Dan Wheldon has admitted that he is hoping to get a run of good results having bounced back from second successive practice accident to claim victory in Sunday's Iowa Corn 250.
The win, Wheldon's second of an IndyCar campaign increasingly dominated by his Target Chip Ganassi Racing team, edged the Briton closer to the overall title fight headed by team-mate Scott Dixon, but he admitted that he needed to find the Kiwi's sort of form if he was to mount a concerted challenge.
"You need to get on a roll, like Scott's been on such a roll," Wheldon explained, "When everything goes for you in this business, even when you make wrong decisions, they turn out to be the right decisions. It's about getting on that roll and, hopefully, we can do that now.
"I'm surprised [by Ganassi's five wins in nine races] because it is so competitive and, although we've won five races, we've worked really, really hard for them each time. The team work really hard - I'm not saying other teams don't, but they work really hard on giving Scott and I incredibly competitive equipment because it
is so close.
"When you're talking hundredths of seconds and you've got the guys working all the time to give you competitive equipment, it really does make a difference, and I think Scott and I really kind of feed off that.
"There's still a long way to go in the championship, but I've been around this business long enough to know now that, if you get on a roll, everything's great - but, if you're not on that roll, it's really difficult. We've got to maintain that momentum. There are going to be a lot of cars that are going to be competitive - Penske is renowned for being competitive at Richmond - so we have to work real hard in our practice sessions to make sure we can try and be the competitive cars and race out front because it's much easier out front than it is in the middle of the pack."
The Briton, series champion in 2005, had to come from that pack to win on Sunday, although he admits that he had been helped by the cancellation of qualifying after rain continued in the flood-hit Iowa area. Following his flip at Texas, Wheldon was caught up in another accident on Saturday, leaving his car too badly damaged to continue into the timed session and leaving him relying on his back-up. When the rain returned, however, he accepted third place as the grid was decided according to the point standings.
"We had a little bit of misfortune in practice when Bruno Junqueira's suspension broke, and I kind of got collected in that," he said, "But, from the time, the guys rolled out the spare car, it was very fast.
"We had a couple ups and downs in the race. I got caught up on the outside of Tony [Kanaan], which kind of put me in the grey and nearly got me caught up in the wall, but I was able to survive that and marched on.
