Wheldon wins at Kansas

Wheldon and his No. 10 Target Chip Ganassi Racing Honda/Dallara were running second behind Scott Dixon's No. 9 Ganassi Honda/Dallara when a yellow flag waved with 28 laps remaining in the 200-lap race. At the time, Dixon was already in the pits.

"Scott was unfortunate with the way that yellow fell," Wheldon said. "He deserved better than that. It was very difficult to have a go at him when I was trailing because my car would get a little loose when I ran across the seams. It would have been difficult to pass him, but I never tried really hard. It would have been tight. We had equal cars."

Under IndyCar Series rules, Wheldon was allowed to stop for fuel while the pits were closed as were several other top runners, including Tony Kanaan, Helio Castroneves, Ryan Briscoe and Danica Patrick.

They later returned for regular service under yellow when the pits opened, effectively keeping them near the front. In the meantime, Dixon dropped from the lead at the time of the caution to seventh on the restart 19 laps later.

"Once we got out and I realized that nobody had pitted and they'd come in for just a splash, I knew it was going to be tough," Dixon said, noting the new rules regarding lapped traffic in the restart order. "Last year it wouldn't have been such a big deal, but that's a tough thing to get through.

"You lose a lot of ground. Once I had clear air, those guys were half a straight ahead of me. There was going to be no chance to catch them."

Wheldon was dogged by Kanaan for much of the final stint before Kanaan got boxed in by traffic with three laps remaining. He held on for second place, saying he wouldn't have had anything for Wheldon even if he hadn't been hung up by slower cars.

"I was hauling trying to catch him the last 28 laps," Kanaan said. "I had nothing for him. I was actually just trying to hang in there so Scott wouldn't catch me. I knew that was going to be the best I could get."

Wheldon's victory and Dixon's third-place finish, coupled with the win by Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas in the Grand Am race at Virginia International Raceway and the runner-up finish by Juan Pablo Montoya in the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Talladega, marked the best combined weekend effort in the history of Chip Ganassi's race teams.

"He's a tough guy and he's very unpredictable, but at the same time he's a big teddy bear," Wheldon said. "He's very passionate about racing. It doesn't matter if it's got a roof, three wheels, six wheels or 12 wheels. He will make sure he gives you whatever he can give you to make you competitive. That's a guy you have to respect."

Dixon raced up from seventh to third in the final stint to pull to within six points of Castroneves for the IndyCar points lead. Castroneves finished fourth, followed by Andretti Green Racing teammates Marco Andretti and Hideki Mutoh.

Ryan Briscoe, A.J. Foyt IV, Justin Wilson and Ed Carpenter rounded out the top ten.

Wheldon shadowed Dixon through much of the race after moving into second place on a restart on the 31st lap. When Buddy Rice's car crashed on the 152nd lap, Dixon was in the pits. When all was sorted out under the lengthy caution period, Dixon was seventh, with five more lapped cars between him and his teammate.

"That's two weeks in a row," said Dixon, who has led 246 laps in the last two races but hasn't won. "I don't know what we're trying to do. We definitely lost the race ourselves. It's just something we have to work on."

Kanaan, who finished 2.1778 seconds behind Wheldon, found the race dull.

"We wanted to see some action," Kanaan said. "You saw Scott pulling away and Dan following him for most of the race. We realized that we just had to get in line and start following everybody. To me, that was boring.

"I'm not criticizing the racetrack or the type of cars, I'm just saying that we've had a lot better races at Kansas Speedway. We did such a good job as drivers that there wasn't a caution in the last 30 laps. That made it less exciting. If it goes yellow with 12 laps to go, it was going to be pretty exciting."

Danica Patrick, who scored her first IndyCar win last weekend in Motegi, was sidelined Sunday when the studs sheared off the right-rear hub of the No. 7 AGR Honda/Dallara. She finished 19th.

"It felt like something was wrong with the left front, maybe that's when it started," she said. "But definitely the loose feeling that was happening on that last lap was probably the rear tyre moving when I got into the corner."

In the end, the celebration belonged to Wheldon, who knew it came at the expense of his teammate but also knew he'd been a victim of similar circumstances himself.

"It's unfortunate for Scott the way the yellow fell," Wheldon said. "I'm sure he'll make up for that later in the year."

Dixon, Wheldon and Kanaan will be among the favorites when teams begin preparations next weekend for the 92nd Indianapolis 500. Rookie orientation is scheduled to begin Sunday, with the first day of regular practice set for May 6.

Pos  Driver              Team                 Laps
  1.  Dan Wheldon        Ganassi               200
  2.  Tony Kanaan        Andretti Green        200
  3.  Scott Dixon        Ganassi               200
  4.  Helio Castroneves  Penske                200
  5.  Marco Andretti     Andretti Green        200
  6.  Hideki Mutoh       Andretti Green        200
  7.  Ryan Briscoe       Penske                200
  8.  A.J. Foyt IV       Vision                200
  9.  Justin Wilson      Newman/Haas/Lanigan   199
 10.  Ed Carpenter       Vision                198
 11.  Oriol Servia       KV                    198
 12.  Graham Rahal       Newman/Haas/Lanigan   198
 13.  Jay Howard         Roth                  197
 14.  EJ Viso            HVM                   197
 15.  Bruno Junqueira    Dale Coyne            196
 16.  Milka Duno         Dreyer & Reinbold     195
 17.  Mario Moraes       Dale Coyne            193
 18.  Ryan Hunter-Reay   Rahal Letterman       169
 19.  Danica Patrick     Andretti Green        156
 20.  Buddy Rice         Dreyer & Reinbold     150
 21.  Jaime Camara       Conquest              150
 22.  Vitor Meira        Panther               101
 23.  Tomas Scheckter    Luczo Dragon           96
 24.  Darren Manning     Foyt                   76
 25.  Enrique Bernoldi   Conquest               54
 26.  Marty Roth         Roth                   41
 27.  Will Power         KV                     22