Both drivers retired from the race while the caution was out, and heavy rain started falling on the track less than five minutes after their incidents. IRL officials brought out the red flag on Lap 149. Eddie Cheever had inherited the lead during the caution, and would be later proclaimed as the winner after the race was called with 51 laps to go. This gave Cheever, who had not led a lap under green flag conditions, his first Indy car win after seven years, and the first for a driver-owner since A. J. Foyt at the 1981 Pocono 500. It also ended a long winless drought in Cheever's career: it was his first win on any series since the 1988 1000 km of Fuji, his first win in an open-wheel car since the 1979 Formula 2 race at Zandvoort, and the first major open-wheel victory of his career, having scored 9 podiums without a win in his ten-year F1 tenure, and another four in CART. During the caution, Buddy Lazier, Scott Goodyear and Scott Sharp made a pit stop, but Mike Groff, who had run ninth for most of the race, didn't follow suit, gaining three places on all of them for what would be the best finish of his career in second place, extending his championship lead to 10 points over Buzz Calkins. Also, Lazier's pit stop was significantly slower, which made him drop down to fifth place behind Goodyear and Sharp. Marco Greco got his third top 10 finish in a row with his two stop strategy, the same that propelled Jim Guthrie into his best result at that moment in sixth position in front of the unsung Davey Hamilton. Spaniard Fermín Vélez was the last running car in ninth place, in another career-best showing. Despite being credited with a 10th-place finish, Tony Stewart failed to see the checkered flag for the fifth IRL race in a row, having only finished a race in his first start at Orlando the previous year.