James Hinchcliffe wins St. Petersburg

Red and white was flying high in victory lane this afternoon. Canadian driver and rising star, James Hinchcliffe, won today's IndyCar season opener at St. Petersburg. Although lacking the typical Florida sun, the Grand Prix at St. Pete left some great moments nonetheless. Will Power sat on the pole, a driver who is always in contention at a street course, but throughout the race Power was slowly drifting from that P1 spot after a series of unfortunate incidents. Starting with losing his lead to teammate Helio Castronves on a restart, then a scary incident where JR Hildebrand ran over his tires, causing damage and position loss. Last year's Indy 500 winner, Dario Franchitti, was out of the race early after hitting the wall.

Swiss driver, Simona De Silvestro ran a fantastic race with her new team at KV Racing. She ran in the Top 5 consistently all day. Her teammate Tony Kanaan ran up front as well. During the final laps of the race, her tires wore and the fuel tank was running low. Unfortunately, she was forced to back off and conserve. She ended the day in 6th place after a 3-wide finish between her, Scott Dixon and EJ Viso.
"We were running up front the whole day and it was really cool to be keeping up with them,'' she said. ''I think we can really learn from this and try to be better next week. We all know we can be fast and qualify fast and run up front. Now we just have to minimize mistakes so we can win races.''

I suspect a great season for Simona and the whole KV Racing team.

Hinchcliffe won over the lead from Penske driver Helio Castronves on the final restart. This win is the first for the Indycar driver and the first for GoDaddy.com (Danica Patrick won her only IndyCar race in Japan with a different sponsor). Hinchcliffe dedicated the win to the late Dan Wheldon who resided in St. Petersburg before his death in 2011. ''This is his hometown; this is his car,'' said Hinchcliffe. Dan Wheldon was signed to drive the Andretti Motorsports GoDaddy.com car before his death. Hinchcliffe will be added to the Dan Wheldon memorial at the track. He said, ''Knowing my face will be on that memorial, that's really special.''