It was the second victory of the season for Castroneves, at least officially.

Unofficially, he considers it his third. He led the field to the wire at Edmonton in July, but was dropped back to 10th after officials penalized him for blocking with a couple of laps to go.

Castroneves was fined $60,000 and placed on probation for manhandling an IRL official after that decision, and being stripped of that win clearly still grates.

Introduced to the media in Victory Lane, Castroneves couldn't help but correct the moderator.

“Just a little correction, it was the third win,” he said, laughing.

He also considered Saturday's win as making up for the events here in 2008 when he was yards away from winning only to run out of fuel exiting Turn 4, allowing Scott Dixon to steal the win.

Not this time. While the leaders zipped around the track, Castroneves slowed down after pitting on lap 147 when race strategist Tim Cindric suggested he could win if he went a little easy on the throttle.

Castroneves was skeptical at first, but it turned out to be a masterstroke. When the leaders took turns heading down pit road for splash-and-go stops with a handful of laps left, Castroneves steadily made up ground.

In the end, he had more than enough to ease past pole-sitter Ed Carpenter, who matched a career-best with a second place finish. Dan Wheldon was third, followed by Tony Kannan and Dario Franchitti.

Points leader Will Power led 83 laps but slipped to eighth after a late-race slip. The bobble allowed Franchitti to draw within 17 points with two races remaining. The series races in Japan on Sept. 19.

“We finished ahead of Will, which was one of the things we needed to achieve, but it would have been nice to have finished a little further up,” Franchitti said.

A week after a pit road gaffe cost Power a chance at his first oval victory, a slight bobble while getting up to speed shortly after exiting the pits cost him.

Power dominated the middle of the race but briefly got loose while heading into Turn 3. He narrowly missed the wall, but the break in momentum prevented him from making inroads on the leaders, meaning the road-racing star will have to wait a little longer to breakthrough for an oval win.

“I'm going to get it one day,” Power said. “We led plenty of laps. We'll get there.” Carpenter was making just his third start of the season, after signing a deal last month as part of a collaboration between Vision Racing and Panther Racing.

“Dan and I can say we probably had the best cars in the race, but the best car doesn't always win,” Carpenter said. “That's racing ... it was (Castroneves') night. It was meant to be. But I am a little bummed out.” Danica Patrick was ninth. Defending race champion Ryan Briscoe, who edged Carpenter by 0.0162 seconds last year, finished 24th after getting collected in a three-car pileup with Vitor Meira and Simona de Silvestro.
 
Hamlin wins pole for Atlanta NASCAR

In Hampton, Georgia, Denny Hamlin showed signs of turning around his midseason slump by claiming pole position Saturday for Sunday's NASCAR Sprint Cup race.

Hamlins edged consistently strong qualifier Ryan Newman, who'll start from the outside of the front row. The rest of the top five for the Emory Healthcare 500 was Kyle Busch, Carl Edwards and Tony Stewart.

“I'm a very bad qualifier,” Hamlin said, “so I'll take it.” He claimed the eighth pole of his career and the 50th for Joe Gibbs Racing.

Hamlin has five wins this season, but it's been nearly three months since his last victory. He's coming off a 34th-place finish at Bristol and is fifth in the point standings.

While that's still safely within the 12-driver Chase for the Championship, which will be set at Richmond next week, Hamlin wants to recapture the dominance he showed over a 10-race stretch that included five wins and two other top-five finishes.

“I feel like the last 10 races have definitely been up and down for our team,” he said. “We were on such a hot streak there. We kind of got spoiled. The regular season was kind of irrelevant at that point because we knew we were going to get in the Chase.” Hamlin said the team started racing for victories instead of points.

“We're going to treat these next two weeks as if we're Chase racing,” he said. “We found ourselves going for wins so much, going all-out for wins, that it probably hurt us in the long run. These next two weeks, we're going back to points racing.” Hamlin wanted to get that new attitude started with a strong qualifying run, and that's just what he got from his No. 11 Toyota Camry.

“We brought our best stuff,” he said. “I'm trying to get cautiously optimistic, but that's the fastest car I've ever had on the race track. It was very, very, very good.” If all goes according to plan, Hamlin will have a couple of high finishes - maybe even another win or two — heading into the 10-race Chase.