Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Turn your clocks back or you'll be early for the Grand Prix

On Oct. 26, 1997, I got up bright and early to go over to a pub on Bayview Ave. in Toronto (long gone) that used to open early on Grand Prix Sundays and serve up a breakfast for a couple of dozen F1 fans who – unlike today – couldn’t watch the races on their home TVs because they weren’t available.

I got there and the place was dark. I looked at my watch and looked at the pub and realized I’d forgotten to turn my watch back an hour because it was the Sunday that daylight savings time ended.

Don’t be a stupid like me. Turn your clocks and watches back an hour before you go to bed tonight because, if you don’t, you’ll turn on your TV Sunday morning to watch the last race of the 2009 season and there will probably a fishing show, or something, on instead.

In any event, I went home a dozen years ago and read the Sunday Star to kill an hour and then went back to the pub where, that morning, the several dozen regulars had turned into a full house and I can still hear the roar of delight when Michael Schumacher tried to block Jacques Villeneuve’s pass late in the race and wound up stuck in the kitty litter.

Every time Michael spun his wheels, the cheering got louder. It was almost an anti-climax when the race ended and Jacques had become Canada’s first World Champion.

But, all in all, a great day.

Villeneuve won the championship that day at Jerez, in Spain – a wonderful racing circuit out in the countryside that had hills and trees and grass – unlike the brand new track in Abu Dhabi that looks – from the air – like Pearson International Airport, or LAX.

All concrete and pavement and flat as a pancake – except for the tunnel leading out of the pits that reminds me of leaving a parking garage.

I mean, it’s beautiful and gorgeous in its ultra-modern way and that, I guess, is the way Formual One is going but it just doesn’t look or feel right.

And we all know that watching any sport on TV is nothing like the real thing – hockey in the ACC or baseball at the Rogers Centre is much better in person than on the tube (until, I guess, the day comes when it will all be in 3-D) – and that’s particularly true of auto racing. Only when the cars flash past and you have to wear ear plugs to protect your eardrums from the shrieks of the engines can you really appreciate the spectacle that is F1.

I watched the qualifying earlier today and it didn’t look like the cars were moving at all. You could get a little of the sensation of speed when the director switched to the in-car cameras but even then it looked like Hamilton, Vettel, et al, were just toodling along the Strip in Las Vegas.

I hope the race is better. We’ll find out tomorrow on TSN at 7:55 a.m. STANDARD TIME.

Like Bob Griese, A.J. Allmendinger should have been suspended

In a blog entry earlier this week (scroll down), I reported on ESPN/ABC football announcer Bob Griese’s comment last Saturday on Juan Pablo Montoya being "out having a taco" when another announcer asked why he was missing from a list of NASCAR’s top five Chase for the Championship drivers.

Griese apologized for the remark as the football game was going off the air and reportedly apologized again later.

ESPN, the employer, responded by suspending Griese from working football games this weekend. According to the Associated Press, the network has spoken to the former quarterback and "he understands the comment was inappropriate."

Good for ESPN.

Thursday, NASCAR driver A.J. Allmendinger was stopped near his home in Mooresville, N.C., and, following a roadside breath test, was charged with drunken driving.

NASCAR responded by putting Allmendinger on probation.

I suggest that if one person, Bob Griese, can be suspended a week for poor judgment in his use of words, A.J. Allmendinger should have been suspended a week for poor judgment in getting behind the wheel of his car after consuming enough alcohol to result in a criminal charge.

Probation doesn’t cut it, in this instance.

A Formula One race runs through it

When I did my pre-season Formula One column interview back in March with my friend Gerald Donaldson, arguably Canada’s foremost expert on all-things F1, I asked him about the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

“People are going to love the track,” he chuckled. “They have all the money in the world over there and they’re building a new hotel and a section of the circuit is going to run right through the lobby.”

Now, Gerry was kidding me - laughing when he said that. But that fact of the matter is that he was close in his prediction. The circuit isn’t going to run through the lobby but close to it. It is, in fact, going to run through the hotel.

Designed by Canadians Lise Couture and Hani Rashid, the Yas Hotel will actually straddle the race track – two enormous bulb-like structures connected in the middle. The 500-room hotel will be open just in time for this weekend’s race.

Race organizers are expecting in excess of 50,000 people to flock to the spectacle but none of them will be able to watch the race from the Yas this year as all of the rooms have been set aside for F1’s VIPs. (What a surprise, eh?)

Hotels over race tracks are nothing new, of course. The Fairmont Monte Carlo (nee the Grand Hotel, nee nee the Lowe’s Hotel) is built over some of the city streets of Monaco and what’s called the “tunnel” passes beneath a portion of it.

