Remembering Dan Wheldon and his last and most amazing win

By:

David Malsher-Lopez

Oct 16, 2021, 7:16 PM

Saturday, Oct. 16th, marks the 10th anniversary Dan Wheldon’s death. David Malsher-Lopez pays tribute, then asks Wheldon’s race engineer from 2011, Todd Malloy, to recall that magical second victory at the Indianapolis 500.

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Wheldon led an Andretti Green Racing 1-2-3-4 at St. Pete in 2005, and shared the moment with his teammates Bryan Herta, Dario Franchitti and Tony Kanaan.

Photo by: Michael Voorhees - IRL

Once upon a time, I reckoned Dan Wheldon was superficial, a pretty boy who found racing and winning came too easy because he was driving for a top team in the Indy Racing League. His winsome, cheeky smile, his bonhomie with TV cameramen and interviewers, his tendency to say only the right things in public, the kidding around with teammates… From a distance, it all came across as somewhat forced and artificial.

David Malsher-Lopez

David Malsher-Lopez is Motorsport.com’s U.S. editor, covering the NTT IndyCar Series and IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. Since completing journalism college in 1994, he has worked for Autosport, TRMG, Motor Sport, Autosport (again) and Racer, before joining Motorsport.com in 2015… where he has found himself enjoying a third spell writing for Autosport. Over the course of those 27 years, he has served as a journalist, sub-editor, features editor, deputy editor and editor. In 2015, he also wrote Will Power’s biography. David lives with his wife Sophia in California and when not writing about racing, he will be found reading about planes and classic cars, attending airshows, listening to a wide variety of music or watching cop shows from the ’70s. He intends to one day own a grand piano, an Airedale terrier and a vintage Pontiac. He doesn’t do Facebook and doesn’t understand Instagram but can be found @DavidMalsher on Twitter.