ST. PETERBSURG, Fla. — Tony Kanaan knows how this night would have gone. If not, of course, for the terrible thing he and his contemporaries are reminded of every time the Verizon IndyCar Series returns to this place he still considers “Dan’s city.”

But with each passing year since two-time Indianapolis 500 winner and 2005 series champion Dan Wheldon was killed in an accident in the final race of the 2011 IndyCar season, his friends and former teammates are more able to indulge fond memories when they return to the site of the series opener and the continued home of his widow and two young sons.

Such was the case on Thursday night as Susie Wheldon welcomed much of the IndyCar community for the opening of the “Verve” clothing boutique along the burgeoning Central Avenue district.

Kanaan, who was Wheldon’s teammate at what is now Andretti Autosport, chatted with Susie Wheldon last week about how this would have all transpired if Wheldon were still alive. A voracious collector of shoes — his garage had always been filled with racks of them — and such a compulsive tidier before the birth of his children that he insisted visitors all but bubble-wrap themselves, Wheldon, Kanaan said, would have been a mental mess and bad for business. And he probably would have bought out the inventory of footwear.

“I said to Susie, in a way, somehow, Dan, from somewhere, convinced you to do this,” said Kanaan, who burst into a smile and began gesturing wildly to illustrate his story. “But it would be so funny, right? Can you imagine somebody walking into the store, and they would want to look at the clothes and they would be all lined up and folded, and then they would mess them up. I think he would not be able to be in the store because he would scare clients away.

“’No, no, you can’t look at that! Leave it there! Don’t touch it.’ Or he would spend hours and hours folding shirts.”

The turnout, human and ornamental, spoke to the connection the racing community still feels for the gregarious Brit, who died at 33.

Both Hulman & Co. chairman Mark Miles and Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Doug Boles were slightly surprised to see the Borg-Warner Trophy — presented to the Indianapolis 500 winner — stationed in the shop under a floor-to-ceiling spray paint mural of a lion, harkening to Wheldon’s “Lionheart” persona. Susie Wheldon had been contacted recently by an anonymous worker at the IMS Museum who informed her open-wheel racing’s most coveted trophy could be stashed with a Wheldon race car as it was shipped south for the weekend. And so it came.

Amid the festivities, drivers and local friends and dignitaries celebrated, and IndyCar drivers shopped heartily, with pants the most coveted item. Kanaan and fellow driver Conor Daly even shared a change room to secure their desired apparel. Four former Indianapolis 500 winners mingled and reminisced.

And even with Wheldon’s sons, Sebastian and Oliver, cavorting around the shop in “Verve” t-shirts and later, with libations flowing, the shop remained neat. So maybe Wheldon could have enjoyed this night after all.

“There might be a little truth to that,” Susie Wheldon said of Kanaan’s theory. “Most of the things are hanging so maybe I was subconsciously thinking of the way he was so neat and orderly.

“He always had a great sense of style, and he has been a great inspiration to this store although this has been my next chapter in moving on. He’ll always be a part of my life in some way.”