Dario Franchitti

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Dario Franchitti can't avoid talking about his race team's early season troubles and his hopes of getting his Chip Ganassi Dallara-Honda sorted out in time to win Sunday's Indianapolis 500. But Monday, while making the rounds with various media outlets, he was just as interested in chatting about the Baltimore Grand Prix, which has had its own troubles. It seems both the IndyCar driver and the race are coming from behind. "Is everything going well for Baltimore's race now?"

Scott Dixon had been in this position before - out front in the Honda Indy 200 at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. It was a very familiar place to be. But it wasn't comfortable. At one point, he was so far ahead, he thought he'd done something wrong. But it was just Dixon's dominance. Still, he said, he never thought he had the race won until he took the checkered flag. "Until it's over you never know," said Dixon, who won Sunday at the track for the fourth time in six years.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Have you seen the trailers for Ashley Judd's latest performance? They've been all over TV. Terrific stuff. She's a race driver's wife, running barefoot in a pouring rain down the pit lane at Indianapolis, soaking wet, hair and dress stuck to her skin, shivering more with joy than cold - just ecstatic. She's trying to get to victory lane to kiss her husband, who has just become the first Scotsman to win the Indianapolis 500 since Jim Clark in 1965, by gambling that rain would cut short the race before he ran out of fuel.

Here at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, four-time IZOD IndyCar champion Dario Franchitti and two-time champion and Chip Ganassi teammate Scott Dixon had breakfast Friday -- from boxes with their pictures on them. "This is so cool," Franchitti said, picking up a box of Kellogg's cereal called VROOMS and looking genuinely excited. "when I was a kid, I wanted to be on a cereal box!" Franchitti, Dixon and Juan Pablo Montoya, the 1999 CART Champion, who now races full-time in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series for Ganassi, will have their photos on a variety of Kellogg's breakfast foods in celebration of Target's 23rd anniversary in motorsports with Ganassi Racing.

Here at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, four-time IZOD IndyCar champion Dario Franchitti and two-time champion and Chip Ganassi teammate Scott Dixon had breakfast Friday -- from boxes with their pictures on them. "This is so cool," Franchitti said, picking up a box of Kellogg's cereal called VROOMS and looking genuinely excited. "when I was a kid, I wanted to be on a cereal box!" Franchitti, Dixon and Juan Pablo Montoya, the 1999 CART Champion, who now races full-time in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series for Ganassi, will have their photos on a variety of Kellogg's breakfast foods in celebration of Target's 23rd anniversary in motorsports with Ganassi Racing.

The Buffalo Bills will receive $78 million -- more than double their calculated 2006 operating income -- to play eight games in Toronto over the next five years. The payment to the Bills was disclosed for the first time in Rogers Communications' 2008 first-quarter report released yesterday. The Toronto-based company is part of a consortium that negotiated a deal with the Bills to have them play five regular-season and three preseason games, starting this year, at the downtown Rogers Centre.

In her 50th race, Danica Patrick, the speed world's golden girl, had a golden ride. Nursing her fuel tank so that she had a few extra RPMs when she needed them, she flew by Helio Castroneves on the high side just a few laps from the finish and cruised to victory in the rain-delayed Indy Japan 300 over the weekend, thus making history as the first woman to win a major auto race. For Patrick, the whirlwind is just beginning. In an interview on ESPN after the race she said she had initially intended to spend an evening enjoying Tokyo but that winning Saturday's race changed her plans.

As his fellow competitors bounced over man-made curbs and bumps, and sometimes bumbled their way through tight turns on the temporary street course at the inaugural IndyCar Baltimore Grand Prix, Will Power drove like a man out for a Sunday drive -- only faster. Power took his Team Penske Dallara on the smoothest ride of the afternoon. He didn't brush a wall, run over a curb or make contact with anyone else's fenders. "I didn't have any near misses," he said after averaging 75.046 mph and beating Oriol Servia to the finish of the 75-lap race by 10.2096 seconds.

INDIANAPOLIS — They were boos heard 'round the world, a stinging rebuke aimed at Danica Patrick at the same spot that five years earlier was the stage for making her among the most recognized women in sports. Moments after a dreary qualifying run for Sunday's Indianapolis 500, the driver was speaking on the public address system at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway when she blamed the problem on an "absolutely awful" race car and said "it's not my fault." It was a flash point for many sitting in the grandstands.

