After two weeks of blaming and finger-pointing
for all the ‘done me wrong(s)’ in the Toronto
race…including accusations leveled at Race
Control for a glaring lack of consistency in
penalties for avoidable contact…one had to
wonder what was going to happen in Edmonton.
Much speculation had taken place about the
severity of anger that lingered between title
rivals Power and Franchitti after run-ins
on-track, and pointed accusations afterward by
Power.
The
two had not spoken face-to-face since, and there
were a few non-conciliatory Tweets exchanged
after Toronto. (This only addresses two of
the protagonists that were more than a bit
unhappy after the Toronto race.) Was Dario
getting in Will’s head? Perhaps.
With Franchitti now ahead in points by a
substantial margin heading into Edmonton, Power
was looking for a solid performance and also a
bit of vindication.
Friday practice was completely washed out due to
heavy rain and standing water on the track. With
Saturday’s practice and qualifying, another mark
of the overdue parity that is slowly working its
way into the series was seen. At the end
of the ‘knockout qualifying’, culminating with
the Firestone Fast-Six, none other than Takuma
Sato of KV Racing was on pole, his second of the
year (the first being on the oval in Iowa).
The
KV team has shown significant improvement since
unification of the two series (IRL and Champ
Car) in 2008. In that first year they
performed well with Oriol Servia bringing his
steady professionalism to the team. In
2009 and 2010 they languished, as the team
wrestled with running new-to-IndyCar driver Sato
(in 2010) along with their two young (and still
very ‘green’) drivers, E.J. Viso and Mario
Moraes. Though notably fast at times, the
trio proved to be inconsistent at best and
hell-bent-for-destruction at worst. This
year, with veteran Tony Kanaan in the third car
and Michael Cannon’s superlative engineering,
the trickle-down of reliably fast cars has
permeated the team. Gone is Moraes, and
while Sato, an F1 veteran, at times seems to
struggle with self-control in race situations,
he’s generally displayed an increased maturity
in his performances this season. Viso, on
the other hand, is still involved in some manner
of incident at almost every race, and one must
wonder how long Jimmy Vasser will continue to be
tolerant.
Overall,
the KV squad, like Newman-Haas Racing, is
showing itself to be one of the teams to deal
with near the front of the field. To those
who paid attention in the Champ Car era, this is
no surprise.
Alongside Sato in the front row would be Power
in the Verizon Penske #12. Sato’s second
career pole ended a streak of eight-straight
poles on road and street courses for Power, who
was complimentary of the performance by Takuma.
Competitors seemed genuinely happy for Sato, who
received sincere congratulations from both Power
and Scott Dixon. Dixon qualified third,
just ahead of teammate and points leader
Franchitti. Viso also qualified somewhat
surprisingly well in fifth (remember that
‘trickle down’ comment), though Kanaan missed
the fast six. Sixth after the final round
of qualifying was Ryan Briscoe, in the Penske
Truck Rental #6. Missing the last round
were Ryan Hunter-Reay, Servia, Castroneves,
James Hinchcliffe, Kanaan, and Sebastian
Bourdais.
Servia missed the fast six after, as he put it,
“we got greedy” with the setup for qualifying.
He was on the receiving end of Ryan Hunter-Reay’s
rant at the end of the second session of
qualifying. Hunter-Reay brake-checked
Servia during the last lap of the session after
Servia let him past. While RHR’s complaint
may have been valid (Servia had struggled in his
attempt to break into the fast six and was
immediately in front of RHR), the
all-too-familiar complaint by the Andretti
Autosport driver fell mostly on deaf ears.
Servia stated his case, Ryan continued to
complain, and life went on. They would
start the race on Sunday side-by-side in the
fourth row.
Sunday’s race in Edmonton on a revised 13-turn
circuit that shared only a small portion of the
original course turned out to be a race to
remember. What was notably different about
the track was the inclusion of three sharp,
slow, left hand corners, (turns one, five, and
thirteen) at the end of significantly long
straights. The purpose, to provide passing
zones, created all that and more.

On
the initial start, amid much breath-holding,
everyone made it through turn one nicely.
Sato led as Dixon made a clean pass inside of
Power for second, with Dario behind Power.
It seemed for a fleeting moment that the guys
and girls had finally figured out how to respect
each other and race cleanly. By turn five,
some had reverted to their former ways, as Alex
Tagliani optimistically took a big run along the
inside edge of the track to pass several cars,
which he did.
What
he didn’t do was judge his braking well, as he
speared Graham Rahal’s left rear with his right
front wing. Rahal limped on attempting to
get back to the pits, but the rear of the car
got away from him at the right hand turn six,
where the left side of the car dropped into the
water-saturated infield. The car
pirouetted back onto the track into the hapless
Paul Tracy, ending both of their races.
Rahal gave a wide-armed questioning
“Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot” gesture to Tagliani who,
other than the skewed (but replaceable) front
wing/nose assembly, got away relatively
unscathed. Tagliani was rightly penalized
however for avoidable contact, which required
him to make a drive-through of the pits.
He started shotgun on the field after his stop
to replace the nose, then had to do the
drive-through when the field was restarted.
Good job by Race Control to restore its
credibility after the debacle at Toronto.
Tagliani eventually finished the race in 17th.
