Dario Franchitti stormed to his first IndyCar Series victory, winning the Menards A.J. Foyt Indy 225 (Milwaukee Mile). Franchitti, who led 111 of 225 laps, finished six-tenths of a second ahead of Buddy Rice.

Dario started the race from seventh place, and methodically began picking off the leaders as he and the ArcaEx crew found the optimum balance in the #27 ArcaEx Dallara/Honda/Firestone.

Dario was delighted with his victory, commenting: "This win means a lot, both to me and to the ArcaEx team, especially to come at a special track like The Milwaukee Mile.  We had the car to do the job. To come back after taking a year off (due to a back injury) and win this race makes it pretty special.  I thought the final laps would be determined by handling. 

I just wanted to make sure I got that last restart right, and we did.  Buddy Rice has been quick all year and I was concerned about him, but it worked out well.  It has been frustrating in that we've been quick, week-in and week-out, but didn't have much luck. Today we had some really good luck and things definitely went our way. The car was fantastic all day.  It went off a bit as the run went on, but not as much as other people. I think the engineers got it right. Nothing went wrong today." - 25 July 2004