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Crew members for Dario Franchitti, of Scotland, service the car in a
pit stop during IndyCar’s Indianapolis 500 auto race at Indianapolis
Motor Speedway
Yahoo Sports...
Franchitti wins
Indy 500
INDIANAPOLIS- Dan Wheldon couldn’t win his third Indianapolis 500.
Dario Franchitti did it for him.
And if it wasn’t going to be Franchitti, then it would be Scott Dixon.
Maybe even Tony Kanaan.
No matter what, one of Wheldon’s best buddies was going to Victory Lane.
In the end, they celebrated a 1-2-3 sweep that honored D-Dub, their
missing friend.
Franchitti stamped his name in the record books by winning his third
Indy 500 on Sunday, a day that started and ended as a tribute to
Wheldon, who won the race a year ago but was killed in an October crash
in the IndyCar season finale. As his three friends lined up with six
laps remaining for the final restart - Kanaan out front, Chip Ganassi
teammates Franchitti and Dixon second and third - they couldn’t help
but wonder if Wheldon was at play.
‘’Kind of like old times, the three of us back and forwards,’’
Franchitti said. ‘’I thought, ‘Dan is laughing at us right now going at
it.’’’
It was an absolutely fitting finish, even if the elation for
Franchitti’s win was tempered by the heartbreak for two other deserving
drivers. Dixon, a one-time Indy 500 winner, temporarily relocated his
family to St. Petersburg, Fla., to support Wheldon’s wife and two sons,
and Kanaan, 0 for 11 now at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, had openly
wept following the death of his former teammate.
‘’I think a lot of us that were close to Dan, you know, you wanted it
that little bit more,’’ Dixon said. ‘’I guess maybe in the back of your
mind, you figured he would probably help you out today, too. I think in
that situation, seeing how it lined up with the top three, three of
Dan’s friends, it was a tough one.’’
Franchitti won a wheel-to-wheel, last-lap battle, sailing away to the
checkered flag when Takuma Sato spun out trying to make one last pass
on the inside and slammed into the wall.
The race had shaped into what was expected to be a duel to the finish
between Franchitti and Dixon. But when the Scot made his final pass of
Dixon with two laps to go, he pulled Sato with him and it sapped
Dixon’s momentum.
So the last-lap pass attempt was Sato’s for the taking, and he couldn’t
pull it off as he hugged the inside white line through Turn 1. His
wheels appeared to touch Franchitti’s, he spun hard into the wall, and
Franchitti sailed past for the win - this one, just like the first two,
under caution.
Dixon crossed the finish line in second, and Kanaan was third.
‘’Everybody up there was a friend of Dan’s, and that about sums it up.
Everybody loved him,’’ Franchitti said as bagpipes played over the
public address system.
‘’What a race! What a race!’’ Franchitti said. ‘’I think D-Dub would be
proud of that one.’’
Dixon met his teammate in Victory Lane, and Franchitti was reminded of
the delicate balance in celebrating a team win vs. beating a teammate.
‘’I want to beat Scott. I know he wants to beat me. I don’t think I’ve
met maybe a more competitive individual, except maybe Dan in the early
years,’’ Franchitti said. ‘’He’s my buddy. Out on the track, he’s
competition, but a teammate, and then afterward he’s my friend. I see
the disappointment in his face. I see the disappointment in T.K.’s face.
‘’I think both those guys will get more championships and Indy wins.
They’re just too good not to. When you beat guys like that, I take that
as a big accomplishment because, God, they’re not easy to beat.’’
Kanaan, who used a bold move on a late restart to dart from fifth to
first, couldn’t hold off Franchitti and Dixon on the last restart. He
was OK with the final result.
‘’I don’t think it could have been a better result for Dan,’’ Kanaan
said. ‘’Wherever he is right now, he’s definitely making fun of Sato, I
can tell you that, and he’s giving Dario a tap on the back for sure,
and he was going to call me a wanker that I didn’t win this thing.
