After a weekend off, the Izod IndyCar Series heads to Toronto for the tenth round of the championship. Will Power leads the championship by only three points over Ryan Hunter-Reay who has won the last two races at Milwaukee and Iowa. This is the first street course race since Belle Isle back on the first Sunday in June. Lot to cover so let's get to it.
How Will The Racing Be?
We saw four really good street and road course races to begin the year and then a major dud in Belle Isle. The series has brought back push to push beginning at Toronto and for the remaining street and road race in 2012. The last two races at Toronto have been pretty good, although last year's race was a crash filled event. With the "defending rule" no longer in effect, let's see how the racing goes. No one wants to see a parade. Weather looks good for Toronto. Looks like a chance of showers on Saturday and a cool day on Sunday. The Push to Pass allotment determined by IndyCar for the Toronto race will be 100 seconds.
Race Is On ABC
The penultimate ABC covered race is Toronto and this is a good chance to bring in respectable ratings. The NASCAR race is on Saturday night and there is no NHL or NBA playoffs on. You got some Major League Baseball games but only the Sunday game on TBS is a threat to take away ratings. The IndyCar race might be up against the Wimbledon Gentlemen's Final which will be on ESPN but the IndyCar race will be a lead-in to tape-delayed Wimbledon coverage on ABC meaning the end of the IndyCar race could benefit. There is some golf on CBS this weekend and if Tiger Woods is in contention it could terrible for possible viewers.
Engines
IndyCar released engine counts for each team with six races remaining. Each team is allowed five fresh engines for the season and if they go to a sixth engine, regardless if their fifth engine blows up in a race or test session or they reach the mileage limit, they will receive a ten spot grid penalty at the following event. The teams that switch from Lotus before Indianapolis are only allowed four fresh engines with their new manufacture. Five drivers are on their last engine in Toronto. Four are the Honda teams of Scott Dixon, Mike Conway, Takuma Sato and Simon Pagenaud; the fifth is the lone Lotus of Simona de Silvestro. The only Honda team with two fresh engines remaining is James Jakes, while five Chevrolet teams, all three Andretti Autosport cars, JR Hildebrand and EJ Viso have two fresh engines remaining. All the other teams have one fresh engine remaining. More engine failures could lead us to seeing more situations like Long Beach where half the field has to serve grid spot penalties and the top five or six have to drop back and work their way to the front.
Prediction
Toronto will be a good race. A sufficient amount of passing that keeps the fans into the race. I have two picks for this race. One is Justin Wilson who has won at Toronto before and has a great track record. The other is the sentimental favorite James Hinchcliffe. It would be amazing if he won his first race in front of his home crowd. If Hinchcliffe does not win, I still see him keeping up his consistency on road and street courses and getting a podium. Ryan Hunter-Reay keeps up his trng of good runs and passes Will Power for the Overall Championship lead. Graham Rahal gets a top ten, as does Simon Pagenaud and Josef Newgarden finally gets a finish that he deserves in the top ten. Sleepers: Alex Tagliani and Sebastien Bourdais who returns after sitting out for the oval races.
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