Dario Franchitti led early and led late to take his 11th IndyCar Series win, also re-taking the points lead. Penske's Briscoe and Power completed the top-3.
With two wins from the last four races and an earlier win at Long Beach in April, Dario Franchitti is poised to stretch his championship lead with three road/street course races and the Kentucky oval ahead of him. (LAT)
Target Chip Ganassi’s Dario Franchitti didn’t win Toronto easily after his early lead was squandered by a slow pit stop, but fortunes smiled on the 2007 IndyCar Series champion as a perfectly timed yellow flag shot the #10 car into the lead he’d never relinquish in the latter stages of race.
“I guess we timed it right with strategy,” he said, after his engineer kept him in the hunt up until the fateful yellow. “We really struggled at the end of the first stint – we used up the Reds. We came in just as the yellow (came out). (Winning in Toronto) ten years after my first win is pretty cool.”
Franchitti was followed home by Ryan Briscoe, a man quickly earning the nickname “Mr. Second Place” after the Penske driver took home the second spot for the fifth time from the last six races. Will Power took the final podium spot for Penske, but after first lap clashes for he and Briscoe, the podium looked like the last place either driver would visit.
The race kicked off with a big jump by Dario Franchitti at the start as Power slid into Graham Rahal, flattening the Aussie’s right rear tire as he was forced to go down the turn 1 escape road. Both pitted to effect repairs, with Rahal needing a front wing replacement. Briscoe would follow Power to the pits at the end of lap 1 with a flat right rear as both Penske cars suffered the same issue.
Rexall Edmonton driver Alex Tagliani was an amazing second by turn 1 thanks to the drama surrounding the start. The early portion of race settled into a rhythm as Franchitti held a sizeable lead over Tagliani, an inspired Robert Doornbos, Scott Dixon and Mike Conway. Helio Castroneves held sixth as lone Penske car to lap without being hit and Watkins Glen winner Justin Wilson dropped back to hold seventh by the end of lap 7.
Dan Wheldon found himself backwards on lap 8, bringing out the first yellow. Wheldon’s spin, the result of a half-hearted passing attempt by Richard Antinucci, left the 2005 IndyCar Series champion a lap down but without major damage. Antinucci continued unharmed but would later retire with mechanical woes.
With most of the field starting on Firestone Reds, it was interesting to see Franchitti break away from the field, leaving a close pack of cars running second through seventh as the Scot held more than three seconds over the field before Wheldon’s yellow.
The only major runners to pit were Castroneves and Wilson, with Wilson switching to Blacks for the middle stint of the 85 lap race. The race restarted on lap 12 with Dixon overtaking Doornbos for third, but the green flag racing would be short lived as Vision Racing’s Ed Carpenter spun on his own, stalling in the process.
With Carpenter back under way thanks to the IndyCar safety team, the race went back to green on lap 15. Rookie Mike Conway followed Dixon’s previous move, taking Doornbos under braking at the hairpin for fourth.
Franchitti continued to stretch his lead on the restart, putting 1.8 seconds between his Target car and Tagliani’s Conquest Racing car. After building his initial gap, Dario slowed his pace, adding one to two tenths per lap to his lead, holding 2.3 seconds over Tags by lap 19.
By lap 20, Franchitti had checked out as those in pursuit slowed slightly, sitting on a 2.7 second lead as his speed came effortlessly and without having to abuse his car. Paul Tracy made his way to fifth, looking far more settled than he had the week before in his KV Racing Dallara. Tomas Scheckter held eighth, followed by HVM’s E.J. Viso and AGR’s Tony Kanaan, up to tenth after starting twentieth.
Doornbos started marching backwards on lap 24, pitting on lap 25 for the Newman/Haas/Lanigan team to inspect a suspected electronics issue. The Dutchman would return to the action, but his race was effectively over. Ed Carpenter completed his trifecta, rotating once more on lap 25 but the track stayed green. Franchitti would pit from the lead on lap 26 but a stripped left rear wheel nut held the polesitter for an extra three seconds, dropping the #10 car to fifteenth.
Paul Tracy zeroed in on Conway on lap 27, passing the Briton as his front tires locked and poured smoke heading into the hairpin. PT repeated the pass on the following lap, dropping Scott Dixon to third. The Canadian 1-2 at the head of the field featured PT cutting and thrusting as he tried to take the spot from Tags. All but those two at the front had pitted by lap 32, with almost everyone switching to Blacks. Tracy was in on lap 32 for fuel and Blacks, passing Mike Conway once more in the turn 3 hairpin on lap 33.
