Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Hockey aftermath: USF1 says wait til next year

I have only been so nervous and excited I could hardly catch my breath about five times in my life.

– The last game of the 1972 Canada-Russia Series, when Paul Henderson bailed us out with 34  seconds remaining;

– The 1993 Molson Indy Toronto when an exceptionally fast final pit stop got Paul Tracy out in front of teammate Emmerson Fittipaldi and he went on to win his hometown race;

– The last race of the 1997 Grand Prix season when Jacques Villeneuve survived an attack by Michael Schumacher and finished third in Spain to win the World Championship of Drivers.

– The 2002 Gold Medal men’s hockey game in Salt Lake City, when Canada beat the U.S.

– Yesterday.

I love auto racing and everything about motor sport but that hockey game was special, wasn’t it?

Sidney Crosby for Prime Minister!

And, by the way, what will the Olympics ever be like without Brian Williams?

He is the Olympics in Canada.

He’s a pretty good car racing play-by-play man, too, although it’s been too many years since we heard him in that role.

Now, back to the real business of this column.

It seems that cooler heads are finally prevailing in Formula One. With only two weeks remaining before the season-opening Grand Prix of Bahrain, the USF1 team – according to a report on Speed TV last night – has asked for a year’s extension to join Formula One.

It became more and more apparent in recent weeks that USF1 wasn’t going to make it onto the grid for Bahrain, primarily because they don’t have a car. Whatever funding they were promised in the way of sponsorship apparently didn’t materialize and they were up the creek.

So instead of continuing to bluff their way through – "please let us miss four races and we promise to show up then . . ." – USF1 has asked for the extension and the FIA would be wise to grant it.

Apparently, the Campos F1 team won’t be in Bahrain either but the other two new teams – Virgin and Lotus – will be, so half a loaf is better than none. It’s time to put a cap on this aspect of the F1 pre-season and start to concentrate on what really matters, which is the racing.

The final test before Bahrain finished in Spain yesterday and, at end of day, Lewis Hamilton was fastest in his McLaren, with Mark Webber a millisecond behind in a Red Bull followed by Felipe Massa in his Ferrari, Adrian Sutil in a Force India, Sebastien Vettel in a Red Bull, Michael Schumacher in the Mercedes (here’s the split – Hamilton, 1:20:472; Schumacher, 1:20:745), Rubins Barrichello in the Williams and Kamui Kobayashi in a BMW-Sauber.

After that, the times dropped off with Sebastien Buemi (1:22 and change in a Toro Rosso-Ferrari), Robert Kubica (1:23+ in a Renault), Heikki Kovalainen (1:25 in a Lotus) and Lucas de Grassi (1:26 in a Virgin-Cosworth).

And then there is the mysterious Stefan GP, the Serbian outfit that claims it will be in Bahrain, even though it doesn’t have an official entry for 2010.

I’m afraid you can’t believe a word those people say. They said they’d planned a test of the car (allegedly one of the new Toyotas that had been built before the company pulled the plug) but had to cancel because they couldn’t get tires. Bridgestone, they said, wouldn’t supply the rubber because they weren’t in the club.

It turns out they couldn’t conduct a test because they don’t have a car, or cars. Toyota won’t release them until it receives payment for them.

There are motor racing companies out there that could have gotten the job done. David Richards, chairman of Prodrive and Aston Martin Racing, comes to mind. It makes you wonder why Bernie Ecclestone and the FIA got mixed up with some of these people, doesn’t it?

I can’t report in detail about yesterday's Sprint Cup race in Las Vegas because, like everybody else in the country, I was dying a thousand deaths watching that hockey game.

I was on and off the bandwagon so many times yesterday I just about had a stroke.

In any event, I did switch over to Fox Sports between the second and third periods of that game to try to get a feel for the race and can report that they had a good and healthy crowd on hand to watch it, which is an improvement over the California stop last weekend when the grandstand looked like the one at an IRL race.

For the record, Jimmie Johnson won his second race of the three-race season to date, meaning that 1) championship No. 5 looks to be very possible and, 2) it’s going to be a really boring season if he wins all the races.

(No wonder the reporters are all going nuts over Danica Patrick.)

Kevin Harvick was second, Jeff Gordon finished third (he was in charge most of the race but opted for only two new tires on his final pit stop while Johnson and others took four), Mark Martin was fourth and Matt Kenseth fifth.

The Cup series will travel to Atlanta next weekend for the Kobalt Tools 500.

Speaking of Danica, NASCAR really rubbed it in on the weekend when the series moved to Las Vegas.
Danica had been testing with IndyCar at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama all week and the people who run that series pretty much ignored her because they didn’t want to upset the other drivers.

(Democracy is wonderful, but not when more people watch taped poker games than your races. But I digress.)
The first thing NASCAR did when she arrived in Sin City was to make her the first guest on the Speed TV program "Trackside." Then, when her segment ended and Juan Pablo Montoya came on, the panelists spent most of the time asking him questions about her.

Now, this is all about marketing. NASCAR lost significant audience share on TV last season and there were a lot of empty seats at the speedways. It is trying any number of ways to turn that around - telling the drivers to trade a little paint, increasing horsepower at restrictor-plate races and exploiting the name, charm, good looks and potential stock car driving ability of one Danica Patrick.

They’ll do this until it doesn’t work anymore. Then they’ll zero in on the next best thing.
The problem with IndyCar is they don't have a next best thing. Except for her, they don't have anyone with any name recognition. Dario Franchitti maybe. Helio Castroneves maybe. Marco Andretti maybe. Paul Tracy, yes, but you'll note he's not in the series.

I always say this to people: go out on the street and ask the first 10 people you meet who Scott Dixon is. No one - not one person - will be able to tell you. This is a guy who has won the Indy 500, who’s been IndyCar series champion twice and yet people look blank when you mention his name without context.

Scott Dixon is possibly one of the Indy car drivers who gets upset when the camera is always on Danica. In a way, you can’t blame him. In comparison to him as a race driver, she’s done nothing. But - and there’s always the but - if the IndyCar drivers were truly concerned about the health and future of the business they’re in, which is open wheel Indy car racing, they’d be climbing aboard her bandwagon without hesitation.

