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Through the Looking Glass

© Gary Presley

That's television, isn't it? A warped view of the world flickers through the televison screen. You're never sure if you're getting the whole picture, part of the picture or only enough of the picture to confuse you.

That's my take on ABC's opening of the coverage of the Milwaukee Mile last Sunday. Nearly every owner, team representative or driver had something to say about Indy, and almost every comment could be classified as a definite maybe.

One thing certain, everyone from CART seemed to appreciate the warm welcome and generous cooperation received by Team Target-Chip Ganassi at the Indy 500. The talk was strong enough that a bettin' man might risk a few pesos on more of the left-right open-wheel boys tackling the Brickyard next year.

ABC's commentators had little else to do Sunday afternoon except talk about Indy, for a consistent drizzle postponed the race 'til Monday. The CART guys might risk rain tires on road or street courses, but not even the bravest of the hot shoes would risk a high speed oval run in the wet.

Monday came, and you had to watch the on-the-spot Web sites like Seventhgear to learn whether the weather would move out of Wisconsin and allow the race to be run.

Everyone except Juan Montoya probably now wishes it had rained another day. Considering the way the Colombian Kid dominated, however, he probably could've started tomorrow and still won the race today.

No surprise, really. The real eye-opener was one of those lost-in-the-statistics facts that TV announcers love to repeat until you've got it memorized. This was Toyota's first victory on the CART circuit. And it's been slow coming. Considering it took 300+ tries to put a Toyota-powered chassis in the Winner's Circle, the guys from Tokyo might have been wondering if they should've taken a few pages out of Ford's book, a company that accomplished the same feat in 7 races.

Or maybe they just need the Juan the Quick. Montoya essentially repeated his "try and catch me" Indy performance at Milwaukee for the win. Smooth all day, fast when he wanted to be, beneficiary of perfect pit-stops, Montoya was untouchable.

Michael Andretti ran second, but, despite being able to close up slightly when Montoya hit traffic, you would have been hard pressed to convince anyone in grandstands he was ever a threat, unless perhaps Montoya had been able to find another way to break a Toyota engine.

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