Having survived an earthquake and a hurricane last week, Baltimore Grand Prix CEO and president Jay Davidson joked that he was "waiting for the locusts. " What descended Friday amid the deafening roar of 180-mph Indy racecars along the 2.03-mile track were a few mild complaints about the pit road area, but otherwise high marks for the track's race readiness for the inaugural event. With a mix of smooth blacktop straightaways that reminded a few of the drivers of other street courses in Brazil and Canada, and slippery stretches of concrete that could make some spots downright treacherous if there's any precipitation this weekend, the track received mostly positive reviews before and after the practice sessions were concluded.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Dario Franchitti can't avoid talking about his race team's early season troubles and his hopes of getting his Chip Ganassi Dallara-Honda sorted out in time to win Sunday's Indianapolis 500. But Monday, while making the rounds with various media outlets, he was just as interested in chatting about the Baltimore Grand Prix, which has had its own troubles. It seems both the IndyCar driver and the race are coming from behind. "Is everything going well for Baltimore's race now?"

As his fellow competitors bounced over man-made curbs and bumps, and sometimes bumbled their way through tight turns on the temporary street course at the inaugural IndyCar Baltimore Grand Prix, Will Power drove like a man out for a Sunday drive -- only faster. Power took his Team Penske Dallara on the smoothest ride of the afternoon. He didn't brush a wall, run over a curb or make contact with anyone else's fenders. "I didn't have any near misses," he said after averaging 75.046 mph and beating Oriol Servia to the finish of the 75-lap race by 10.2096 seconds.

Having survived an earthquake and a hurricane last week, Baltimore Grand Prix CEO and president Jay Davidson joked that he was "waiting for the locusts. " What descended Friday amid the deafening roar of 180-mph Indy racecars along the 2.03-mile track were a few mild complaints about the pit road area, but otherwise high marks for the track's race readiness for the inaugural event. With a mix of smooth blacktop straightaways that reminded a few of the drivers of other street courses in Brazil and Canada, and slippery stretches of concrete that could make some spots downright treacherous if there's any precipitation this weekend, the track received mostly positive reviews before and after the practice sessions were concluded.

Will Power trailed IZOD IndyCar Series championship front-runner Dario Franchitti by 47 points entering the Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma. He moves on to the inaugural Baltimore Grand Prix on Sunday considerably closer. Power pulled away early, didn't have any issues on pit lane, withstood the lone restart challenge and went on to become the first two-time winner in seven years of the event on the 2.303-mile, 12-turn Infineon Raceway road course. With the bonus points for the pole start and leading the most laps (71 of 75)

INDIANAPOLIS — They were boos heard 'round the world, a stinging rebuke aimed at Danica Patrick at the same spot that five years earlier was the stage for making her among the most recognized women in sports. Moments after a dreary qualifying run for Sunday's Indianapolis 500, the driver was speaking on the public address system at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway when she blamed the problem on an "absolutely awful" race car and said "it's not my fault." It was a flash point for many sitting in the grandstands.

The Buffalo Bills will receive $78 million -- more than double their calculated 2006 operating income -- to play eight games in Toronto over the next five years. The payment to the Bills was disclosed for the first time in Rogers Communications' 2008 first-quarter report released yesterday. The Toronto-based company is part of a consortium that negotiated a deal with the Bills to have them play five regular-season and three preseason games, starting this year, at the downtown Rogers Centre.

Picking up speed into the fourth turn when the green flag waved on Lap 61, Scott Dixon planned to hold the line beside his teammate Dario Franchitti and then try to pull ahead out of the turn. But Franchitti got such a good start, Dixon had to change his plan. "He took off like a bloody cannon," Dixon said. "So then, the only option I had to do was to slip back inside. No one was expecting it. I was lucky he moved back over to the left, which left the inside open. And he couldn't defend.

In her 50th race, Danica Patrick, the speed world's golden girl, had a golden ride. Nursing her fuel tank so that she had a few extra RPMs when she needed them, she flew by Helio Castroneves on the high side just a few laps from the finish and cruised to victory in the rain-delayed Indy Japan 300 over the weekend, thus making history as the first woman to win a major auto race. For Patrick, the whirlwind is just beginning. In an interview on ESPN after the race she said she had initially intended to spend an evening enjoying Tokyo but that winning Saturday's race changed her plans.