Look at the NASCAR guys. To a driver, they’ve all bought in. You will not hear one discouraging word from any of them, because they know that how NASCAR goes, they go (and they’ve all got private jets and mansions on lakes around Charlotte, N.C., and/or penthouse apartments in New York City. Somebody should tell the Indy car guys . . .)

In the Nationwide race at Vegas on Saturday, she ran into the back of a car driven by Michael McDowell, putting them both out of the race. Watch the video and you decide who was at fault. But just listen to what poor McDowell said afterwards.

"It’s completely my fault. Not the spotter’s fault. . . I apologize and I hope that Junior Nation and Danica Mania don’t attack me because I’m a big fan."

He knows which side of the bread his butter’s on, doesn’t he?
For the record, the Nationwide race was won by Kevin Harvick, with Denny Hamlin second and Carl Edwards third.

P.S. Reporter Robin Miller said on the Speed News program last night that Danica wouldn’t talk to reporters after the IndyCar test in Alabama. You can interpret that statement one of two ways:

1. She’s getting too snotty and it’s imperative that her employer, Michael Andretti, who has her under contract, tells her to smarten up or he’ll fine her.

2. More likely, she’s already decided to go to NASCAR sooner rather than later. In short, it’s only a matter of time.

In closing, here is some positive news from that IndyCar test:

- Formula Atlantic graduate Simona De Silvestro turned heads while testing for Keith Wiggins’s HVM Racing team. In only her second time in an Indy car, she set 16th best time.

If she can come up with a budget for the season, she will make her mark. At the moment, she’s only confirmed for the season opener in Brazil.

I saw her race at Mosport last summer - she’s 21 and from Switzerland, by the way - and she’s got serious talent.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if she got enough money together to be able to run the Honday Indy Toronto (July 16-18).
I can just see the marketing now: SIMONA VS. DANICA.
Oh, I forgot. This is IndyCar. More likely it’ll be: EJ VISO VS. MIKE CONWAY
(Okay, I'll knock it off.)
- James Hinchcliffe of Oakville was fastest of the 14 drivers who took time during a Firestone Indy Lights test, also at Barber. Philip Major of Ottawa was 11^th.

- Bryan Herta Autosport had its new Colombian driver, Sebastien Saavedra, out for practice in the Indy Lights test and he was fourth fastest. Saavedra, who finished third in the Lights championship last season, has also been entered for this year’s Indy 500 by the Herta team

.- Conquest Racing of Indianapolis (Eric Bachelart, owner) had Brazilian driver Mario Romancini aboard at the Barber test and says they will run the whole Izod IndyCar Series schedule in 2010. The 22-year-old rookie ran in Indy Lights last season.

Okay, and now for a slight change of pace . . .
- Joey Logano has announced he’ll compete in the NASCAR Nationwide Series NAPA Auto Parts 200 Presented by Dodge on Aug. 28-29 at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal.

"I’m looking forward to racing again in Montreal," Logano said in a release, although he added he hopes it doesn’t rain like it did in 2008 when he first raced there.

"Everyone had a hard time seeing and that was the first time many of us raced under those conditions," he said. "But, I think we’ve all gotten a lot smarter in terms of racing in the rain. We all have new windshield wipers now and new (rain) tires so we’re ready."

That 2008 event, by the way, was won by Mississauga’s Ron Fellows, who knows how to race in the rain.
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Mario Andretti is 70 years old today

Happy Birthday, Mario.

That’s right – the greatest racing driver who ever lived is beginning his eighth decade today and when looking back over his career it’s safe to say that we’ll never see another like him.

Yes, we might see Formula One drivers as good as him, and sports car drivers, and stock car drivers, and midget and sprint car drivers. But we will never again see anyone who was a champion at all the disciplines and frequently at the same time.

He won the F1 world driving championship in 1978. He won the Daytona 500 in 1967 and the Indianapolis 500 in 1969. He won four Indy car championships in 1965, ‘66, ‘69 and 1984. In all forms of motorsport, he drove in 879 races and won 111 of them. He had 109 poles, to boot.

This, to my mind, is the most amazing statistic and showed – more than anything else – his versatility: In 1974, he drove in F1, Indy cars, sprints and midgets and won – won – the USAC national dirt track championship, on mile ovals at places like Sacramento, Calif., and DuQuoin, Ill., beating out all the legendary names of the day: A.J. Foyt, Al and Bobby Unser, Johnny Rutherford, and on and on.

The first I heard of Mario Andretti was in 1965 when I’d gone to the since-demolished Glendale Theatre (east side of Avenue Rd., north of Lawrence) to see Jim Clark win the Indianapolis 500 on closed-circuit television. Parnelli Jones finished second and Andretti, whose claim to fame to that point was as a midget and sprint car driver, finished third and was named rookie-of-the-year.

There was great excitement that July when Andretti came to Toronto for a U.S. Auto Club midget race at the CNE Grandstand. I have a vivid memory of that warm, sunny evening: Andretti didn’t make the feature and had to be added to the lineup as a "promoter’s option." That’s how tough the competition was in those days. For the record, he finished 18th.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been to Canada. When the Andretti family emigrated to the United States in 1955, the first port of call in North America was Halifax, N.S.

"We had to get off the ship and our names were recorded," Andretti told me once in a telephone interview. "Some of the people on the ship stayed in Canada but we had relatives in America so we went on to New York. There’s a lady in Halifax who’s invited everybody who was there that day to come back for a visit. Maybe I’ll go, one of these years."

His other, major, Canadian connection was his close friendship with the late Canadian racer Billy Foster of Victoria, B.C.

They’d met when they were both rookies at Indy in 1965 and became very close friends. As well as chumming around and travelling to races together, they’d purchased a sports car and took it to the Nassau Trophy Races in the Bahamas in 1966 and took turns driving it.

Foster was killed at Riverside, Calif., early in 1967 while practicing for a NASCAR stock car race and it had an enormous effect on Andretti.

"He was the finest man I ever knew and one with an amazing potential as a race driver," Andretti told me in an interview in Vancouver in the mid-1990s.

