TORONTO — The Verizon IndyCar Series shone through on a wet and wild weekend for the Honda Indy Toronto doubleheader.
It almost looked like a complete disaster at first with the weather washing out Saturday’s activity at the Exhibition Place temporary street course. Although it wasn’t a torrential downpour, the rain had coated the track making those already ice-like concrete patches super slick and whenever drivers passed through puddles, water would kick up off the back of their tires creating a sheet of mist and reducing visibility to almost nothing down the straightaways.
Even the pace car had trouble keeping it together and slid across the stretch along Lake Shore Boulevard.
IndyCar made the right call postponing the race as driver safety should always be the top priority. Kudos though to the diehard fans who stayed glued to the wet bleachers all throughout the two-hour delay until the official PPD announcement.
IndyCar decided to shift the full doubleheader to Sunday and cut the races down from 85 laps each to 65 or an 80-minute time limit (whichever came first). The decision paid off at the start as bright skies and a dry track greeted the drivers in the morning as it shaped up to be the kind of hot and humid race of previous years for Race 1.
Pole sitter Sebastien Bourdais had struggled to regain his championship form since returning from a two-year stint in Formula One and languished with uncompetitive cars. The Le Mans, France, native had won in sports car series but hadn’t reached the top of an IndyCar podium since 2007, the same year he captured his fourth consecutive Champ Car World Series title.
Bourdais sizzled during last year’s doubleheader finishing second and third, respectively, with the Dragon Racing team and a switch to KVSH Racing this season was viewed as the next step on his journey back on track.
It’s fitting the journey would culminate at an old Champ Car track. Bourdais drove a phenomenal race, keeping all challengers in his rearview mirror to pick up career win No. 32, which now gives him sole possession of eighth place on the all-time victories list.
But during the three-hour break, gloomy grey clouds covered up the sky and Race 2 was bumped up a few minutes to hopefully get everything going before there was another situation. However, just over a dozen laps in and the rain started the sprinkle the track. The race wasn’t without its share of incidents — it never really is at Toronto with narrow streets, unforgiving barriers and surface changes — but drivers were able to cut a dry line through the damp parts of the course to make the most of it and put on a show.
Street-course specialist Mike Conway led the final seven laps to take home the checkered flags for Ed Carpenter Racing, giving another underdog team outside of the Big 3 (Penske, Ganassi and Andretti) a victory on the weekend.
Although the event capped a span of six races in four weeks, Target Chip Ganassi Racing driver Tony Kanaan, who scored podium finishes in both races, was just getting warmed up.
“Should we do another one again?” Kanaan joked during the post-race press conference. “I’m tired, it was a long day but we’re all here. I think I’m going to feel it tonight and a little bit tomorrow morning but I’m not that young it takes me time to recover. It was a tough day for all of us but we had to do what we had to do. It was a very unusual situation even for the fans, I appreciate them hanging on for two days. It was quite hard for us for sure.”
Canadian James Hinchcliffe experienced another roller coaster double header with a eighth place finish followed by a disappointing 18th as a result of contact with Juan Pablo Montoya when the rain hit the track. He was a bit more serious with his suggestion for more racing.
“It doesn’t feel like that first one was this morning, it already feels like it was a day away,” Hinchcliffe said. “In hindsight I kind of wish we had run the full distances because they were exciting races and physically I feel fine. I can’t imagine anyone’s too banged up after we drove half the rain under caution and a little bit in the wet so it would have been really fun to break a real record and go two full distances in one day.”
It was exciting and thrilling as well as chaotic and exhausting but Penske driver Will Power summed it up best: “This is IndyCar. That’s what’s good for the fans, the element of surprise, who knows what’s going to happen.”