CSI: NY Episode 6.15 The Formula

A racing legend dies in a car explosion on the streets of Manhattan during an exhibition race and when our CSIs discover car tampering, their murder investigation leads us through the F1 racing community to find the killer. The victim, a legend in his time but definitely passed his racing prime, was not well liked and had a number of enemies which made Mac and the team's job to find his killer that much harder. His #1 competitor was a female race car driver (played by Danica Patrick), who was racing him at the time of his death. She had all the motive in the world to kill the victim since he almost killed her in a race not to long ago. When the team finds fibers from her race suit at the location where they know the car tampering took place they think they have there killer but she has an alibi that checks out and claims she was just trying to get a look at the competition. The break in the case comes in the form of surveillance video showing the victim's wife leaving the hotel room of the victim's longtime and seemingly loyal Crew Chief. During interrogation they both admit to conspiring to rig the engine to short circuit but never to kill him. They wanted him to stop racing and retire and knew making him lose was the only way to convince him to quit. Mac believes their story and when Sheldon finally finds the tool that damaged the engine wire, causing the explosion, he also finds a fingerprint on the tool; it belongs to the owner of the racecar. The owner thought the victim was over the hill and needed him out of the way so that he could bring in a new, hotter race car driver and build up million dollar sponsorships again, so he believed there was no other way to get rid of him than killing him.