Last year’s series runner-up and former Champion Dan Wheldon dominated the IRL season opener under the lights at Homestead Speedway in Miami on Saturday night. This was Wheldon’s third consecutive victory at the venue and once again established him as one of the potential power houses for the season ahead. At one point a minor mistake in a pit stop dropped the Englishman down to ninth place but it only took him ten laps of flat out power driving to regain a lead he never relinquished.

Behind Wheldon the race was somewhat processional, especially for the IRL which is noted for its close finishes on oval tracks. Wheldon was followed home by team mate Scott Dixon with reigning champion Sam Hornish Jr . finishing a distant third in his Penske. Vitor Meria (Panther) and Tony Kannan (AGR) were the only two other finishers on the lead lap. Sarah Fisher marked her full time return to the IRL with a solid 11th place while media darling Danica Patrick hit the pit lane wall at pit-in and stomped off to the garage area in a somehat lackluster debut for her new team, Andretti-Green Racing. Fellow AGR star on the rise, Marco Andretti, pitted an ill-handling car early in the race.

The Top 10 finishers were as follows:

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

This entry was posted on Monday, March 26th, 2007 at 6:44 pm and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.