Wheldon closes in on title, sets IRL season win record

JOLIET, Ill. -- Dan Wheldon kept his composure through the tense moments and left the track with a record and, unofficially, a championship.

Wheldon set an Indy car mark Sunday with his sixth victory this season and all but clinched his first IRL championship, beating Helio Castroneves and Sam Hornish Jr. in a tight finish to win the PEAK Antifreeze Indy 300 at Chicagoland Speedway.

"It's difficult in this series," Wheldon said. "To have won six is a very proud moment for me. To win six races is something I'll look back on and think that was a strong season."

Wheldon beat Castroneves by about a hood's length, with Hornish taking third place.

Wheldon will win the points title simply by taking to the track at Watkins Glen in two weeks. With Sunday's victory, he broke a tie with Hornish for victories in a season.

Wheldon survived a pit-speed violation midway through the race, regained the lead on the 179th lap, held off a pack in the final stages, and finished in 1 hour, 47 minutes, 49.6126 seconds -- 0.0133 seconds ahead of Castroneves. It was the eighth closest finish in IRL history, with three of the top 10 coming at Chicagoland.

Castroneves and Hornish made it as difficult as they could.

"Close to the end, when I saw Sam coming, I tried to make a move," Castroneves said. "I tried to take advantage of the momentum, put me side by side with Dan. But it just was not enough. If we would be like NASCAR and have bumpers, I'm sure we would have won the race by now."

Hornish, a two-time winner at Chicagoland, was followed by Tomas Scheckter and Tony Kanaan.

Danica Patrick, starting from the pole, was sixth -- the seventh top-10 finish of her rookie season. The Roscoe, Ill., native lost the lead to Scheckter on the second lap and never regained it back despite a push late in the race. She jump started coming out of a pit after the 188th lap and was knocked down two spots to fourth.

"I definitely thought there was a chance to win," she said. "I looked at the yellow flag and was like this is great, this is positive, because all of a sudden I'm 20 feet away from the lead, as opposed to being 200 or 400 feet. ... Nevertheless, no matter what happened at the end, I think it was a great race."

Wheldon averaged 169.160 mph and led 88 laps. He has 570 points -- 102 more than defending series champion Kanaan.

After a fiery 20th-lap collision involving three cars, Ryan Briscoe was taken by helicopter to a Chicago-area hospital where he is to spend the night with a concussion, bruised lung and broken right and left clavicles.