Helio Castroneves congratulates his teammate on the win.(LAT photo) » More Photos

In addition to playing a conservative pit stop strategy, Dixon was delayed by a jammed wheel nut on his second stop and fell-in behind the man trying to overhaul him in the championship race. With one eye on Castroneves and the other eye on his mirrors, the Kiwi was driving a circumspect race.

“We’re definitely trying to win,” he said. (But) it’s sort of step by step. You look at the people you’re racing. When it comes down to Helio, we probably wouldn’t make big dives on each other because we know we’re racing each other for the championship. But, say one of the other guys is racing me, he’s going to make more aggressive moves. He’s got nothing to lose. That’s what you’ve got to more careful of.”

In the end, the guys behind Castroneves and Dixon were not close enough to make any moves -- aggressive or no -- on them. They were more concerned with not taking each other out of the race, seeing as how they were KVRT teammates Will Power and Oriol Servia. In the team’s first visit to Mid-Ohio with the Dallara-Honda, they had both struggled to come to grips with the roller coaster track’s idiosyncrasies. After qualifying 12th, Power made a big gain in performance in the morning warm-up and further benefited from being among the first to stop for rain tires.

Thereafter he was always at or near the front, although any chance of a win probably went away when his team made the “conventional” strategy call on his second stop, dropping him from third into the mix behind Briscoe and Castroneves, then falling to fourth when Dixon passed him following the final pit stop. Servia had qualified better (eighth), but waited a lap or two too long for rains.

“We had a car that could win today,” he said. “We could have chosen a crazy strategy and maybe been a hero, but having a car that could contend at the front was a smarter thing to do, was more logical, as we definitely need those championship points.”

A good read of the rain tire situation moved Power forward to an eventual fourth place. (LAT photo) » More Photos

Vitor Meira did choose a “crazy” strategy, pitting for slicks at the end of the first lap and subsequently led for 20 laps before going conservative, pitting with the rest on the Lap 25 caution and then fighting his way back top sixth in the latter two thirds of the race.

Tony Kanaan finished a subdued seventh -- a position he conceded was roughly where his car should have finished -- while Darren Manning, another earlier caller for slick tires, came home eighth ahead of Hideki Mutoh, who ran a quiet race marked by conservative strategy on the switch to slicks and fuel stops.

The race was anything but quiet for a number of other competitors, however. Justin Wilson drove a storming first few laps, charging from fourth to second place in the first two laps, but spun down the order when he skidded through a pool of water exiting the pits on his slick tires and then triggered the biggest shunt of the day when he banged wheels with the lapped car of Mario Dominguez on a mid-race restart. Marco Andretti, who had run in the top four before a spin, was eliminated in the ensuing accident that also delayed Manning and A.J. Foyt, IV.

Mario Moraes was another driver to finish the race pondering what might have been. Like his teammate, the young Brazilian benefited from cagey strategy by car owner Dale Coyne and found himself running in second place behind Briscoe at mid-distance, even taking the lead on Lap 56 when the Penske car made its final stop. But soon after making his final stop, Moraes planted the Sonny’s Bar-B-Que car in the sand trap at Turn Four.

“I was trying to push and we just locked up the rear tires,” he said. “I don’t know if we would have been able to get a top-three finish today, but for sure we would have finished in the top five.”

As it was the top five was reserved for those who didn’t make any mistakes, and who got their tire and pit stop strategy right. And in the case of Briscoe and Roger Penske, got their strategy exactly right when it really counted.

HONDA INDY 200 RESULTS