Conway snapped sideways under acceleration trying to re-pass Tracy, but the opposite lock and heavy power application smashed the rookie’s right rear hard into the wall, breaking his suspension and his hopes to improve upon his sixth place finish from last weekend.
Tagliani made it to lap 34 on his tank of fuel, getting back out in eighth place on Blacks. Toronto rookie Scheckter took the lead when Tags and then Mario Moraes pitted, giving the Dreyer & Reinbold team slight consolation after Conway’s crash.
The lead looked rather different on lap 35 thank it did at the end of lap 1, with Scheckter, Castroneves, Power, Wilson, Hunter-Reay, Tagliani, Tracy, Patrick, Rahal and Dixon filling the top-10 spots.
Scheckter, still on Reds, came under heavy fire from Castroneves by lap 40, and the Brazilian took the lead once the South African pitted his MonaVie car on lap 41. Will Power pitted from second on lap 42, going to Blacks, but suffered a similar pit stop delay to Franchittis as his right front wheel had yet to be tightened before the car was dropped off the airjacks.
The halfway point of the race saw Castroneves holding a 6.6 second lap over RHR and 9.2 seconds over Tags. AGR’s day was looking dismal at that point with Danica Patrick’s sixth place the best of the 4-car team. Kanaan in sixteenth, Andretti in seventeenth and Mutoh in eighteenth was a marginal improvement over their poor qualifying results.
A slowish stop by the Foyt team turned RHR’s stop on lap 47 into a longer affair than it needed to be. He’d recover slightly to take seventh at the finish, but wouldn’t feature at the front as he had prior to the stop. Castroneves pitted on lap 48 for fuel and Reds, having last stopped on lap 10. Tagliani took the lead from Helio on lap 49 with a 1.8 second gap over Tracy in second, followed by Dixon, Moraes and a resurgent Franchitti.
Justin Wilson pitted on lap 50 for low mileage Blacks, hoping the slower but more durable tires would give him the steady performance needed to get to the end of the race. As he’d later learn, the gamble wouldn’t completely pay off. Briscoe pitted for Blacks on lap 51, his fourth stop of the day, and resumed in thirteenth. Power pitted from ninth on lap 54, going to Reds for his final stint.
With 30 laps to go Tagliani had Tracy sitting just 1.5 seconds off his rear wing, followed by Dixon 1.2 seconds behind PT, Moraes 2.2 seconds behind Dixon and Franchitti .6 seconds behind Moraes.
Tracy chipped away at Tags, dropping the gap to 1.1 seconds before he pitted on lap 56. Tracy was strongest on low tanks, but another slow stop – the theme of the day – this time the left rear wheel – held ‘The Thrill from West hill’ for almost 12 seconds. A fairytale win for PT appeared to end on that stop as he took to the track in ninth place.
Franchitti found himself stuck behind Mario Moraes and pitted on lap 59 for the final time, taking Reds. An incident between Toronto nemesis Ed Carpenter and Graham Rahal just after Dario committed to pit lane found Rahal’s McDonald’s car parked firmly against the inside of the hairpin and Carpenter flying in the air as Rahal attempted to pass the Vision Racing car. Rahal was out on the spot while Carpenter continued on unscathed.
It was the only incident of Carpenter’s four during the event he wasn’t responsible for. After being passed en masse under braking, Carpenter turned right to take his line once Patrick got past. Rahal hoped the WilliamRast-sponsored car would stay left and leave him a lane at the apex, but it was wishful thinking on Graham’s part as Ed took his line and was hit in the right rear wheel by Rahal’s left front.
The pits opened during the yellow on lap 59 and had a lot of takers, promoting Castroneves, Franchitti and Tracy to the top-3.
Castroneves fought oversteer on the restart and was hounded by Franchitti. Dario passed Castroneves in turn 1 on lap 65 as the Brazilian went wide on the exit of turn 1. Once past, Franchitti walked off into the distance, holding 2.0 seconds over Castroneves until a bullish passing attempt by PT in the hairpin -- another theme of the day -- smashed PT up against the wall in the same exact spot Conway hit as the two tangled wheels. After limping back to the pits, Helio’s right front wing and suspension were deemed too badly damaged to continue.
The partisan crowd were rather vocal about their thoughts on the incident, but Tracy’s insistence on passing at that moment was the reason for the impact. He appeared to have the speed to get by Helio, but in such tight confines, the funnel-like nature of the exit of the hairpin brought the two together. Patience on PT’s part could have seem him on the podium at home.
