Wheldon is the Mileage Pro at Richmond

Can you imagine driving more than 171 miles per hour average on a ¾ mile racetrack? When we saw the IRL cars race on the one mile track at Nazareth, Pennsylvania, it was unbelievable that they were traveling at speeds of over 173 miles per hour at that difficult facility. Helio Castroneves qualified the #3 Penske/Marlboro Toyota on the pole at the ¾ mile Richmond International Speedway with a speed of 171.202 miles per hour. When we were at Nazareth last summer, you had to sit way up in the grandstands to be able to really see the racecars as they went by. If you were sitting down low near the catch fence, the racecars were just a blur, because they were traveling at such high speeds. The only way you could take pictures of the cars as they went by was to wait for a caution period, then they were only doing a paltry 70 miles per hour, but you still had to be pretty quick to get a good picture.

Dan Wheldon, last season's Rookie of the Year, won his second race of the season at Richmond for his Andretti Green team by banking on fuel mileage, racing the final 121 laps on the ¾ mile track with one 30 gallon tank of methanol.

I've written before how the IRL seems to be following the lead of NASCAR, and the finish of the race wasn't any exception. After what he perceived to be the end of a late race caution, the flagman gave the green and white flags together signifying a restart with just one lap to go, while the caution lights were still flashing. Brian Barnhart, Senior Vice President of IRL Racing Operations, nullified the hasty restart and the positions gained during the restarted laps by making the call to end the race under caution. Confusion reigns in the racing world today, due to the ever-present human error factor.

Following Wheldon across the finish line were Vitor Meira, #17 Rahal-Letterman Honda; Helio Castroneves, #3 Penske Toyota; Bryan Herta, #7 XM Honda; Tony Kanaan, #11 Andretti Green Honda; Buddy Rice, #15 Rahal-Letterman Honda; Adrian Fernandez, #5 Telmex Honda; Scott Dixon, #1 Ganassi Racing Toyota; Scott Sharp, #9 Delphi Toyota; Felipe Giaffone, #24 Dryer and Reinbold Chevy. The top ten starters and how they finished:

Go To Page: 1 2