Iowa: Series race notes

NEWTON, IOWA, Saturday, June 21, 2008 - Dillon Battistini won the Jeld-Wen 100 Firestone Indy Lights race. Battistini passed polesitter Arie Luyendyk Jr. with 14 laps to go to earn his third victory of the season and move into the series points lead.

Luyendyk tied a career best with his seventh career second-place finish. Ana Beatriz was third, Brent Sherman fourth and Pablo Donoso fifth.

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JELD-WEN 100 POST-RACE NOTES:

* This is Dillon Battistini's third victory of the season. He also won at Homestead-Miami and Indianapolis. He takes the points lead over Richard Antinucci 242-215.

* This is Panther Racing's third victory of the season and 12th overall in Firestone Indy Lights competition.

* Arie Luyendyk Jr. tied his career-best finish. He also finished second at St. Petersburg in 2005, Phoenix in 2004 and Nashville, Michigan, Gateway and Chicagoland in 2002.

* Ana Beatriz finished third, tying her career-best finish. She also finished third at St. Petersburg 1.

* Pablo Donoso finished a career-best fifth.

JELD-WEN 100 POST-RACE QUOTES:

DILLON BATTISTINI (No. 15 AlexP, finished first): "I'm just amazed. What a race; I really enjoyed that. Our cars were very close to matching pace. We lapped a few of the cars several times and we both got held up, so I realized if I dropped back a little bit and when he got held up I might be able to carry a run on him and it worked perfectly. There was a little bit of luck involved."

ARIE LUYENDYK JR. (No. 26 Automatic Fire Sprinklers, Inc., second): "Guys just wouldn't get out the way. If you're in the back, just move out of the way. I cannot believe (James) Davison could not let me by. And he wouldn't let Dillon (Battistini) by either when he was up front. It just messes up our race. We had a clean, fast race car. Andretti Green/AFS Racing did an awesome job. We rolled off the truck, and we were just fast. It just doesn't get any faster than that. It's just frustrating when you have 10 car lengths on a guy for the lead with eight to go, and you come up on lapped traffic and you lose the race."

ANA BEATRIZ (No. 20 Healthy Choice/Sam Schmidt Motorsports, third): "It was really hard to pass on this track. I had to set up my passes. I would go back sometimes because I couldn't set up good. But the car was really good. The Healthy Choice Sam Schmidt crew worked perfectly, and my car was great."

PABLO DONOSO (No. 22 TMR-Cristal-Xtreme Coil Drilling, fifth): "We're improving. In the big picture, that's the most important thing I see. We changed teams, and we're improving every race more and more. Today I had the car to finish in the top three, but there was a lot of traffic. The team did a really good job."

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The 2008 IndyCar Series season continues with the Iowa Corn Indy 250 presented by Pioneer on June 22 at Iowa Speedway. The race will be telecast live in High Definition at 1 p.m. (EDT) by ABC. The race will air live on the IMS Radio Network. A Spanish-language telecast of the race will be carried by ESPNDeportes. The IMS Radio Network broadcast also is carried on XM Satellite Radio and www.indycar.com. The 2008 Firestone Indy Lights season continues with the Jeld-Wen 100 on June 21 at Iowa Speedway. The race will be telecast at 5:30 p.m. (EDT) June 26 on ESPN2 and live on www.indycar.com.

-credit: irl