Restart success for Wilson lands season's first victory

He made two near perfect restarts after a pair of late-race cautions.
EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) -- The memory of "throwing away" last year's Edmonton Grand Prix with a late-race mistake kept flashing through Justin Wilson's mind during a pair of late-race cautions.
"Definitely, I was thinking about that," Wilson said Sunday after making two near perfect restarts and pulling away from Sebastien Bourdais for his first Champ Car victory of the season.
"For both of [the restarts] I was pretty nervous," the 27-year-old Englishman said. "I didn't want to make a mistake. It was all a matter of not throwing it away the way we did a year ago."
In that inaugural race on the 1.972-mile, 14-turn temporary circuit at City Center Airport, both Wilson and then-RuSport Racing teammate A.J. Allmendinger crashed late in the race, giving the victory to Bourdais, who had been running a distant third.
"Basically, I got too confident and too relaxed," said Wilson, whose 2005 crash came under yellow as the field prepared for a restart. "I had been saving fuel and driving very conservatively. Then, the team told me I was good to the end and I got carried away and spun around."
Not this time.
Finally gets checkered flag
After passing Bourdais under green just past the halfway point in the 85-lap race, Wilson, who had four second-place finishes in seven previous starts this season, finally got to the checkered flag.
"I kept my head and everything was just about perfect," he said.
The final flashback for Wilson came when the fourth caution flag of the race waved for Nelson Philippe's crash into a tire barrier just 16 laps from the end, bunching the field and putting Bourdais right behind his rear wing for one last shot at the leader.
But Wilson, who finished fourth last year, never gave the two-time defending series champion a chance to challenge him on Sunday.
He pulled away after the green flag came out on lap 73, beating Bourdais to the finish line by 5.319 seconds -- nearly the entire final straightaway.
Allmendinger, who came into Sunday with a three-race winning streak, ran a strong race to finish third. He was followed by Oriol Servia, Paul Tracy and rookie Will Power, the last driver on the lead lap.
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