IRL Kansas Results ***SPOILER***

(from autosport)

(what is is with wheels this past weekend, if you saw the video on SpeedReport, if Danica's pit crew had not found the stripped studs it would have been a major disaster on track)


Dan Wheldon took advantage of a timely caution period to unseat his teammate from the lead and win the Road Runner Turbo Indy 300 on Sunday at Kansas Speedway.

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

 

I will get flamed, but I do not consider golf a sport, to me its a pasttime like hiking. The first real athelete to appear in years in golf is Tiger, he is comparable to anyone in any real sport. But the rest, even NASCAR has pit crew members in better condition.

 

I have no idea who John Daly may be?

Is he the one with the Comedy Channel talk show??

Never heard his name in golf tournament reports (is that what they call them, tournaments?), maybe a poker player on those late night shows, or is he a pool player? Who, what, is he Michael? I'm not even going to bother to Google him. My 18 year old daughter didn't know who he was, that tells me this guy is, well, so far, a nobody.

Then no, he is no friggin athelat, athelete, whatever. He is someone with a pasttime. Kinda like going to strip bars, that is a pasttime, and I am no athelete, and I have many pasttimes. All of them legal.

Maybe not all of them.

But none of them could be called perverse, that is all that matters.

 

Là vous allez encore, prenant des choses du contexte.

Si son équipage ne l'a pas tiré de la course à cause d'une voiture défectueuse, et si elle n'a pas eu une voiture défectueuse, elle aurait battu 75% des hommes, donc de nouveau, vous avez tort.

S'il vous plaît, au moins être honnête, ne pas être politicien.

 

Ted, if Hemingway was alive today, he would have included pole dancing in this list. Those ladies have incredible muscles! And bullfighting, he would have submitted to PETA, so that one is no longer on the list.

 

Honesty, is not the policy on FChat.