 "After he died, I never wanted to be buddies with anyone in racing again. Race driving is a dangerous business and these things happen but it affected me tremendously. It was tough on my wife, too, because she and Bill's wife were close. We travelled together, we went everywhere together."

When Billy Foster was inducted into the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame in 1993, I represented the Foster family at the ceremony. Several years later, I met Foster’s son, Bill Jr., who was working as a police officer in Victoria, at the Vancouver Molson Indy and gave him his father’s plaque and arranged for him to spend some time with Andretti.

Foster Jr. brought some memorabilia with him that day – postcards that Mario and his wife, Dee Ann, had sent Billy Foster and his wife, pictures of Mario and Billy together away from the track (one was of the two of them riding motorcycles; Mario autographed it for Bill Jr. with the inscription, "the original Hell’s Angels") and speedway programs where they’d raced against each other.

As he got up to leave, Andretti turned to Foster Jr. and said: "If I could spend one more day on this Earth with anyone I wanted, it would be with your dad."

Following Foster’s death, Andretti went on to race many times in Canada – at Mosport and Mont Tremblant in the Indy cars in ‘67 and ‘68, in Formula One at Mosport starting with Ferrari in 1971 and ending with Alfa Romeo in ‘81 at Montreal, and in CART Indy car races at Toronto and Vancouver until his retirement in 1994.

Strangely, except for the two races at Mont Tremblant way back in the 1960s, which he swept, Mario Andretti never visited Victory Lane in this country.

I'll leave it to others to fill in the blanks so far as the rest of his glorious career is concerned but it goes without saying that it's always been a pleasure to watch him race and to represent the world of racing as well as he does.

And he's always available for an interview.

Have a great day, Mario. And have many, many more.

The day Sammy Swindell insulted Canada’s richest man

I was sitting in a doctor’s office this week, reading a 24-year-old copy of the long-dead Open Wheel magazine I’d taken with me. (I knew it would probably be a long wait. It was.)

Open Wheel was a great book, heavy on oval-track midget and sprint car racing with a dose of romantic nostalgia (Bill Vukovich at the 1954 Indy 500, the day Rex Mays was killed – that sort of thing). I actually wrote a few features for it in its early years.

The magazine had an underlying theme. It was for and about "real racing" and "real racers," as distinct from the wine-and-cheese crowd the “real racers” were convinced had taken over CART and Indy car racing. There were frequent references to "ride-buying;" how “somebody with a rich uncle” had landed a prized Indy car ride ahead of somebody who had "real" talent.

In the January, 1986, issue I was reading, columnist Bruce Ellis (the announcer at Williams Grove Speedway in Pennsylvania) had written a good-news piece about U.S. sprint car star Sammy Swindell’s bucking that trend. Swindell had landed a ride with Patrick Racing for the `86 CART Indy car season and Ellis had written about how wonderful this was.

Now, at some point between the time the magazine came out and the actual start of the `86 CART schedule, somebody – whether it was team owner Pat Patrick or one of the sponsors – decided that Swindell had better have a little more seasoning, so he was spending the year in the minors in what was then called the American Racing Series, the forerunner to Indy Lights. It was a good series to be in because it was on the program at all the CART races and the owners of that series could keep an eye on all the up-and-coming talent.

In 1986 – the first year of the Molson Indy Toronto – the CART cars and the ARS cars were housed inside the Automotive Building at the Exhibition grounds, where the race was – and is – held. All the famous teams and drivers of the day were pretty accessible, as a result.

On the Saturday morning of that first Molson Indy weekend, I happened to be standing on the interior second-floor balcony of the Automotive Building and talking with one of Canada’s richest men, the late Ken Thomson, who'd wandered in from the suites. He always attended the Molson Indy and liked to hear about the drivers and the teams and on this particular day he was listening to me ramble on about the economics of big-league auto racing and how some people had access to serious money and others didn’t and yada-yada-yada.

I mentioned Swindell as a guy who was on the verge of making it on talent alone. "That's interesting," said Mr. Thomson. "I'd like to meet him." So off we went down the stairs into this big, indoor, paddock to seek out Sammy Swindell.

We found him, alone beside his car. He didn’t seem to be doing anything, just standing there, hands in his pockets, shuffling his feet, looking around, that sort of thing. So I approached him and said, "Sam? I’d like you to meet . . ." and before I could say Ken Thomson’s name out loud, Swindell snapped, "Can’t you see I’m busy?" He turned on his heel and walked away.

I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen. Sammy Swindell had just blown off a guy who might - might - have been interested in helping him pursue his career (although, to be fair, I never heard of Thomson sponsoring any racing or racers outside of his immediate family).

It was an awkward moment, for sure. "What can you do?" I said to Mr. Thomson. "A lot of these folks are preoccupied."

Sammy Swindell never did make it in Indy cars and he’s been grinding away on the sprint car circuits ever since. I’ve often wondered if there was a connection?

Those guys might have been “real” racers, all right. But, who knows? It might have helped some of them if they’d also been “real” gentlemen.

Why is IndyCar ignoring Danica Patrick?

Over the last two weeks when she was in NASCAR, all you heard about from the NASCAR people was Danica, Danica, Danica.

Patrick is at an IndyCar test in Alabama this week – it’s her regular, permanent employment as compared to her part-time stock car job – but you wouldn’t know it from the press releases.

Oh, it’s not that they’re ignoring her. She was quoted in one release Wednesday down around paragraph 15 or so.

But they’d rather tell you about Ryan Briscoe (who?) and Will Power (who?) and Helio Castroneves (okay, we know who he is) than Danica.

Which is indicative of the mindset in the open wheel community. They’d rather not risk browning off the other drivers by singling her out than by singing her praises – or failures – to the sky and yelling to the general population at large:

SHE’S HERE AND SHE’S OURS!

NASCAR has no such qualms. She was the only story in Daytona. Okay, Jamie McMurray won the Daytona 500 but everybody knows who the real story was. And even though she got her butt kicked in California last weekend, they still talked about her most of the time.

And it’s because she’s a star and NASCAR knows it and IndyCar, for some curious reason, doesn’t.

