Female drivers suffer stormy day at track

Danica Patrick repeated her eighth-place finish from 2006.

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Maybe this is the surest sign that women racers are no different than their male rivals: Danica Patrick, Sarah Fisher and Milka Duno were all ticked off after the Indianapolis 500.

Patrick, right on the tail of leader Tony Kanaan after a three-hour rain delay, wound up eighth for the second year in a row, doomed by less-than-stellar pit stops, lapped traffic and another round of storms that lopped off the final 34 laps.

“This elusive win keeps sitting on my shoulder,” Patrick said, shaking her head. “Eighth is not anything like we wanted, especially since we were running second behind Tony for a long time. It’s definitely a disappointing day.”

Patrick has three straight top-10 finishes in the 500, beginning with her memorable fourth-place showing as a rookie when she was leading in the closing laps but had to back off the throttle to conserve fuel.

This time, she dipped into the pits with the rest of the leaders on lap 155, only to be left behind when Franchitti and several other cars stayed on the track. Their strategy paid off when two more cautions slowed the pace, and the rain returned, ending the race.

Lapped traffic blues

“This is probably the most frustrating of all,” Patrick said, the words rolling slowly off her lips for emphasis. “I really felt like I had a chance. I really had a fast car. But silly lapped traffic got in the way. These guys are hanging on to their cars for dear life and not looking around very much.”

Fisher, returning to Indy after a two-year absence, finished two laps down in 18th place with a car that never had any chance of running with the leaders. Still, it was the best showing of her six Brickyard starts.

Not that it made her feel any better.

“Nothing was going our way,” Fisher said. “I thought we had a car that was capable of finishing maybe 15th or 16th, but the speed just wasn’t there. We’ve got to get better at that. We’ve got to have the pit stops go our way, all the calls and everything attached to that. It just has to be flawless at Indy. Today, it just wasn’t.”

Attention-getter

Venezuelan Duno got plenty of attention heading into her first Indy 500, and it wasn’t all positive. She crashed in practice, struggled to get up to speed in qualifying and started 29th from the next-to-last row.

She was by far the slowest car on Carburetion Day — Friday’s final shakedown — and there was speculation that Indy Racing League officials would order her off the track if she couldn’t keep up.

Duno not only stayed with the back-markers, she passed a few to get as high as 22nd in the 33-car field. Then came a rookie mistake; she was caught speeding on pit road. A short time later, there was the gaffe that ended her day.

As the green flag waved after a caution, Duno came up too quickly on a pack of cars in turn one, tried to back off too late and wound up sliding into the outside wall.

“I’m so sad because my team did a fantastic job with the car,” Duno said. “I wanted to finish the race. So, no, I’m not happy.”