Sato led as the field took the green again on
lap 5. Power made a clean pass of Dixon
for second going into turn one on the next lap.
The top four ran as they had qualified until
Sato miscued in the twisty (remnant from the
original) section of the track on lap 19, which
allowed Power to pounce as they braked for turn
thirteen. Sato braked deep into the turn
with front wheels locked. Power was inside
and past but had also run deep, locking his left
front as the car unloaded the inside wheels for
the tight left-hander.
Dixon saw the opportunity presented him, moved
inside of Sato and Power, and nearly took both
spots. Power recovered from his mistake,
howeve
r,
and his launch off of the corner allowed him to
‘pull’ Dixon down the long front straight.
Power led as they headed into turn one with
Dixon and Sato in tow. Franchitti seized
the moment as well, with Sato having struggled
to get off the hairpin in thirteen well, Dario
got a run that allowed him to pass cleanly as
they braked for turn one. The cars were
now shuffled with the two points-leaders running
first and third with a hungry Scott Dixon
separating them. Sato continued in fourth,
followed by Ryan Briscoe and E.J. Viso.
Meanwhile, Kanaan, Justin Wilson, Danica
Patrick, Bourdais and J.R. Hildebrand were
moving forward from their respective starting
positions. Some attrition contributed to the
advancement of Patrick and Hildebrand, but
credit is not to be withheld from these two as
they drove strong, heady races to make passes
all day long, producing good finishes for both.
There were other incidents that ended with
penalties as the race progressed. Oriol
Servia was punted into the tires in the twisty
(old) section of the track by Mike Conway in an
impossible move to pass after Servia had made
his first pitstop of the race. Tires were
cold and he wasn’t up to speed, but the mistake
by Conway was obvious, and had he waited for
another 8 seconds he would have passed the
Newman-Haas driver cleanly. Conway was
rightly penalized.
After
the cleanup and restart, E.J. Viso returned to
his wicked ways on the entry to turn five.
Viso, if you recall, was running near the front
of the field. He made a similar dive-bomb
pass attempt of Scott Dixon going into five, and
speared the #9 Target car in the left sidepod.
Dixon limped toward the pits, and was heard on
the radio saying “my butt’s on fire”.
Graham Rahal, now in the TV broadcast booth,
clarified the statement to mean that the
radiator had been punctured and there was hot
water in the seat of the car. This was in fact
the case, and the Ganassi team took the Target
car behind the wall to change radiators and get
the car back in the race, though obviously not
in contention for the win. During the
prolonged stop Dixon was heard to say he wanted
to get back out there to take Viso out.
Cooler heads prevailed though, and there was no
on-track retaliation. Viso was not
penalized due to a loss of two laps while he
waited for a restart on the track during the
ensuing yellow. Franchitti, who was just
behind the incident, had to stop on track to
wait for the path to clear to resume and fell to
tenth. Several cars advanced, including
Sato and the #28 of Ryan Hunter-Reay.
On lap 39, Ryan Hunter-Reay made an ill-advised
attempt to pass Sato (now running in second)
going into turn five as well. It appeared
that RHR thought about it, reconsidered, and
then decided to go ahead with it. One
veteran observer speculated that he moved to the
inside the second time to avoid ramming the back
of the #5 KV car, but the result was the same
either way. It spun Sato, the car stalled,
and his race was ruined. RHR continued but
was also penalized with a drive through after
the incident. It dropped him from near the
top of the order (he was fourth after the
contact) to thirteenth. He recovered well
to finish seventh. Sato went laps down
waiting for a restart of the car and finished 21st.

As the race wound on, Helio Castroneves advanced
with steady fast laps and the fallout of the
others in front of him. As the race was
winding down, he was running second, ahead of
Franchitti (recovering from his patient wait for
the Viso/Dixon kerfuffle) and Briscoe.
Helio appeared to have the faster car at one
point, was clearly better under braking, and got
uncomfortably close (for Power) entering the
tight turns where all the passing was occurring.
Power had better straightline speed, though, and
a serious attempt was never made by his teammate
to pass. That showed admirable restraint
on Helio’s part, since it’s been a long drought
for the 3-time Indy winner. (Let’s not forget
that he was in position to win this event last
year prior to a controversial call from Race
Control that penalized him for blocking the same
teammate on a late-race restart That
penalty cost him the win.) Power won by .8
seconds ahead of Helio.
Franchitti, meanwhile, patiently drove to third.
Briscoe ran fourth until the last lap, when an
un-Penske-like fuel calculation error caught the
Aussie one lap short of Ethanol. This
advanced Tony Kanaan to fourth, followed by
Justin Wilson, Bourdais, RHR, Conway, and
Patrick, with Briscoe rounding out the top-ten.
Power and Franchitti were afterward seen in
Victory Lane being cordial, talking and smiling.
The hatchet appears to have been buried.
The championship battle has tightened slightly.
Race Control was consistent and on target with
its penalties. As teams head to Mid-Ohio
for the next round on August 7th, the
series continues to grow in both competitiveness
and stature, and is very nearly again the great
series it was prior to the split. With the
new car scheduled to make its first shakedown
run soon in the hands of Indy 500 winner Dan
Wheldon, things are shaping up all around.
Three engine manufacturers, the return of
turbochargers…Ahhhh. It all sounds pretty
good to this writer.