Race boxscore
Winner's press conference
Daily Trackside Report
Points chase stories
Indianapolis Star: Crash sends title up for grabs
Lots of discussion about the Dario-Dixon incident. Michael: It was intentional. TK: It looked intentional. Dario: "Other than blocking me a couple of times, I don't think he did anything intentionally. Scott has raced me cleanly all year, and I've raced him cleanly." Scott did throw one obvious block, but you usually get one freebie before BB starts laying down the law.
Detroit Free Press: Only room for one
Dario Franchitti & Scott Dixon are vying for the championship. Only one will win it. It rehashes the wreck, with Buddy Rice taking the high road: "Obviously, it was a crash-fest and I just hate to get involved in the points championship because of where I'm at. Those two were battling it out, and to take them out with a lap to go or get involved in an accident because I ran out of fuel is just disappointing for everybody involved."
Race stories
Detroit News: Kanaan wins Grand Prix
Says TK: "We came here to take the championship lead away from (Scott) Dixon. We accomplished what we wanted to do." Well, TK took the championship lead away from Dixon for Dario. He might have been a lot closer if he hadn't played blocker last week.
Detroit Free Press: Kanaan wins DGP
Says author Mike Brundell: "When they talk about great fights, last man standing, the encounter Sunday between Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti in the Motor City could go down as one of the best, or, at least, the most bizarre, incidents in auto racing history."
Toledo Blade: Kanaan survives Belle Isle chaos
SpeedTV: Kanaan keeps title hopes alive
Says Dario: ”I said this was going to be a hell of a championship battle, and it’s going to be. We want to win and they want to win. On the track, we don’t take any prisoners.”
AP: Kanaan's gamble pays off
TK says "it was a weird race." Dixon answers Michael Andretti's claim that his backing into Dario was intentional: "How would that be intentional? If I'd have kept going I would've picked up five points on the guy. I had no control of the car. It was spun out."
IndyCar.com: Three for the title show: TK wins
Driver stories
ESPN.com: Kanaan thumbs nose at critics
Says TK: "After all the criticism that I was involved in last weekend, I always say to all the people that criticize me that all you do comes back to you so I guess I didn't do a bad thing. I have a lot of respect for Rick Mears. As he said, he lost a lot of respect for me, but I did not lose respect for him. I think he's the greatest of all time. I always look for him and talk to him."
Detroit News: Patrick stays alive, earns career-best finish
Says Danica: "It was a fun-filled day for me. We weren't the fastest car, but fast enough to be in contention -- which was half the battle.
IndyCar.com: Runner-up Patrick has eventful race
Says Danica: "Mid-pack is never the ideal spot to be. But (I) kind of knew that it was settle in, make good fuel mileage, be smart, and try to get 'em in the pits."
Detroit News: Helio's crash thwarts try for a triple
Says Helio: "It was very disappointing. It was very confusing and that's what caused the crash. I felt I had a chance to win. I had never lost faith. I felt it would have been a great end of the race for me."
Easton Express-Times: Marco up and down after shift in gears
Says Marco: "Unfortunately again it's just one of those years. I couldn't get out of my way at the beginning of the season. Whenever we finish the race we seem to be in the top five."
Race notebooks
Indy Star notebook: Another pole start, another short race
Today's items: Helio wins pole & DNFs, Brian Barnhart threatens to penalize "unsportsmanlike conduct," including sending the entire team through the drive-thru, and most importantly, a conflict brewing in Texas. Basically, here's what's going on: TMS demands to have the date after Indy, but they also demand their race be two weeks after Indy. The IRL refuses to take the weekend after Indy off (and it can't ... it needs to keep momentum going). Methinks this is posturing from Eddie Gossage, but if he wants the race after Indy, the easiest way to make it happen is move the race up to the weekend after Indy (and, with TG's help, get NASCAR to move their Truck date).
Detroit Free Press notebook: Patrick satisfied with runner-up finish
Says Danica: "Today I wasn't in a position that I thought I could win the race, as far as speed goes. But I came home second. So karma. What goes around comes around and I'll take it."
Other items: Hornish's day, the physical track, the soap opera nature of the recent IRL.
Detroit News notebook: Hornish plays blame game
Says Sam on his incident with Sarah: "It's not fun being taken out by a car eight miles per hour slower. Everybody needs experience and that's what she's lacking. She's obviously doing everything she can do, but she has to let us go by instead of taking a chance on taking someone out who's running up front." Other items discuss RLR, no team orders from AGR, and Joe Dumars was impressed (oh, and Ashley Judd was at the race, but that's hardly news).
Toledo Blade notebook: Frustration rides with Hornish
The newspaper's notebooks discusses Sam, the 2008 schedule, the spiffy Belle Isle, Marco and Joe Dumars' appearance at the race.
