Verizon IndyCar Series officials have postponed the first race of the double header weekend at Toronto because of heavy rain around the Canadian city.
Initially attempting a standing start on a track that was best described as being hit by a typical British Summer day – wet with persistent rain – the race director Beaux Barfield decided to change that in favour of a rolling single file start.
However, two attempts at taking the green flag led to a number of red flags because of poor conditions on the parade laps – with many drivers complaining they couldn’t see the car ahead of them.
“The conditions were tough for sure, I can’t speak for the drivers in the back on how visibility was but it was borderline – marginal even – for us. It’s a shame we didn’t get the race off, especially considering a couple of championship rivals ended up in pit lane just before we were going to go green. It would have been nice to capitalise on that opportunity, but I understand the call for safety. Big thanks to all the fans that came out today and stuck with us, we look forward to putting on a good race for them tomorrow,” stated Ryan Hunter-Reay.
The championship rival he was alluding to was Will Power, the Team Penske man had clouted the wall on an out lap and had to go into the pit lane to fix the damage. Thankfully for him the delay between attempted starts allowed the damage to get fixed.
Indeed may be as testament to just how bad the conditions were, Arie Luyendyk – the two time Indy 500 winner – spun the safety car on a parade lap. Thankfully the Dutchman kept it out the wall and could continue.
For the schedule it now means that Toronto will see two IndyCar races today (Sunday) with the order for race one being decided on yesterday’s qualifying and race two’s order being decided solely on championship points.
Something potentially more worrying – as can be seen in the Tweet below – was discovered by Racer.com’s ace IndyCar photographer/reporter Marshall Pruett who spotted that the crash fencing isn’t attached to the barriers.
There was no news on whether this situation had been remedied but expect few pictures from behind the turn one barriers.
