The holiday weekend proved to be a fruitful one for Oriol Servia and the KVRT crew of the #5 Honda/Dallara/Firestone as the team fell just shy of a podium finish at the track at Belle Isle.
Servia demonstrated his strength early on in the weekend, earning a position again in the Firestone Fast Six and qualifying third on the starting grid. Fuel conservation strategy on the part of the team early in the race saw Servia drop back 12 seconds from the leaders by Lap 16. However, a yellow brought out by an incident between Weldon and Camera helped bunch up the field and Oriol was able to capture the second position when the team stayed out on the first round of pit stops.
Upon pitting on Lap 31 under green track conditions, the KV squad supplied their driver with fuel and tires and got him back on track in third position as the field cycled through. Servia held on to his position and repeated the tactics again on the second stop, moving up to second. When race leader Castroneves pitted, the pilot of the #5 machine found himself leading the race with clear track ahead. After a quick duck into the pits for fuel himself, Oriol re-entered the race in fourth position and found himself ahead of championship points leader Dixon who was forced to throttle back on fuel and unable to pass the Spaniard.
Oriol wrapped up a strong race weekend in fourth position and improved his championship points standing by two positions, up to seventh.
(On a side note, Drew hopes to have the URL sorted out for oriolservia.com very soon! In the meantime, visit the site by clicking here.)
Posted by Shelly Paul, Servia Squad Feature Writer
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