Detroit News Q&A: IndyCar returns with style
Says Angelique Chengelis: "Roger Penske has the golden touch. This was no different. If it's possible, Penske might have had something to do with the perfect weather that made for a magical three days on the island. It was a happening, an event for the city, and it was pulled off so very well."
"Event" stories
Detroit Free Press: Belle Isle welcomes back speed, excitement in return
Says Mike Brundell (who has done a fantastic job covering the two Michigan races this year): "Belle Isle put on a show on Sunday that was worthy of any city where motor sports drops in for a visit. You can spend a lot of money and watch Formula One in Monaco. You can drive to Cleveland and attend a Champ Car World Series race at an airport. Why bother? Just pack a lunch, buy a ticket and catch a bus to Belle Isle. You can catch some great open-wheel racing and be home in time for dinner."
Detroit Free Press: Simply Grand
The obligatory fan piece. My favorite quote: "It's the whole atmosphere. I can smell the exhaust up here. And this beats flying or driving anywhere else."
Detroit News: Penske touts the success of Belle Isle
Says Chip Ganassi: "Roger did a really good job making this a real event. There's plenty of people around, plenty of activity, pageantry, music. It's an event; it's not just another race. We're really lucky to have him as a promoter, and Detroit really needs to embrace Roger."
Detroit News: Detroit wins as Grand Prix roars back
Says one fan: "The renaissance they've created here for this weekend is amazing."
IndyCar.com: A day at the park
Race commentaries
Detroit Free Press: How can IRL attract fans?
An interesting column by Eric Sharp, balancing the viewpoints of Tony George and Robin Miller. RM: More American Drivers. TG: We can't control who our teams hire, but we play off the tradition of the Indy 500, which has always been an international event.
RM on unification: It must happen if the OW series are to catch NASCAR.
TG on unification: "Everyone tries to compare us to NASCAR, and I don't think that's fair." As for re-uniting with CHAMP, he said in carefully chosen words, "I don't necessarily see that. They clearly have their challenges (including canceling three races), which I can only view from afar. But I can certainly empathize with the challenges they face."
And finally
Champ Car journalist David Phillips tells us rumors of CC's demise are greatly exaggerated. However, we'll likely see more of the series in Asia (where, right now, they're 0-for-3) and Europe, rather than in the United States.
I normally don't spend this much time on the other series, but this stuff is too juicy to be ignored. So, let's have some fun.
Steve Johnson on canceling races: "It’s bad for the teams. It’s bad for the other venues. It’s bad for the series. It’s not acceptable to us and we’re putting together a schedule where, hopefully, that will not happen in the future.” (doesn't it happen every year? For those scoring at home, that's the third race canceled this season).
Says Kevin Kalkhoven: It’s called the Champ Car WORLD Series. We’ve made mistakes. Come on, we all know that. But we’re learning from those mistakes. It’s hard to get into Asia, but we’ll do it." (so far, CC is 0-for-3 in Asia).
"We’ve learned that Europe really likes us, so we’ll push on there. We’ve learned that there are other parts of the world where as Formula 1 departs, they have a great interest. They like the American approach to it. They like the open paddock, they like the accessibility of the drivers, and they like the fact that it’s American.” (the open paddock, I can agree with, but Europeans care about as much about American sports as we do about soccer).
Adds David Phillips: The fact remains, however, that the emergence of NASCAR as the 800 pound gorilla of American motorsports makes it increasingly difficult for competing sanctioning bodies -- be they the Indy Racing League, the American Le Mans Series, the Grand American Road Racing Association -- to stage economically viable events, let alone attract the commercial sponsorship that drives racing series and racing teams. This too makes Europe and Asia increasingly attractive to Champ Car . . . (uh, David, Grand Am is owned by NASCAR. ALMS is doing fine piggybacking onto the IRL/CC -- and actually outdoing CC at their own tracks, much like Road America. And, while the IRL isn't 100% healthy, it doesn't seem to have much difficulty staging economically viable events).
Adds Paul Gentilozzi: "Domestically, maybe we have always over estimated how important that market was. (translation: Nobody is watching us in the U.S.) In Europe, we have probably underestimated how important that market was. (translation: Nobody is watching us in the U.S., so we might want to look somewhere else) We’re not worldwide bragging about what our TV was. If half a million people are watching in the US, how many are watching over here? We don’t ever put out a statement saying ‘14 million people watched Champ Car (worldwide) last weekend.’” (no, you just put out statements stating 175,000 people were at the track when the race-day attendance was close to 30,000 on a good day).
Says Steve Johnson: “It’s a World Series. We’re not just selling to North America.” (With hs track record -- the guy sounds a lot like Saddam's spokesperson during the early days of the Iraq War -- Johnson would be better off not saying much of anything on-record, but you can read between the lines and see where this is going).
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