Toyota 400 Report

I told you earlier that John Schroeder and I were going to the IRL finale today at the California Speedway. It's my first Indy Car race and it was an entertaining event, though the ending was a little fishy. More about that later.

I left the house under beautiful blue skies and warm temperatures, and even after arriving at the Speedway, the weather was still great. However, off to the east, things were looking a little gray and seemed to be heading to Fontana. There was a companion race scheduled to run at 10:15, and at 10 during the singing of America the Beautiful it suddenly got a lot less beautiful. The wind picked up and the rain started coming down. For about an hour we had very brisk cold winds and enough rain to wipe out the companion race.

John called while I was waiting out the weather upstairs and we met down in the concourse and spent some time talking about the recently completed GodBlogCon. The rain subsided and they were able to get the track dry and ready for the 12:30 start.

They started 21 cars, though a couple of them were way off the pace from the start. They do get around that place pretty quick, and in the early part of the race were clicking off laps at about 215 mph. There was a lengthy caution following a single car wreck by A.J. Foyt IV, another brief caution following a blown engine, and then a very long green flag run. We were sitting up high between turn 4 and the start/finish line with a pretty good view of the entire 2 mile D-shaped oval, though parts of the facility are still a long way away. We didn't even know A.J. had crashed until we saw the caution come out. The accident was clear on the other side of the complex from where we were seated.

There was another short caution with about 35 laps to go when a car spun on pit road, and then with 15 laps to go media darling Danica Patrick got tangled up with Jacques Lazier and both went hard into the turn 4 wall. Everybody was okay, but their day was done. You don't bounce IRL cars off of anything and expect to continue.

That left us with a 10 lap shootout for the finish. Dario Franchitti (Mr. Ashley Judd) had led for quite awhile, but his teammate Tony Kanaan was right on his tail. Tony clearly had the faster car and was biding his time to make the pass.

On the last lap Tony got a run down the backstretch and they were side-by-side through turns 3 and 4. As they passed us headed for the finish line Tony clearly was faster and was pulling ahead. This is where things got a little fishy. Right before the finish line Tony very abruptly let off and gas and allowed Dario to win. It was pretty blatant, though there was nothing about it on the IRL website. I watched a TV replay when I got home and it's pretty clear that Tony had the race won and some kind of team orders must have forced him to back off. Here's the photo of the finish courtesy of the IRL.

I'd love to know what really went on.

All in all it was a fun experience and I'm glad John talked me into going. Next February we'll do it again when NASCAR comes to town. They run twice as many cars, 100 more miles, and a little less speed, so it will be interesting to compare the two events.