Indy 500 stops, Castroneves leading
( 2001-05-28 09:07 ) (7 )

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The Indy 500, marred by early crashes, was stopped after 155 laps by a red flag due to rain with Helio Castroneves of Brazil, driving a Dallara/Oldsmobile, in the lead on Sunday.

American Robbie Buhl, driving a G-Force/Infiniti, was second and Brazil's Gil de Ferran third with 45 laps to go. Castroneves and de Ferran are team mates at Penske Racing.

Michael Andretti, who had taken the lead in the 103rd lap, was running eighth and Greg Ray, who had been in second place, was 20th, seven laps behind the leaders.

There had been 10 lead changes among six drivers halfway through the race.

The race got off to a shaky start in which pole-sitter Scott Sharp crashed on the first turn.

On a restart on lap 23, Ray, last year's pole-winner, took the lead from Robby Gordon.

Sharp, driving a Dallara Oldsmobile, drove below the white line ringing the 2.5-mile (4-km) oval and lost control. He was not injured.

The green flag came out on lap seven and on the restart Sarah Fisher, 20, the only woman in the race, spun, collecting Canadian Scott Goodyear. She was not injured.

GOODYEAR INJURED

Goodyear limped when helped out of his car. He was taken by ambulance to Methodist Hospital for x-rays after complaining of back pain. The hospital said he had sufferred a fracture of the lower back.

Fisher said: "It's just really, really, really loose. It's kind of cold out here and everybody's having kind of the same problems. I've never been that loose here at Indianapolis, it was something I was unprepared for.

"I was just hanging on for dear life and finally I couldn't hold on any more."

The spinning continued when, on the second restart on lap 18, Sam Hornish, the 21-year-old Indy Racing League points leader, spun coming out of turn four. Like Sharp, he appeared to go low, below the white line, and spun.

He collected twice Indy 500 winner Al Unser Jr, who had nowhere to go to avoid Hornish, who was able to bring his car into the pits and re-start his engine.

Unser had to retire but he appeared uninjured.

Rick Galles, owner of Unser's car, was disconsolate. "We really thought we had a shot at it today," he said.

"He said we had a hot rod on the radio. It's just unfortunate because we had a good car. I just wanted this for him."

John Barnes, owner of Hornish's car, said: "It looks like the cars, a lot of them, are loose because of how cold it is and how hard the tire is."

In 1992 Roberto Guerrero, then the pole-sitter, spun and crashed on the warm-up lap.