By Dick Mittman
indy500.com

Friday, May 9, 2003

Rookie Dan Wheldon is not afraid of going 232 mph at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. But he is afraid his mother, Sue, will find out about it.

"Man, my mother would kill me if she knew I was going this fast," Wheldon said after turning a 231.108-mph practice lap May 6 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Wheldon, from Emberton, England, topped that two days later with a 232.202-mph circuit in his No. 26 Klein Tools/Jim Beam Dallara/Honda/Firestone. The fast lap not only upset his mother further, but it also sounded a warning that he could contend for the MBNA Pole on Saturday during qualifying runs for the 87th Indianapolis 500 on May 25.

Wheldon's mother works in karting in England, leading timing-and-scoring operations at some of the tracks. And Wheldon's dad, Clive, sometimes riles up his wife by keeping her informed of Dan's speedy progress at Indy.

"I guess when dad calls me up - he always calls me up on the way home from the Speedway - he asks me what average speed I was doing, and then he'll repeat it just to wind her up," Wheldon said. "I think she kind of gets a little ticked."

Wheldon, 24, was unimpressed with his fast laps. His speed Thursday was the fastest at the historic, 2.5-mile oval since the last turbocharged cars competed at Indy in 1996.

On both fast laps, Wheldon said a he got a tow from a car running in front of him and breaking the air for his car to move through it faster. His teammate and team co-owner, Michael Andretti, provided the tow Tuesday while 2001 MBNA Pole winner Scott Sharp's machine helped out Thursday.

Wheldon knows the speeds with a tow are inflated compared to running alone, which are the conditions during qualifying.

"It's fast, really fast," he said. "But it's definitely not that fast, probably not even close to that.

"But if I can pull this off on Saturday, I'll be really popular. Obviously, I'm going to have (teammates) Tony (Kanaan) and Michael pushing me hard, which will be interesting."

Wheldon, who has a mural of Richard the Lionhearted on the rear of his helmet, thinks he is driving for one of the top motorsports teams in the world, Andretti Green Racing. The team's technical director, Tino Belli, also is his engineer for the race. Belli insists on a structured approach to both qualifying and the race.

"He gets together with the engineers and keeps everybody happy," Wheldon said. "But he worked out a program for each driver (a fourth driver is Robby Gordon, substituting for injured Dario Franchitti), and he's pretty strict on making sure everybody sticks to it. Each night we'll get together - driver, engineer and team manager - and perhaps fine-tune it for the next day."

Wheldon believes a team with a young driver like him easily can get lost in the race without a regimented routine, noting what happened to the great Penske Racing team in 1995 when its two drivers failed to qualify for the "500."

"Tino is very set on making sure we follow the route that we've planned out," he said. Obviously, I'm a rookie, as well, so they are babysitting me extra carefully."

Wheldon went through the Rookie Orientation Program in April. He was driving in the 200-mph range, and the car wasn't set up quite right. He said it felt like he was doing 350.

But, he added, when the car is right and the air is cool, it's easy to drive at 230. He even joked that the media interviewing him would be able to drive it.

Still, the rapidly changing temperature of fickle Indiana weather, and its effect on the car's handling, is one thing that has baffled Wheldon as a first-time driver. He has experienced weather-related handling changes at other tracks but not to the extent that it occurs at the Speedway.

"But really the speed doesn't feel that fast," he said. "I would say if you're heading toward the wall out of control it would feel really bloody fast."

Wheldon made his IRL IndyCar^™ Series debut last year with Panther Racing, first as a test driver and then as a competitor in the last two races at Chicagoland and Texas. He finished 10th at Chicagoland, only .9387 of a second behind winner Sam Hornish Jr., and was 15th at Texas.

He was hired by Andretti Green Racing as a test driver and made his debut with the team last November at Homestead-Miami Speedway. He drove a strong first race for AGR last month at Twin Ring Motegi in Japan, starting fifth and finishing seventh in a substitute role for the injured Franchitti.

"I guess I'm kind of a laid-back kid," he said. "I probably feel less nervous here than I was at Motegi. At Motegi, that was my first run with the team. I enjoy being with the team very much, and I want to have a long future here, so I've definitely got to go out there and impress.

"I'm sure you'll have butterflies when you're sitting at the starting gate, but I'm sure when I pull out I'm just going to be focused on making sure I go fast as I can go.

"I don't want to come in and think, 'Man, if I just had not backed off there, or what have you.' I want to make sure when I come in I've got everything I could."

Wheldon is being groomed to replace his boss when Andretti steps out of his car into retirement as a team owner after this race.

"He's obviously my idol, but he's a teammate, too," Wheldon said of Andretti. "He's a great guy. He was very different than how I perceived him. Perhaps, I thought he was kind of too good to speak to people like me. He's very, very down to earth, like, I think he'll do anything for you. And he's very personable."

While Michael Andretti enjoys seeing Wheldon drive like the wind, the same can't be said for Wheldon's mom. But maybe she'll change her mind if her son is on the front row of the greatest race in the world.

Isn't that why she put him in a kart at 4 years old?

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