Morning Warm-Up: Houston 2014 Race Two

Carlos Huertas went from unknown to IndyCar winner overnight. Can he win in consecutive days?

After stunning the motorsports world Saturday, Carlos Huertas looks to sweep the weekend and the naysayers aside again this afternoon. The Colombian came from 19th on the grid Saturday, matching second furthest back a winner has come from on an IndyCar road/street course race. Al Unser Jr. started 19th at Miami in 1986. Little Al only led the final lap after Colombian Roberto Guerrero ran out of fuel after leading all 111 laps up to that point. Only Max Papis has started further back and won, when he started 25th at Laguna Seca in 2001. Huertas and Dale Coyne Racing used pit strategy to perfection to land in victory lane, leading a Colombian 1-2-3 with his idol Juan Pablo Montoya and the popular rookie Carlos Muñoz.

Sébastien Bourdais finished fourth Saturday as he looks for his first victory since Mexico City 2007. The Frenchman was up front all day, lost ground on his final pit stop but rallied back into the top five with some help from some incidents in front of him. James Hinchcliffe led the most laps on Saturday but had to settle with fifth. Jack Hawksworth started twenty-first but worked his way methodically to the sixth place.

Ryan Hunter-Reay kept his nose clean and like Bourdais, Hinchcliffe and Hawksworth, lost ground on the final pit stop and finished seventh. Marco Andretti recovered from being spun by his teammate, black flag for leader at the time Takuma Sato failing to get by the American and a late pit stop to finish eighth on Saturday. Hélio Castroneves finished ninth after starting second Saturday. Justin Wilson rounded out the top ten Saturday and laid down a 46-lap stint, by far the longest of the race before having to pit from the lead with a little over 10 minutes remaining.

Graham Rahal recovered from stalling on the start to be running fourth heading to the final restart before running into the back of Tony Kanaan, leading to a finish under caution and a 30-second penalty for the Ohioan, dropping him from 3rd to 11th in the final results. Ryan Briscoe also received a 30-second penalty for making contact with Sebastián Saavedra, dropping the Aussie from a solid top ten to 12th, right ahead of Kanaan.

Will Power may have finished a lap down and outside the top ten for the first time in 2014, but what appeared to be a day that would unravel his championship hopes, turned out to be a slight blip. Power lost only six points in the championship to second place Castroneves and holds a 33-point lead heading into the tenth round of the championship later this afternoon. Saavedra was battling for a top five position before the contact with Briscoe relegated the KV Racing driver to fifteenth.

Simon Pagenaud's first pole position was ruined by bad brakes in the race and finished sixteenth. Mike Conway had contact with the tires on a drying track in race one end his Saturday with a slight wrist injury. He will be reevaluated before qualifying today. Charlie Kimball finished eighteenth after being collateral damage after teammate Scott Dixon hit the wall a little past halfway through Saturday's race. Josef Newgarden was twentieth after slight contact with the front straightaway wall, the same place where Luca Filippi's first race of 2014 and with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing ended after the Italian started fourth. Takuma Sato led early Saturday before he and the lapped car of Mikhail Aleshin got together entering turn six. Both started in the top ten for race one and look to recover from the incident today.

Qualifying for today's race will take place at 11:00 a.m. ET.

NBCSN's coverage of race two will begin at 3:00 p.m. ET. Green flag will be at 3:45 p.m. ET. The race will feature a rolling start.