AP Photo/Tom Strickland
AP Photo/AJ Mast
Right after Dario was announced the winner Sunday -- which came after Marco Andretti flipped over a couple of times and had the yellow flag come out -- Ashley dashed across the track and made her way to the winner's circle, again drench in the Indiana rain. And again, another opportunity for a reaction shot from right when it was declared over....

We found another AP shot of Ashley admiring Dario from the garage during the milk and weath ceremony, but we just felt it was more important to zoom in for her still beaming reaction. After all, Ashley said afterward, she was very proud of the way he raced at the end to claim the disputed title: "I'd like to point out that my husband went from 14th to first like a gentleman and that's exactly what he is - a gentleman ... He raced like a gentleman, picked 'em off one by one, and won in style."
Well, we wouldn't go that far, but what the heck ...

Another Website, AOL Fanhouse's blog, was able to procure a shot from Getty Images of Ashley looking really, really, really wet ... without makeup, we're not that impressed, but that's life. So why end up running this shot? She's still very happy, and we're happy for her as well. She's got plenty of reasons for joy. For his victory, the 34-year-old Franchitti received $1,645,233, more than he's had during any other full season of his career. He had finished seventh and sixth in the two previous years at Indy and had his best-previous earnings year in 1998 with $1.4 million when he won three races on the CART circuit. His car had only enough fuel for another 10 laps but the rain came at just the right moment for Franchitti. "I can hardly believe it,'' Franchitti said. "Who would have thought it?" He again was talking about the victory, not the fact Ashley was running around in a wet dress with hardly anything under it.

Earlier in the race, before the rains came, Ashley was giving hand signals to anyone who cared. Even the other guy in the pits was looking for a translator... Maybe she was trying to explain why no one went to see her movie, "Bug," when it couldn't find any screens thanks to "Shrek 3" and "Pirates of the Carribean 3."

She's always ready for her closeup. At least before it rains....

They really could have seen this coming. Saturday, after the drivers' meeting, Dario and Ashley walked to a bus that would take them back to whereever, but they needed an umbrella to protect them from the elements. Where was that protection on Sunday? Maybe it was "bugging" her to bring the umbrella. And while on that subject, we hear that she does have some naked scenes in her new movie, "Bug." Here's a snipped of a review from a site called Cinematical: "In many ways, Bug may represent the apex of Ashley Judd's curious career. She's always been something of a green-screen actress without the green-screen, relying on some kind of method to dig deep and come up with seemingly heartfelt, emotive performances in routine thrillers where the surroundings don't warrant that kind of effort. (I'm looking at you, Kiss the Girls.) Judd's motivation is always in her head, which makes her naturally primed to take on a character like Bug's Agnes White, a lonely, small-town waitress who was frozen inside her own emotional headspace years ago, when her young son disappeared out of a grocery cart. She now spends her days being lusted after by the lesbians at a honky-tonk dive where she works, doing drugs, counting up crumpled dollar bills and bracing herself for the unwanted return of her ex-con ex, who has more than one screw loose. "You tried to kill me," she reminds him when he finally washes up on her doorstep. "That was a rough one, yeah," he replies, without trying to be funny."
OK, we're still not convinced to go see it yet...

Finally, once Ashley pulled herself together, she took the traditional winners photo on the start/finish line at Indianapolis Motorspeedway on Monday with her dog Buttercup. She even allowed her husband to get into the shot.