WE STANDING STARTS NOW!
Toronto, the only city in Canada where a playoff beard means being clean shaven, is up next for the Izod IndyCar Series and is the second of three double-headers this season, where fans get twice the usual IndyCar action and half the action of any other series. The official spotter guide for the weekend claims that the double-header "offers a unique challenge to the stars of IndyCar", a challenge unlike any other round on the calendar, except perhaps the other two which are also double-headers. You won't want to miss how a species that put a man on the moon 44 years ago fails to drive more than four corners without bringing out a yellow.
Dat Schedule:
12 July (Friday)
Practice: 10:25am - 11:55am
Qualifiying #1: 2:15pm - 3:25pm
13 July (Saturday)
Qualifying #2: 10:35am - 11:05am
Race #1: 3:40pm - 6:00pm
14 July (Sunday)
Race #2: 3:40pm - 6:00pm
Note: All times posted Eastern/Greatest time zone. For West Coast USA, subtract 3 hours. For British/European, add 5 hours. For Westeros, send a raven.
Other Important Stuff:
(click to open .pdf)
Entry list
Spotter guide
Pit lane assignments
Full schedule
"I can't watch the race on TV! Can someone give me a stream?"
Sure, but only if you can bravely soldier through this maze and avoid its various traps and temptations!
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Toronto is a misunderstood city by much of the world as proven by its official city motto of For the last time, it's Vancouver that's full of *****!. Toronto is actually home to immigrants, and even though large parts of the world use that sentence as code for "full of crime", I can assure you that if you find your car broken into, your dog kicked, or your sister's ass squeezed, the perpetrator is almost certainly a blue-eyed haystack like most of the population. Toronto is quite a diverse and tolerant place by major city standards these days. Whether this is due to everyone some time in late 2012 cottoning on to the fact that if land belongs to the man who works hardest for it, the very least you can do is divide the grass and the dirt beneath your feet 50/50 with someone who didn't have the good fortune to be shat out by their mother here already but instead came to this country by floating across the ocean on a barn door. There could also be a much simpler explanation, that my years of following up any racial thoughts of my own with a shrug and a confident muttering of "All pussy is pink on the inside" has finally began to change things around here. Of course, the local news may not see things this way, but who are you going to believe? I actually go outside and walk around here sometimes. Toronto is the real capital of the country that gave the world Call Me Maybe and the Trailer Park Boys, and this weekend it will give us two excellent races as well. There even used to a reason to live here.
Toronto also has a rich sporting heritage, sort of like the one you'll find in every other city. The NHL's Maple Leafs are in financial terms the most valuable hockey team in the world, despite the fact they have not won the league's championship since two years before Michael Schumacher was born. Put another way, their last meaningful victory of any kind came the same year Jim Clark, Jochen Rindt and Graham Hill contested the Indy 500, and two of those drivers have been dead for over four decades, not unlike the hearts of the city's hockey fans. The Canadian Football League's Toronto Argonauts are the oldest professional sports team still using the same name in North America, which is a bit like expecting praise for having worn the same sweater since the 1870s. Toronto also has a baseball team, a soccer team, and a lacrosse team, of which absolutely nothing interesting could be said. The Toronto Indy however has a riveting history of excellent races and is one of the oldest races on the current calendar, and the inaugural event in 1986 was won by Bobby Rahal's moustache. Dario Franchitti won here in 1999. He's won here more recently, but 1999 was a long time ago now. That's 10 years before 20 years before James Jakes wins a race. Regardless, the races are sure to be the most interesting things to happen in the city since the mayor was caught smoking crack* with gangsters and the scandal rocked the city.
*Not a joke.
Here is our circuit map, providing useful tips for everywhere in and around the circuit you may wish to check out.
Speaking only for myself I find no identity with patriotism and therefore I shouldn't feel the need to excuse an entire country here, but please do not let the nauseatingly sentimental street names that make up this track bullshit you. They would be more accurately called "This fat girl getting finger-banged on the park bench is the size of Manitoba" avenue, or "All I can see is puddles of sewage and dead seagulls on the Lake Shore" boulevard. Toronto is one of the most difficult circuits on the calendar, particularly the tight exits of corners, made harder by the fact that in this day and age of progressiveness and tolerance every exit is also an entrance.
The rules regarding the standing start (which will take place on Saturday's race, not Sunday's) are surprisingly uncomplicated by IndyCar standards, but are nevertheless far too boring to copypasta here. This article sums it up nicely.
