INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – Teammates Tony Kanaan and Marco Andretti tangled on the track, perhaps costing Kanaan a chance to win. Danica Patrick – all 100 pounds of her – went looking for a fight before cooler heads prevailed.

Scott Dixon took the victory, but the walls at Indianapolis Motor Speedway claimed plenty of trophies in a mayhem-filled Indianapolis 500 on Sunday.

No one was injured seriously in the seven crashes and spinouts that marred the race, but Kanaan still paid a heavy price. He went from leading the race to crashing out of it in a matter of seconds.

Kanaan put the blame on his teammate and didn’t seem to take any comfort in the fact that Andretti apparently said he was sorry over the team’s radio.

Kanaan was seething, but his display of anger was nothing compared to Patrick’s after she was run into by Ryan Briscoe while trying to leave pit lane late in the race.

A furious Patrick then got out of her car and walked purposefully toward Briscoe’s pit for what was shaping up as a confrontation with his crew. She removed her gloves and seemed ready to rumble before track security personnel directed her back to her own pit area.

“I was ready to take it all off, my helmet and everything – because it’s hard to talk through the helmet,” Patrick said. “It’s probably a better idea that I didn’t make it all the way down there anyway because, well, as you guys know, I’m a little emotional.”

Patrick said she was waiting for Briscoe to come talk to her about the incident. After watching a replay, Briscoe seemed convinced that Patrick had plenty of room to move over and didn’t seem willing to offer an apology.

With that, all the hype and momentum Patrick carried into the race didn’t mean a thing. Even before the crash, Patrick had spent much of the race complaining about her car.

“I am SLOW!,” Patrick protested over her in-car radio with about 60 laps left. “I am DAMN SLOW!”

Patrick made the leap to legitimacy with an IndyCar series victory earlier this season, but she’ll have to wait a year for another shot at Indianapolis 500 stardom.

Patrick’s complaints about her car started early, and her crew made a wing adjustment intended to give her car more top-end speed. That helped boost her to eighth place at the race’s halfway point.

But Patrick struggled to hang onto her position from there, and was warned by Indy Racing League officials not to weave back and forth to keep Helio Castroneves from passing her with 80 laps remaining.

Then she launched into her team again for giving her a car that just wasn’t fast enough, but seemed to disprove her own point when she climbed to sixth on a re-start. Then the crash ended her day.

Patrick, who already was making a name for herself with a combination of good looks and aggressive driving, finally broke through with a victory in an IndyCar series race in Japan earlier this year – making her the first female driver to win a major open-wheel race.

The victory earned Patrick an overwhelming amount of media attention heading into the biggest race of the year. Winning Indy could have catapulted Patrick even further into mainstream sports stardom – and helped the IndyCar series in its ongoing attempts to steal fan attention back from NASCAR.

But she needed speed, and her team simply couldn’t find enough of it.

Patrick wasn’t considered a favorite going into Sunday’s race, despite all the attention and momentum. She qualified fifth, but didn’t seem to have the speed to match the Ganassi team cars driven by Scott Dixon and Dan Wheldon in practice this month.

And on Sunday, Patrick’s car couldn’t quite keep up with those driven by her Andretti-Green Racing teammates, Tony Kanaan and Marco Andretti.

But Patrick didn’t have nearly as bad a day as fellow female driver Sarah Fisher.

Fisher, who has struggled to secure firm financial commitments from sponsors all month, had trouble getting her car started before Sunday’s race, spun out early on, then ran into Tony Kanaan just past the race’s halfway point.

In a television interview after the crash, Kanaan said he felt badly for Fisher.

“I feel so sorry for her,” Kanaan said. “I drove back in the ambulance with her, and she was just crying so much. She put so much into it, and I just feel bad for her. She apologized to me, and I should be the one apologizing to her.”

Milka Duno, the third female driver in Sunday’s race, spun out in the race’s closing laps.

Patrick’s near-rumble was perhaps the race’s most memorable moments, but it was hardly the only spectacle at Indy this year.

Early on, rookie Graham Rahal hit the wall hard, and A.J. Foyt IV had to scramble out of his car after it caught fire in the pits – sending the newest generation of two of the sport’s most famous names home early.

Rahal, son of 1986 Indy 500 winner Bobby Rahal, tried to pass a car on the outside of Turn 4 and slammed into the wall on the race’s 37th lap, knocking both right-side tires loose. Rahal blamed slower cars driven by Alex Lloyd and Mario Moraes for not staying out of the way.

“Finally I got the opportunity to get by those few guys, and I thought our car was pretty good,” Rahal said. “Lloyd, for some reason, wouldn’t stay right on the bottom, and when he just came up a couple of feet, I reacted slightly and got in the (debris).”

With that, all the hype and momentum Patrick carried into the race didn’t mean a thing. Even before the crash, Patrick had spent much of the race complaining about her car.

“I am SLOW!,” Patrick protested over her in-car radio with about 60 laps left. “I am DAMN SLOW!”

Patrick made the leap to legitimacy with an IndyCar series victory earlier this season, but she’ll have to wait a year for another shot at Indianapolis 500 stardom.

Patrick’s complaints about her car started early, and her crew made a wing adjustment intended to give her car more top-end speed. That helped boost her to eighth place at the race’s halfway point.

But Patrick struggled to hang onto her position from there, and was warned by Indy Racing League officials not to weave back and forth to keep Helio Castroneves from passing her with 80 laps remaining in the race.

Then she launched into her team again for giving her a car that just wasn’t fast enough, but seemed to disprove her own point when she climbed to sixth on a re-start. Then the crash ended her day.

Patrick, who already was making a name for herself with a combination of good looks and aggressive driving, finally broke through with a victory in an IndyCar series race in Japan earlier this year – making her the first female driver to win a major open-wheel race.

The victory earned Patrick an overwhelming amount of media attention heading into the biggest race of the year. Winning Indy could have catapulted Patrick even further into mainstream sports stardom – and helped the IndyCar series in its ongoing attempts to steal fan attention back from NASCAR.

But she needed speed, and her team simply couldn’t find enough of it.

Patrick wasn’t considered a favorite going into Sunday’s race, despite all the attention and momentum. She qualified fifth, but didn’t seem to have the speed to match the Ganassi team cars driven by Scott Dixon and Dan Wheldon in practice this month.

And on Sunday, Patrick’s car couldn’t quite keep up with those driven by her Andretti-Green Racing teammates, Tony Kanaan and Marco Andretti.

But Patrick didn’t have nearly as bad a day as fellow female driver Sarah Fisher.

Fisher, who has struggled to secure firm financial commitments from sponsors all month, had trouble getting her car started before Sunday’s race, spun out early on, then ran into Tony Kanaan just past the race’s halfway point.

In a television interview after the crash, Kanaan said he felt badly for Fisher.

“I feel so sorry for her,” Kanaan said. “I drove back in the ambulance with her, and she was just crying so much. She put so much into it, and I just feel bad for her. She apologized to me, and I should be the one apologizing to her.”

Milka Duno, the third female driver in Sunday’s race, spun out in the race’s closing laps.