Saint Petersburg INDY - Play By Play Via Tweet By Tweet

On a beautiful West coast of Florida day, the 2009 IndyCar Series got under way. Watching the race on VERSUS and seeing commentary on Twitter provided a unique way to experience the beginning of one of the most longed for seasons in North American Motorsports in recent years.

Today held out a great hope for a grand showing for all of the teams to race with an amount of parity. Ever since the rushed merger last year, many fans that followed the ChampCar World Series and the IndyCar Series wondered if this would all turn out to be good for the sport of open wheel automobile racing?

With the race in the can, it can be said ... Yes!

Ok! So Penske Racing won another race, but the 100 laps that made up the race, and the practice and "Knock-Out" qualifying sessions that took place before today, paid many dividends to the fans from both cultures that have now become one.

The following "Tweets" were excerpted and edited from Twitter via TheEDJE account during the season-opening Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg:

CONTD.

HOW THEY FARED (** denotes Transition Player merged from CCWS):

Pos Driver Team Gap
1. Ryan Briscoe Penske
2. Ryan Hunter-Reay Vision + 0.4619s
3. Justin Wilson** Dale Coyne + 0.9490s
4. Dario Franchitti Ganassi + 1.5230s
5. Tony Kanaan Andretti Green + 2.3214s
6. Will Power** Penske + 3.4622s
7. Graham Rahal** Newman/Haas/Lanigan + 4.0672s
8. Dan Wheldon Panther + 4.7283s
9. Vitor Meira Foyt + 5.9559s
10. Alex Tagliani** Conquest + 1 lap
11. Robert Doornbos** Newman/Haas/Lanigan + 4 laps
12. Stanton Barrett 3G + 4 laps

Retirements:

Driver Team Laps
Marco Andretti Andretti Green 94
Dan Wheldon Panther 86
Hideki Mutoh Andretti Green 86
Scott Dixon Ganassi 80
EJ Viso** HVM 75
Ed Carpenter Vision 71
Danica Patrick Andretti Green 31
Raphael Matos Luczo Dragon 31
Mario Moraes** KV 31
Mike Conway Dreyer & Reinbold 1
(ht: autosport.com)

... notes from The EDJE