MOTOR RACING ROUNDUP

Buddy Lazier had it figured out from the start, and Eliseo Salazar and Eddie Cheever Jr. helped make his finish great, too.

Lazier took the lead when his chief challengers took each other out with 37 laps to go Saturday night and went on to win the SunTrust Indy Challenge in Richmond, Va., that looked a whole lot like NASCAR.

Lazier, who took the lead on the first lap and led a record 224 of 250 laps around Richmond International Raceway, beat Sam Hornish Jr. by 4.88 seconds for the sixth victory of his career and second in a row.

It was the IRL’s first race on the three-quarter-mile oval, the shortest track the series has raced on, and featured more spinning, banging and crashing than fans of Indy car racing are used to seeing.

Even Lazier’s average winning speed, 97.435 mph, was NASCAR-like.

There were nine cautions for 87 laps, the last one taking out front-running Salazar and Cheever and making it Lazier’s race to lose.

Hornish hung on for second, followed by rookie Didier Andre, Al Unser Jr., Scott Sharp, Mark Dismore, Donnie Beechler and Jeff Ward.