But Average Joes (if you have the money) can actually rent rooms in that Monaco hotel for the Grand Prix and hopefully, going forward, that will also be the case in Abu Dhabi.

By the way, retired driver David Coulthard was being very diplomatic about the Abu Dhabi track in a published interview this week. But if you read between the lines, he’s not fussy about it and is particularly concerned about pit exit, which is – apparently – a very sharp turn.

Let's all pitch in to get Paul Tracy an IRL ride in 2010

I love passionate people – particularly people who are passionate about motorsport. Two near the top of that list are Toronto graphic artist Steph Wallcraft and her Edmonton pal, Mike Cockrall.

TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO

Paul Tracy at the 2009 Honda Toronto Indy

They are fans of the "Thrill from West Hill," Paul Tracy (who isn’t?), but rather than sitting around and complaining that he doesn’t have a full-time ride lined up in the Indy Racing League for next season, they’re determined to convince at least one potential sponsor, Monster Energy Drink, that it would be well worth their sponsorship dollars to have him in a car in 2010.

Said Steph in an email: "If you could give us a hand and direct people to the Monster web site (just click here), it would be greatly appreciated."

It would be my pleasure - but I had to call her up first. Where did this interest in racing - and Tracy - come from?

"My dad was an auto worker," she said over the phone Tuesday night. "He was a supervisor at the Chrysler plant in Brampton and back in the day when PPG was a sponsor in the CART series, they would treat people like my dad and their families to the Molson Indy Toronto.

"My mom and dad used to enjoy the hospitality suite and I’d take advantage of the grandstand tickets that were made available and I just fell in love with racing. But there's been something missing lately: Paul Tracy in every race. He should be in them all. Mike (Cockrall) and I have passion and energy for the sport and we’re trying to focus that on getting Paul back into the series full-time.

"Mike noticed that Monster had updated Paul’s biography on their website so that indicated to us that they are still very interested in him. We felt that if we got enough people to go to the Monster site and to take a few minutes to fill out a ‘Shout Out’ (a comment), that would show them and other potential sponsors the support Paul still has in the racing community."

Steph and Mike have been busy sending out emails and three or four of the more popular IRL chat sites have climbed aboard the bandwagon. In less than a week, more than 400 comments have been entered on the Monster "Shout Out" board.

I left mine at about 8:30 Tuesday night. I said Paul Tracy’s the most exciting driver to ever strap himself into a race car.

I want him back in the IRL so that when he wins I can write about it and when he gets me mad I can write about it. As we say in this business, he’s good copy.

If you feel the same way, I invite you to join Steph, Mike and me in getting the message through to Monster – and any other potential sponsors out there. If this grassroots movement is successful, it'll be to everybody's benefit.

Following F1's musical chairs can make you dizzy

Here’s something you can take to the bank:

Rubens Barrichello will be driving for Williams in 2010 and Nico Rosberg is going to Brawn.

There has not been a formal announcement yet but that's what's going to happen.

But now it gets interesting.

Will Rosberg be partnering newly crowned world champion Jenson Button at Brawn, or will Button beat out Kimi Raikkonen for the second seat at McLaren?

And if Button goes to McLaren (I can’t really see that happening, because Lewis Hamilton will not be happy having to compete for a country’s affection with his teammate, never mind trying to beat him on the race track), then where will Raikkonen wind up (and don’t say Toyota because that’s not going to happen either)?

According to reports from Europe, Button (and just about everybody else on the Brawn GP payroll) took a pay cut after Honda dropped out of the sport in order to keep the team going. But now that he’s world champion, Jenson not only wants to be paid at his previous level but wants a hefty increase on top of that and who can blame him?

Ross Brawn could solve this whole puzzle by coming up with enough money to keep Button happy. But money’s tight in F1 at the moment and Brawn’s having trouble raising it so maybe the next best thing he could do would be to offer Jenson a piece of the action. To make him a part owner of the team.

Or get ready to make Kimi an offer he can’t refuse.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave . . .

Guardian newspaper turns its guns on F1 (and it ain't pretty)

With only one Grand Prix remaining in the 2009 season (next weekend in Abu Dhabi), I’ve been reflecting on the year and I think even its most ardent defenders would have to admit that F1 has seen better days.

I’m not alone. This is what Britain’s respected Guardian newspaper (via National Speed Sport News) had to say about the sport in a recent editorial:

"The problem now in F-1 is that no one believes anyone.

"Under its present rules, it finds itself wrapped in a web of deception and sophistry spun by highly intelligent but totally unscrupulous people who have been encouraged to see it as a world in which vast sums of money can be accrued without too many questions being asked.

