“Patrick was as low as eighth place on the 189th lap, but Carpenter pitted with about 10 laps to go and she went from fourth to second after Dan Wheldon and Tony Kanaan pitted on the 196th.

After flying for about 12 hours to attend the finish of the last race in the Champ Car World Series Sunday in Long Beach, Calif., Patrick, appearing refreshed and relaxed, gave a lot of the credit for her win to team engineer Kyle Moyer.

“I knew that the last stint was going to be important, that was a good call from the pits from Kyle Moyer, who calls my races, to pit on the end of the yellow flag.” she said. “It was going to be close on fuel, but we were in the process of giving ourselves the best opportunity possible.

“As soon as we went green after that yellow flag, it was all about saving fuel.”

Patrick said she began to look for Castroneves with about 10 laps to go.

“I knew I was P2 (position two) by then. Five laps later, I see he’s backing up, saving fuel,” she said. “I was like, `Hey, kick it up a notch and get by.’ If this is what it comes down to, you better not think to yourself I wish I had tried a little bit harder.

“It probably would have happened whether I would have pushed or not because it seemed like he was running out of fuel quite a bit at the end. But it was really very nice to drive by him at that point.””