Hampton holds the key to Gateway.

During most of Sunday's 80-lap, Gateway 100 Infiniti Pro Series race at Gateway International Raceway, Ryan Hampton was the rabbit. On the event's four restarts, however, he became a sitting duck.

The popular young driver from Phoenix was up to all challenges, however, and led wire-to-wire en route to victory, establishing several records in the process with his #34 Conti-Genoa-Frost Racing Dallara, including being the first time in Indy Racing League history in either the IRL Indy car series or the Infiniti Pro series that one driver has led every lap of a race.

It was the series' first visit to the tight 1.25-mile oval, so Hampton established other records in winning the pole at an average speed of 143.727mph. That lap was 0.7563secs faster than Cory Witherill ran to earn the second starting spot, making it was the largest margin for a pole winner in the series' history, while Hampton also set the fastest lap of the race when he circled the track at an average speed of 142.877mph two tours from home.

Hampton's domination was so complete that he topped all three practice sessions too, despite the fact that this was only his third Infiniti Pro Series race ever. At one point, he had a six-second lead, but, due to caution periods, his official margin of victory over Arie Luyendyk Jr was 'only' 1.9352secs.

"You're always worried on a restart - that's just the nature of the beast," Hampton said in the post-race press conference, "I missed a shift when he [Luyendyk] was behind me, and it's like 'oh no, we're in trouble now, he's definitely going to try to go on the inside'. I just had to take the defensive line - I hope we didn't scare him too much!"

Luyendyk wasn't scared, but he wasn't able to take advantage of that opportunity because he was too busy trying to hold off Ed Carpenter, who finished third.

"It was a fun race," Hampton added, "When you lead the whole time, it's fun. This is probably up there with one of my most enjoyable victories, by far - the bigger an event gets, the more fun it gets. At least, it's been that way so far. It's definitely more fun when you lead the entire race.

"Another thing that made it fun was this is definitely a driver's track," Hampton noted of the notorious Gateway 'oval', "It takes some skill to get around here quickly. Sometimes, it's who is the bravest and sometimes it's a matter of set-up. Everything kind of came together this weekend for us. My engineer just pretty much nailed it.
When the car rolled off the trailer it was fast. We only did minor, minor tweaks."

Although Hampton had everyone covered, he said at one point he was a little worried.

"The car kind of started going away around the middle of the race," he disclosed, "It just wouldn't hold the line so you could go flat all the way around. You had to start kind of breathing the throttle. Then, all of a sudden, in the last ten laps, the thing just hooked back up and it was off and running. It was good. It was exciting. I'm ecstatic!"

Although Hampton got off to a great start, the same couldn't be said for Aaron Fike and Tony Turco, who were involved in an accident in turn two on lap two to bring out the first caution flag. The race restarted on lap ten and, by lap 14, Hampton already had a 2.7secs lead. He had stretched that to 6secs by lap 28, but that evaporated on lap 34 when Matt Beardsley's engine let go on the backstretch.

That left Hampton vulnerable on the restart, but his closest rival at the time, Cory Witherill, had engine problems at that point and pitted. The green waved again on lap 42, but Hampton wasn't able to get his momentum going again before Gary Peterson had an accident in turn two on the very next circuit.

Luyendyk and AJ Foyt IV were going at it like gangbusters for second on that restart on lap 50. That turned out to be good for Hampton because, while they were duking it out for second, he was able to start rebuilding his lead. Foyt later retired with engine problems to bring out the final yellow on lap 63. Then, on that restart, Hampton missed his shift but, with Luyendyk and Carpenter caught up in a torrid battle for second at the end, he was able to continue unchallenged to the chequered.