Wheldon, meanwhile, was involved in the final on-track incident, which caused the race to finish under yellow as the rain returned, having made contact with Marco Andretti. The Briton ended his day in the pits with damage to the #10 Target car's front left corner and was eventually credited with 22nd place.
“It's very disappointing," Wheldon sighed, "I was running on the outside of him and, unfortunately, he hit me. Thank goodness he's all right though."
The 2005 race winner had set the early practice pace along with team-mate Dixon, but just couldn't find the magic touch when he needed to.
"It didn't seem anything we did today worked very well for us," Wheldon continued, "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 and, thankfully, it's coming up pretty soon so we can just move on.”
Dixon now leads Wheldon by a single point, with 500 winner Franchitti closing the gap on both to lie just three points off the series lead.
