Blundell Gets Through Slow Traffic to Win

It wasn’t the fastest drivers who gave Mark Blundell his biggest problems. It was the slowest.

The Englishman dominated Sunday’s Toronto Molson-Indy, but nearly had the best race of his budding Indy-car career marred by several lapped cars that virtually erased the lead he had worked so hard to build.

Blundell, who last month lost a race at Detroit just yards from the finish when he ran out of fuel and then won an economy run at Portland, Ore., took the lead at the start Sunday and stayed ahead for all but two of the 95 laps on the temporary street circuit.

Alex Zanardi, coming off a dominating victory a week earlier in Cleveland, was the only driver able to pressure Blundell at all. But his effort on the 1.721-mile, 11-turn course in downtown Toronto came up seconds short.

Zanardi, from Italy, got one last shot when Blundell got caught behind the lapped car of Hiro Matsushita for several turns on lap 91. That allowed the runner-up to pull right up behind Blundell’s Mercedes-powered Reynard.

“I’m slightly disappointed with a couple of guys out there,” Blundell, 31, said. “I built up about a five-second lead and they cost me that lead. One of those guys almost cost me the race.”

But this was Blundell’s day. Zanardi’s Reynard-Honda could not overtake the leader and wound up finishing 0.659 seconds--about eight car-lengths--behind.

Andre Ribeiro of Brazil passed five-time Toronto winner Michael Andretti late in the race to take third. Andretti, who had won the last two events here, was fourth.

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Dale Jarrett, who resurrected his career with a surprising victory two years earlier at Pocono International Raceway in Long Pond, Pa., won his latest duel with Jeff Gordon in the Pennsylvania 500.

They exchanged the lead four times, but Jarrett was able to pull away late in the race and beat Gordon by 2.99 seconds to win for the third time this season and give Ford its 11th victory in 18 races.

But Gordon, who has all seven wins by Chevrolets, took the lead in the Winston Cup point standings.

Meanwhile, the longest drought in the career of seven-time Winston Cup champion Dale Earnhardt reached 45 consecutive defeats. He ran well but was involved in a multi-car accident with 73 laps left.

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Cory McClenathan won the Top Fuel title in the Mile-High Nationals, edging Tony Schumacher with a quarter-mile run of 4.864 seconds with a top speed of 294.59 mph in Morrison, Colo.

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Miguel Duhamel won the AMA Superbike race at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington, Ohio, his second consecutive victory in the AMA/MBNA Superbike Series.