Young Marco Ends Up 12th After Long Night At Richmond

RICHMOND, Va. — Dan Wheldon and Marco Andretti had hopes of a good finish at Richmond. Wheldon wanted to turn his season around from his crash and 11th-place finish at Iowa, and Andretti was hoping to capitalize on his second-place finish at Iowa.
“Any time you have a good result boosts your spirits,” Wheldon said of Andretti. “That’s the first oval race he’s finished, so that’s certainly good for him. It’s a little tough to say he finished second because of attrition because at the end of the day, he didn’t crash. Myself and Tony Kanaan, we went off on our own, and Marco didn’t, so this is a big confidence boost for him.”
It’s easy to forget that Andretti is just 20 years old. But with Mario as his grandfather and Michael as his father, much is expected from a race driver when his last name is Andretti.
“It’s been a disastrous season so far because I had high hopes of the championship,” Andretti said. “They weren’t unrealistic. It’s just the bad luck hit me all at once. It’s been a character-building season for sure. It’s been a very tough season for me so far, but I’m learning from Dario [Franchitti] and Tony Kanaan and how they achieve success.”
In the first four races of the season, Andretti parked his race car twice because of the handling was so bad he was “scared to death.’’ He went on to say “Superman couldn’t have driven that thing.’’
He finished fourth on the street course at St. Petersburg, Fla., in April and was a leading contender to win the 91st Indianapolis 500, pacing 13 laps before he was involved in a crash with Wheldon late in the race that sent Andretti’s car flying through the air before landing upside down.
Andretti was unhurt and finished 24th. He crashed at Milwaukee the following week, and a mechanical problem at Texas brought a 19th-place finish.
He finally lived up to his billing with a strong runner-up finish in the cornfields of Iowa.
“We finally saw a result, and we finally finished the race and nearly won the thing,’’ Andretti said. “There was a lot of misfortune for a lot of people, but it was a survival day and we did.”
Wheldon delivered with a third-place finish at Richmond, but Andretti struggled and finished 12th at a track where he was fourth last year.

• There were two incidents in Friday’s practice session, with Vitor Meira having front suspension failure for the second week in a row. This time he crashed in the third turn.
“Something failed, and I don’t want to speculate,” Meira said. “Our car had new parts. It feels like what happened in Iowa, but I don’t want to assume.”
Milka Duno, the slowest of the 19 cars at 160.352 miles per hour, also crashed in the first turn at the end of the second session.
“I was just trying the low line with the car, and I may have touched the yellow line,” Duno said. “I was getting comfortable. We were working with the car, and the team had learned so much today.”
 
• IndyCar President of Competition Brian Barnhart celebrated his birthday Saturday. So in the driver’s meeting, Helio Castroneves and Andretti attacked Barnhart with birthday cake, a prank which is commonly pulled on drivers celebrating their birthdays. Barnhart joked he may look into the incident to see if any drivers were involved.
Ironically in the race, Castroneves was nailed for a pit-road penalty that dropped him one lap down when he had to serve a drive-through penalty.
Once a lap down, he finished 11th.
“Helio was on pit road within the boundaries of pit lane and actually was free to stop his first pass through pit lane,” Barnhart explained. “The race control (radio) channel said that the No. 3 was OK to do a full stop, but they apparently chose not to and drove through. When he came back out we have to pack up (the field), but before we have the pack-up, he came back in and entered a closed pit and just did a splash (of Ethanol fuel) which is what you are supposed to do.
 “Then when he came back out we had the pack-up, so we opened the pits and everybody else comes back in and he instead goes down the front straightaway trying to get around them, but the No. 27 (leader Franchitti) beat him to the blend line, and the timing and scoring showed that right away, so we informed the teams that it was the No. 3 behind the No. 27, the No. 3 behind the No. 27. He passed him and drove on around him and in actuality pitted a lap ahead of where he should have been.”