Sounding off on open-wheel's historic weekend

The nightmare is over. Twelve years after it began, the split era of American open-wheel racing is finally just a memory.

February's unification of the sport forced both the IRL's Indy Japan 300 and the Champ Cars' Grand Prix of Long Beach to run on the same weekend. And now that both races -- and Champ Car itself -- have ended in historic wins from Danica Patrick in Japan and Will Power in Southern California, the unified IndyCar can now look forward to the future.

While this weekend temporarily split the series again, it also served to continue the unified series' momentum it had built up with a successful season opener in March at Homestead-Miami Speedway and Graham Rahal's headline-grabbing win at St. Petersburg, Fla. earlier this month.

Patrick may not have been the fastest car on the track at Twin Ring Motegi, but it takes more than a lead foot to win a race. It takes smarts. When Patrick cruised by Helio Castroneves with three laps to go, she and her strategist Kyle Moyer became geniuses.

On Lap 148 -- five laps after the leaders had pitted en masse -- Patrick, Castroneves and Ed Carpenter went back into pit road under caution to grab another splash of fuel in hopes of moving to the front when the rest of the field would have to make their last stops in the final laps.

Surprisingly, Carpenter was the first to blink on Lap 195, a victim of bad fuel mileage. Scott Dixon, Dan Wheldon and Tony Kanaan followed, and with three laps left, Castroneves was in the lead. But while the two-time Indy 500 winner was running low on fuel, he didn't know that Danica was fighting for position when she passed him on the high side heading into Turn 3. At least, not until he saw the scoring pylon.

After the race, he admitted that he was told by his team to let her go by. Sure enough, some fans have seized on that as proof that the IRL somehow orchestrated Patrick's win.

Give me a break. Helio may not have known about Danica's pass being for the lead, but his Team Penske crew did. To tell him that it was a lead pass with three to go would have been a disaster.

Had he been told to go after Patrick, he would have run out of fuel. Why do you think he finished six seconds behind her? He had to about coast to finish second and bank those valuable championship points. If he ran out, he'd probably be out of the top five in the standings. Big difference, especially when the IndyCars get to Chicago for their season finale in September.

Team Penske did the only thing they could do for Helio. Their man was toast, but at least he didn't become burnt toast. Yet people are whooping up on Castroneves for "laying down" as well as deeming Patrick's victory as fake since she won it on fuel mileage, not with a wheel-to-wheel duel against another car.

If these fans need to put the proverbial blade to somebody, they should go after Team Penske for missing the fuel strategy -- and even that's dubious since they still made the right decision in the long-term for Castroneves' championship hopes. To go after him is unfair and to go after Patrick for winning the race is even worse.

Fortunately, the debate over the Champ Cars' final race is much more tranquil -- albeit for the fact that it was buried in the wake of Patrick's victory.

ESPN2 tape delayed the broadcast to 5:30 p.m. ET last night (the race started at 4) and then devoted the final stint of the race to an interview with Patrick, shoving the racing action to a small box on-screen. Yes, her victory is a big deal, but this was a new low for them in their already abysmal open-wheel coverage. Champ Car fans deserved a better send-off for their series than that.

The race wasn't much better. Power showed that he was not going to be stopped right from the get-go. On the standing start, he rocketed from third position past Alex Tagliani on the outside and then beat polesitter Justin Wilson on the inside to Turn 1. When Wilson fell out of the race after 12 laps -- he figured it was an engine failure -- the Grand Prix was effectively sealed for Power, who led 81 of 83 laps.

But there were many positives too. Second-place driver Franck Montagny may have put himself on the radar of several team owners for a future ride after a dazzling American open-wheel debut. Also, third-place man Mario Dominguez is appearing set to become a full-time IndyCar driver with his Pacific Coast Motorsports team beginning at Indianapolis.

The biggest positive though is that the Grand Prix of Long Beach was given a new lease on life with an extension that will see the race go off until at least 2015. Next year will be the first GPLB with the unified IRL, a new era for the biggest street race in North America.

That's what matters the most. While it's bittersweet to see such a venerable series fade away, open-wheel racing has a chance to build a better future now with unification.

"The future is very bright," said Dominguez, a two-time race winner in Champ Car. "I think there has to be only one series; that was proven before.

"Even though I'm very, very sad that Champ Car is finishing, is ending, at the same time I'm happy, because I'm sure in the end the fans are going to be the winners when they're going to be watching one IndyCar race all the time with all the stars, with all the great teams, with all the great names out there in one same race."

Great words for a great day. A new day in IndyCar racing.

The nightmare is over. At last.