Dan Wheldon, aka Mr. Opportunity, solidified his IndyCar Series points lead, tied Sam Hornish Jr.’s single-season victory record and delivered the engine manufacturer title to Honda on one lap in the Honda Indy 225.
All in all, it was a decent afternoon’s work for the steady Brit who recorded his first victory since the 89th Indianapolis 500 by leading Hornish under the checkers at a sun-drenched Pikes Peak International Raceway.
All came at the expense of Andretti Green Racing teammate and 2004 race winner Dario Franchitti, whose final pit stop problem opened the door for Wheldon to slam the door on his fifth victory. While Wheldon might commiserate briefly, that’s racing.
“It’s very important to me to be in Victory Lane, for everybody involved,” said Wheldon, who started fifth in the No. 26 Klein Tools/Jim Beam Dallara/Honda/Firestone. “It just happened to work out for me. It’s a nice time for a victory to come. Dario was really strong. I think he was my strongest competitor today. I was a little bit better in traffic at some points. It was a shame for him. He’s had some bad luck.”
Shown as the leader when Wheldon and others at the front of the field made their final pit stops on Lap 159, Franchitti remained on the 1-mile tri-oval until Lap 164. But the promise of retaking the point after a routine stop for fuel and tires literally stalled in his pit box because of a clutch problem. His crew attempted to push-start the No. 27 ArcaEx Honda-powered Dallara to no avail. So they pulled the car back within the confines of their stall and used the electrical starter.
The miscue dropped Franchitti to ninth, though he was able to advance two spots at the end. He was shaking his head near his transporter while Wheldon was shaking hands in Victory Circle.
“Yet again a mechanical problem took us out of a race that I think we had the car to win,” said Franchitti, who experienced a wheel bearing problem that knocked him out of the race at Kentucky Speedway a week earlier.
It would have been interesting to see the teammates, plus Hornish, Tony Kanaan and pole sitter Helio Castroneves mix it up over the final laps of the fast and furious race. Franchitti had the fastest race lap (170.427 mph; 21.1234 seconds) on Lap 96 and led 68 laps. But once Wheldon regained the lead, it was all over.
Hornish finished 12.4763 seconds behind in a race slowed by only one caution period. Kanaan, the reigning IndyCar Series champion, was third, followed by Castroneves and Vitor Meira. Tomas Enge recorded his best finish of the season (sixth), while fellow rookie Danica Patrick posted her sixth top 10 with an eighth place.
With four events remaining, including two road-course races, Wheldon has a 97-point lead over Hornish in the championship race. Hornish, who started alongside his Marlboro Team Penske teammate on the front row, led a race-high 71 laps. He looked to be on the way to his third short-oval victory of the season before being passed by Franchitti on Lap 96.
“I didn’t think anybody was going to catch us at first,” said Hornish, who scored his seventh top five of the season. “I don’t know if they would have if the yellow hadn’t come out (on Lap 80 when the No. 33 Target Chip Ganassi Racing Panoz/Toyota/Firestone driven by Ryan Briscoe made contact with the Turn 4 wall). But it did come out, so we will never know what happened there.
“The thing that we need to do, what we needed to do is catch back up to traffic. The car wasn’t handling quite the way I needed it to be, so I didn’t want to take the chance of putting it in the wall. Last year we finished our race here up against the fence in Turn 4. It hurt us in the points quite a bit.
“On the other hand there, we just have to look at it from the other point of view that I caught up to him a couple times in traffic. But every time I’d get close, something strange would happen in front of me and I had to get out. One time I got stuck in traffic, so I lost a lot there.
“You don’t want to put yourself in a position where you can get taken out. There’s always a chance the yellow would have came out toward the end and I would have had a shot to go after him. As it turned out, I didn’t.”
He remained in relative close proximity with Wheldon’s car and inherited second when Franchitti’s misfortune arose. Next he’ll attempt to close the points gap at Infineon Raceway - a 12-turn, 2.26-mile permanent road course - on Aug. 28 (ESPN, 3:30 p.m. EDT). Related Stories
