Montreal ? Dario Franchitti took advantage of Cristiano da Matta’s strategic gamble Sunday to win the inaugural Montreal Molson Indy.

An early pit stop by da Matta, the runaway CART series points leader, opened the door for Franchitti, who pulled away after a late race restart to win the 80-lap race at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve by 2.588 seconds about half the last straightaway.

Da Matta started from the pole for the seventh time in 13 races this season and was shooting for his seventh victory, but, after an early caution flag, his Newman-Haas Racing team decided to bring him in for an extra stop on lap 12.

“It was similar to the strategy that we ran in fuel strategy races last year,” the Brazilian driver explained. “Most any other times that strategy would have won us the race. If any yellow had happened at any time except the last 10 laps, the race would have come back to us.

“Strategy sometimes is a little bit of a game. You have to bet on what more often is going to go right, especially in the situation we are at.”

It turned out the extra stop by da Matta gave Franchitti all the edge he needed.

“The car was faultless today and the guys from Team Kool Green were on it in the pits, which is what it takes to win races,” said Franchitti, who had gone through some frustrating moments in the pits this season. “We had nothing go wrong today.”

It was the first experience for most of the CART drivers on the 2.709-mile, 14-turn road course on which the Formula One series has competed since 1978. The demanding track was particularly hard on brakes.

“There were a couple of anxious moments there with a long brake pedal, but I think everybody had the same problem with the hard braking on this track,” Franchitti said.

Franchitti and da Matta swapped the lead several times on pit stops and it appeared the Scottish driver, who made his last stop on lap 63, was home free when he found his Honda-powered Lola out front by nearly 5 seconds after da Matta made his final stop on lap 68.

Da Matta got one last shot at the leader, though, when Adrian Fernandez crashed on lap 71, bringing out the third and final caution flag of the race.

On the restart on lap 75, Shinji Nakano, a lap down, was between the two leaders and da Matta didn’t get by until Nakano moved over to let him go on lap 76. By that time Franchitti was ahead by 2.6 seconds.

It was the second victory of the year and ninth of his career for Franchitti. He moved past Patrick Carpentier and Bruno Junqueira to take second place in the championship, a daunting 56 points behind da Matta with six of 19 races remaining.