Franchitti Wins, Canadians Wreck

Ten years after claiming victory on the streets of Toronto in the now-defunct CART series, Dario Franchitti has found the winners circle there for a second time. A combination of textbook perfect driving and great pit strategy helped the Scot bring his Ganassi machine to the finish line ahead of the Aussie duo from rival Team Penske, Ryan Briscoe and part time driver Will Power.

"It's great to be back in Canada and bring the Target car to Victory Lane," he said afterwords. "It was a tough race. In the middle of the race, I thought we were really going to struggle to get a good result. Through good strategy, a fast car and pushing like hell, we got to there."

While the day got off to a promising start for the two Canadian drivers in the field, things went sour for both in the closing laps. Paul Tracy was his usual aggressive self, charging through the mid-pack to challenge the leaders throughout most of the event. With twenty lap to go, however, Tracy and Helio Castroneves banged wheels forcefully enough to send both cars into the concrete barriers, ending their resective days.

Alex Tagliani made the most of his great qualifying position to stay up front until, with eleven laps to go, he tangled with Tomas Scheckter. Tne South African's day was done, but Alex was able to carry on, limping home in 9th.

In what was perhaps the best performance that nobody was paying attention to, Danica Patrick - who is not generally considered to be a top-notch road/street driver - climbed from a dismal 18th starting spot to finish an impressive 6th.

Here are the complete race results:

http://www.indycar.com/stats/boxscores/2009/toronto_07122009.pdf

The next race for the IndyCar Series will be on July 26 on the airport tarmac at Edmonton, Canada. There will also be a Firestone Indy Lights race there, on Saturday the 25th.