2007 Camping World Watkins Glen Grand Prix

The 2007 Camping World Watkins Glen Grand Prix was a race in the 2007 IRL IndyCar Series, held at Watkins Glen International. It was held over the weekend of July 6–8, 2007, as the tenth round of the seventeen-race calendar.

Track map of Watkins Glen International

Race Summary

Helio Castroneves started on pole, but after leading the first 19 laps, he crashed out under heavy pressure from Scott Dixon. Dixon, who led 23 laps, held off Sam Hornish Jr. to win the race. However a post-race brawl occurred. Tony Kanaan was angry with Sam Hornish Jr. for a previous wreck and said he wanted to talk with Hornish after the race. On pit road Kanaan and Hornish walked up to have a civil talk about their incident when Sam Hornish Sr. tried to defend his son by wrestling Tony Kanaan. A brawl broke out and Sam Hornish Sr. had to be physically restrained by IndyCar officials and security. Michael Andretti tried to get into the brawl but Marco Andretti held his father back while driver Dan Wheldon helped Kanaan out of the brawl.

"I got a run on Tony into Turn 6, but he didn't give me room and ran me up on the curbs," Hornish explained. "I had nowhere to go. Then he runs into me coming into the pits and starts calling me every name under the sun. He likes to talk about what a great teammate he is when someone on his team wins, but he can't handle it when he doesn't. It's an unfortunate deal. For a guy that likes to claim he's such a great sport, he's always doing stuff like that. If he wants to get out and talk to me about it afterwards, he can do that. But you don't do it in the car. Someone could have gotten hurt in the pits."

"He hits me and almost takes me out of the race, and he gets mad," Kanaan said in his post-race interview. "He drives like a champion all the time, but mistakes happen and people should let us talk about it and not get in the middle. I think he made a mistake today, and I don't know if he was going to apologize because I couldn't hear what he was saying -- we both had our helmets on. I don't think he drove like a champion today, and he didn't act like one. And his dad was even worse. That's why dads should be in the grandstands, not in the pits."

For punching Kanaan and interfering with the intended civil discussion, Sam Hornish Sr. was fined $25,000 and banned from the garages for one race. Kanaan and Hornish Jr. were both fined $25,000 and put on indefinite probation.

Classification

Fin. Pos	Car No.	Driver	Team	Laps	Time/Retired	Grid	Laps Led	Points
1	9	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	60	1:43:51.5094	2	23	50+3
2	6	Sam Hornish Jr.	Team Penske	60	+6.2591	5	0	40
3	27	Dario Franchitti	Andretti Green Racing	60	+9.7492	3	0	35
4	11	Tony Kanaan	Andretti Green Racing	60	+14.4830	4	0	32
5	26	Marco Andretti	Andretti Green Racing	60	+15.4749	6	9	30
6	15	Buddy Rice	Dreyer & Reinbold Racing	60	+26.9171	7	0	28
7	10	Dan Wheldon	Chip Ganassi Racing	60	+35.3515	10	1	26
8	55	Kosuke Matsuura	Panther Racing	60	+40.7037	11	0	24
9	14	Darren Manning	A.J. Foyt Racing	60	+47.6893	9	0	22
10	17	Jeff Simmons	Rahal Letterman Racing	60	+54.8895	12	0	20
11	7	Danica Patrick	Andretti Green Racing	60	+57.0833	15	0	19
12	20	Ed Carpenter	Vision Racing	60	+1:06.9352	17	0	18
13	2	Tomas Scheckter	Vision Racing	60	+1:07.7275	13	0	17
14	8	Scott Sharp	Rahal Letterman Racing	60	+1:10.3164	14	0	16
15	22	A. J. Foyt IV	Vision Racing	60	+1:25.2853	16	0	15
16	5	Sarah Fisher	Dreyer & Reinbold Racing	58	+2 Laps	18	0	14
17	4	Vítor Meira	Panther Racing	58	+2 Laps	8	8	13
18	3	Hélio Castroneves	Team Penske	19	Crash	1	19	12
Lead changes: 6 between 5 drivers

Full Course Caution Periods

There were three full course caution periods during the race, with a total of seven laps run under full course yellow.

Laps	Cause
20-22	Hélio Castroneves crash in turn 11
25	A.J. Foyt IV spin in turn 8
33-35	Vítor Meira tow-in from turn 4

References

• IndyCar Series Archived 2020-10-17 at the Wayback Machine
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