ST. PETERSBURG – She grabbed his arm and spoke tersely. He said she was acting like “a spoiled brat.” They eventually talked and made peace.

Danica Patrick and St. Petersburg’s Dan Wheldon, who will race in today’s Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg (2:45 p.m., ESPN), say their highly publicized spat after June’s Milwaukee race is behind them.

But is it?

In an offbeat Q&A that accompanied her Sports Illustrated swimsuit photos in February, Patrick playfully named Wheldon as one of two drivers in the Indy Racing League who might wear makeup.

She said Wheldon “would probably have some fake British smile” when he sees her comment.

Wheldon did, in fact, smile when he was asked about it over a cup of coffee recently.

“She made a comment about me wearing makeup,” he said. “By the same token, I thought makeup did a wonderful thing for her Sports Illustrated pictures.”

At Milwaukee, Wheldon came down on Patrick in the corner and they touched wheels. Patrick spun off the track and went on to finish eighth after suspension repairs.

Afterward, Patrick approached Wheldon on pit road, grabbed his arm, and spoke to him for several seconds before bumping his shoulder and walking off. Wheldon, who finished third, didn’t respond. But a few days later, he said Patrick was “behaving like a spoiled brat and that he would be willing to listen to an apology.”

Chip Ganassi, Wheldon’s team owner, is still irked about the incident.

“The only thing Danica was missing was her purse,” he said last week at Homestead. “She could have whacked him with her purse.”

Ganassi said he thinks Patrick is good for racing and he’s glad she’s involved, but “she needs to step up her game in terms of driving and not always be the victim so much. She’s always the victim.”

Though Patrick criticized him a second time in August at Michigan after a crash in which Dario Franchitti flipped wildly, Wheldon said he says hello to Patrick when he sees her and doesn’t hold any resentment.

The Milwaukee incident would have been quickly forgotten had it involved other drivers. But because it was the 5-foot-2, 100-pound Patrick going after the aggressive-driving former champion Wheldon, media and fans devoured it.

Never mind that Wheldon had passed Patrick to win the 2005 Indy 500 and that the IndyCar Series was starved for a rivalry. Never mind that both are intensely competitive and cutthroat on the track.

Former driver Scott Goodyear, now an ESPN analyst, is practically pulling for more sparks.

“There’s no love lost between them,” he said. “Anything that can be done to get some rivalries in the series right now I think is wonderful.”

Patrick and Wheldon met with IRL president Brian Barnhart and settled their differences, but not before Texas Motor Speedway exploited the incident with a “tale-of-the-tape” poster promoting “The Rumble at the Speedway.”

The track promised a rematch between Dan “The Battlin’ Brit” Wheldon and Danica “The Phoenix Firebird” Patrick. In a staged photo at an autograph signing, Patrick and Wheldon sat on either side of Tony Kanaan, who wore a referee shirt and a menacing look.

Patrick says she played along but never considered the situation a laughing matter.

“My only concern was safety, really,” she said recently. “You go to a place like Texas and you wheel bang a little, that’s a long way up to the wall at 220 mph. You’re going to have a big accident, you could flip, you could get really hurt.

“I don’t think it’s healthy to drive out there with that sort of animosity each other. So I’m glad we were able to talk it out.”

She says that while Wheldon “has never been one of my closest friends,” she harbors no hard feelings toward him.

“Dan loves the attention,” she said. “He loves when I talk about him. It’s kindhearted. I make jokes every now and then, but it’s nothing I wouldn’t say to his face.

“Dan is a good guy; he’s a good competitor. He’s tough, for sure. But I respect him and I hope he respects me back.”