It is easy to see why the plot is off for n<4, by looking at the implementation:
sage: graphs.WheelGraph??
the plotting layout is computed in the 1st 6 lines of the implementation:
pos_dict = {}
pos_dict[0] = (0,0)
for i in range(1,n):
x = float(cos((pi/2) + ((2*pi)/(n-1))*(i-1)))
y = float(sin((pi/2) + ((2*pi)/(n-1))*(i-1)))
pos_dict[i] = (x,y)
and it's all good for n>3, but for n<4 it's certainly not.