Roberto Moreno won the shortened race by five seconds over Gil de Ferran and Michael Andretti.

Rookie Bruno Junqueira, who had previously been scrapping for points in the midfield, scored his first win at the preceding race in Road America.

After winning the race in Toronto, Michael Andretti had been plagued with multiple DNFs before finally finishing second at Road America and was looking to get his pursuit of the championship back on track.

Defending series champion Gil de Ferran, after a lukewarm start to 2001, was beginning to power his way to the front of the point standings, coming to Vancouver on the heels of three consecutive top-5 finishes and a pole position at Mid-Ohio.

But the big story going into Vancouver was the rise of Forsythe Racing and the string of good results by Canadian drivers Patrick Carpentier and Alex Tagliani.

[5] Practice would be a challenge for the teams and the drivers, as the weather forecasts called for light showers on Friday and again during qualifying on Saturday.

Dario Franchitti stalled twice on track during the first session with fuel pressure issues while Max Wilson nudged into the Turn 12 barriers, causing moderate damage to the nose of the car.

[6] At the end of the session, Tony Kanaan had managed to top the time sheets with a 1:01.958 followed by Cristiano da Matta with a 1:01.968 and de Ferran with a 1:02.302.

Although clouds were building around Vancouver during the Friday afternoon practice, no rain fell on the track and thus the session continued as normal.

The only major interruption of the day came when Junqueira hit the wall in Turn 10 and damaged the right suspension about twenty minutes into the session, bringing out the red flag.

Ten minutes later, Moreno, who at the time was running third in the session and fourth overall, lost power on the backstretch and was forced to retire the car.

Junqueira, trying to pull to the outside of the queue, clipped the front of Tracy and spun; he managed to keep it out of the tire barriers but ended up stalling the car.

During the opening caution, Alex Zanardi, Wilson, and Bryan Herta all went into the pits to top off on fuel, anticipating a strategy change later in the race.

At the same time, points-leader Castroneves came to a stop on the start-finish straight with an electrical problem, forcing the second caution of the day.

Suffering from a right rear puncture, Tracy pulled onto the runoff area at Turn 1 and retired the car, the official cause being a gearbox malfunction that resulted from the collision with da Matta.

Dixon, who was battling for position at the back of the pack with fresher tires, collided with Tora Takagi at Turn 6, forcing him off the track and stalling the car.

Almost simultaneously, Zanardi hit the tire barriers going into Turn 7, spilling water that had collected from the previous night's rain all over the track.

Meanwhile, the race took a dramatic turn as Tagliani, who had reported a strange noise to his crew just laps earlier, was helpless as a large plume of smoke erupted from the back of his car, forcing him to pull off-course and retire from first place.

Since Tagliani had managed to avoid bringing out a caution, his teammate Carpentier and 3rd place Bräck pulled into the pits for their scheduled stops, handing the lead to Moreno.

The drama continued when Papis clouted the wall in Turn 4, destroying the right-side suspension, putting him out of the race and bringing out the full-course caution.

The yellow gave the rest of the field a perfect opportunity to pit as da Matta, Franchitti, and Jimmy Vasser each made a stop for fuel and tires.

The race continued under green as de Ferran stormed past Gugelmin on the back straight to take 1st place.

Bräck fell from 5th to 8th place as a result of the incident, while Carpentier was forced to limp around the circuit back to pits to change tires; he would be put a lap down.

The rest of the race was incident-free, and Moreno remained unchallenged as he took the checkered flag for his second career win.

A very popular driver in the series, he was holding back tears as he raised the winner's trophy and gave interviews.

Moreno would come back to CART in 2003 racing for Herdez Competition and score one final career podium at Miami.

We all wish he was still here, and we think about him all the time when we're up here, so I'd like to dedicate this race for him.de Ferran recorded his fifth podium of the year, continuing an upward trend that would ultimately earn him two wins and the season championship.