By the way, in her first day of testing back in IndyCar, Danica stunk. Of 20 cars on the circuit at Barber Motorsports Park, she was 17th fastest, or third slowest, take your pick. She just beat rookie Simona de Silvestro, up from Formula Atlantic, and Sarah Fisher, who’s not bad turning left but can’t really count road-racing as one of her skills.

Having said that about Danica, she was only two seconds off the pace set by Briscoe. His time was 1:10:5052 as compared to her 1:12:5369, so it’s not exactly as if she’s out to lunch.

Meantime, Graham Rahal – one of IndyCar’s rising young stars who is not at Barber this week because he doesn’t have a ride – is now sufficiently discouraged that he told Curt Cavin of the Indianapolis Star that he has scheduled a meeting with NASCAR officials about employment over there.

Now, NASCAR might take a pass on paving the way into a car for Rahal, because it already has a good number of ex-open wheelers doing very well already, thank you (Sam Hornish Jr., A.J. Allmendinger).

But the fact that they’ve agreed to see him is worrying.

NASCAR is a big, dirty business and as well as working to put the best product possible on the track for race fans to enjoy, it will also do anything in its power to stamp out the competition.

That’s why it’s welcomed Danica with open arms. They are in the process of stealing IndyCar’s biggest star and IndyCar doesn’t seem to be too worried about it (see first paragraphs above).

(Can you imagine what would happen if Dale Earnhardt Jr. started musing about taking a crack at IndyCar? I can tell you right now it wouldn't get past the talking stage because NASCAR would do anything it had to do to keep him there. You can bet on that.)

If IndyCar wants to protect its heritage and traditions, not to mention its long-term financial prospects,  it would be in its best interests to get Graham Rahal (and Paul Tracy, by the way) into a car asap – even if it means having to write some team owner a cheque.

And to start reminding the world, regularly, that Danica Patrick is an Indy car driver.

Ferrari gossip columnist rattles F1's cage

One of the delights of surfing the web in search of Formula One news and gossip is occasionally stumbling upon something totally delicious.

Monday, on the official Ferrari team website (www.ferrari.com), there appeared a column written by a person or persons unknown who writes his or her stuff under the pen name "The Horse Whisperer."

That it appears on the official site of Scuderia Ferrari means that it has the formal blessing of senior management and is not just the wacco meanderings of some gossip-monger.

In the instalment – and I’m going to print the whole thing in a second – it takes a huge shot at ex-FIA chief Max Mosley, two of the new F1 teams (Campos and USF1) and, if you read between the lines, the one and only Bernie Ecclestone.

The underlying theme is that the new teams shouldn’t even be in F1 and more should have been done to retain the manufacturers – or that’s what some pundits have suggested.

You decide, because here it is:

"MARANELLO, 22nd February – Only less than three weeks to go until the ultimate form of motor sport, the Formula One World Championship, gets under way, while celebrating its Sixtieth birthday this year.

"For many of the teams, this coming week is a crucial one, as the bell rings to signal the final lap, with the last test session getting under way in Barcelona. It is one last chance to run the cars on track, to push reliability to the limit and to try and find some performance.

"That’s the situation for many teams but not for all of them. Of the 13 teams who signed up, or were induced to sign up, for this year’s Championship, to date only 11 of them have heeded the call, turning up on track, some later than others, and while some have managed just a few hundred kilometres, others have done more, but at a much reduced pace.

"As for the 12th team, Campos Meta, its shareholder and management structure has been transformed, according to rumours which have reached the Horse Whisperer through the paddock telegraph, with a sudden cash injection from a munificent white knight, well used to this sort of last minute rescue deal.

"However, the beneficiaries of this generosity might find the knight in question expects them to fulfil the role of loyal vassal.

"It is hard to imagine the Dallara-designed car showing its face at the Catalunya Circuit, with Sakhir a more likely venue to witness the return of the Senna name to a Formula 1 session.

"The 13th team, USF1, appears to have gone into hiding in Charlotte, North Carolina, to the dismay of those like the Argentinian, Lopez, who thought he had found his way into the Formula 1 paddock, (albeit with help from chairwoman Kirchner, according to the rumours) and now has to start all over again.

"Amazingly, they still have the impudence to claim that everything is hunky-dory under the starry stripy sky.

"Next, we have the Serbian vultures. Firstly, they launched themselves into a quixotic legal battle with the FIA, then they picked the bones of Toyota on its death bed. Having got some people on board, around whom there was still a whiff of past scandals, they are now hovering around waiting to replace whoever is first to drop out of the game, possibly with backing from that very same knight in shining armour whom we mentioned earlier.

"This is the legacy of the holy war waged by the former FIA president. The cause in question was to allow smaller teams to get into Formula 1.

"This is the outcome: two teams will limp into the start of the championship, a third is being pushed into the ring by an invisible hand – you can be sure it is not the hand of Adam Smith – and, as for the fourth, well, you would do better to call on Missing Persons to locate it.

"In the meantime, we have lost two constructors along the way, in the shape of BMW and Toyota, while at Renault, there’s not much left other than the name.

"Was it all worth it?"

In auto racing, it's all about the money

Before we get going on the weekend’s news, there is something I have to clear up.

In my regular Saturday column in Toronto Star Wheels, I wrote about the legendary Canadian power boat Miss Supertest, her equally legendary driver, the late Bob Hayward, and the efforts spearheaded by Picton resident John Lyons to have Canada Post issue a commemorative stamp in her (and his) memory.

If you missed it, it is here.

As bad luck would have it, an email address I included in the article was wrong – an extra "t" somehow found its way into it. It’s been corrected online but to make absolutely sure, here it is again:

robert.waite@canadapost.postescanada.ca

And, finally, if you want to see Miss Supertest in action, there’s a video on YouTube and you can watch it by clicking here.

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I have a friend who owns a professional racing team and his favourite expression is, "it’s all about the money."

It doesn’t matter who you are or how many championships you’ve won or how talented you are or how much potential you have. In the end, the only thing that matters is how much money you have to go racing.

It’s been always thus.

