"I feel really bad for all the people who came out to see me today. But hopefully I can give them a bigger and better result at the Indy 500 next month. I'm really looking forward to it."

Bonus time
Winning team owner Tom Kelley gave Toyota a victory in its home country of Japan. When asked if he expected a bonus from the automaker, Kelley had a business proposition.

"I'm a car dealer and if Toyota wanted to give me a Toyota dealership in the United States, that would be just fine, thank you very much," Kelley said.