The pace car leads the field around the track for the formation lap, headed by Juan and Helio.

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And they're away, with Helio hurling himself into turn one at the Festival Curves to steal the lead for the next 30 laps.

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The rest of the field makes it through the Festival Curves with barely an incident.

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24 laps later Robby Gordon spins and then rips up the grass to rejoin the race. I know Robby is the king of off-road racing, but this is ridiculous!

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Juan brakes too late and has to make an escape by cutting the chicane. He still manages to hold onto second place, though. On lap 30 he takes the lead as Helio starts to slow and begins a serious of painful pit-stops, culminating in his retirement ten laps later.

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On lap 46 Richie Hearn spins and Christian Fittipaldi brakes hard to avoid him.

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Richie's incident brings out the yellow flag for a full course caution. The safety crew is just about to step out to help him when Tarso Marques enters the turn too fast and has to drive between the safety truck and Richie's car!

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Richie is restarted and the safety crew has barely got back in the truck when Tarso comes round on his next lap and passes them on the wrong side again! What does he think he's doing?

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On the restart Montoya spins coming onto the main straight, dropping two places to de Ferran and Tracy. However he recovers and immediately passes Tracy. The yellow flag stays out for another three laps while the officials decide what to do. They choose to let de Ferran keep the lead, but he loses it to Montoya at the first turn on the restart.

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Only three laps later, it is P.J. Jones' turn to spin and drift into the gravel trap, causing another yellow and an earlier than anticipated fueling stop for the leaders.

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Montoya's pit crew dropped the car off the jacks too quickly and had to lift him again to complete the change of the left front wheel. This allowed Gil de Ferran to emerge from the pits in the lead, with Montoya and Tracy right behind.

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Dario passes Paul for third place on lap 66: "I was tempted to radio in and say, would it be OK, because I was a lot quicker. Paul was trying to get mileage and I was managing to get better. I think basically he was drafting me up the track helping the fuel mileage. I had a bit more, he was backing up on the straight and it was a very clean pass."

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Michael Andretti passes Max Papis, still in his Harley Davidson colors from Milwaukee, on lap 82 before dropping into the pits for his third stop a lap later. He had worked his way up from 25th after a disastrous stall on his first pit stop, finishing tenth overall.

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For the last 30 laps Dario was shadowing JP: "It was a fuel saving race after the last pit stop. Juan and myself were playing this kind of game where he would accelerate and I would accelerate, then he would back off and I would back off… what I was planning was to catch him unawares, turn the thing up and go blasting by, but he was keeping an eye on his mirrors and would catch me just in time."

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Gil de Ferran takes the checkered flag for the win. As team owner Derrick Walker put it: "Our fuel mileage was not what we wanted so we decide to start racing instead of trying to play the two-stop strategy. Pit stops were key! Gaining track position gave us the idea to go. Gil drove a flawless race and our car was good enough to make good use of the tires."

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The Brazilian fans were delighted and very noisy during the awards ceremony!

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Honda's podium sweep was the second in its five-year Champ Car racing history, following a podium sweep by Franchitti, Alex Zanardi and Tony Kanaan, respectively, at Houston last year.

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"Once I was up to speed, Derrick kept telling me to save fuel, and obviously I wasn't doing a good enough job of that. So he said 'Let's go to position eight' [maximum fuel setting] and go for a gap. After that, I just concentrated on driving every lap as hard as I could. When we came in for the splash and go, I was worried: 'Is it gonna work? ... Is it not gonna work?' But we came in and got out with about an eight-second lead, and I was able to hold it the rest of the way."

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At the airport we ran into Cristiano da Matta. He worked his way up from a 15th place start to finish eleventh on only two pit stops. What do you do while you are on an airplane? "Listen to music when I cannot sleep but I try to sleep. I do not like planes very much."