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Briscoe Wins, Power Crashes
By Andrew Cutler
October 26 2008
For the third consecutive year, Will Power was unable to capitalize on a pole position start at Surfers Paradise. The driver known as "the Toowoomba tornado" lead the way for the first sixteen laps, only to clip the wall in Turn 5 on the next lap, causing massive damage to his car's suspension.

Afterwards, Power called it; "the worst mistake of my career. Obviously, I'm very disappointed. You could see how fast we were at the start of the race. Then I backed off to save a lot of fuel, not pushing hard and then got caught out and clipped the inside wall and ricocheted into the next one."

Fellow Aussie Ryan Briscoe, who was following Power in second at the time, took full advantage of his countryman's misfortune, dominating the rest of the race to capture his third win of the year. 2008 IndyCar Series champion Scott Dixon finshed in 2nd, followed by Ryan Hunter-Reay, Alex Tagliani, Oriol Serivia (Power's KVRT teammate) & rookie EJ Viso.

Just don't try to tell Briscoe that Surfers was an exhibition race only, with no  championship points on the line, because; "it means almost a million points to me" he said afterwards.

Here are the complete results for the race: http://www.indycar.com/stats/boxscores/2008/surfers_10262008.pdf

The IRL will have an announcement as to the future of their participation at Surfers Paradise sometime within the next few weeks.

This concludes the 2008 IndyCar Series season. The 2009 campaign begins on April 5 at St. Petersburg, FL.

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