Wheldon uses pit gamble to win Iowa

The Ganassi cars had not been a factor in the lead battle for most of the race, but the decision to leave Wheldon on track as most of the leaders pitted under a late yellow allowed the Briton to vault to the head of the field.

He then had to conserve fuel to make it to the finish - running 90 laps rather than the usual 75 on his last stint - but two further cautions in the closing stages allowed Wheldon and fellow fuel gamblers Mutoh and Danica Patrick to stretch their fuel mileage to the end.

"We saved fuel for a little bit at the end," Wheldon explained. "The team knew I was having trouble on restarts, so they really worked hard at giving me time to heat my tyres up. That certainly worked. The more laps I did (on a set of tyres), the better it was for me.

"When they told me to stay out, I looked up and said, 'Thank you, God.' I was just incredibly loose. I don't know why it was so bad, but you could see from the next few restarts on tyres that were not slightly worn, it was great. The car was very comfortable."

Wheldon was running back in the pack when he and strategist Barry Wanser chose to keep the car out on the track while the leaders came to the pits on the 187th lap.

It appeared at the time as if Wheldon wouldn't be able to make it to the finish, but he received two huge assists - a yellow flag when Mario Moraes brushed the wall on a restart on the 197th lap and another when Tony Kanaan spun and hit the wall on the 211th lap.

"It looked to be a pretty big accident just from the debris," Wheldon said. "I knew if I saved as much fuel as I could at that point that we would be OK. Actually the team told me that, but they wanted to make sure we had some spare fuel. I don't think they wanted to cut it too close."

Wheldon donated his winnings to relief programmes for victims of flooding in Iowa. Coupled with Scott Dixon's $15,000 for finishing fourth, Ganassi's drivers donated a total of $60,000 to disaster relief efforts.

"It's very small in the grand scheme of things, but we're very proud to be able to do something," Wheldon said. "Hopefully it will put a smile on people's faces."

Andretti was the highest finisher amongst those who made the extra pitstop, having jumped past Patrick and Dixon in a single move at the final restart before hunting down Wheldon and Mutoh.

He was unable to get around his rookie teammate, though, and had to settle for third, as Mutoh successfully managed to fend off Andretti while also trying to keep the pressure on Wheldon.

"I almost got by Wheldon at the end, but I didn't have the speed to overtake him," Mutoh said. "This is the highest finish by a Japanese driver (in the IndyCar Series), so it's good news for Japan and for myself, too."

Andretti, who has been fast in recent races but crashed out of the previous two, praised his teammate for staying clean during the duel.

"He's not just going to hand it to me," Andretti said. "He was as clean as can be. I was trying to make it work around the outside, but I didn't have enough to do it."

Dixon retained his points lead by finishing fourth, but - as he had expected after struggling in practice - he didn't have the speed to hold on to the advantage he had been given when the qualifying rain-out handed him pole position. His pace improved as the race progressed, though, and a very rapid final pitstop helped him claim fourth.

"I started using the high line and things came together better," Dixon said. "The high line was definitely the choice of the day. When you had two or three guys in front of you trying to do the same thing, it was difficult to pass. Strategy paid out in the end, and that's the way it goes."

Kanaan and Helio Castroneves had dominated the majority of the race, and staged an astonishing side by side battle for much of the opening 25 laps.

Neither would feature at the flag, however, with Castroneves finishing 14th after a late pitstop with a puncture and Kanaan crashing out of third while chasing Wheldon and Mutoh with 39 laps to go.

"I lost it," said Kanaan, who also crashed in Turn 2 at Iowa last year. "I was setting myself up for the end of the race. Turn 2 has not been a good turn for me at this race."

Despite these incidents, the race was a far cry from last year's crash-filled and processional inaugural Iowa event.

"Last year was a procession," Wheldon said. "It wasn't really a race. The person that sat on the bottom won, unless you tried to go crazy on the start, which I did, and paid the price for."

This time, the race featured six cautions for 57 laps, but 17 of the 24 starters were running at the end. The other significant yellow came when Ed Carpenter spun in Turn 2 on the 39th lap, then blamed Patrick for his accident.

"Danica did her normal supreme block job," Carpenter said. "She is the new Scott Sharp of the series, as far as I'm concerned. That is two races in a row. I'm over her."

Patrick survived the incident to finish sixth behind the impressive AJ Foyt IV (Vision Racing), who carved through from 18th on the grid.

Penske's Ryan Briscoe took seventh, with Ryan Hunter-Reay falling back to eighth in the final pitstops after earlier running a strong third for Rahal-Letterman Racing. KV Racing's Will Power and Newman/Haas/Lanigan's Graham Rahal completed the top ten.

John Andretti showed encouraging pace for the small Roth Racing team to run as high as seventh, while Justin Wilson (Newman/Haas/Lanigan) also occupied that position in the middle of the race, before both lost ground in the last stint.

Pos  Driver             Team                  Time
 1.  Dan Wheldon        Ganassi               250 laps
 2.  Hideki Mutoh       Andretti Green       +  0.1430
 3.  Marco Andretti     Andretti Green       +  0.9028
 4.  Scott Dixon        Ganassi              +  1.2726
 5.  AJ Foyt IV         Vision               +  1.3564
 6.  Danica Patrick     Andretti Green       +  1.9115
 7.  Ryan Briscoe       Penske               +  3.9780
 8.  Ryan Hunter-Reay   Rahal Letterman      +  4.4888
 9.  Will Power         KV                   +  5.6158
10.  Graham Rahal       Newman/Haas/Lanigan  +  7.7886
11.  John Andretti      Roth                 +  8.4639
12.  Justin Wilson      Newman/Haas/Lanigan  +  8.7225
13.  EJ Viso            HVM                  + 12.5775
14.  Helio Castroneves  Penske               +  2 laps
15.  Vitor Meira        Panther              +  2 laps
16.  Oriol Servia       KV                   +  3 laps
17.  Enrique Bernoldi   Conquest             +  8 laps
18.  Tony Kanaan        Andretti Green       + 39 laps
19.  Mario Moraes       Dale Coyne           + 58 laps
20.  Jaime Camara       Conquest             +117 laps
21.  Darren Manning     Foyt                 +156 laps
22.  Buddy Rice         Dreyer & Reinbold    +172 laps
23.  Ed Carpenter       Vision               +212 laps
24.  Milka Duno         Dreyer & Reinbold    +224 laps