The Indianapolis 500 has long been a unique, larger-than-life American spectacle, if perhaps more than a tad arcane as sports go.

At a glance, it might still seem that way, what with Scotland's Dario Franchitti winning his second Indy title on Sunday because -- wait for it -- he did such a good job calibrating the fuel consumption.

Yup, Franchitti rolled across the finish line with only about one-tenth of a tank left in his Honda racer. Way to economize, Dario!

Which, compared to Duncan Keith playing on despite spitting out a mouthful of Chiclets, or Steve Nash burying three-pointers with one blackened eye swollen shut, lacks a certain quelque-chose in the drama department.

On the other hand, seconds before Franchitti sped so fuel-efficiently to victory, Mike Conway's unit touched wheels with Ryan Hunter-Reay's car, sending Conway's racer helicoptering terrifyingly into the wall. Miraculously, Conway limped away from that airborne demolition job with a leg injury, nothing else.

The crash put the race under a yellow caution flag for the ninth time, sealing Franchitti's victory.

The thing of it is, snobs who once sneered at racing fans as ghouls lurking trackside in hopes of gnarly crashes like Conway's are missing out. Turns out, the Indy 500 is a crossover cultural phenomenon, truly something for everybody, from expert to neophyte, and from mass start to wild finish.

Any sports event that serves up Jewel singing the U.S. national anthem and Gomer Pyle -- OK, Jim Nabors -- belting out Back Home Again in Indiana, is not just reaching out to that male 18-35 demographic.

Motor racing can be intimidatingly technical, with endless chatter about the setup of the car, downforce this, differential that, on and on.

But Sunday's ESPN broadcast was a technological tour de force for the viewer, with cameras in all the cars and the drivers wired for sound -- like the curlers are, but at a much higher RPM.

There was immediate access to drivers who crashed out of the competition from trackside reporters, pit crew chiefs available for instant explanations of what was going on, and so forth.

And there was a lot going on, starting with 48-year-old Davey Hamilton crashing out of the 200-lap race on Turn 2 of the race's first lap, and TV spectators viewing the Conway crash from the perspective of the camera inside Hunter-Reay's racer at the last.

In between those bookends, as much as anything, the race was about mistakes, bad ones, made by the competition and the nearly error-free route taken by Franchitti.

On the 33rd lap, Australia's Will Power, who won the 2009 Edmonton Indy, was cleared to leave the pits while the fuel probe was still attached. Off he went with that connector dangling dangerously from his vehicle. He was black-flagged, forced to return to the pits to correct the problem, and that was it for his brief grasp on the lead of the race. He wound up eighth.

Meanwhile, Lachenaie, Que.'s Alex Tagliani, who started an impressive fifth on the 33-car grid, had wormed his way up to third by Lap 44 before he lost power and began to back up, overtaken by faster cars. He wound up 10th, one placing better than last year, when he was named Indy's rookie of the year.

All in all, a decent showing for the 37-year-old Canadian, co-owner of the FAZZT Race Team, whose racer displayed a Honda Indy Edmonton logo, part of the Team O Canada promotion to hype the July 25 race at Edmonton's City Centre Airport circuit.

During the same pit stop on Lap 67, both Raphael Matos (left rear) and Scott Dixon (left front) had badly installed fresh tires fall off as they tried to wheel back onto the track. You don't need to be a racing insider to know that won't work.

Six laps later, Matos spun out, rear-ending the wall, mangling half of his car and ending his day.

And so it went, with 10 cars crashing out, and eight different drivers combining for 14 lead changes, which made for plenty of tactical jockeying for position, for those who appreciate that sort of thing.

Most of the manoeuvring went on behind Franchitti, who led for 155 of the 200 laps. The unfortunate -- or very fortunate, as it turned out-- Mr. Conway led for 15 late-race laps.

One driver who managed the mayhem well was Danica Patrick, the only woman ever to lead the Indy 500, who navigated her way to a sixth-place finish.

Perhaps the most compelling race-within-the-race was the one-man battle being waged by Tony Kanaan, who started 33rd and dead last on the 11-row grid, but wound up 11th overall.

The veteran Kanaan passed eight cars by about the halfway point of the first lap alone, and drove his way to second place on Lap 157 before being reeled in late in the race.

Shortly after Franchitti won the race, Canada's Internet-savvy Paul Tracy tweeted: "Congrats to Dario, my man."

Which was classy of Tracy, who was bumped from the Indy starting grid on the final day of qualifying, but is on track to race at the Edmonton event.

Better yet was the reward Franchitti received from his wife, Ashley Judd, the Californiaborn, Kentucky-raised actor, who sprinted the length of pit row to kiss the champion.

If the Honda Edmonton Indy delivers half the entertainment value that Sunday's 94th Indy 500 did, it will be an artistic success, at the very least.