Takuma Sato's Indy 500 victory

Indy 500 is by far one of the most coveted and most prestigious race events in the racing calendar. It is also extremely gruelling since the drivers have to drive hundreds of laps and stay focused for more than 2 hours. Very often the race will have numerous big accidents and many restarts. This year's race was no exception. The main difference with this year's race is that the winner was no other than the former F1 driver Takuma Sato.
Takuma Sato has been in Indy car racing since he left F1 and did not have a lot of success winning only 1 previous race and coming extreme close to winning the Indy 500 many years ago when he spun out on the last lap trying to pass Dario Franchitti. He has since learnt a lot about patience and timing his actions. This Indy 500 win is by far his biggest victory ever and it is celebrated by Japan. Takuma Sato is the first winner of Asian descent in Indy car and first Japanese to ever with the Indy 500.
This victory also means a lot for Honda which is the main engine supplier for his team. Honda has been at the receiving end of bad news since end of 2016 for producing poor F1 engines for the Mclaren team and also the frustration that Fernando Alonso was going through in F1 and in his maiden drive in Indy car.

The victory also boosted the popularity of Indy car in Japan all of a sudden and many young up coming drivers now are more eager and more driven to excel in motorsports. The flip side of this victor is that there were some racial backlash from racist journalist and racist fans. Some went as far as to comment that the Indy 500 should have been won by a white driver since the race was held on Memorial weekend which commemorates the veterans who died in World War 2. This of course is ridiculous since the race can be won by any driver regardless of nationality or ethnicity.

Many fans were upset at the racist comments made by some sports journalist and have called for the racist journalist to be fired or at least issue an apology. Racing or motorsports should never be race based and stereotyping is also wrong. In the past many Americans would say that oriental people can't drive because there are not nearly as many Asians in motorsports and not many compete at the top level with the exception of drifting where it came from Japan and is dominated by Japanese drivers. Takuma Sato's victory also shuts up many people who would stereotype orientals can't drive. This really puts on a new topic for them to talk about and possibly start to change the mind set of the fans.