Filed under: Motorsports, Honda, Racing
After a three-year hiatus,
IndyCar racing finally made
its return to Detroit this weekend. But after only five laps, things started to fall apart - literally - for Belle Isle's big race.
Now, any Michigan native - or anyone who has spent enough time here - will tell you that this state isn't exactly renowned for its immaculate road surfaces. And because the Belle Isle circuit sat unused for the past three years (aside from its day-to-day duties as a public road on Detroit's island park), cracks and potholes were present along the entire race surface. Before the weekend's events took place, road crews used synthetic rubber to fill the cracks and dips, but as you can see from the photo above, the patch job wasn't good enough. As the racers lapped the patched pavement at high speed, it began to break loose to dangerous effect.
Autoblog was present at the race, seated trackside between Turn Nine and Turn Ten - the latter of which being one of the corners where the synthetic rubber patching started to come apart. Huge chunks of the rubber would break off and scatter across the track, and in one case, a car kicked up a piece of the asphalt with such force that it flew over the safety fences and landed on the roof of a nearby chalet.
As the race went on, we cringed while watching the cars speed over the broken pavement, wondering how long it would be before track officials would declare the conditions unsafe, or worse, how long it would be until a driver lost control over the broken pavement and went off the course... which is exactly what happened.
Continue reading IndyCar's return to Detroit's Belle Isle Grand Prix comes apart at the seams [SPOILERS]
IndyCar's return to Detroit's Belle Isle Grand Prix comes apart at the seams [SPOILERS] originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 04 Jun 2012 13:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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