The Grand Prix of Cleveland is always a barnburner, so even though it was after midnight when I got home from Iowa Speedway, I went straight for the TiVo.
From talking on the phone to colleagues in Cleveland during the six-hour drive, I knew the recorded race would be worth staying up for. And it was.
Mi-Jack Promotions has reinvigorated the 25-year-old Cleveland race, and the results even showed on television. There were several creative new camera angles that did a good job of demonstrating the speed and agility of the Champ Cars on the unique Burke Lakefront Airport circuit.
Paul Tracy admitted that his 31st- career Champ Car victory didn’t come the way he would have wanted it to, but the triumph is good for Tracy and for the series — especially heading into three-consecutive races in Canada.
This was the first Cleveland race I missed since the early 1990s. It’s a shame, because it’s a great city and a fun race to cover.
Cleveland ’88 was the first time that I really had insider access to big-time racing, thanks to some passes from a gentleman named Ken Lowe, who managed the PPG Pace Car Team.
I can clearly remember moments from the weekend, like when Hans Stuck let out a blood-curdling yodel when he pulled his victorious Audi into Trans-Am victory circle.
The CART race that year was one of the all-time classics, as Mario Andretti, Bobby Rahal and Danny Sullivan swapped the lead on a broiling summer day. The victory wasn’t Mario’s last in Champ Cars, but it was one of his best.
Hot weather has been a Cleveland GP constant since the inaugural event in 1982. The initial races were scheduled for 500 kilometers (312 miles), which was thankfully cut back after a couple of years.
They tried holding the race at night for a couple of years, but the cost was prohibitive. Plus it doesn’t get dark until well after 9 o’clock in Cleveland in early summer.
The wide-open track always encourages aggressive racing. Most of the carnage usually occurs at the start, but occasionally the race is close enough that there is bumping and banging at the end.
The best example came in 1995, when five drivers disputed the lead over the last few laps with contact at nearly every corner. The car-to-car warfare even continued after the checkered flag when Robby Gordon rammed Michael Andretti in retaliation for an earlier altercation.
Conversely, in 2003, Tracy and Sebastien Bourdais waged an intense two-man battle over 115 laps that resulted in the Frenchman’s first race victory on American soil. Bourdais still rates that rookie triumph as one of his best.
Bourdais’s luck didn’t hold at Cleveland this year, however, and he suffered a rare mechanical DNF. That’s bad news for him, but good for the Champ Car championship, which now has five drivers within 25 points of the series lead.
Will Power and Team Australia have shown they are a match for Bourdais and Newman-Haas-Lanigan Racing on most weekends, and the RSPORTS team with Justin Wilson and Alex Tagliani is making rapid progress as well.
Team Minardi USA’s Robert Doornbos hasn’t won a race, but he’s racked up four podium finishes and lies second in the points. And you can never disregard Tracy and the Forsythe team, though the Canadian is well behind in the championship sweepstakes after missing two races to injury earlier this year.
Then again, we’re less than a third of the way into the season, so Tracy could conceivably elevate himself back into the mix with a strong Canadian tour. And as the Grand Prix of Cleveland showed, anything can happen in the Champ Car World Series.