Will Power dropped behind Jenson Button in the Castrol EDGE Rankings and lost ground in the IZOD IndyCar Series championship after falling foul of a late caution flag period at Mid-Ohio.
With Button claiming a superb win in changeable weather at the Hungaroring last weekend, both Power and his title rival Dario Franchitti had to place well in IndyCar's visit to Mid-Ohio to avoid dropping behind the Briton in the Rankings.
Both were on course to do so, running second and third behind eventual winner Scott Dixon, before the race swung on a late safety car period which caught Power out – the Australian opted to run one lap deeper than Franchitti, only for the full-course caution to ruin his strategy and drop him to the back of the field. Power fought back to 14th at the finish, but couldn't prevent himself from falling one place to eighth in the Rankings – with Button moving in the opposite direction and into seventh.
Although Dixon and Franchitti gave Ganassi a commanding 1-2, neither driver improved in the Rankings.
Andretti Autosport's Ryan Hunter-Reay joined them on the podium, moving up three places and onto the brink of a top 50 berth as a result.
Earlier in the weekend, Lucas Luhr and Klaus Graf had won in a rain-hit ALMS race at Mid-Ohio to give their Muscle Milk Lola-Aston Martin squad its second successive win.
Victory allowed Luhr to continue his rapid ascent up the Rankings order, the German improving 18 places to 68th. At the end of May, he had been 305th, before success in GT1 and ALMS rocketed him through the order.
Moving across to NASCAR, Brad Keselowski overcame a fractured ankle to claim victory in the Pocono 500 and vault into an all-time high of 54.
The Penske driver had suffered his injury in a testing crash, but drove through the pain to take a hard fought victory over Kyle and Kurt Busch. Kurt, the older of the Busch brothers, held off Jimmie Johnson on the final lap, the pair touching several times and then exchanging heated words after the checkered flag.
Busch was one of the biggest gainers in the Sprint Cup, jumping six places to 21st as a result of his podium finish.
There were even bigger changes over in DTM, as Mattias Ekstrom dominated to claim his first win of 2011 at the Nurburgring, moving up 15 places to 77th. Farther down the field, Renger van der Zande moved up 59 places to 320th as a result of finishing 11th, while Filipe Albuquerque went one better by finishing ninth, rising a massive 73 spots to 410th as a result.