At Indianapolis in the 50s and 60s, the drivers from Indiana and Ohio and other midwestern states – the Pat O’Connors and Sam Hankses and Pat Flahertys – wanted owners to pay them 40 per cent of the purse plus expenses to drive their cars. It’s how they made their living.

Then the guys from California – the Bill Vukoviches and Roger Wards and Parnelli Joneses – showed up and said they’d drive the cars for 30 per cent and no expenses.

If you owned a racing car at Indianapolis, what would you do?

So that’s how the California drivers pushed some of the Ohio and Indiana drivers aside at Indy. It was all about the money.

I think calling Danica Patrick a "marketing machine" is derogatory. She’s a race-car driver who’s worked her buns off over the last 10 years to raise her profile high enough for a sponsor to pony up the millions of dollars required for her to drive a full season in the Indy car series and a partial season in NASCAR.

She is no more a "marketing machine" than Max Papis, an offshore road racer who was smart enough (and who worked his buns off) to raise his American profile to a level sufficient for a large U.S. insurance company to agree to pay millions for him to drive a full season in NASCAR.

It’s what you have to do to get the money, which this sport is all about.

Which brings me to Graham Rahal. There is much gnashing of teeth over the fact that this talented, good-looking and young American driver doesn’t have a ride in this season’s IZOD IndyCar Series.

And yet, if he doesn’t have a major sponsor, the question must be asked: what is he lacking that others have?

There’s got to be a reason.

Is he not trying hard enough? Is he not working hard enough? Is there a sense of entitlement around him that we’re not seeing and which is turning off potential backers?

Perhaps he was spoiled when he first came on the scene. He drove for Newman-Haas-Lanigan, the team of the CART and Champ Car Series years. It was probably the best funded of all the teams and its drivers were treated liked kings.

Then Paul Newman died and much of the sponsorship the team enjoyed over the years either dried up or has been cut back substantially. It's gone from a team that paid its drivers – Mario Andretti, Nigel Mansell, Sebastien Bourdais and young Rahal – to a team that is now insisting its drivers do the paying. It had Robert Doornbos doing that, but he bailed. For 2010, Hideki Mutoh might be its only driver.

Doornbos took his cash elsewhere, but he has it. So does Mutoh – as do Patrick and Papis and a whole lot of others.

It doesn’t matter how, or why. And circumstances be damned.

They have it because they went out and got it and Graham Rahal hasn't. 

They’re in and he’s out.

It might not be fair but it’s the way it is.

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It didn’t take long – two races, to be exact – for Jimmie Johnson to get back to his old winning ways.

The four-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion won yesterday’s race at California Speedway in somewhat flukey fashion, holding off Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton over the last 20 laps. Mark Martin was fourth and Joey Logano fifth.

Last week’s Daytona 500 victor Jamie McMurray was 17^th – although one of his crew members inserted some excitement into what had been a dull event to that point by jumping (in self-defence) over Harvick’s car during a series of pit stops.

The Johnson fluke came on lap 223. Brad Keselowski and David Reutimann collided, bringing out the yellow while Johnson was in the pits. But the champion managed to get to the scoring line at pit exit in advance of the pace car. This kept him on the same lap as the others and when they had to pit (they'd been closed as a result of the accident), he inherited the lead.

"Those guys (Johnson and his team) have a golden horseshoe stuck up their ass," said Harvick. "There’s no getting around that."

Harvick made a determined bid to catch Johnson when the green waved with 20 laps remaining but with four laps left he got a little high in turn four and brushed the wall, slowing him down enough that Johnson romped home.

Burton went way low coming off four in an attempt to nip Harvick at the finish line but missed by about an eyelash.

Next up: Las Vegas.

In the Nationwide race Saturday, Kyle Busch was the winner with Greg Biffle second and Brad Keselowski third. Danica Patrick was 31^st, three laps down – although she lost one of them because of a pit-road speeding infraction that forced her into the pits for a drive-through.

There were a lot of empty seats at yesterday's Cup race; the place was three-quarters empty for the Nationwide event despite Danica's presence.

It might be too early for a pattern, but NASCAR was down 13 per cent in racedays admissions in 2009 and if this tailoff continues it could prove worriesome.

　

　

　

　

　

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Jacques Villeneuve close to F1 seat for 2010

One of two new Formula One teams – maybe both – won’t be at Bahrain for the season-opening Grand Prix in three weeks, which means good news for Serbia’s F1 team, Stefan GP, and Canada’s world champion driver, Jacques Villeneuve.

Although Stefan GP doesn’t have an official entry in this year’s F1 series, it's going full-steam ahead with the development and testing of its car and says negotiations with two drivers – one of whom is Villeneuve – are proceeding.

Although the Campos-Meta F1 team officially changed hands this weekend – founder Adrian Campos is out – all continues not to be well with the Spanish entry. A team official was quoted as saying that it still needs to raise money in order to make it to the first race.

Yikes. What about the rest of the season?

And despite rumours of its official demise that circulated earlier this week, the USF1 team continues to operate but the folks there are now trying to convince the FIA to allow it to miss the first four races of the season, after which it would join the series and everything would be peachy, they say.

Apparently (and everything about this team right from the start has had the word "apparently" attached to it), if the FIA says okay, we’ll cover for you – oops, allow you to join the series a quarter of the way into the season – then USF1 will receive sufficient funding from sponsors to allow it to complete its chassis and to pay for its Cosworth engines.

It is a mystery to me (and will be a mystery, undoubtedly, to the people at the FIA) how an extension will suddenly result in untold riches.

What happened to those untold riches previously? Did they take a wrong turn? Did they beat a hasty retreat when they got to USF1 headquarters in Charlotte and discovered that once you got past the sign on the front of the bulding that the team consisted of some well-meaning people but no racing cars and no motors?

Who is going to write a cheque for untold riches when the only racing car in the place is on a computer screen?

Those guys are done like dinner. Campos-Meta too, probably.

In the wings is this Stefan GP outfit, which rose from the ashes of the Toyota F1 project. On Friday, according to reports, they fired up the car for the first time.

Team principal Zoran Stefanovik has revealed that Kazuki Nakajima, who used to drive for Williams, has already signed to drive for the team.

