Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Is Tagliani injecting a little NASCAR into IndyCar?

When you’re a race-car driver, and you don’t own the car you’re racing, it doesn’t bother you all that much if you wreck it. Sure, you might get balled out by the boss and you might feel a little foolish, but the cheque still arrives in the mail without deductions.

(I guarantee you that if a certain Canadian racing star that we all know and love had had to reach into his pocket and fork over cash to pay for the damages every time he crashed (which would add up to millions of dollars, by the way), he flat out wouldn’t have gone off on the hook as many times as he has and might even have won a whole bunch more races. But I digress.)

If you happen to own the car you’re racing, it’s a whole different ball of wax, which likely explains why Montreal’s Alex Tagliani got more upset two days after his accident in Brazil on Sunday than he did at the time.

Tags was running in the top five in the IZOD IndyCar Series opener in Brazil when Dan Wheldon missed his braking point going into a sharp turn and ran into the back of the Canadian’s car. Tagliani, in turn, ran into Tony Kanaan. Everybody kept going except our boy, who was eliminated on the spot.

Tagliani, a part owner of the Fazzt Race Team of Montreal, was interviewed on TV after the crash and, despite expressing his annoyance, more of less let on that it was probably just one of them racin’ deals that happen all the time.

Wheldon reportedly apologized to Tagliani and the team after the race ended, in which he finished fifth.

On the plane on the way home, though, Tags had some time to think. (As the owner of racing cars that were frequently crashed by others, I know how the thought process works.)

“Well,” thought Tagliani, “not only did I miss the payoff on what would probably have been a top five finish, the jerk who clobbered me was paid handsomely and I have serious damage that has to be repaired. So I went into the race even and now I’m in the hole. I’m pissed.”

Which was the mood he was still in on Tuesday afternoon when a reporter from the Canadian Press wire service gave him a shout and when the questioning got around to the wreck, Tags said Wheldon did it on purpose.

""He comes to me at the airport, apologizes and says, ’Oh, I’m sorry. I hit a bump and locked up and slid into you.’ And I said, ’Okay, no problem. You’re okay. Thank you.’ And I shake his hand. Everything’s good. And then I come to Indy and I watch the replay and it’s (B.S.). I’m not happy.

“I’m not stupid. You bump me off the road. You hit me. You crash my car and then you lie to my face?”

Now, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, you can watch the accident. I, frankly, think Tags might have been a little too far out in the middle of the track and kinda in the way of the faster Wheldon when he got hit, but what do I know? Take a look and then you decide:

So the harsh economic realities of Indy car team ownership caught up with Tags and probably explains his eruption.

On the other hand, on the other hand, Alex Tagliani is a wiley guy. He is a remarkable self-marketer and self-promoter and he knows the ins and outs of public relations to a T.

He is, as is everybody connected to the IndyCar series, very aware of the publicity surrounding NASCAR’s “have at it, boys” philosophy and knows that a large portion of the U.S. population will have its eyes on Bristol, Tenn., this weekend to see who’s gonna get theirs, who’s gonna lay down a little payback, who’s going to get roughed up out there?

So Alex Tagliani’s outburst very possibly could have been something else.

He might have simply been trying to inject a little NASCAR into IndyCar.

A little feudin’ ‘n’ fightin’ in car racing never really hurt anybody and if it helps with the publicity for the next race in St. Petersburg, Fla., a week from this Sunday, so much the better.

Burgess, Marcelli, Wilkins enter 12 Hours of Sebring

Three Canadians will race in next weekend’s 12 Hours of Sebring.

Tony Burgess of Toronto is a veteran of prototype racing in the ALMS and at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. He’s being joined in the classic Florida event by Kyle Marcelli of Barrie, who’s entering his first year of big-league competition after apprenticing in the minors the last couple of years, and Mark Wilkins of Toronto, who’s stepping out of his regular ride in the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series for a one-off at Sebring.

Burgess will race, as he has for several years, with P1 class Autocon Motorsports in their Lola B06 10. He’ll partner Bryan Willman of Seattle and Pierre Ehert of Germany in the 12-hour marathon.

Marcelli and his driving partner, Joel Feinberg of Fort Lauderdale, will race an Oreca FLM09 in the LMPC class while Wilkins will join Scott Tucker of Leawood, Kan., and Christophe Bouchut of France in the same car and class.

