Intro:

Carlos Huertas raced to his first IndyCar Series victory, leading a Colombian 1-2-3 in a rain-soaked Grand Prix of Houston on Saturday (28 June) in Texas.

Script:

IndyCar's Grand Prix of Houston 1 took off from the street circuit around the NRG Stadium complex in Houston, Texas on Saturday afternoon.

The race was timed at 1 hour, 50 minutes.

Simon Pagenaud started from the pole, with Helio Castroneves alongside him.

With just over an hour left, Takuma Sato was taken out of the race when he made contact with the lapped car of Mikhail Aleshin. Sato was running second at the time of the accident.

Championship leader Will Power slid into the turn 9 tyres on lap 58 to bring out the caution flag. He finished 14th.

Dale Coyne Racing used strategy to get Justin Wilson and Carlos Huertas to the front, but Wilson eventually had to pit for fuel, and Huertas assumed the lead with just over seven minutes to go.

Then Ryan Briscoe turned Sebastian Saavedra, to bring out a caution with five minutes to go.

IndyCar believed it had enough time after the clean-up to run one final lap and Huertas lined up with Juan Pablo Montoya, Tony Kanaan, Graham Rahal and Carlos Munoz behind him.

But as they inched toward the green flag, Rahal anxiously turned Kanaan and the start was waved off.

Huertas grabbed his first career victory. He was followed by Montoya and then Munoz, who was moved to third-place when Rahal wrecked Kanaan on the aborted final restart.