Then he said this:

"We are very near to a contract with Jacques Villeneuve and probably also with another driver, who will be our reserve driver."

For Stefan GP and JV, this story could have a happy ending very shortly.

Meantime, Jame Hinchcliffe of Oakville will return to the Firestone Indy Lights Series for a second season. It was announced this past week that’s he’s signed to drive for Team Moore Racing of Indianapolis for the 2010 season, where his teammate will be Adrian Campos Jr., the son of you-know-who.

Right now, the entry list for the Lights series is on the low side. Fewer than a dozen cars have drivers. And the Formula Atlantic Series doesn’t seem to have more than a couple of up-and-comers signed, despite incentives like capping the cost of racing at less than a half-million smackers for the season and promising to pay cash money to the first 10 finishers at every race instead of waiting till the end of the season.

You’d have thought, with the demise of the Formula BMW-Americas Series, that Atlantics and Lights would both be a lot healthier, entry-wise.

This could change between now and the start of the season – but don’t bet on it.

In the end, this is not a good sign for the future of professional open-wheel racing in North America.

　

Ecclestone lost Canadian Grand Prix gamble - big time

The price to put on the Grand Prix of Canada F1 race in Montreal dropped $100 million because head honcho Bernie Ecclestone either overplayed his hand or misjudged the willingness of governments to pick up the tab, the promoter of this year’s event suggests.

Francois Dumontier, president of Octane Racing Group, Inc., said Thursday that when negotiations over last June’s Grand Prix broke down in late 2008, F1 commercial rights holder Bernie Ecclestone had been demanding $175 million over five years.

When agreement was finally reached in November on a five-year deal to return Canada to the Formula One calendar – this year’s race is scheduled for June 13 – Ecclestone settled for $75 million.

"He dropped $100 million," Dumontier said.

"That’s how much he wanted to come back to Canada."

The Octane Group chief flew into Toronto Thursday specifically to meet the city’s motorsports media and to drum up interest in this year’s race at Circuit-Gilles Villeneuve on Ilse Notre-Dame.

This has not happened in recent years, if ever. Does this mean the Grand Prix is having trouble selling tickets?

"Not at all," said Dumontier, adding that two of the circuit’s 11 grandstands – including a prized location at the hairpin – are already sold out.

"And when Michael Schumacher officially announced he was coming back to race again (on Dec. 23), we had a spike in sales then, too."

But the man who took over the Montreal promoting reins from long-time Quebec motor racing czar Normand Legault emphasized that the race and the city want everyone to come.

"This isn’t Montreal’s Grand Prix," Dumontier continued. "This is the Grand Prix du Canada and we want to share it with all Canadians."

He acknowledged, however, that the time to promote the event had been shortened considerably.

"When the ‘09 race was cancelled, it changed things dramatically," he said. "Instead of going from the race one year to the race the next, we didn’t sign the agreement for 2010 until the end of November and we didn’t start to sell tickets until December so we have less time.

"The Toronto market is very important to us and that’s why I’ve come today to talk about the Grand Prix."

Dumontier said that in 2008, in addition to negotiating a new agreement for the Grand Prix, Ecclestone and Legault were having personal business issues.

"I was part of the previous team," Dumontier said. "I was executive vice-president (of Legault's company) and I knew what was going on. It came out (in the media) that Bernie was the guy who took away the Grand Prix but it takes two to tango.

"In that case, they had a commercial dispute. They were in a business relationship for a long time – Normand was the promoter since 1996. It was a situation that just built up."

According to Dumontier, Ecclestone gambled that – at the end of the day – government would step in and save the 2009 Grand Prix.

"If you look at the 19 other races on the calendar, " he said, "we in Montreal were the only one where the government, at some level, wasn’t supporting it. Look at all the other races in the world. Government is in there somewhere – sometimes all the way in there."

When Ecclestone ran into trouble closing sponsorship deals with corporations, he turned his eye toward Ottawa and Quebec City.

"Bernie, in his mind, said a government cannot go bankrupt, a government cannot just walk away. So I’m pretty sure that at the end of the day, he was expecting the government would jump in and save the race."

Dumontier added that it very nearly happened.

"There were negotiations right up until the end of November (2008)," he said. "But then, I think our government was well-advised to pull the plug and tell him the money was just not there."

The 2009 Grand Prix of Canada was cancelled shortly afterward.

But Ecclestone came under intense pressure almost immediately from sponsors and the teams to get the series back to North America, particularly to Montreal.

Knowing that, Dumontier said he decided to wait out Ecclestone – to see if he would come to him rather than the other way around.

 "I wanted to see what he would do," he said.

What Ecclestone did was to contact the mayor of Montreal. Gerald Tremblay, in March of 2009. Dumontier still didn't bite.

"Then Bernie called me in May - it was a very short call, three minutes and he wanted to know if we could talk - and we met in London in June and several times after that," the new promoter said.

"We negotiated up until November and we signed the deal at the end of November. It was quite an experience, dealing with him."

As has beeen reported, the five-year agreement calls for Ottawa and the Montreal Tourism Office (an association of hotels and restaurants) to contribute $5 million each per annum, the Quebec government will pitch in $4 million a year and the city of Montreal will pay $1 million.

"It’s a good deal for everyone," Dumontier said. "F1 is back in North America and Bernie – who was under big pressure from sponsors and the F1 teams to get back to Canada – is happy and everyone in Montreal is happy.

"The hotels lost $22.9 million because the Grand Prix wasn’t there."

Why is the Indy 500 track almost giving away tickets?

Tuesday afternoon/Wednesday morning musings with some news mixed in:

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway has been offering deals to customers that make you wonder if the place is having trouble selling tickets.

For instance, when Danica Patrick announced that she would drive in the ARCA race at Daytona on Feb. 6, the Speedway sent out a media release saying that if you were a new customer and Danica led 40 laps of that race, you could purchase a $90 Tower Terrace reserved ticket for the Indianapolis 500 for $50 – a $40 saving.

If she led 80 laps, they would sell you that $90 ticket for 10 bucks.

