Bore-day regains points lead at Edmonton

HO HUM..................................................!

Champ Car vs Mother Nature

As evidenced in the latest crash fest Champ Car has the potential to be a more exciting series if only we would wet down the track at some point during the race. Perhaps we could provide a few fans located strategically around the course with garden hoses and radios so that race control could instruct them on when to use them.

Well of course this is nonsense but my how the chase has changed since Mother Nature has volunteered her services lately. My prophetic question in the Cleveland column when Bourdais DNF’d, ”Is there more to come” seems to have been answered in the affirmative.

With Bourdais out of first place, but certainly not out of the chase, the championship is only in question if Mother Nature continues to Rain on the Champ Car parade or if the fans get their hoses!

Bourdais claims to have been “taking it easy to avoid problems” but it looks to me like is a less skillful mudder than some of the other drivers. Is this a chink in is armor?

I still cannot give a good grade to the most recent effort for two reasons: The first lap shenanigans that put PT in the wall and the reckless abandon that some showed on the rain slickened track. The series must find a way to get race started with all cars running for at least one lap, I for one am not interested in the NASCAR like bump and crash racing.

Bourdais must have gone to anger management class last week; he didn’t seem upset with the take down that Doornbos scored that took him out of the race. So now I guess we will have to watch to see if the Wilson/Dalziel tangle will develop into something more exciting.

Coyne’s team might have had an even better day had Kat not been taken out in the PT incident, with Bruno finishing fifth. Both he and Kat had found something that must have had pit row buzzing when Bruno finished P1 and Kat P4 in the morning warm up. I was really looking forward to seeing how both would do in the race.

When I spoke of others trying alternates strategies in my Cleveland column it was tongue-in-cheek , hopefully Rahal didn’t take it seriously even though he did try to repeat Tracy’s three wing win as he went about creating a shortage of front wing spares in the NHL transporter.

All in all the race was OK, given there is now at least some hope that a championship race will be more than a single driver wide. Still, if the remainder of the events are dry look for the championship morph back into a one man show.

Doornbos Conquers The Mont

Rookie Robert Doornbos managed to out drive everyone at Champ Cars latest event in at the beautiful Mont Tremblant circuit Sunday. The Rookie notched his first Champ Car victory over a very unhappy 2nd place Champion Sebastian Bourdais with some excellent driving on a very slick rain soaked track. The race started on a dry track but ended wet.

Bourdais was livid when complaining about the blocking he was certain that Doornbos had done to him during the latter part of the race after the rain started. He was soundly booed by the crowd during the post race interview for his rant.

Bourdais reportedly said “If race control did not see it, OK. But Robert knows what he did. He told me after the race, ‘You’re going to see a lot of this in formula 1.’ And that’s just the point. This is not Formula 1. The rules here are very clear about blocking and we are all supposed to play by the rules. If the rules said we are allowed to block it would have never come to this because he would have never gotten past me in the first place.”

So did he or didn't he? A little controversy never hurts!

The start saw three cars stall on the grid, what was that all about? I thought the software geeks had that under control. Every software engineer I have every dealt with said they could write software that would fix anything. It will be interesting to see if these latest issues can actually be corrected in software!

Race time temps were not ideal either, could there be a connection to the stalled cars at the start? Temps reminded me of my days in Milwaukee where I kept a jacket in my car all year round because when the wind came of the lake in the summer it was very uncomfortable without a jacket. I don't know about the norms for the area but it would seem in July it should have been warmer.

Steve Johnson is reporting there were more than 42,ooo clicks recorded on his turnstile for the weekend and calling that a success. Well, OK I guess success is subjective at least for now. I sure the cash register content cannot be counted as successful after they do the count Monday morning. Wonder what the TV rating was?

Next up Toronto!