Wheldon takes another Miami win

A year ago Wheldon snatched the win with a last lap pass. This time he had no need for late heroics, instead cruising home six seconds clear of teammate Scott Dixon in a Ganassi one-two.

"We ended the season last year with a one-two in Chicago, and the guys worked hard over the winter and we're one-two again here to start off the season," said team boss Chip Ganassi. "I hope it's an omen for the season."

Defending champion Sam Hornish Jr had been Wheldon's main rival for the first half of the race. Wheldon and Hornish Jr fled from the field in unison when the green flag finally flew 45 minutes late following early evening rain. A light shower subsequently caused a ten-lap yellow half an hour into the race, but the weather then co-operated for the remainder of the night.

Wheldon and Hornish's lead over the battle for third grew to as much as 11 seconds during the longer periods of green flag racing, with the Penske Dallara-Honda shadowing the Ganassi example without ever mounting a concerted challenge.

Their dominance was threatened when both men had disastrous pit stops at half-distance.

Most of the field pitted during a prolonged caution prompted by Jeff Simmons spinning into the path of Kosuke Matsuura and AJ Foyt IV, sending all three heavily into the wall without injury. During the stops, Hornish stalled, while Wheldon lost even more time after an air hose became caught under his car.

Those delays moved Wheldon's teammate Scott Dixon into the lead, while Hornish and Wheldon fell back to seventh and ninth. Yet it took Wheldon just 10 laps to recover the lost ground and surge back into the lead.

"I have to put that one down to the engineering staff," said Wheldon. "Now that I've been at the team one year, everybody back at the shop has really tried to perfect the car to suit my style, and it did today.

"It looked dominant, but any time you've got Dixon or Hornish around you, it's going to be tough."

Hornish's progress was not quite as fast as Wheldon's, and by the time he reached third the two Ganassi cars were out of reach.

"We stalled in the pits and ended up losing the draft of Dan," said Hornish. "I could stay with him if I was there but as soon as we got that gap, I couldn't quite get there.

"It's unfortunate for the Team Penske crew, but I said we'd be happy if we came out of here with a top three finish tonight, and we did that."

Dixon managed to stick with Wheldon for a while, but after the final pit stops the Englishman was able to leave even his teammate behind.

"We just didn't have enough speed," Dixon admitted. "Dan was very good over the long runs. We'd get 10 laps from the end of a stint and we'd just get a bit loose and a bit low on grip, so it was a bit of a handful. But it's great to see the team with another one-two."

Behind Hornish, Vitor Meira impressed again by fending off Tony Kanaan for fourth place.

Meira had briefly challenged Dixon for the lead after Wheldon's pit delay, while Kanaan's fifth place - achieved despite losing ground initially after adopting an out-of-sequence pit strategy - was the high point of Andretti-Green Racing's difficult night.

Dario Franchitti ran in the top three for a period before losing ground in heavy traffic. He recovered to seventh, but the team's other two cars both retired.

Marco Andretti quickly fell to the rear of the pack with serious and perplexing handling difficulties, eventually retiring after a series of pit stops failed to cure the problem.

"My engineer thinks we just messed up on set-up, but I swear there's something broken on the car," said Andretti.

Danica Patrick ran with the backmarkers at first but made good progress in the middle of the race. Despite being penalised for hitting one of Franchitti's tyres during a pit stop, she made it into the top ten before crashing in the pit entry while attempting to take her final service.

Rahal-Letterman were also out of luck. Scott Sharp and Simmons were put to the back of the grid for rear wing infractions in qualifying, and both were off the pace in the race.

Darren Manning retired after brushing the wall in the closing stages, while Alex Barron's comeback lasted just six laps before fuel pressure problems struck - although he later rejoined to get more mileage.

Apart from the dominant Wheldon, Ed Carpenter must be considered one of the stars of the race. Carpenter and Vision Racing teammate Tomas Scheckter rapidly moved from the midfield to the top ten early on, with the American getting as high as second at half-distance before eventually slipping to sixth, between the AGR cars.

Scheckter took eighth, ahead of the unwell and subdued Helio Castroneves, and the Dreyer & Reinbold pair.

Results:

Pos  Driver             Team                 Laps/gap
 1.  Dan Wheldon        Ganassi              200 laps
 2.  Scott Dixon        Ganassi              + 6.4993
 3.  Sam Hornish Jr     Penske              + 17.4754
 4.  Vitor Meira        Panther             + 22.5373
 5.  Tony Kanaan        Andretti-Green      + 23.1179
 6.  Ed Carpenter       Vision                + 1 lap
 7.  Dario Franchitti   Andretti-Green        + 1 lap
 8.  Tomas Scheckter    Vision                + 1 lap
 9.  Helio Castroneves  Penske                + 1 lap
10.  Buddy Rice         Dreyer & Reinbold     + 1 lap
11.  Sarah Fisher       Dreyer & Reinbold    + 5 laps
12.  Scott Sharp        Rahal-Letterman      + 6 laps
13.  Darren Manning     Foyt                + 42 laps
14.  Danica Patrick     Andretti-Green      + 46 laps
15.  Marty Roth         Roth                + 81 laps
16.  Kosuke Matsuura    Panther            + 108 laps
17.  Jeff Simmons       Rahal-Letterman    + 110 laps
18.  AJ Foyt IV         Vision             + 110 laps
19.  Alex Barron        Beck               + 114 laps
20.  Marco Andretti     Andretti-Green     + 147 laps