On his way to his highest Champ Car finish, Max Wilson leads a group of cars through the Festival Curves at Portland International Raceway. Check out the day's Slide Show

Starting his winnerB2B Ford Lola in the 19th spot and aided by a great pit stop by his Arciero Blair Racing crew, he drove to fourth place in dismal conditions for the June 24th event.

Rain throughout the day meant that the track was wet and very slippery. As other more experienced drivers spun off, ran into each other and crashed their cars, Max drove a measured and intelligent race.

Moving up steadily, he was up to sixth by the 26th lap. Sixteen laps and one pit stop later, he was up to third. He as able to fend off the more experienced Patrick Carpentier during that run.

Behind Carpentier though, was the fastest car on the track-the Kmart Blue Light Special of Christian Fittipaldi. Fittipaldi had pitted later than the rest and consequently was running on fresher tires as the circuit finally began to dry in some areas in the latter stages of the race.

Fittipaldi was able to get by both Carpentier and then Wilson with less than 10 laps to go. Although Max's tires were well past there prime, he held on to fourth to record his first top five finish.

" It was great to finish fourth, almost a podium for Arciero-Blair and the whole team," said Wilson. " We got some points for our race family here. (Including his father Wilson de Lima) "It was hard to hold off Fittipaldi at the end; I tried but lost my rear tires and almost went off of the track. I am very pleased with this finish and scoring my first CART points.