40°44′N 75°19′W / 40.73°N 75.32°W
Race details | |
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Race 4 of 21 in the 2001 CART season | |
Date | May 6, 2001 |
Official name | 2001 Lehigh Valley Grand Prix Presented by Toyota |
Location | Nazareth Speedway, Nazareth, Pennsylvania, USA |
Course | Oval 0.946 mi / 1.522 km |
Distance | 225 laps 212.85 mi / 342.45 km |
Pole position | |
Driver | Bruno Junqueira (Chip Ganassi Racing) |
Time | 19.700 |
Fastest lap | |
Driver | Tony Kanaan (Mo Nunn Racing) |
Time | 21.170 (on lap 196 of 225) |
Podium | |
First | Scott Dixon (PacWest Racing) |
Second | Kenny Bräck (Team Rahal) |
Third | Paul Tracy (Team Green) |
The 2001 Lehigh Valley Grand Prix, known informally as the 2001 Nazareth 225, was a Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) motor race held on May 6, 2001, at Nazareth Speedway in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, USA. It was the 4th round of the 2001 CART season. Rookie Scott Dixon won the race by just four tenths of a second over Kenny Bräck, while Paul Tracy took third.
Dixon scored his first and only CART win after he successfully gambled on a fuel-saving strategy that gave PacWest Racing its last win before the team folded in 2002 as well as its first win since 1997. Bräck's first podium of the season was the prelude to two consecutive wins at Motegi and Milwaukee, putting him solidly in the championship hunt. For Tracy, it was his second podium in three races, but he would not record another for the rest of the season.
The race was the first after the Firestone Firehawk 600 fiasco, and there were concerns about the G-Forces experienced at Nazareth that were ultimately unfounded. This would also be the last time that CART raced at the speedway, allowing open-wheel rival Indy Racing League to run its own 225-lap race from 2002 to 2004.