‘’I’m glad this is over. I’m glad that now I hope we can all move on
and just remember Dan the way Dan was - a happy guy, a wonderful
friend.’’
Wheldon’s wife, Susie, went to Victory Lane to congratulate Franchitti,
who hid his tears of joy behind a pair of white sunglasses worn in
tribute because they were Wheldon’s preference. She then sat next to
Franchitti’s wife, actress Ashley Judd, in the backseat of the
convertible - the same seat she had a year ago for Wheldon’s win - for
the victory lap around the 2.5-mile oval.
The day opened with car owner Bryan Herta driving a single parade lap
around Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the car Wheldon drove to victory
last year. Fans were given white sunglasses to wear on laps 26 and 98,
marking the car numbers Wheldon used in his two wins.
It was Susie Wheldon’s first trip to any race track since her husband’s
death, and she watched from Dixon’s pit stand with his wife, Emma.
So it was apt on this hot day - the temperature hit 91 degrees, just
one shy of the Indy 500 record from 1937 - that one of the most
competitive races in history ended with a frantic push from Wheldon’s
friends. Ten drivers swapped the lead 35 times, shattering the record
of 29 in the 1960 race won by Jim Rathmann.
Until the last lap, when Sato made his move for the win, the race was
close but uneventful.
The only multi-car accident came when a spin by Mike Conway collected
Will Power, who came to Indy as the series points leader and winner of
the last three races this season. It was a somewhat frightening
accident as Conway, who broke his front wing when he hit one of his
crew members on pit road, hit the outside wall and his car tilted on
its side before coming to rest. And Helio Castroneves had to deftly
maneuver past a bouncing tire that still grazed one of his own wheels.
Besides that, though, the race was slowed by just seven other cautions
- including the one on the last lap - for 39 of the 200 laps.
Marco Andretti, who went into Sunday believing the race ‘’is mine to
lose,’’ was strong at the start, but a series of adjustments were not
to his liking and he unraveled on his team radio before spinning to
bring out the final caution with 13 laps remaining.
Franchitti and Dixon battled back and forth in the final third of the
race, with Sato consistently in the mix. Then came Kanaan, from nowhere
it seemed, but he was unable to hang on to the lead on the restart
after Andretti’s crash brought out the yellow with 13 laps to go.
Andretti said the wreck ‘’definitely rang my bell.’’
Everyone thought the race would go to a Chevrolet driver for either
Andretti Autosport or Penske Racing, which won the first four races of
the season and swept the front two rows in qualifying. But in the end,
it was three Hondas fighting for their first win of the season.
After the last restart, Franchitti pulled past Dixon for the final
time, then went for the lead, pulling even with Franchitti. ‘’Job
done,’’ he said he thought, but he went in too low and the tires
appeared to touch.
‘’It looks like he didn’t give me enough room to go there,’’ Sato said.
‘’I was a little below the white line. I had nowhere to go.’’
Sato said the cars never actually hit but the white line marking the
inside of the track ‘’was less than touching my own car - so, you know,
I mean almost on the grass.’’
Franchitti coasted across the line under a yellow caution flag to
become the 10th driver to win at least three Indy 500s.
This was the second year in a row that a crash on the final lap
affected the outcome. In 2011, rookie JR Hildebrand was leading going
into the final turn when his car slammed into the wall, allowing
Wheldon to cruise past and take the checkered flag.
‘’I was side by side with Takuma,’’ Franchitti said. ‘’We hit and I
managed to keep it out of trouble.’’
The victory snaps a disappointing start to the season for Franchitti,
who has won the last three championships but seemed stumped by
IndyCar’s new car through the first four races. In breaking out Sunday
for his 31st victory, he’s now in a tie with Sebastien Bourdais and
Paul Tracy on the all-time wins list.
One more win will move Franchitti into seventh place in the record
books. The only drivers ahead of him? The giants of open-wheel racing:
three Unsers, two Andrettis and A.J. Foyt, the all-time wins leader.
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