Okay, okay – it was a good gamble on their part because it was highly unlikely that she would lead any laps. But the question remains: what if she had?

In any event, the same release stated that, regardless of her ARCA success, in honour of the 19 laps she led at the Indy 500 in 2005 they would knock $19 off that $90 ticket price if you ordered during the promotion dates (Feb. 6 through 13).

Tower Terrace seats are behind the pits on the main straight. They are premium, because you can watch the pit action and see the cars exit turn four and blast right along the stretch into turn one. The press box (oops, media room) is in the tower behind the seats we’re talking about here so the view is excellent.

Ninety dollar seats for $71? It makes you wonder . . .

What got me going on this is a release I received on Monday of this week offering what I think is a pretty good deal for the Brickyard 400 in July.

The Speedway is offering to sell you a package of one reserved seat in the Northeast Vista backstretch (a regular $75 ticket) for the NASCAR race on Sunday, plus a reserved seat for the Nationwide race at O’Reilly Raceway Park the night before and a general admission ticket for the truck race on the Friday night (a ticket total of about $150) plus transportation plus food vouchers that are good at both tracks.

All that – three races (including reserved seats at two of them), transportation to and fro twice and a hot dog and a soft drink (I’m guessing what’s what the vouchers will get you) – for $95.

Okay, so that's 95 U.S. but it's still a very good deal.

But what’s behind this marketing strategy? Not that many people planning to attend, otherwise?

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Gil de Ferran has landed on his feet, after all.

The 2003 Indianapolis 500 winner and two-time CART champion, who went off to run the BAR-Honda team in Formula One before forming an American Le Mans Series team, appeared to be out of racing after shutting down the ALMS effort to concentrate on an IRL team, which failed to materialize.

Then came the announcement today (Tuesday) that he would team up with Jay Penske (Roger’s son) and Steve Luczo in the Luczo Dragon Indy car team. De Ferran, who takes over as the team’s president, will start work immediately.

De Ferran brings a wealth of technical expertise and a driver's perspective to the operation while Penske and Luczo are marketers who have financial stability. De Ferran, a native of Brazil, will also be able to coach the team’s driver, Raphael Matos, who happens to be a countryman.

Although the team only has resources for one car at the moment, they are already talking about two cars for the IndyCar series as well as a possible return to the American Le Mans Series with a prototype entry.

I love ambitious people. It will be full speed ahead for those guys.

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I admire racing drivers who don’t depend on chance – or other people – for their breaks. People like de Ferran, for instance, who are aggressive on the track and off.

Which is one of the many reasons I admire Alex Tagliani. He owns a team in the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series and part of one in the IZOD Indy Car Series. He markets himself – hats, t-shirts, sunglasses and so-on. I guarantee you that during the runup to the Grand Prix in Montreal this June, when you walk along Ste. Catherine St. downtown, you will come to a storefront full of Tagliani gear.

Add Davey Hamilton to this list. A skilled Indy 500 driver, he’s still full speed ahead in the cockpit. Midgets indoors, the USAC Silver Crown series, Oswego supermodifieds, the Indy Racing League two-seater – you name it and Hamilton’s likely to be in it.

He started and promoted the Supermodified Racing League in the western U.S. and he’s a colour commentator on Indy car radio and web broadcasts.

And he’s a profile in courage because he just about lost his feet in a grinding crash at Texas Motor Speedway in 2001. He’s had to endure 21 operations, and walks with the Indy driver’s gimp, but he’s whole and as on-the-gas as ever.

The news today is that as his race-driving days wind down – he’s 47 – he’s preparing for the future. With the help of three partners, Hamilton has purchased Menard Engine Group which builds engines, engine-management systems and electronic components for people and teams competing in Indy car racing.

Good on ya, Davey.

I can think of more than a few on-the-career-bubble racing drivers who could take a page from your book.

Tag's, too.

 

Daytona 500 most bizarre, exciting, race in years

In what had to be the most bizarre Daytona 500 ever contested, long-shot Jamie McMurray finally won "the Great American Race" more than six hours after it started.

Red-flagged twice because of potholes that developed in the lower groove between turns one and two of the Daytona Speedway, the 500-mile marathon featured a startling number of leader and lead-changes as compared to other years (21 different drivers led the race as compared to nine a year ago), several multi-car crashes that contributed to the extraordinary length of the event, and a surprise winner who was let go by his last team.

Although the race was one of the most exciting in recent memory, it was also one of the most irritating to watch because it had to be stopped twice so repairs could be made to the track.

More than two hours in total was spent trying to patch up the surface of the speedway – an hour and 41 minutes the first time (the race was originally stopped on lap 122 of the 200-lap contest) and then for 46 minutes the second time (on lap 161).

While the drivers were allowed to exit their vehicles to stretch their legs, the delays were aggravating and the maintenance of the old speedway came into question. It’s been more than 30 years since the 2.5-mile oval was repaved and a number of drivers suggested it was time to do it again.

"The track is old," said eventual second-place finisher Dale Earnhardt Jr. "It’s a terrible time (economically) to ask anyone to pave a race track but, if anyone needs it, it’s probably Daytona. You just can’t put on a good show."

There would be some who would argue with that because the race came down to the final two laps three times and it was all edge-of-your-seat stuff.

Yes, that’s correct. They had to try to finish the Daytona 500 three times.

There had been a wreck on lap 194 and it took the safety crew four laps to clean up the mess. So on lap 198, two laps before what was supposed to be the finish, Clint Bowyer brought the field down to take the green flag but a lap later, Bill Elliott and Joey Logana crashed on the backstretch to bring out the yellow.

That was the first try

NASCAR’s policy is for a green-white-checkers finish – the race leader has to complete a green lap and then take the white flag to make a race official – so the 500 had to go into overtime.

On lap 202, Greg Biffle brought the field down to the green but a lap later Kasey Kahne and Robert Richardson crashed.

That was the second attempt.

On lap 206, the third try, Kevin Harvick was in the lead when they waved the green. But McMurray got past him, as did Earnhardt Jr., Greg Biffle, Bowyer, David Reutimann and Martin Truex Jr.

Poor Harvick, who looked for the longest time like the guy to beat, wound up seventh.

