Or, for those who speak English and are frustrated when reading Tweets from Kanaan, Moraes, or Barichello, "Difficult Weekend for Brazil"
I'll start with the most significant event of the weekend: Felipe Massa's Saturday qualifying incident at the Hungaroring. Not only was the victim of this completely freak occurrence a native of Brazil, but the car that shed the 1-kilo steel spring was piloted by a Brazilian. By all indications, it looks like Felipe will emerge from this in relatively one piece -- pretty good for someone who suffered a frontal skull fracture, a basal skull fracture (which is the injury that has claimed the lives of many drivers of old), a concussion and a good-sized laceration on his forehead.
Judging by this photo (not for the faint of heart), if the spring had hit Felipe about two inches lower, we may be writing his obituary today. It's also pretty obvious that, in spite of his woozy condition, Felipe clearly understands that his life was nearly ended that moment. His good eye looks like that of a man who went a few rounds with ManBearPig or something.
Fellow Brazilian Rubens Barichello, who surely feels a level of misplaced guilt for driving the car that fired the errant spring, has begun calls for research into making this racing thing safer. Unfortunately, it is situations like this and like that of Henry Surtees last week that lead to innovations in safety to prevent issues in the future.
MEANWHILE
The IndyCar Series race in Edmonton, while being duller than a box of rocks after all of the rocks have been emptied out, continued the weekend's theme of "let's see how much trouble Brazilians can get in".
On the first lap, (Brazilian) Rafa Matos was punted off the track when Mike Conway was squeezed between Rafa and (Brazilian) Tony Kanaan going into the first turn. Moments later, Paul Tracy tried a bit of an optimistic move in the little purpose-built portion of the mostly-airport circuit and punted (Brazilian) teammate Mario Moraes onto the grass and out of the race. Tracy, who has apparently jumped on the Danica bunnies-and-rainbows train, admitted fault for the incident, but also said that it might be good for Mario to be on the wrong end of one of these ridiculous incidents.
The only exciting thing that happened in the entire race happened to catch (Brazilian) Tony Kanaan out and end his race. Kanaan, who has fallen victim to a suspension breakage at one of the fastest points at the Speedway and a pit barbecue at Milwaukee, got splashed with fuel once again and got torched (video HERE). This was an extremely scary fire as far as pit fires go, but Kanaan did a smart thing here: in the post-BBQ interview, he admitted that he knew he was covered in ethanol and knew that the car was about to light up like a broken propane tank, but he stayed in the car to get it away from his pit crew before the fire broke out. Props also to be given to the Ganassi and Penske crews, who jumped into the fray with buckets and hoses and extricated Kanaan from his car.
Oh and, because of his association as a fellow South American, Columbian Juan Pablo Montoya snatched defeat from the jaws of victory at the Artist-Formerly-Known-As-The Brickyard 400 by supposedly speeding on the pit lane after flat-out dominating The Speedway. The only man to pilot three different types of car in anger at The Speedway was well-clear of the field and on his way to embarrassing the NASCAR establishmet by being a 500 winner to meet success in stock car oval racing when the penalty fell. There's always next year...
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