The Kansas City Star from Kansas City, Missouri • 23

SECTION EXTRA RL wwwkcstarcom THE KAN8A8 CITY STAR Monday July 9 2001 TO CHEEVER IDE LEDFORD Hne Kansu City Star JIM BARCUSThe Kansas City Star IRL driver Eddie Cheever Jr enjoyed the sweet taste of success (top) after beating Sam Homish Jr to the finish line (above) and winning the Ameristar Casino Indy 200 on Sunday at Kansas Speedway Key move Speedways first IRL winner guts out a dramatic duel The Ameristar Casino Indy 200 was decided when Eddie Cheever Jr saw a little opening inside on turn four and took it Cheever (No 51) passed Sam Homish Jr (No 4) on lap 198 and went on to the victory By JIM PEDLEY The Kansas City Star And oh he won the race was perfect" Cheever said was one of those days you want to happen more often than they The race was not just perfect for Cheever It was fun So much fun that Cheever an obviously intelligent driver committed a grammatical gaffe in saying so was the funnest race had in a long he said Funner than heck thanks to Homish With 33 laps to go perfection was showing big time He was 16 seconds ahead of Homish and Donnie Beechier who was right behind Homish And at 216 mph 16 seconds is a long way But by working together Homish and Beechier See IRL D-6 How perfect was Eddie Cheever weekend visit to Kansas Speedway? The champagne bottle he was holding in Victory Lane opened itself Things on the track in Indy Racing League race things that allowed him to get that bottle of bubbly were a bit mote difficult Cheever and Sam Homish Jr went side by side nose to tail and swapped the lead several times over the final 55 laps of the Ameristar Casino Indy 200 But the inaugural really big weekend at Kansas Speedway kept coming bark to Cheever He led seven times for 104 of the 200 laps He was fastest in practice Friday and Saturday He was second fastest in qualifying starting from it row the outside of the front i Racing take CART-ful of cash Sunday afternoon at Kansas Speedway you saw why Tbny George created the Indy Racing League Indy cars were made to run on ovals not road courses And a driver have to be backed by lie can run a competitive car won champion dipped inside onlap 198 took the lead and then beat Homish to the checkered flag by about two-tenths of a second by running his fastest lap of the race 216241 mph The IRL made quite a first impression For those of you who doubted open-wheel ability to create excitement with side-by-side racing the 20 lead changes among eight drivers in the IRL race and the three-abreast photo finish in the Dayton Indy Lights that followed answered your questions You put Indy cars on a 1 Vi-mile oval even one with a relatively narrow straightaway such as Kansas Speedway and stay close enough together that be afraid to turn your head story was about more than what happened on the track though victory was a testament to savvy skill experience and not big money In a The KuuuCIty Star No doors? sure hard to identify with these cars NASCAR are geniuses but you say it enough They are geniuses They have built NASCAR into a colossus into a ratings -grabbing merchandise-pushing money-printing dynamo In these crazy times NASCAR trends run against every bad sports trend going Everybody television ratings go The cars don't look like cars That's die only explanation I can come up with Here we are Sunday watching these Indy cars at Kansas Speedway and you know what? They're a lot faker than NASCAR cars They handle better than NASCAR cars They pass each other more often than NASCAR cars especially on Sunday as Eddie Cheever and Sam Homish Jr traded the lead back and forth in die final wild wicked wonder ful laps This was great racing But this just excite people like NASCAR gotta be because these cars just look like cars at they're like jet air-o-planes without the one angry fan shouted as he looked over these Indy cars aren't cars" Everybody knows that the people who run JOE POSNANSKI Commentary See POSNANSKI D-6 See WHITLOCK D-6 NEXT RACING WEEKEND AT KANSAS SPEEDWAY: SEPT 29-30.