Although Jeff Gordon and Robby Gordon crashed, it happened on what turned out to be the last lap and was too late for any flag other than the checkered.

"Oh, my God!" McMurray screamed after crossing the finish line. "I can't freaking believe it right now. Thank you so much. I can't believe we just won the Daytona 500."

 McMurray, who's 33 and from Joplin, Mo., climbed from his car and ran to the Daytona 500 logo in the infield. He dropped to his knees and started to pound on the painted grass.

It was a fairy tale finish for the driver, who broke down in Victory Lane. "I said to my wife this morning that if I won this race . . . oh, I'm going to cry," he said, before using a towel to cover his face.

Although he’d only won three Sprint Cup races before this one, McMurray - who was listed as a 30-1 longshot by Las Vegas bookmakers - has been a steady performer since he broke into the big leagues in 2002 and is considered to be one of the really good guys.

He’d been racing for one of Roush-Fenway’s five teams but when NASCAR ruled that owners could only field a maximum of four entries following the 2009 season, McMurray found himself to be the odd man out.

He found a ride with Earhardt-Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates when Truex Jr. bailed to go drive for Michael Waltrip. As luck would have it, the Daytona 500 was McMurray’s first NASCAR race with Earnhardt-Ganassi and you have to believe it was the start of what could turn out to be a beautiful friendship.

Four-time Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson’s rotten luck in the Daytona 500 continued when he was forced out with a flat tire on lap 185. He won the 500 in 2006, the year of his first championship, but has been an also-ran at Daytona in February ever since.

Defending Daytona 500 champion Matt Kenseth finished eighth. Other notables: Juan Pablo Montoya was 10^th, police-sitter Mark Martin was 12^th, Kyle Busch was 14^th and his brother Kurt was 23^rd. Tony Stewart finished 22nd and Max Papis was 40th.

NASCAR NOTES:

CORRECTION: In an earlier version of this post, I reported that the pace car was an Oshawa-built Camaro. Wrong.  It was a Mustang. I apologize.

– Except for some of the drivers, the real stars of the eight-hour telecast on Fox (simulcast here on TSN) were the announcers – anchor Chris Myers and analyst Jeff Hammond, play-by-play announcer Mike Joy, colour commentators Darrel Waltrip and Larry McReynolds and pit reporters Dick Berggren, Krista Voda, Steve Byrnes and Matt Yocum.

It takes a lot of talent, knowledge and passion to keep talking just about forever, as those folks did during that extraordinarily long telecast. Yes, they filled some airtime with some tried and true stuff (Danica, Danica and more Danica), pit interviews ("what’s it like out there?) and they even managed to get NASCAR’s chief poobah Brian France to appear on camera and apologize to everybody watching for the delays, but the rest of the time they were on their own and they acquitted themselves wonderfully.

I got a big kick out of Myers’ throwaway line, in referring to an early race accident involving Regan Smith, as happening "about two days ago now." It was great stuff and they should win a collective Emmy for their performance.

– Oh, speaking of TSN, what was with those "NASCAR Canada moments?" What was "Canadian" about them? There is a NASCAR Canada series, you know. Couldn’t TSN, which is in business with NASCAR, have used those "filler" moments to promote the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series instead of talking about Toyota racing in the U.S.?

Just wondering.

– Dale Jr. is correct. They should repave that place because it’s just too bumpy. It makes 200 mph racing too dangerous because the cars are jumping around out there. They blamed the potholes on heavy rains. Please. They have lots of heavy rains in Florida and they've had them just about forever. Something else is happening to the old speedway for that sort of thing to materialize.

By the way, usually those holes in the track are called "weepers." They had problems along those lines years ago at a speedway in England when CART was over there. In fact, I think that’s how Kirk Russell, who was the Indy car series’ tech director, lost his job.

I wonder if a head will roll in Daytona over this?

– The "loosening up" of the restrictor plates made for interesting racing. With increased horsepower and greater throttle response, drivers could really "get a run." Earnhardt Jr.’s last-lap run from tenth to second was wonderful to watch.

– It was too bad Regan Smith was eliminated by a crash in the early going. I cheer for him because, a) he comes from just outside Syracuse, which makes him kind of a "local" driver and, b) his crew chief is Ryan Coniam, who hails from Burlington.

– Best run of the day was made by ex-Champ Car star A.J. Allmendinger. Because he changed an engine after the qualifying races on Thursday, he had to start last in the 43-car field. Forty-five laps after the race got started he was in first place, which means he passed one car just about every lap. Now, that’s motoring. He had some issues and eventually finished 32nd but had the grandstands buzzing.

– By the way, is "issues" NASCAR’s new favourite word? For years, we’ve had to listen to everything being "awesome." Now, "issues" is everywhere. Kasey Kahne, in an in-car interview, said his team had "issues" to deal with. Chad Knaus said he and Johnson had some "tire issues" and even McMurray mentioned "issues" in Victory Lane.

– Harry Connick Jr. sang the U.S. national anthem the way an anthem should be sung. It sounded like an anthem, not a pop song. I liked a lot about the opening of the Olympics in Vancouver Friday night but the singing of the Canadian national anthem by the same woman who sings that annoying Olympics theme song was not one of them.

– What is with Jeff Gordon always carrying his daughter around with him?

– There are signs everywhere in NASCAR these days. The in-car cameras always show five or six signs for UPS, NAPA, Budweiser – whatever the sponsor. On Saturday, they put the in-car camera in Tony Stewart’s car on the steering column so that it looked "up" at him and what you saw was a helmet (where, presumably, his head was) with two signs – Ritz and Oreo.

Anyway, the first sign I saw when I turned on the NASCAR RaceDay telecast on Speed Sunday morning was someone in the crowd holding up a Canadian flag with "Alexandria, Ont." written across the front of the Maple Leaf.

So hello to you from Alexandria, Ont., whoever you are/were. I wish I’d been down there with you.

– Oh, Dale Jr. was still talking Sunday about the financial bath his team took on Saturday when his car was destroyed and Danica Patrick’s was badly damaged. The total bill was $650,000.

Holy cow.