With my planned day at the drag strip rained out and threatening skies above, me and my boys retired to the confines of BS Eastern World HQ and played Hot Wheels, killed time, and waiting for racing to be on TV yesterday afternoon. After such a rousing experience with the Indy 500 last weekend, I decided to tune into the IndyCar race from Detroit. This was a road course on Amelia Island, which the series used to run, until discontinuing the event in 2008. Apparently since then, nothing has been done to maintain the course, which are roads on the island, because it started falling to pieces during the race, ultimately causing two wrecks at almost the same time. James Hinchcliffe and Takuma Sato crashed at nearly the same time on opposite ends of the course due to massive chunks of what appears to be rubberized crack filler pulling up and causing their cars to catch small amounts of air. As a side note, Indy cars do not turn worth a damn with the front tires off the pavement.
We have no idea if Sato flipped out like Hinchcliffe did because he’s a Japanese guy who probably yelled a lot of mean Japanese words. Hinchcliffe on the other hand, let ‘er rip over his radio and ABC broadcast his brief explosion on the air (with f-words bleeped). We don’t blame the guy. How massive chunks of the track sitting loose in the racing line were missed by track and safety people is beyond us.
Once again, the Indy 500 is an awesome watch that is so full of action and killer racing that it is literally driven me to vow attending the thing next year and the IndyCar series reduces it to a laughing stock the next week. I think it will be the last afternoon I devote to the series until Memorial Day weekend 2013 in Indiana, sadly.
Press play below to watch an IndyCar driver lose his mind after a wreck that he really should have never had!
Are we so quick to blame Indycar, as opposed to Michigan’s notoriously awful roads?
Detroit . . . streets falling apart . . . who’s surprised about that?
BTW, wasn’t the Detroit G.P. on Belle Isle, not “Amelia Island?”