Race Preview, Rexall Edmonton Indy

The IndyCar sereis makes it's only visit to Canada this year with a race in Edmonton. The race track, a temporary one at the Edmonton City centre Airport is a great track and has been hugely popular since the race's inception as a Champ Car race in 2005. As the only points-paying race converted from Champ Car where all the field competes it could be a golden opportunity for some of the transition teams to score a win on a track they are familiar with, in fact Justin Wilson has won this race back in 2006. Eight drivers have raced here before and four have gotten podiums here including Wilson, who won in 2006 and was second last year, Paul Tracy, who was third back in 2005, Graham Rahal, who was third last year, and Oriol Servia, who was second in 2005. The other four who have raced here include Mario Dominguez, whose best finish was fifth in 2005, Bruno Junquiera. whose best finish was seventh last year, Will Power's best finish was sixth in 2006 and Ryan Hunter Reay was sixteenth in his only start here back in 2005. If I were to pick a driver among these few drivers to come through with a surprise victory it would be Oriol Servia. He has been consistently quick all year and has usually manged to bring the car home in solid points positions., he deserves a win as he has been one of the hardest working drivers over the past few years. This race will also see the much anticipated return of Paul Tracy to the cockpit. The aggressive and animated Canadian has a one race deal and will want to show well to convince his sponsors to pay for more races this year with a view to getting him a full schedule next year. In total 27 cars have entered the race with the only driver change of the 26 cars who raced last week is the re-emergence of Townsend Bell for Dreyer and Reinbold replacing Milka Duno, who was horribly off the pace last weekend (according to my calculations, had F1's old 107% rule existed she would not have qualified for the race). Bell is a decent driver who will be looking for a good result here in order to prove to teams that he would be a legitimate choice for a full time ride next year. At the front Newman/Haas/Lanigan will probably join the big three of Penske/Ganassi/and Andretti-Green at the top of the timesheets, although KV racing could also be up there. Both Penske and both Ganassi drivers are great road racers, as are two of the four AGR drivers (Marco Andretti and Tony Kanaan) and so it should be a lively race up front, and with Edmonton being a track conducive to overtaking we should have some drama. Unfortunately the fans will not be treated to cars as quick as they were last year as it is estimated that the IndyCar Dallara is aproximately 5 seconds per lap slower than the Panoz DP-01 cars who raced here last year and there are calls to boost the horsepower of the Honda engines for the road courses. As some of the oval specialist drivers continue to get better on Road courses there will not be any real drivers but Marty Roth who will be off the pace. Hopefully this leads to a lot of good racing among the 27 drivers and qualifyuing could be very close, leading to some surprises among those knocked out in the earlier rounds. Qualifying is Friday and Saturday the race starts at 3pm local time, 5 pm eastern time.