Tony Kanaan swept past Helio Castroneves in the closing laps to win the 2010 Iowa Corn Indy 250 at Iowa Speedway on Sunday. Unfortunately, that's about all that I can tell you.
My family is remodeling our basement at the moment and as a result of this, we've chosen to get AT&T U-Verse, which comes with Versus, but it will not be hooked up until Tuesday evening. So I was forced to attempt to watch the online feed of the race but after 10 minutes of trying to watch it only to be frustrated when it decided to pause every 15 seconds, I just gave up and chose to watch the Cubs beats the Angels 12-1 with my Dad instead (you know, with it being Father's Day and all).
However, I did manage to watch the feed from Kanaan's in-car camera for the last 40 laps which was quite entertaining as Dario Franchitti's gearbox decided to remain in neutral and Helio was unable to hold off Kanaan who certainly had the better car at the end. Watching TK work as hard as he could to catch back up to Helio after lapped traffic got into his way was quite awesome.
Based on what I've read/heard, it sounds like it was a fairly competitive race which featured seven different leaders including Marco Andretti and Graham Rahal. I nearly smashed my computer monitor when Milka Duno got in Marco's way as he was attempting to pass Will Power for the lead about 20 laps in. I have no idea how Marco wound up 6 laps down; if anyone could fill me in, that would be great.
I have to give some props to EJ Viso. He looked strong in the last race at Texas and he looked very competitive today when he came home in third. I also need to recognize Vitor Meira for finishing in a solid seventh-place when his #14 ABC Supply Foyt Racing team has looked quite inept at times this season. I really do wish Vitor the best as I personally think that he's still mentally recovering from his big crash at Indy last year.
Who doesn't deserve accolades? Mario Moraes. Yes, I understand that today's accident wasn't his fault, but at some point, if you're Jimmy Vasser or Kevin Kalkhoven (Moraes' team owners), you have to decide if you want to keep fielding a car for a driver that keeps finding the wall. He crashed twice during the Month of May and smacked the wall during the 500 enough to bend his suspension and force him out of the race. He also got into a controversial crash with Helio Castroneves in Texas two weeks ago and today he collided with Justin Wilson on the first lap. Surely there must be another driver (Paul Tracy, Graham Rahal, Ryan Hunter-Reay, JR Hildebrand) who doesn't have a guaranteed full-time ride that would be able to consistently bring the car home in one piece.
I'm not even going to mention Milka, other than that she was 20 MPH slower than everyone else at the beginning of the race, she blocked Marco when he was attempting to take the lead, and she retired after 31 laps with "handling" issues (read: too slow and clueless to be on the track).
Back to what Kanaan's victory means for him, his team, and the sport of Indycar. For him, it means that his 34-race span without a win, dating back to the race at Richmond in 2008, has disappeared and that it appears that he has fully recovered from his disastrous Month of May. For his team, it shows that they really do have something for the Penske and Ganassi cars as they looked to be challenging them since the 500 and they are starting to resemble the dominant team that they were in 2005 (minus the dominance). For the sport itself, it means that for the first time in 16 oval races, neither a Ganassi or a Penske car won the race. Finally, some parity, which will hopefully shut Robin Miller up just a little bit.
The points standings were shaken up a bit as Franchitti's late-race gearbox failure caused him to fall back to third behind Will Power and Scott Dixon. Also, Tony Kanaan jumped up to sixth, 45 points out of first.
See you in two weeks in Watkins Glen. Until then, stay tuned for some posts about specific drivers.
Any thoughts and comments about today's race are more than welcomed. In fact, they are suggested.
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