Helio Castroneves proved to be the dominante force on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida for the second race of the IRL season. The Penske driver lead the race from the early stage and held it for most of the race.

At around lap 35 Castroneves did find himself behind an out of sequence Dan Wheldon but gently pushed Wheldon aside on a restart to regain and hold on to his lead. Wheldon’s team-mate Scott Dixon appeared to have the fastest car on cicruit but never managed to get to grips with the circuit or find any passing opportunities.

Darren Manning, made an impressive return to the series in the under funded and under developed AJ Foyt Racing car, running as high as third for much of the race before a uncharacteristic spin in the closing laps.

The Top 10 finishers were:

1.  Helio Castroneves  (Penske)
2.  Scott Dixon (Ganassi)
3.  Tony Kanaan  (Andretti-Green)
4.  Marco Andretti  (Andretti-Green)
5.  Dario Franchitti   (Andretti-Green)
6.  Tomas Scheckter (Vision)
7.  Sam Hornish Jr  (Penske)
8.  Danica Patrick (Andretti-Green)
9.  Dan Wheldon   (Ganassi)
10.  Buddy Rice  (Dreyer & Reinbold)

Here at The Speed Blog we thought it might be a fun exercise to come up with a method for comparing and ranking the achievments of  drivers across the various series we cover.

We have set up a scheme that compares top 10 finishes in Formula 1, World Rally,  NASCAR, IRL, ChampCar and NHRA, and aggregates scores based on the number of events competed in. Each month, between March and November, we will present the Driver Rankings for that month, plus the Year to Date rankings.

As March is the first month, then this month’s results also reflect the year-to-date results.

Speed Blog Driver Rankings – Top 10 (March 2007)

1. Jimmie Johnson (NASCAR)
2. Jeff Gordon (NASCAR)
3. Jeff Burton (NASCAR)
4. Matt Kenseth (NASCAR)
5. Tony Stewart (NASCAR)
6. Kyle Busch (NASCAR)
7. Dan Wheldon (IRL)
8. Kimi Raikkonen (F1)
9. Ron Capps (NHRA)
10. Sebastian Loeb (WRC)