by CHRIS ESTRADA, Special to FOXSports.com

Updated: April 30, 2008, 9:22 PM EST 1 comment

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The British driver snapped a year-long winless streak on Sunday at Kansas Speedway, and in doing so, set himself up as one of the major favorites for the 92nd Indianapolis 500 on May 25. Meanwhile, his teammate Scott Dixon will have to shake off two straight races in which he led for most of the event but couldn't finish the job.

As for points leader Helio Castroneves, he rang up another solid fourth-place finish and now heads into Indy with a major head of steam. He's in perfect position to win his third Borg-Warner Trophy.

However, all of them will have to go through the Andretti Green Racing armada in order to win the "500." They've won two of the last three at the Brickyard and the team of Tony Kanaan, Marco Andretti, Danica Patrick and Hideki Mutoh will be ready after a Kansas weekend that was hit (Kanaan and Andretti in the top 5, Mutoh in 6th) and miss (Patrick finishing 19th to a mechanical failure).

The countdown to the world's greatest race has begun and there are plenty of stories to follow throughout May. But before we shift our focus to perhaps the most critical "500" in recent memory for open-wheel racing, let's look back at what we learned in Kansas City.

First lesson: Scott Dixon and Dan Wheldon are simply brutal when they have the right set-up.

The Target Chip Ganassi Racing duo had the drop on everyone else from the opening practice and when that happens, it often leads to a long race day for anyone not wearing the bulls-eye.

Once either of them get hot, they can rattle off several wins in a row and basically run away and hide. It happened with Wheldon in his 2005 title run for AGR and Dixon used an incredible summer last season to extend his battle with eventual champ Dario Franchitti to the final lap at Chicagoland Speedway.

Both of them will be out to avenge a tough outing at Indy last year. Dixon finished second to Franchitti in a rain-shortened race, while Wheldon triggered the race-ending caution on Lap 163 by sending Andretti tumbling down the backstretch. His car was also put out of commission as a result and he placed 22nd. It was the beginning of his '07 descent; an early-season title run (two wins in the first four events) disintegrated over the summer with three costly DNFs.

Wheldon is thinking points this year, and as a result, he doesn't believe his Kansas win may help out his chances at Indy as some might believe.

"The win is good, but the biggest thing that you notice about this year is, you know, pick up the wins when you can, but you can't have races out of the top five, because the points are just that close," he said after Sunday's event. "So it was important to score wins. I think this will help going into the month of May, but I don't think it means too much, because it's just going to be tight there."

Dan Wheldon is a favorite for the Indianapolis 500 after snapping a year-long winless streak Sunday at Kansas Speedway. (Orlin Wagner / Associated Press)

Still, it gives him momentum. That's the last thing the rest of the field needs to see.

However, if anybody can stop the Ganassi express, it's AGR. Their leader Kanaan was unable to catch Wheldon at the finish, but considering that his car had been running in the 10th-to-12th place range during the days leading up to the race, his runner-up performance was a big effort for him.

Add in the fact that team owner Michael Andretti wasn't too thrilled about the weekend according to TK, and you can be sure that the AGR quartet will be ready to roll for Indy.

"If we're going to be happy with the second and fifth place, why should we go racing?," Kanaan said. "We want to win. I think Michael (Andretti) was a racer before. If you remember the way he used to race, either it was a win or nothing. So that's the way he thinks, and that's the way we think as well.

"As a team, I think he's frustrated, because I don't think we did a good of enough job over the weekend. I mean, we had many, many mechanical problems with all of our cars. Then when you have the two Ganassi guys that unload the cars so fast, it's pretty hard to catch them when you don't run and I think that's what he meant."

Meanwhile, Andretti collected a strong finish when he needed it the most. As mentioned last week, he ran a solid race at Twin Ring Motegi after two bad events to start his 2006 rookie season. We know what happened when he came to Indy that year. The 21-year-old's fifth-place effort Sunday at Kansas gives him the chance to once again use Indy as the catalyst for a second-half resurgence.

"It was a struggle (Sunday)," he said. "It is these kind of days that you have to fight through that will really help you in the championship. The car balance wasn't the best, but we can't complain about fifth place."

Patrick has three Top 10 finishes in three career starts at Indy, so despite her problems at Kansas, she can be a contender on Memorial Day weekend. Mutoh did a good job with his sixth-place run, and with plenty of track time ahead of him at IMS, he could become a dark horse by the time the race rolls around.

Finally, we can't overlook the performance of Justin Wilson and Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing. Wilson's ninth-place finish was proof-positive that his N/H/L team is quickly progressing on ovals as expected.

Wilson was unable to hang with TCGR, AGR and Castroneves, but was able to dice it up in the 8th-to-12th positions for much of the race as well as gain valuable draft experience. Compared to his first oval run of the year at Homestead (15th place), Sunday's performance was, literally, night and day — it showed that N/H/L is going to become at least an outside threat on the ovals by mid-season.

However, they still have plenty of learning to do about all the little tricks of high-speed racing.

"As soon as we lost the draft, we struggled to keep up with the pace," Wilson said. "That's the part where these other teams have had years of experience on us, so hopefully we will work that out over the next couple of weeks and close some of that gap.

"We just need to work on some little things."

Even so, Kansas still showed us that a fourth major team in the IRL is on the horizon and that can only enhance the competition at Indy and beyond.