Wilkins, who regularly drives the AIM Autosport No 61 Ford Riley in the Grand Am Rolex — he and co-driver Burt Friselle just missed the podium at the recent Grand Prix of Miami at Homestead-Miami Speedway and had to settle for fourth — is excited about the opportunity of going to Sebring.

“Sebring is one of those tracks that is steeped in history and the 12 hours is one of those races every racer would like to have on his resume and this is an opportunity not to be missed,” he said before heading south for a seat-fitting.

Now, big-league sports car racing is pretty safe stuff generally but the ALMS has had to endure two incredibly serious accidents recently. Scott Sharp managed to get out of a wreck at Road Atlanta last autumn that totally destroyed his car (I still can't figure out how he emerged unscathed) and then on Monday of this week, Ohio driver Jon Field, survived an equally vicious wreck at Sebring (ditto).

Take a look. The photographs will have you shaking your head.

The 58th Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring presented by Fresh from Florida is scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. EDT on Saturday. The race will be shown live on Speed TV.

All you’ll miss will be the sunshine and the no-see-ums.

F1 analysis: Please stop making any more stupid rules

The people who participate in Formula One are too smart by half and that’s why every time somebody comes up with a bright idea to "improve the racing," they figure out a way to circumvent it.

Going into Sunday’s Grand Prix of Bahrain (won by Fernando Alonso in a Ferrari, with Felipe Massa second in a Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton third in a McLaren), the conventional thinking was that the racing couldn’t help but be more exciting because there would be no refuelling this season. The drivers would have to stop for tires, however, and since they had to use two different compounds during the race as per the rules, and because the tires would wear out because of the weight of all the fuel they had to carry, they would have to stop twice – or so the thinking went.

All this would mean that if drivers wanted to advance they would have to execute racing passes out on the circuit rather than during pit stops, which has been the case for years.

So what happened Sunday? All the front-runners stopped just once for tires, not twice. They started on one compound and when they went to the pits, they took on the other.

So much for trying to engineer excitement.

But F1 people still think that this is the only way to go and even want to complicate it further. Martin Whitmarsh, who runs McLaren, said after the race – which, unfortunately, was a bit of a snoozer (full results here) – that F1 should immediately dictate two mandatory stops and he also wants Bridgestone to fool around with the tires so drivers flat-out can’t use them beyond about 20 laps.

I have a better idea.

Stop making any more rules. There’s too many rules as it is and it’s ruining the sport (if it hasn’t been ruined by rules already).

Leave everybody alone to make their own decisions and to run their own races.

Here’s what to do:

Let Bridgestone arrive with three compounds for dry tracks. Soft, medium and hard. Then, let the teams and drivers decide which tire, or tires, they want.

Should they go with the hard compound and not stop, go with the medium compound and maybe have to stop once (but maybe not, if the driver can manage his tires better than the next guy) or go with the soft compound and have to stop twice (but, presumably, be faster on the short runs than the guy with the hard tire who has to get all the way to the finish without stopping)?

That way, it would be completely up to the drivers and their teams and out of the hands of the kind of people who think the way to create interest is to tell the racers: "Thou shalt stop twice, or else."

Let the racers race. And have minds of their own. The show will be much, much better for it.

The Grand Prix of Bahrain, according to my notebook jottings:

– I don’t know what the deal is officially, but it looks like Speed TV will be allowed to broadcast F1 material this year except for live qualifying and the live race itself, which is the property in Canada of TSN and for which they pay a lot of money.

But that means we don’t get a pre-race program (which is fine, because wheels.ca is now providing one; I’m recording a Preview Podcast interview with Canadian F1 expert Gerald Donaldson that will be on the site by Friday noon of Grand Prix weekends. Take a listen to the first one here).

In any event, the TSN race broadcast comes on the air five minutes before the race starts and I want to be the first to say that the BBC can sure fit an awful lot of information into that short period of time. Maybe we’re not getting the colour of a grid walk, but we sure are getting the facts and figures from Jonathan Legard, who I now officially quite like.

