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.
"I got caught up with John Andretti, and I'm not sure if he knew where I was. I was in the grey coming out of [turn] four, and his car just kept coming. Eventually, I got to the point where I had to turn left, but I know I was in the grey a lot because the rear got loose and I think I hit him. That was pretty hairy.
"It was one of those races where you had to be patient. Everybody seemed pretty good for the first 10-15 laps, then they started to tail off. When I had new tyres, my car was really, really loose for the first four, five laps on them, so I was so glad [the team] kept me out [at the fourth caution] because, on the restarts, I knew I'd be good [on warm tyres] because, whenever I had new tyres, I was terrible. Chip's not here so, if they'd have called me in, I might have pretended I didn't hear and stayed out....
![Dan Wheldon - Target Chip Ganassi Racing [pic credit: IRL/Snoddy]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/458988.jpg)
