Will Power bags fourth win of season; Title edge up to 42 points
Two down. Three to go.
The IZOD IndyCar Series is in the midst of five straight road/street course events and it’s proven to be quite the boon to Will Power’s championship hopes. After scoring a win at Watkins Glen International two weeks ago, Power showed once more why he’s the king of the streets with another triumph Sunday at the Honda Indy Toronto.
The victory boosts Power’s lead in the title fight to 42 points over Dario Franchitti heading into next weekend’s event at Edmonton, Alberta. And considering that Power destroyed the field there last season, the gap stands to get bigger. At this rate, he could run away and hide with the championship by the time the series returns to the ovals in late August.
“Yeah, if I could win every road course race going into that, it would be great,” said Power after he bested Franchitti by 1.27 seconds in Sunday’s 85-lap affair. “You know, whatever that number might be.
“Man, you know, I knew it’s going to be a tough championship to win. I was aware coming into the season that I had lack of experience on mile-and-a-half ovals. I think the only place it really showed was Kansas, where I was very cautious and just finished the race. Everywhere else, I felt like I could have challenged for the win. So, you know, I want to win an oval race before the year’s out. I’ve been knocking on the door, so I think that may come.”
Power stayed out of trouble during the afternoon and found himself in second place behind polesitter Justin Wilson. On the Lap 72 restart, Wilson had trouble coming out of Turn 11 and Power pounced, making a run on the outside and passing the Englishman on the front stretch.
Shortly after the pass, mayhem ensued as Ryan Hunter-Reay made contact with Scott Dixon in Turn 3, causing Dixon to suffer a broken suspension upright. Then at Turn 8, Wilson lost control of his car and spun out to put a damper on his day.
One lap later, Tomas Scheckter and Alex Tagliani finally triggered the full course yellow by tangling and going into the Turn 1 tire barriers. At Lap 76, Power quickly pulled away from Franchitti and Hunter-Reay on the final restart of the day to finish off his fourth victory of the season.
“It was, I would say, a calculated but risky move to pass [Wilson] on the outside because I wasn’t sure I’d make it out the other side,” said Power of his winning move. “It was close, but sometimes you have to do that in racing if you want to win, and that’s what happened.”
That’s not good for Franchitti, who lost ten points’ worth of ground to Power. The Scotsman felt he had as good a car as his Australian rival on Sunday, but that he was simply a victim of strategy.
“Last year, it worked out for us,” said Franchitti, who won at Toronto last year. “The strategy we chose today, it didn’t, and that’s the way it is sometimes. But [Power’s] done a helluva job. We need to do at least as well as we did today with the car.
“We’ve got to keep making progress, because if you stand still, you’re going to get passed by four or five different cars just in the next week because the speed of development in the series is pretty intense right now, even though we’ve had cars for such a long time.”
As for Hunter-Reay, he likened the race to a football game with the high amount of contact between drivers. He also revealed that he suffered some damage as a result of his late-race incident with Dixon.
“It came down to [racing] with Dixon on a restart,” the American said. “He just blocked the inside all the way down, left barely a car width in there. I just shoved it in there and got it done clean. But he tried to run side-by-side with me through there and there just wasn’t any room. He ended up going over my left front tire, getting airborne. I don’t know if he continued or not.
“It knocked the left rear tow out, for sure, because I had a hard timekeeping it in line. We were lucky to finish third considering that.”
Dixon would not continue after the contact, finishing 20th.
“I held my typical line, moved over to the left, and [Hunter-Reay] dove under,” he said after the race. “I had to go somewhere. He was just carrying way too much speed and hit the front of my car and put us in the tires.”
The RHR-Dixon deal was certainly not the only one in the streets of Toronto. Mario Moraes knocked KV Racing Technology teammate Takuma Sato out of the race when they touched wheels on Lap 16, and then at Lap 32, Moraes did the same to Conquest Racing’s Mario Romancini. Moraes was given a drive-through penalty for avoidable contact after the second incident.
Helio Castroneves saw his day end early at Lap 21 when he clipped Vitor Meira going down Lakeshore Boulevard heading for Turn 3. Castroneves’ car eventually ended up hitting the tire barriers near that corner, but he emerged from his machine without help.
Lap 60 also saw an incident of note, in which a hard-charging Graham Rahal spun out Ryan Briscoe at Turn 3. Rahal went on to finish fifth, while Briscoe was saddled with an 18th place finish.
Both drivers saw the deal differently. Rahal insisted that he was much quicker than Briscoe and that the latter was blocking him going into Turn 3.
“He blocked me all the way into the braking zone and he broke on the inside and I wasn’t expecting him too so I just punted him,” said Rahal. “He was against the wall and I was waiting for him to move out. Then he hit the brakes before he ever moved.”
On the other side, Briscoe wasn’t buying it.
“That was just really unfortunate to be taken out by a non-championship contender,” he said.
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IZOD IndyCar Series
Honda Indy Toronto
Final results
1. 12-Will Power, Penske, avg. speed of 83.451 m.p.h.
2. 10-Dario Franchitti, Ganassi, -1.2757 seconds
3. 37-Ryan Hunter-Reay, Andretti, -1.7605 seconds
4. 11-Tony Kanaan, Andretti, -3.5382 seconds
5. 02-Graham Rahal, Newman/Haas, -9.7349 seconds
6. 7-Danica Patrick, Andretti, -11.9439 seconds
7. 22-Justin Wilson, Dreyer & Reinbold, -12.3783 seconds
8. 26-Marco Andretti, Andretti, -16.3360 seconds
9. 78-Simona de Silvestro, HVM, -21.5321 seconds
10. 4-Dan Wheldon, Panther, -23.1537 seconds
11. 14-Vitor Meira, Foyt, -25.8960 seconds
12. 06-Hideki Mutoh, Newman/Haas, -26.2878 seconds
13. 15-Paul Tracy, KV Racing Tech., -1 lap
14. 32-Mario Moraes, KV Racing Tech., -1 lap
15. 24-Tomas Scheckter, Dreyer & Reinbold, -1 lap
16. 36-Bertrand Baguette, Conquest, -1 lap
17. 77-Alex Tagliani, FAZZT, -1 lap
18. 6-Ryan Briscoe, Penske, -2 laps
19. 8-E.J. Viso, KV Racing Tech., -3 laps
20. 6-Scott Dixon, Ganassi, contact at Lap 71
21. 2-Raphael Matos, De Ferran Dragon, contact at Lap 64
22. 34-Mario Romancini, Conquest, contact at Lap 31
23. 19-Alex Lloyd, Coyne, contact at Lap 26
24. 3-Helio Castroneves, Penske, contact at Lap 21
25. 5-Takuma Sato, KV Racing Tech., contact at Lap 15
26. 18-Milka Duno, Coyne, handling at Lap 8
Race statistics
Time of race: One hour, 47 minutes, 15.2554 seconds; Margin of victory: 1.2757 seconds; Cautions: Six for 21 laps; Lead changes: Six among five drivers; Lap leaders: Wilson 1-17, Tracy 18-31, Franchitti 32-53, Power 54, Kanaan 55-56, Wilson 57-71, Power 72-85.
Point standings
Power 377, Franchitti 335, Dixon 299, Briscoe 292, Hunter-Reay 286, Castroneves 285, Kanaan 273, Wilson 240, Wheldon 233, Andretti 225.
Next race
Honda Indy Edmonton, July 25, Edmonton City Center Airport, 5 p.m. ET on Versus.
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Quotes used in this article were taken from the post-race press conference and Sunday trackside report.
