Bordin wins at Toronto

By Cam Curwood - Motorsport.com

Andrew Bordin won for the first time at Exhibition Place and for the first time in the year 2000 by taking the Cart Atlantic race at his home track at the Molson Indy Toronto. Bordin finished 0.646 seconds ahead of 2nd place finisher Buddy Rice, and ahead of 3rd place finisher Daniel Wheldon by 2.456 seconds in an incident-filled event.

Many yellow flags throughout the race meant the field was almost always packed together, and there was much dicing for position and contact between cars in the 35 lap event. It was from one of these yellow flag periods that the leaders sprinted the last few laps to the end. Bordin passed Rice, retook the lead and went on to edge Rice and his team-mate Wheldon at the chequered flag. Rice had earlier taken the lead from pole-sitter Bordin.

"I thought," said Bordin, "there are five laps left here and I am going to go wild. It's great to win in Toronto. It's definitely the top win of my career."

It wasn't completely smooth for Bordin, however, as a problem with 4th gear gave him troubles. "The yellow flags helped me," he admitted. "If we didn't have them I would have destroyed the gear. If it pops out of gear along the main straight, you can lose half a second just like that," he mentioned as he snapped his fingers.

Second place finisher Buddy Rice wasn't too disappointed finishing behind Bordin. "I wanted to stay in the points lead," he admitted. "Andrew had a great car on cold tires which helped at each of the [yellow flag] re-starts." Rice has finished on the podium each time he had finished this year, but had his points lead reduced from 9 points to 7.

Daniel Wheldon, who finished third, was also not too disappointed with his race. "I didn't quite have the car that Buddy and Andrew had. It's good for the team that Andrew won." Wheldon, however, has dropped from 2nd in the championship into 3rd behind his team-mate.

Rice and Bordin, who admitted he was nervous going into the race, complimented each other on their overtaking maneuvers. "He could have squeezed me, but he gave me room," said Bordin.

"Andrew an I have been racing a long time together," said Rice, who then made a similar comment about his earlier pass. "He could have squeezed me, but I was being cautious and he gave me room."