A cut tire was the key to Dario Franchitti’s victory in one of the most chaotic Indy 500s of recent years.  The race started with pole sitter Helio Castroneves and Tony Kannan swapping the lead on several occasions. The race would involve a large number of lead changes and different leaders over the course of the afternoon, with Kannan appearing to be the most dominant car on track. However due to a large number of cautions, 11 in total, mainly the result of back markers getting offline and sliding into the wall, no real rythmn was established.The real story of the race was the rain, with the first heavy downpour arriving on Lap 111 with the AGR trio of Kannan, Marco Andretti and Danica Patrick in the first three places.  Just as the red flag flew the strongly running Franchitti cut a tire but didn’t have time to replace it before the cars were parked.

After a delay of three hours the race was resumed with Franchetti making an immediate pit stop to replace the cut tire. This put him “out of sequence” with the field and at the back of the pack.  What followed was an impressive charge as he picked off one car at a time. The task was made easier when several of the leaders, including Kannan and Patrick, pitted dropping them back into the field. Kannan became invloved in another back markers incident while Patrick fought back up to an 8th place finish. Marco Andretti tangled with pre-race favorite Dan Wheldon and ended up airborne and inverted before landing on all four wheels on the speedway infield.

By lap 137 Franchitti was  now out front with a second heavy rain fall forecast. The rain duely arrived around thirty laps later and the race was once again red-flagged, this time for good.

The Top 10 finishers were:

1. Dario Franchitti
2. Scott Dixon
3. Helio Castroneves
4. Sam Hornish Jr.
5. Ryan Briscoe
6. Scott Sharp
7. Thomas Scheckter
8. Danica Patrick
9. Davey Hamilton
10. Vitor Meria

Dan Wheldon firmly displayed his determination to reclaim his IndyCar title with a dominant perfomance at Kansas. Andretti-Green Racing’s Tony Kanaan, fresh of his win in Japan, started on pole, but his lead only lasted 8 laps before Wheldon blasted past.

Wheldon’s only real challenge came from his Ganassi team mate Scott Dixon, who was hampered by a drive through penalty for entering the pit-lane too late and too agressively. Kanaan’s day was ruined by a pit-line collision between himself and team-mate Danica Patrick, the direct result of an inattentive crew member who waved Patrick out into the path of the oncoming Kanaan. 

Such was the strength of Wheldon’s dominance that he lapped everyone upto the 4th place car of Dixon.

The Top 10 finishers were:

1.  Dan Wheldon (Ganassi)
2.  Dario Franchitti (Andretti-Green)
3.  Helio Castroneves (Penske)
4.  Scott Dixon (Ganassi)
5.  Tomas Scheckter (Vision)
6.  Sam Hornish Jr.  (Penske)
7.  Danica Patrick (Andretti-Green)
8.  Vitor Meira (Panther)
9.  AJ Foyt IV  (Vision)

10.  Jeff Simmons (Rahal-Letterman)   

The IRL’s annual visit to the Twin-Rings facility in Motegi, Japan provided an opportunity for the Andretti-Green Team to show that the off-season talk about them returning to the front of the pack had substance. The AGR squad proved quick in qualifying with all four cars taking top 10 grid positions.

Once the race started for real, after a short delay after home-town hero Kosuke Matsuura had hit the wall at Turn One, Lap One, it looked like it might be another Penske / Ganassi battle. But Tony Kanaan had other ideas and made his way to the front where he swapped the lead with Gannasi’s Dan Wheldon for the majority of the race.

The real drama came with just 14 laps to go as all the lead pack started diving for the pits for a lat minute splash-and-go fuel stop. First to blink was Wheldon, then Helio Castroneves followed quickly by Kanaan. After Kanaan, Sam Hornish Jr. and Scott Dixon made their stops. But canny fuel management meant that Kanaan’s stop was the shortest and after all the stops cycled around he ended up in front. The AGR car managed to hold on ahead of the fast charging Wheldon to take the victory.

The Top 10 finishers were:

1. Tony Kanaan (Andretti-Green)
2. Dan Wheldon  (Ganassi)
3. Dario Franchitti (Andretti-Green)
4. Scott Dixon (Ganassi)
5. Sam Hornish Jr. (Penske)
6. Scott Sharp (Rahal-Letterman)
7. Helio Castroneves (Penske)
8. Jeff Simmons (Rahal-Letterman)
9. Tomas Scheckter (Vision)
10. Buddy Rice (Dreyer & Reinbold)

Helio Castroneves proved to be the dominante force on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida for the second race of the IRL season. The Penske driver lead the race from the early stage and held it for most of the race.

At around lap 35 Castroneves did find himself behind an out of sequence Dan Wheldon but gently pushed Wheldon aside on a restart to regain and hold on to his lead. Wheldon’s team-mate Scott Dixon appeared to have the fastest car on cicruit but never managed to get to grips with the circuit or find any passing opportunities.

Darren Manning, made an impressive return to the series in the under funded and under developed AJ Foyt Racing car, running as high as third for much of the race before a uncharacteristic spin in the closing laps.

The Top 10 finishers were:

1.  Helio Castroneves  (Penske)
2.  Scott Dixon (Ganassi)
3.  Tony Kanaan  (Andretti-Green)
4.  Marco Andretti  (Andretti-Green)
5.  Dario Franchitti   (Andretti-Green)
6.  Tomas Scheckter (Vision)
7.  Sam Hornish Jr  (Penske)
8.  Danica Patrick (Andretti-Green)
9.  Dan Wheldon   (Ganassi)
10.  Buddy Rice  (Dreyer & Reinbold)

Here at The Speed Blog we thought it might be a fun exercise to come up with a method for comparing and ranking the achievments of  drivers across the various series we cover.

We have set up a scheme that compares top 10 finishes in Formula 1, World Rally,  NASCAR, IRL, ChampCar and NHRA, and aggregates scores based on the number of events competed in. Each month, between March and November, we will present the Driver Rankings for that month, plus the Year to Date rankings.

As March is the first month, then this month’s results also reflect the year-to-date results.

Speed Blog Driver Rankings – Top 10 (March 2007)

1. Jimmie Johnson (NASCAR)
2. Jeff Gordon (NASCAR)
3. Jeff Burton (NASCAR)
4. Matt Kenseth (NASCAR)
5. Tony Stewart (NASCAR)
6. Kyle Busch (NASCAR)
7. Dan Wheldon (IRL)
8. Kimi Raikkonen (F1)
9. Ron Capps (NHRA)
10. Sebastian Loeb (WRC)