TAG-Heuer to sponsor 'closest finish' award.

TAG-Heuer, the official timekeeper of the Indy Racing League and the Indy 500, has announced that it will present a new 'closest finish' award for the 2004 IndyCar Series season.

The award will go to the drivers who are part of the closest 1-2 finish in the 16-race IndyCar Series, which kicked off in February and concludes in October.

"There have been some incredibly close finishes in IndyCar Series competition, including more than three dozen races in which the difference between first and second place was less than a second," says company president Jean-Christophe Babin, "Since TAG Heuer has strived for more than 140 years to master the technology of split-second timing - with current capabilities including measurements to the 1/10,000th of a second - we believe this award is a perfect tribute to the accuracy and precision of both the world-class IndyCar races and our timekeeping technology for the league."

Both drivers winning the closest finish award will receive a Carrera chronograph, a timepiece that was launched in 1964 as a tribute to the epic Carrera Panamericana race in 1953. So far this season, the closest finish has been the season-opener at Homestead-Miami Speedway, where Sam Hornish Jr defeated Penske team-mate Helio Castroneves by 0.0698secs.