So Ends Another Year with The Mouse
I’m not going to lie, I’m a little sad that the rest of the races are on Versus. It took me till today, but I finally took the Dr. Strangelove approach to the ABC coverage, or How I Learned to Stop Bitching and Love the Bombing Performances.
Yeah, Bob, Robbie, and Jon over at Versus are the consumate professionals, providing a great combination of skill, technical analysis, and team inner-workings, but I might just miss the stylings of Marty Reid, who this season, has been shot out of a cannon. He’s been so horrific, that he actually looped back around to awesome. He’s been confusing cars that look nothing alike, wondering if a driver took gas when there is no logical reason to think he/she wouldn’t, and shamelessly promoting NASCAR above the product before him, he’s just been gold. Pure gold. He has truly reached a level unseen since The Year of the Todd Harris.
Today’s race was pretty much the most perfect street course race of the season. It was a beautiful day in Toronto, and the racing was just as wonderful. There was passing, including for the lead, with Danica and Paul Tracy both making great looking passes stick.
There was drama. Mario Moraes finishing on the lead lap despite having contact with 18 of the 23 cars on track, including EJ Viso after the race had finished. Paul Tracy made a dive on Helio Castroneves and nearly made it stick, but what started as a little contact ended up putting PT into the wall hard. Able to limp back to the pits, Helio’s day was done. To celebrate the incident, the fans of Toronto greeted Helio with the greatest chorus of boos I’ve ever heard at an IndyCar race. Then again, they may have just been saying Boourns. Tagliani made, what looked to me, to be a pretty desperate attempt at a pass on Tomas Scheckter, which ended up taking Scheckter out. To show his appreciation, Tomas brought back the Tomas Scheckter Glove Throw, which hasn’t been seen since Tomas threw his gloves at Marco in Texas in 2007.
It was awesome: a wide array of emotion from shouting to pure glee. Honestly, if today proved anything, it’s that street courses aren’t all bad. In fact, sometimes they can be the most entertaining race of the year. I love oval racing, but this season, it has been entirely about the circuits with the right turns. I have no issue with that.
July 12th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
thoroughly enjoyed the race, but then again toronto nearly always puts on a good show
again please!!
July 12th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
So glad the pain and suffering of watching races on ABC is over for another year! Bring on Versus:)
July 12th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
bring on the pre-race, the post-race, the qualifications, the Indy Lights races, competent announcers and a network that acts like they want to produce good programming.
July 12th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Awesome race, and the Thrilla was on it! Street races can work if they’re racy.
July 12th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
The best two races this year have been Watkins Glen and Toronto in my opinion. And even as a road course/street course fan, I wouldn’t have thought Watkins Glen would be up there above ovals.
July 12th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Great breakdown of a helluva race.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:49 am
Great summary. I got a bit of a chuckle at how Marty said that the next race was in “Vancouver” before correcting himself.
Also, ditto on the racing being pretty good at Toronto yesterday. As big a fan as I am of Helio, I wanted to kick his butt after that incident with PT.
July 13th, 2009 at 3:54 am
That said, I do think it was a racing incident. Just two guys racing hard and then that happened.
July 13th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Absoulutely agree! Despite being a big oval fan, I’ve said all year that St. Pete had been my most enjoyable race to watch. After the last two weeks, I now have a top 3 races this season. 1) Toronto. 2) St. Pete. 3) The Glen.
Is this some sort of Bizzaro world?
July 13th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
As another oval guy, I thought the same thing, Vic. But I’m hopeful the new aero changes help out the ovals a little bit.
July 14th, 2009 at 9:52 am
It’s nice to see you thought this was the most entertaining race of the year. I had a blast watching it.
Reading the “race notes” from a couple of the other Word Butchers (you know, the Doggie and Earl), I found them to be too cynical and critical – they didn’t seem to enjoy the race much.
Too bad for them – any race that features passing on the track, Helio getting booed, and Thomas Sheckter hurling his gloves at another driver = fun times, as far as I’m concerned!
July 17th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
[...] the Toronto race being the rip-roaring dandy that it was, we were all left quite … contented? Is that the right word? It must be. It has to be, for we have nothing to complain about. [...]
July 18th, 2009 at 6:48 am
You had me at “Todd Harris.”
October 21st, 2009 at 7:42 pm
[...] and start loving. It also corresponded to what I’d have to personally consider the photoshop of the year (mustaches excluded, of [...]