Australia's Ryan Briscoe held off Ryan Hunter-Reay to win the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg on Sunday, the opening race of the 2009 IndyCar Series.

Penske driver Briscoe overtook England's Justin Wilson for the lead on a re-start 14 laps from the finish of a race littered with crashes.

Briscoe stayed in front as Hunter-Reay, pressing on new tyres, got around Wilson and tried to chase down the Aussie.

One more re-start gave Hunter-Reay a chance to attempt a move, but Brisco was able to hold him off and win in 2hr 12min 26.8387sec, by a margin of 0.4619sec.

"Finally," said Briscoe, who had crashed out of this event in his two previous starts.

"This place has been bad to me. It feels so good to finally get to the end of this race. And it's great to start off the year like this."

Wilson making his debut with Dale Coyne Racing, dominated much of the race.

"I couldn't quite get the re-start there at the end," he said. the British driver said.

"But it was a good day, a good way to get started with this team."

Scotland's Dario Franchitti, a former Indianapolis 500 winner returning to IndyCar after spending part of last year in the popular NASCAR stock car racing series, finished fourth ahead of Brazilian Tony Kanaan.

Graham Rahal, who won his IndyCar debut at the event last year and on Saturday became the youngest driver to capture and IndyCar pole, was seventh after he was involved in a first-turn incident with Kanaan that left both having to work their way through the field after pitting for repairs.