BACK TO NORMAL; Buddy Rice beats teammate Vitor Meira in an old-fashioned IRL photo finish.(Motorsports)

Byline: CURT CAVIN

The Indy Racing League got back to looking like the Indy Racing League on Sunday at pristine Kansas Speedway. The photo finish of the Argent Mortgage Indy 300 was reminiscent of the league's glory days, prior to engine and aerodynamic changes that were made in May to slow the cars down and keep them from taking flight.

Buddy Rice held off Rahal Letterman Racing teammate Vitor Meira in a 15-lap shootout that came down to which car had the most momentum coming off the fourth turn. Meira, who was positioned in the outside lane, had it on the 199th lap, but Rice had it the next time by-when it counted most.

Rice's margin at the finish was 0.0051 second, the second closest in IRL history (the other being Sam Hornish Jr.'s 0.0024-second advantage over Al Unser Jr. at Chicagoland Speedway in 2002). None of the league's closest 10 finishes had come this season. The closest this year, Hornish's win over Helio Castroneves at Homestead, came before the rule changes.

Rice's winning margin was so close that many among the estimated crowd of 50,000 at Kansas couldn't separate the two. Bobby Rahal certainly couldn't, as he celebrated what he thought was Meira's first victory in the series while standing in the Brazilian's pit. But Rahal noted that he was some 500 yards away from the finish line and didn't have the best perspective. A timing and scoring camera showed the margin was about six inches, so Rahal can be excused for bad vision.

So can Meira. From his perspective, it was a tie. He said it took about 10 seconds for team officials to inform him that it was Rice heading to victory lane. Meira, who finished a career-best second for the second consecutive race, was too tired to be disappointed. He said the final 10 or 12 laps "felt like a hundred.''

Meira deserved to win though Rice led a race-high 83 laps. Meira built a 5.4-second lead in the middle stage of the race before incurring a problem on his second of three pit stops, which came on lap l07. As he went to leave, the car stalled. He lost at least 12 seconds to Rice and fellow front-runner Tony Kanaan of Andretti Green Racing.