"Regulations are changed on a whim, resulting in aberrant results that distort long-established competitive values. Six wins in seven races for the Brawn team and a pole position for Force India may be someone’s idea of fun, but they are the results of a randomly rigged lottery, not of Grand Prix racing.

"One month (Bernie) Ecclestone swears that the British Grand Prix will never return to Silverstone, and the next he is behaving as if he never said it, just because it suits him.

"Soon, FIA President Max Mosley will be gone, to be followed one day by his little pal. Behind them, the pair will leave a sport stripped of its integrity, its old values replaced by a superficial prosperity that can no longer conceal a putrescent core."

Wow. Talk about a slap across the face.

Last Friday, as we all know, Mosley made his exit and was replaced as FIA president by another old pal, Jean Todt. Although the jury will be out for awhile, the initial reaction is that nothing will really change because Todt was supported in his campaign against outsider Ari Vatanen (former Finnish rally driver and current member of the European Parliament) by Mosley, Ecclestone and Michael Schumacher – all members of the Old Guard.

Only Jackie Stewart (so far as I know) was openly calling for a change in the form of Vatanen.

So chances are it will be business as usual – which, in one way, may be a good thing because Todt is an experienced hand at all things F1 and a steady hand on the tiller going forward will be beneficial with new teams coming into the sport.

On the other hand, the cheating, corruption and all-out dishonesty became rampant during the Mosley-Ecclestone era and it might have been time for a guy like Vatanen to come in and clean house.

Formula One is completely (well, almost) dependent on commercial sponsorship. Regardless of the recession, there are still companies with money out there who are interested in motorsport.

But whether they want to be involved at this time is the question.

NASCAR: Johnson has title within grasp and Griese's gaffe

Yesterday’s NASCAR race in Martinsville, Va., which was won by Denny Hamlin (how come the only races Hamlin wins are the ones in Virginia, where he’s a native son?), was interesting to me for three reasons.

Reason No. 1 – Jimmie Johnson has all but wrapped up his fourth straight Sprint Cup championship. He was second in the race yesterday and is now 90 points ahead of second-place Chase contestant Mark Martin (eighth yesterday) and 135 ahead of Jeff Gordon, who was fifth.

There are four races remaining and it’s going to take a miracle for either Martin or Gordon to overhaul Johnson.

Although it’s mathematically possible for Tony Stewart, Kurt Busch or Juan Pablo Montoya (third yesterday) to still win the championship, it’s highly unlikely. Everybody behind Montoya (Greg Biffle, Ryan Newman, Kasey Kahne, Carl Edwards, Hamlin and Brian Vickers) are out of it.

Reason No. 2 – It continually baffles me how experienced sports announcers can keep putting their feet into it when they’re on the air. Have none of them learned that you just can’t make personal wisecracks about minorities?

Bob Griese, who used to be a pretty good NFL quarterback, was announcing a U.S. college football game between Ohio State and Minnesota on Saturday when the inevitable plug for yesterday’s NASCAR race came up on the screen.

After noting that Jeff Gordon was in the top five, lead announcer Chris Speilman said, in passing, "Where’s Juan Pablo Montoya?" and Griese, the comedian said, "He’s out having a taco."

At the conclusion of the game, Griese apologized.

People have been forced to resign for gaffes like that so it will be interesting to see what happens to Mr. Griese.

If you’re interested, you can watch all this on You Tube.

Reason No. 3 – More and more, NASCAR races – except for the ones on the road courses – are like watching paint dry. Round and round, round and round. One of the people who corresponds with me regularly, a fellow who goes by the email name Gizzie, had this to say about yesterday’s race:

"I tuned in once in awhile to get the drift of what was happening. It was so reveting, I did so every few hours. I had enough time to paint the house, mulch leaves, wash the car, prep dinner, watch two NFL games and a movie. Then I caught the last debris caution (No. 13 of 14) to see how the thing ended. Same old, same old.

"As ever, Nemecheck, Blaney and Cope parked it early, just to pick up the starting money. Pathetic. The stands were at least 30 per cent empty. No weather excuses this time. It’s getting old, it seems, for more and more of us."

Couldn't agree more, Rick.

Memo to NASCAR: Except for the Daytona 500 and one or two others (Talladega, Indianapolis), cut the races to 200 laps or two hours, whichever comes first. The writing is on the wall. The bloom is off the rose. Pay attention, or perish.

One tough Mexican road race attracts Canadian competitors

One of my favourite racing stories involves the late Indianapolis 500 champion Bill Vukovich and the time he travelled to Mexico to compete in La Carrera Panamericana road race.

