The Associated Press

INDIANAPOLIS - As Sarah Fisher slowed with the rest of the Indianapolis 500 field during an early race caution, an unfamiliar but encouraging voice in her radio earpiece suggested she move up in the race. The advice wasn't from her pit crew. It came from a man claiming to be a fan.

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"Somebody named Tom got on the radio and told me to get up front," Fisher said.

A radio pirate who intercepted Fisher's race radio frequency chatted with her periodically throughout the five-minute caution, suggesting she needed to pass a few cars in advance of approaching rain and a race delay, she said.

"I was like, 'Hey, man, could you please get off the radio?"' Fisher said, laughing.

The man eventually complied.

The interruption was not as disruptive to Fisher as another radio problem. Before the pirate latched onto her frequency, contact with her pit crew was broken up by interference from the track's race broadcast, she said. That problem continued off and on most of the day.

Fisher was not flustered by the pirate's chatter, but said she might have reacted differently if the interruption had occurred during a green light instead of the caution, when cars may go no faster than 90 mph. Though the radio intrusion could be a violation of federal law, Fisher said she did not intend to press a complaint.

Fisher, the third woman ever to qualify for the 500, started 19th Sunday and finished 21st. It was her best 500 finish - and only the second 500 she has completed - in a career marked by three early retirements due to crashes.

HEARTBREAK: Michael Andretti propped himself up on the pit wall, staring glumly at the storm clouds collecting overhead. Another Indy heartbreak? You bet. Another case of the bad "Andretti Luck?" Michael wasn't buying it.

"It's not like luck beat us," Andretti said, conducting a familiar post-mortem in his garage at Indianapolis Speedway. "When you get beat fair and square, you can accept it. When you dominate the race and something stupid happens, that's when it's hard to accept."

In his first year as a full-time car owner, Andretti watched his four drivers run near the front all day at the rain-plagued Indy 500. But they weren't quite strong enough to hold off Buddy Rice, who now has as many wins at the Brickyard as the entire Andretti clan.

Rubbing a little salt in the wound, Andretti Green Racing cars were running in the next three spots when a severe line of thunderstorms wiped out the final 20 laps of the 200-lap race. Tony Kanaan could only follow Rice across the finish line, about a half-car length behind as yellow and checkered flags waved above them. Dan Wheldon and Bryan Herta coasted across in the next two spots.

"We had a respectable race," Andretti said. "We finished second, third and fourth. We led a lot of laps. That's pretty good, I think. Not a lot of teams can say they've done that at this place."

The fourth Andretti driver, Dario Franchitti, had a punctured tire late in the race that knocked him back to 14th, the last car on the lead lap. All four of Andretti's drivers led at least one lap, led by Kanaan, who ran up front for 28.

But none of them were as strong as Rice, who started from the pole and led 91 laps. "I've had way more disappointing moments than this," Andretti said. "I think we can win here. We've just got to do a little bit better job."

Michael's father, Mario, won at Indy in 1969 and spent the next quarter-century in a futile quest to take another sip of milk in Victory Lane. He usually had one of the strongest cars in the race - leading 556 laps in his career - but he was taken out time and time again by various misfortunes. A broken engine part. An untimely wreck.

Mikey's Indy career took a similar path - minus the victory. He led 426 laps at the Brickyard before retiring after last year's race.

No one ran up front more without winning the event at least once. In fact, the second-generation Andretti led only two fewer laps than Rick Mears, who drove to a record-tying four wins.