Scott Dixon takes over the IndyCar Series Championship lead with a second place finish at the Indianapolis 500 in a bizarre day that saw a mid-race (lap 113) three hour rain delay.

Dixon led three times for a total of 11 laps and was sitting in second spot and poised to make a move on leader Dario Franchitti on the final restart when an accident behind them brought out the caution and rain began to fall once again to bring the 91st Running of the Indianapolis 500 to halt on lap 166. The second place finish was Dixon's best at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Dan Wheldon, involved in the final on track incident after contact with Marco Andretti, ended his day in the pits with damage to the car's front left side and was credited with 22nd place finish. Wheldon does however remain in the hunt of the season title as he takes the second spot in the standings just one point behind his team-mate.

Scott Dixon
“Finishing second is definitely great and means a lot coming this high up the grid at such a great place and against such great competitors. But just a frustrating day, in general, and frustrating for the guys at Team Target, the amount of work they put in, all of them. And we just came up second. You know, one of those days. I think for us we initially started the race pretty aggressive. So we went quite low downforce, I think similar to some of the other fast guys. In the first part of the race, we were quite sketchy, all over the place and, you know, in traffic, so that made it tough. We just wanted to sort of stay up at the top, conserve a bit of fuel, and that worked out pretty good. We saved some fuel, got that yellow, jump up to second, and the car was coming along really well."

"What a day. The rain came three times and then finally ended the race. It was just frustrating, no flow to the race, a lot of back markers causing cautions, restart after restart. It's one of those days where you feel you haven't even raced, sort of like being on the freeway and watching people smash into each other."

"Yeah, I think getting in the traffic and people -- the hardest thing I think today was probably for the guys sitting on the stand and trying to work out what strategy you needed. I was always on the radio asking how far away the rain was, they were pretty accurate how that was going. But it's not the way you want to drive a race, think about the weather conditions and what other people are doing."

Dan Wheldon
"It's very disappointing for me and for the Target team. I was running on the outside of him (Marco Andretti). Unfortunately, he hit me. Thank goodness he's all right. It didn't seem anything we did today worked very well for us. It was just one of those days when we couldn't seem to do anything right. We were definitely trying hard. It's just unfortunate day for us. I'm very disappointed. That's the way this place works sometimes. I wanted to win the Indianapolis 500, but now we'll focus on the championship. We have Milwaukee coming up. Thankfully that's coming up pretty soon so we can just move on.”

Chip Ganassi
"Even though I am disappointed about not winning, I am very happy for Scott and the whole Target Chip Ganassi racing team and the second place finish. I think we just ran out of sunshine and that last caution didn't help either. It is also unfortunate for Dan but those are just some of the things that can get you in a race this long. We just now need to refocus on the IndyCar title chase. A big congratulations to Dario and everyone over AGR."

Press Release
Ganassi Racing