(What is this race? This is the description that I’ve lifted directly from www.panamrace.com

(The modern event is a revival of the famous international Pan Am that was conducted between 1950-1954. Many of the world’s most famous drivers, including world champions like Phil Hill and Juan Manuel Fangio, came to Mexico during these years to test their cars, skill, and stamina. The race was started in 1950 by the Mexican government to inform the world that Mexico had a new system of highways stretching across the country – from north to south – for commerce and tourism. When the race was cancelled in 1955, its purpose had been accomplished.)

Okay, so Vukovich – who didn’t know the definition of the word "slow" – was in the 1954 edition of the race and was reportedly scaring the daylights out of his co-driver who was getting on Vuky’s nerves by constantly imploring him to be careful and not to go so fast and so-on.

As they rounded a particularly dangerous mountain corner, Vukovich lost control and as the car plunged over an embankment, the two-time Indy 500 champion reportedly took his hands off the wheel, looked at his terrified passenger, and said: "Okay, you drive."

The modern version of the Pan-Am was started in 1988 and is more of a rally than a balls-to-the-wall, 2,000-mile top speed run from southern Mexico to the Texas border, as was the case in the old days.

In any event, it’s on this weekend and two of my racing friends, Bob Harrington and Ken Graham, have sent me copies of the entry list and there are some Canadians competing:

Stewart Robertson and Linda Robertson (they’re in the vintage class, driving a Studebaker!), John Nielsen and Emine Nielsen, Anthony Strelzow and Lee-Ann Strelzow, Randy Penner (co-driving with Wilhelm Ostrop of Germany),and John Gregory and Chrislana Gregory.

Ken reports that 77 of 102 entrants completed qualifying, five dropped out because of accidents and two have been admitted to hospital.

I’ll let you know how our folks made out in a follow-up report. They're in against some tough company as one of the competitors is none other than Stig Blomqvist, the 1984 World Rally Champion.

Hey, Bernie: Pay your taxes like everybody else

The Speed web site is reporting that an announcement is imminent that Montreal is officially, officially, officially back on the Grand Prix circuit for 2010.

But according to the story, Bernie Ecclestone is still up to his old tricks. Apparently, the last and final stumbling block is his insistence that he not pay any federal tax on the moneys he receives to bring an F1 race back to this continent.

Somebody should tell Bernie that everybody in Canada has to pay taxes. You even have to pay taxes in Canada after you’re dead (as anybody who’s ever had to settle an estate knows).

Ottawa had better be really careful about how they handle this, because if it’s true and they go along with this demand and the word gets out, I can just see every other professional sport operating in this country demanding the same ( or nearly the same) treatment.

I say to Ottawa: tell Bernie to buzz off.

Bernie's foot-in-mouth disease needs treatment

I have a friend who says the first thing that comes into his head. This gets him into a lot of trouble.

This is something Formula One guru Bernie Ecclestone is no doubt familiar with, especially in light of his recent remarks to the media about F1 icon Ayrton Senna. The original story in the Spanish newspaper El Pais can be found here.

AP FILE PHOTO

Jenson Button autographs an Ayrton Senna poster last month. Since his death in the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, Senna has become an icon among racing fans.

As my friend's wife says to him: “Think before you speak. Count to three before opening your mouth.”

Sometimes he does; sometimes he doesn't. But her good counsel is a constant in his life.

Ecclestone’s problem is that his ex-wife Slava isn’t around anymore to, a) tell him to shut up or, b) beat him up if he doesn’t.

Have you noticed that Ecclestone’s been putting his foot in his mouth a lot more since his wife divorced him? He’s always been right-wing, confrontation and controversial but there was always a degree of political correctness to everything he said. But since the split, there’s been no shades of grey; everything’s been black and white.

First, there was the Hitler thing. That’s when he suggested you had to admire the guy because he knew how to get things done.

Now he’s gone and said that the death of Ayrton Senna was a good thing for Formula One.

Ecclestone looks at the world differently than most people. He’s a “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” kind of guy. Or, “I don’t care what you say about me so long as you spell my name correctly.”

So when Senna was killed, it was front-page news around the world. People who couldn’t give two hoots about the sport knew all about it. In Ecclestone's view, that’s a positive. In Ecclestone's vew, that’s good for the sport.

It isn’t, of course. Death tends to put off more people than it titillates.

But don’t tell that to Ecclestone. He’s not listening – and there’s nobody around to make him.

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I put my foot in my mouth Sunday night when I wrote my opinion about the Brazilian Grand Prix and mentioned that Heikki Kovalainen and Kimi Raikkonen were probably driving their final races for McLaren and Ferrari, respectively.

Of course, I also happened to mention that there was an upcoming Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi. Several people who took time to comment pointed out that Kovalainen and Raikkonen will likely be driving in that race.

Now, I could be a smart guy and say those guys were probably driving in the last race that counted, but I won’t.

It was brain fade. I was careless. I apologize.