Edmonton Race Report: Dixon wins, Tracy impresses.

A great afternoon was had by most yesterday as the IndyCar boys and girls (just one this time) took to the bumps of Edmonton's city centre airport. Scott Dixon won the race, which is not too surprising and he was followed home by Helio Castroneves. The two title contenders ran nose to tail in the later stages and were fortunate that they decided to call the race due to time four laps early, had that not happened they probably would have neeeded a splash and dash, which would have spiced things up a little, but alas they did not and so Dixon coasted to victory to extend his championship lead. The real story however was the man who finished fourth, one Paul Tracy. PT started fifteenth but quickly worked his way through the field to run solidly in the top ten, a result which would have been encouraging to the team, but due to a good pitstop under caution he came up and was running a solid sixth when there was contact between fourth and fifth placed Oriol Servia and Dan Wheldon. Both drivers had wounded cars and tried to limp home, this allowed PT to overtake them, including getting by Servia right at the line on the last lap. This result will be huge and Robin Miller is now reporting that Vision racing are working to get Paul in a car for two more races, Sonoma and the finale at Chicagoland speedway. Paul provided a lot of road course experience and knowledge to the team and was apparently very well received within the Vision team. If Penske, Ganassi, and Vision go home happy, Andretti green racing will leave Canada furious with the way things went. Team number one Tony Kannan had to change his engine and so started at the back while the other three drivers, Marco Andretti, Danica Patrick, and Hideki Mutoh could only manage to qualify in the midfield. In the race Kanaan worked his way up to a solid 9th but the other three drove like clowns. Hideki Mutoh was the first of the three to have difficulties when he crashed heavily on lap 27. The other two drove unspectacularly until late on when Marco Andretti commited a cardinal sin of racing by ramming Patrick damaging both cars. Both continued but their race was ruined. Marco was probably happy that he could keep going for more laps because it would protect him from the bullets that his team bosses were probably ready to throw at him. There were also some question marks about team work as Marco refused to let the faster Kannan by when ordered to and Danica's radio was mysteriously not working when she was asked to move over as well. There was a closed door meeting after the race and apparantly Kanaan was very grumpy afterwards not revealing the nature of the meeting, although it doesn't take a PhD to figure it out....... Down in the field the usual gang of idiots were up to their old tricks of causing trouble with poor Graham Rahal being in the wrong place at the wrong time, twice. At the start Graham was hit by Mario Moraes and had to make a lengthy stop for repairs. Graham rejoined and was minding his own business when EJ Viso tried to pass someone, locked his brakes, and punted into the side of poor Graham's car. Rahal was sent spinning into the tyre barrier, his day over. Back in the pits he was not happy with Viso (understandably) and did not mince words with his comments. Both he and fellow son of former champion Marco Andretti have been fast but have gotten into numerous incidents, mostly their fault, and maybe it was some poetic justice for Grahamm but this time it was truly not his fault. Many drivers have complained about Viso this year and EJ got a fifteen second stop/go penalty for his antics this time but I think that we will see more EJ caused accidents before the year is out. Other drivers had spins here and there, the most notable being Tony Kanaan going for a loop while leading the race and Helio Cstroneves having a big lock up late on while pushing Dixon, depriving us of a potential grandstand finish. Justin Wilson came home third for a very solid podium, proving that he is a very good road racer but needs to work on his oval skills. Marty Roth was painfully slow and got in the way as usual but he did not hit anything, although he ended the day backwards on the grass after spinning with two laps to go. The IRL should force him to attach a warning triangle to the back of his car as he is clearly not talented enough for this level of motorsport. The IRL's next race is in two weeks at Kentucky speedway where we will see the return of everyones favourite owner driver and hard worker Sarah Fisher.