Got Milk? Dixon Does.

Sunday provided a triple bill of blue ribbon racing. First off we had Formula One from Monaco, discussed above. After which we were treated to the Indy 500.

The Indy 500, for those of you who don’t know, is the Indy Racing League’s premier event. It’s the race everyone wants to win. The race, like the Daytona 500 for Nascar, follows a different format with qualifying. The grid is decided in sessions before a final ‘bump’ day to decide who gets in. This year featured the largest grid in some time for the IRL, assisted by the unification. The race also features a three-wide start compared to the conventional two-wide.

Kiwi Scott Dixon took victory for Chip Ganassi. It was his first time to win the big event. From the off it looked that the winner would come from the Ganassi stable. Dixon and Weldon locked out the front row and was the car to beat. Tony Kaanan rose to the challenge at the half-way point, but the Brazilian’s luck would elude him. After losing grip whilst avoiding his team-mate Marco Andretti, he slid up towards to wall before been t-boned by Sarah Fisher. Andretti would go on to finish second at the event for the second time in three years.
It was an impressive day by part-time driver Tomas Scheckter. The son of 1979 F1 champ Jody, he kept tabs on the lead until a driveshaft problem on his final stop put paid to his hopes. The former Champ car teams had contrasting days. Oriol Servia and Will Power brought their KV cars home on the lead lap whilst the rest all hit difficulties.

IRL Kicks Off

The first race of the unified Indy Racing Series past off without major incident at Homestead.

Allot of the concern over how the former Champ Car drivers proved to be mostly unfounded. Of course there was some slightly dodgy moments during lappers but it wasn’t a crash fest as some predicted. There was only three yellow flag periods during the race in fact which saw all but four of the field get lapped.
Scott Dixon picked up where his empty fuel cell let him down at the end of last season. Marco Andretti, son of Michael, grandson of legendary Mario finished second. Dan Weldon, team-mate of Dixon finished third. The Kiwi took victory after Tony Kaanan suffered suspension damage when he clipped a crashed car inside the last few laps. Kaanan tried to limp with three straight wheels on his wagon in the hope the safety car period would end the race, but he had no such luck. It was disappointing that the IRL officials allowed him to take the restart when it was obvious there would be a number of laps run under green. Letting the Andretti-Green car lead those to the line caused slow speeds and confusion behind him.

It's a touch of irony given that many thought that the Champ Car refugees would be the ones to cause chaos in the field. This year is obviously a massive learner process for these teams, especially on the ovals. It will be interesting to see how competitive they can be on the circuits. I don’t think they will win, at least not in the first few, but they shouldn’t find themselves filling up the back rows.

Props go out to the camera work at the start. With championship challenger Dan Weldon starting at the back, they split the screen with a cockpit cam of the Brit on the right while the front runners on the left. It didn’t let the viewers miss anything. We got the action up front and able to watch Weldon slash through the field.

It’s going to take time for the fruits of this unification to bear its full fruit. I reckon give it two, maybe three years and the IRL will be once more a major product in world motorsport.