Tony Kanaan won the Indy 500 today. Tony's one of those feel-good stories, a really decent guy, good driver, etc., who lost his drive at Andretti Green when his car lost its sponsorship a year or two ago. He's been bangin' around trying to stay relevant in the sport ever since.
Kanaan won the race under a yellow flag that had the cars on the last two laps zooming around the track at a whopping 60mph. I'm not a big fan of yellow flag finishes -- they rank with rain stoppages with me as the most undeserving of wins. But everyone's happy for Tony, most likely his son, who they mentioned in an interview was hoping Tony would come back home if he won today. We'll see.
The race itself wasn't too bad. Sadly, I've drifted away from open wheel motorsports of late because of the IROC-ization of IndyCar. The crate motors, single chassis manufacturer, the gimmicky stuff -- push-to-pass, different tires and restrictions on when you can change them, etc.
But IndyCar seems to be learning. The new body design allows for actual drafting (something NASCAR should take note of), and they've allowed Chevy to offer motors as well as allowing at least two different chassis mfgs. So it has opened things up enough that this long time race fan may come back to one of his favorite styles of racing for the balance of the year.
The announcing wasn't too bad. I've mentioned before that I like Eddie Cheever since he seems unafraid to speak his mind even if it isn't politically correct for the sport (see his comments when Dan Wheldon died on the track). They had one noticible bobble during the race as a car wrecked early -- Sebastian Saavedra, he could be heard on his radio saying someone deserved a penalty for what happened. Replays clearly showed another car sliding down the track and hitting Saavedra, spinning him into the wall and putting him out of the race. Despite the announcers saying they would find out what car that was, they never did. Or at least they never announced who it was. Why? Who knows, but it was disappointing to this fan not to get the story.
That's sort of the announcer's job, right?
Anyway, hat tip to Tony and later today is the Coke 600. Hopefully someone other than Jimmie Johnson will win, and I'll end up having a nice holiday weekend.
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