The wildest ride that Panther Racing's Vitor Meira took all day on Sunday came in a moment of chaos that could have reshaped the entire outcome of the ABC Supply/AJ Foyt Indy 225 at the Milwaukee Mile.
The Brazilian's already-troubled run came to an abrupt end when he was sent airborne over the top of a spinning Marco Andretti just three laps from the chequered flag, in an accident that also included Ed Carpenter and Hideki Mutoh - and came perilously close to claiming race leader Ryan Briscoe.
Meira, who started in 26th because of a crash in qualifying, was making the most of an untested car, but was still a lapped 15th at the time of the incident, which was precipitated by contact between Andretti and Carpenter. The Brazilian attempted to avoid Andretti's spinning car, but struck the left-front corner and was catapulted into the air, landing on all four wheels before making contact with the wall.
“Getting airborne wasn't that bad,” Meira admitted, “It's landing that causes all the problems. I was just protecting myself, trying to finish the race and it looked like Marco and Ed got into one another off of Turn Two. I did everything I could to stay out of it, but it looked like Marco lit up the tyres trying to keep it off the wall and I couldn't avoid him.”
While the Panther driver was never in contention for a top ten finish, both Carpenter, running seventh, and Andretti, eighth, were on course for decent points. The critical moment came, however, when the polesitter tried to regain another position lost to an evil-handling car mid-race, but moved up into Carpenter and took both into the wall.
“It was just hard racing there at the end," the Vision Racing driver said, somewhat phlegmatically, "I was running seventh, I think, and trying to pass [Oriol] Servia for sixth. I kept getting good runs on him, but I just couldn't get the pass done into One. That kind of let Marco get up on me.