So what happened last week? You remember, it was Pocono! Scott Dixon won a tricky race, with Charlie Kimball a tricky second and Dario Franchitti a tricky third.
What we expected:
What we got:
Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk!
Ryan Hunter-Reay was taken out by Takuma Sato, who shot so far up RHR's ass he could've French kissed him from the inside. James Hinchcliffe lost it turn 1, lap 1, and manly tears were wept all across the world. Hinchcliffe later went on to provide more insight in the commentator's booth in 15 minutes than Marty Reid has given in 15 years. Pocono was generally agreed by most to have been a good race, just not as good as we had expected, sort of like trying rum for the first time. As for last year's Toronto Indy, Ryan Hunter-Reay was victorious in a finish under yellow but by less than a second from Charlie Kimball and Mike Conway, meaning this would be a good place to put that picture you saw four paragraphs and 9 minutes of your life ago. Takuma Sato is also now 10th in points after being first seemingly two weeks ago, when in reality he hasn't been standing on an IndyCar podium since Brazil. Dobie Gray didn't drift away that fast. Autosport favorite Simona de Silvestro had another forgettable weekend, but she can at least take solace from the fact that the American population is at least interested in something other than her boobs.
For what's been happening since Pocono, we turn to this week's print-screen special:
So you've never watched IndyCar before and you don't know who to cheer for? No problem, figure out who you like and bet on them, and when you lose your house, your wife and the clothes off your back, revel in the fact you are finally free of the modern world's strangling claws and you can do that bank robbery you've daydreamed about for the past 10 years. If you need inspiration, it was less than a year ago that The Great Maple Syrup Heist* saw $20 million dollars of the sugary bottles of heaven sweeter than Jamie Little's daisy juice go missing. If you're going to swing, hit it out of the God damn park.
*Not a joke either.
Using the power of perhaps the only decent web site still around, click on a driver's name to see if he's the one you ought to be supporting. 24 drivers in the race means plenty of choices!
Takuma Sato
James Hinchcliffe
Ryan Hunter-Reay
E.J. Viso
Marco Andretti
-
Alex Tagliani
Scott Dixon
Dario Franchitti
Charlie Kimball
Justin Wilson
-
Sebastian Saavedra
Sébastien Bourdais
Ed Carpenter
Tony Kanaan
Mike Conway
-
Simona de Silvestro
Graham Rahal
James Jakes
Josef Newgarden
Tristan Vautier
-
Simon Pagenaud
Hélio Castroneves
Will Power
Ryan Briscoe
So who has been winning stuff lately?
Dem Standings
Izod IndyCar Series
1 CASTRONEVES, Hélio (356pts)
2 HUNTER-REAY, Ryan (333pts)
3 ANDRETTI, Marco (301pts)
Firestone Indy Lights
1 MUNOZ, Carlos (285pts)
2 KARAM, Sage (281pts)
3 CHAVES, Gabby (246pts)
Pro Mazda Championship
1 BRABHAM, Matthew (184pts)
2 FERREIRA, Diego (134pts)
3 BLACKSTOCK, Shelby (118pts)
USF2000
1 HARGROVE, Scott (141pts)
2 GOODEN, Wyatt (88pts)
3 ESTRELA, Danilo (84pts)
Rosetta Stone Almost-Spoke-German Championship
1 PAGENAUD, Simon (269pts)
2 de SILVESTRO, Simona (171pts)
3 VAUTIER, Tristan (158pts)
Jacques Villeneuve I'll-Never-Be-in-F1-Again Championship
1 WILSON, Justin (253pts)
2 SATO, Takuma (241pts)
3 BOURDAIS, Sébastien (147pts)
And now, all the usual features!
Uneccessary Danica Mentions:
You wish you had..
..the chance to spit game with Ana B in Brazil.
Take a drink every time..
"..well, let's see if they can get through the start clean this time".
Useless Indy Fact of the Day:
The nearest star to Earth is Alpha Centauri, which is 4.3 light years away. This means any aliens looking at Earth from Alpha Centauri are watching things that happened 4 years ago. Which means they think this is Graham Rahal's breakout year.
Do you remember..
..when Oriol Servia learned to fly?
Anagram of the Day:
Alex Tagliani / Genitalia Lax
This is why Autosport won't let me write for them.
Edited by Andrew Hope, 11 July 2013 - 05:17.
