Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/183630
crazy Woman Driver victory for Sato's boss, the great AJ Foyt, since, amazingly, 2002. Hinchcliffe then struck again, winning the street race in Sao Paolo, Brazil, edging past leader Sato on the final corner and barely outdragging him to the finish line. Hinch also won in Iowa. The Indianapolis 500 provided another feel-good moment as Tony Kanaan finally took the checkered flag after 12 years of trying. Although it finished under yellow, the average race speed was 187.433 mph, making it the fastest Indy 500 ever. The racing was great, too, with 68 lead changes among 14 different drivers setting new race highs. Even better for American race fans, a Chevrolet finally broke a string of nine straight losses to Honda. CHANGING LANES A Detroit double-header, two races in two days, provided two surprise winners in Mike Conway and Simon Pagenaud. Another highlight came at MidOhio, where Charlie Kimball became the first diabetic driver to win. Notably, for the second straight year this race went flag-to-flag without any cautions, not even for debris (are you listening, NASCAR?). And just when it seemed like the series' biggest stars would never shine, the summer saw a string of victories by Hunter-Reay, Helio Castroneves and three in a row by Scott Dixon. That thrust some of the big names back into the 20 championship battle, setting up the series for a fantastic finish this fall. Now here's the funny thing about the IndyCar resurgence: When former Indianapolis Motor Speedway boss Tony George led the split from the old Champ Car Series and formed the Indy Racing League back in the mid-1990s, he had a very specific plan. His new series would feature fields mostly of American drivers competing mostly on oval tracks. He got it completely wrong. The IRL struggled to identify and nurture good American drivers, and foreigners like Kanaan, Castroneves and Dario Franchitti have dominated. The Indy 500 remains a fantastic sight to see, but elsewhere the oval races are generally the least interesting and most sparsely attended events on the circuit. Fortunately, George is long gone from the management team, and the current crop of leaders is, for the most part, giving the fans what they want: a few oval races sprinkled in among a heavy dose of road-course and street-course events. The road courses provide the best showcases for these cars, but the big-city street races are where the series really shines. That, I believe, is IndyCar's best bet for the future. The races on the streets of places from St. Petersburg and Long Beach to Sao Paolo and Toronto are packaged as part of weekend-long festivals that include october 2013 // WWW.CHANGINGLANESDIGITAL.COM 1013 crazy woman driver cl.indd 2 9/5/13 2:50 PM