RICHARD ANTINUCCI'S CHARGE HAMPERED BY PIT ERROR AT MID-OHIO

SUNDAY'S NOTES
After a pair of DNFs at the Canadian venues, the Italian-American driver was poised to put in a good show at one of his favorite tracks: as a matter of fact yesterday Mid-Ohio rewarded Antinucci with his best finish so far, albeit a dissapointing 18th place. At the start Antinucci briefly held 18th place behind fellow rookie Robert Dornboos, when on Lap 7 he left the pack for the first of his scheduled pit stops. A bold off-sequence pit strategy early on seemed to be the best call to propel the #98 Dallara-Honda as close to the Top 10 as it has ever been. But on the second pit stop on Lap 31 a regrettable misunderstanding between the pitcrew and engineers meant that insufficient fuel was put in the car. This forced Antinucci to re-enter the pits the next lap, and the aftermath of the pit stop continued to linger, as he had to come in for a splash of fuel on Lap 68. Ultimately the result was compromised due to these refueling issues.

RICHARD'S TAKE
"To say that this has been my best race in four starts may sound ironic, as I wound up 18th, 2 laps down, but I'm actually convinced that this has been a good race for us in many ways. We may have stumbled here and there, but our pace was there throughout the day. Owen (Snyder) was very smart when he choose to mirror Mike Conway's move and pit on the same lap, very early on. That stint turned out being very good for us. I managed to drive in clean air and the car was pretty good, as it had been in the final practice: I made up more ground on the leading drivers than expected.
Had our strategy unfolded smoothly there was a real chance to rejoin the track inside the top 10. Unfortunately the second pit stop went awry and basically any chance of staying on the lead lap vanished. Nonetheless our pace was still good: we were faster than lots of guys today, posting a pretty good ninth fastest lap: no small feat considering we were on primary tyres.
I am really looking forward to Sonoma, as we’ve made a big upgrade to our car and overall a big step in performance. We are ready for a solid finish."