Kanaan wins again at Milwaukee

Kanaan, who led most of the Indianapolis 500 last week before losing it to rain, a spin and teammate Dario Franchitti, recovered on Sunday by beating Franchitti to the finish line to win the ABC Supply/AJ Foyt 225 at The Milwaukee Mile.

Kanaan's victory and Franchitti's runner-up finish - which gave him the points lead after six races of the IndyCar Series season - came at the expense of both Team Penske drivers and the troublesome rear wings on their cars.

Helio Castroneves led 126 laps before the rear wing suddenly collapsed on the No. 3 Team Penske Honda/Dallara, sending him into a spin on the exit of Turn 4 just 24 laps from the end of the race.

That gave Kanaan the lead. Nineteen laps later, Sam Hornish Jr was forced to pit while running second behind Kanaan because his rear wing was askew.

Castroneves, who was 13 points out of the series points lead coming into the race, finished 16th in Sunday's race and dropped 33 points behind Franchitti.

Kanaan, who saw a solid run go sour last week, didn't mind stealing one that easily could have gone elsewhere.

"That shows how racing is," Kanaan said. "Last weekend I had the bad end of it. This weekend, it was Helio. He had a dominant car and had a problem. That's why you can't get upset.

"After Indy, I was very happy for Dario. I kept my head together and kept thinking positively about everything. I still have a championship to go after. I didn't want Indy to affect that."

Likewise, Franchitti didn't mind seeing his teammate beat him to the finish line. "He said, 'OK, you can have your payback,'" Kanaan recalled of the conversation he had with Franchitti following the race. "I said, 'Oh, sure. Your check was $1.6 million and mine is $100,000.'"

Kanaan was chasing Castroneves in the late laps when he came upon the crumpled No. 3 Penske car on the inside retaining wall of the front stretch.

Later, after watching Hornish disappear from his mirrors, Kanaan assumed the No. 6 Penske car had crashed. He didn't learn of the collapsing wings until the Victory Lane celebration.

"I didn't even know they had a wing problem until I made it to Victory Lane," Kanaan said. "I saw Helio spin and crash.

"Knowing him the way I do, Helio does not spin on the straightaway, so I knew something happened. I didn't know they had a rear wing problem until I got to the interview.

"I'm not going to make any comment on the rear wing. Things happen. It's not up to me to go investigate that."

Castroneves said the wing didn't give any indication that it was stressed, but just suddenly dropped, causing him to spin.

"I had the race won," he said. "It's a shame that something so odd happened at the end. The car just started spinning when my rear wing broke. I'm not exactly sure what went wrong."

While the victory was Kanaan's second in succession at Milwaukee and fourth consecutive top-five finish at the historic track, Castroneves suffered his fourth consecutive bout of bad luck at Milwaukee.

Last year, he started from pole and finished 14th. In 2005, he finished 16th, and in 2004, he finished 12th. He crashed in all four races.

"I just have to laugh it off," he said. "It's amazing that I have such bad luck at this place."

The race also was marked by a dust-up between Danica Patrick and Dan Wheldon (see separate report).

But while the Dan/Danica spat, the Penske wings and Kanaan's victory are likely to get the biggest headlines from Sunday's race, Franchitti, still glowing from the Indy victory, quietly slipped into the series points lead as the 2007 season nears the halfway point.

"I had so much motivation by being frustrated last year," Franchitti said. "I came back this year in the first test ready to do the job. The cars thus year have helped.

"Do I think I did a different job last year than this year? No. But I think we've had better luck and we've had a lot faster cars. That's the difference."

Pos  Driver             Laps
 1.  Tony Kanaan        225
 2.  Dario Franchitti   225
 3.  Dan Wheldon        225
 4.  Scott Dixon        225
 5.  Vitor Meira        225
 6.  Scott Sharp        225
 7.  Ed Carpenter       225
 8.  Danica Patrick     225
 9.  Sam Hornish Jr     224
10.  Jeff Simmons       224
11.  Darren Manning     224
12.  Kosuke Matsuura    223
13.  AJ Foyt IV         222
14.  Sarah Fisher       221
15.  Marco Andretti     209
16.  Helio Castroneves  201
17.  Tomas Scheckter    159
18.  Buddy Rice         156