HILDEBRAND’S GIFT TO WHELDON
“WHELDON LED JUST ONE QUARTER OF A LAP – THE MOST IMPORTANT QUARTER OF ALL”
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The closing laps of the Centenary event were epic as a variety of strategy gambles failed to mesh with yellow-flag periods, leaving some great driver/team combinations, such as Chip Ganassi Racing pair Dario Franchitti and Scott Dixon, trying to coax their cars home on fumes.
After Danica Patrick was forced to give up the lead with 12 laps to go, Bertrand Baguette took over at the front until lap 197, when his Conquest Racing Dallara was forced into taking on a late splash-and-dash.
That left rookie JR Hildebrand in the lead for Panther Racing, a team that had finished second in the previous three 500s with 2005 winner Dan Wheldon. Wheldon, by now a part-time driver racing for Bryan Herta Autosport in his first race of the year – and only the squad’s second ever Indycar event – was second and closing, but nowhere near fast enough to catch the 2009 Indy Lights champion.
Then, with just a few hundred yards to go, Hildebrand went to lap Charlie Kimball through the short chute between Turns 3 and 4 on the final lap. He got up into the grey and, with 199 laps’ worth of detritus now stuck to his tyres, drifted up into the wall out of the final corner.
His momentum was such that he would still tricycle across the line in second, but by then Wheldon, who had run in the top six all day, was past and into the lead, having led just one quarter of a lap – the most important quarter of all! There have been few finishes more dramatic than that anywhere.