– I still don’t know why the FIA let the HRT cars start (see my earlier blog on this insanity) but they weren’t around long. Karun Chandhok crashed two laps in and Bruno Senna lasted 18 laps before a hydraulic  problem took him out.

– The other new teams – Lotus and Virgin – tooled around and mostly stayed out of the way. They were okay, but far from being competitive. Everybody kept talking about how these cars were using the race as a "glorified test session," but there was one significant difference: they got paid an awful lot of money for being out there.

Some "test" session.

– I still haven’t passed Grade 11 physics and I sure don’t know anything about aerodynamics but I think these F1 cars are ugly. The Force India car, in particular, when you see it directly from the front, looks like a set of building blocks.

– Nico Hulkenberg and Jamie Alguersuari both spun off the track early in the race but managed to keep going because their anti-stall devices kicked in. I thought F1 drivers were skilled enough that they could keep the motors going in such situations. Apparently not.

– BBC colour commentator Martin Brundle had an excellent observation about how Michael Schumacher – who finished sixth in his first GP in three years – looked in his Mercedes: "Schumie looks to be about a tenth of a second behind the car rather than being a tenth of a second in front of it."

– Sebastien Vettel, who eventually finished fourth, sounded so upset when his Red Bull-Renault developed problems on Lap 34. "Can you fix it (the loss of power because of an exhaust problem)?" he pleaded with his crew. "Negative, mechanical," was the reply, which was too bad because he was the driver to beat Sunday.

By the way, I received a very nice email from a gentleman in Oakville after he listened to my podcast with Gerry D. on Friday and he explained there is no Vee sound in the German language and that Vettel is properly pronounced more like an F, as in Fettel.

Thank you.

– Felipe Massa, of course, was the story of the race (as was the just-back-from-serious-injury Will Power in the IndyCar race, which was a barnburner – please see blog below).

Massa came oh-so close to losing an eye at the minimum and his life at the max when hit in the head with that spring last summer in Hungary. In the Grand Prix at Bahrain, in his first race back, he finished a solid second.

Somebody had asked me earlier this year if I thought Massa was going to come back as hard and as quick as ever and I said I didn’t think so, explaining that he would still be fast and probably as focused but a serious injury can shave a fraction off here and a fraction off there, simply because after spending serious sheet time in the crash house (I had to do that . . . ) it’s sometimes very difficult to make your right foot go all the way down.

It looks, however, like Massa is back with a vengeance (he outqualified Alonso and started second, only to drop to third at the first corner) and for that we should all be thankful.

– The Grand Prix of Australia is in two weeks. Start practicing staying up late.

　

IndyCar Brazil opener a great race to remember

It’s really difficult to put into words something that is truly exciting and spectacular.

But those two words describe to a T Sunday’s IZOD IndyCar Series opener in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It had everything: hard driving, clever passing, a monsoon storm that brought out the red flag mixed in with brilliant sunshine (meaning cars were ducking in and out of the pits frequently), and one of the most incredible accidents you’re ever going to see in which it was a miracle that Marco Andretti wasn’t hurt, or worse.

Anybody watching even a bit of that race yesterday, and then saying with a straight face: "The IRL? I still miss Champ Car," just wasn’t paying attention.

In the end, Australian Will Power won going way in a Team Penske car, with American Ryan Hunter-Reay second driving for Andretti Autosport and Brazilian homeboy Vitor Meira third for A.J. Foyt Enterprises.

Top woman driver was Ana Beatriz of Brazil, who finished 13^th. Two places behind her was American Danica Patrick, a lap down (she was left out on the circuit on dry tires when the storm hit and spun into a tire wall, damaging the front of her car), followed by Simona De Silvestro of Switzerland (she was three laps behind at the checkers but actually led the race at one point) and Milka Duno of Venezuela, who was 21^st and hopeless.

Duno would have been last except for the numbskull moves made at the start by F1 refugee Takuma Sato, who missed his braking point at the first turn and piled into the cars in front of him, creating bedlam, and Brazilian veteran Mario Moraes who then piled pell-mell into the mess without braking, winding up on top of Andretti’s car with his right-rear wheel squishing Marco down in the cockpit.

The normally talkative Andretti simply looked at his rescuers when they finally got him out of the car, squatted down on the ground, and said: "Give me a second to collect myself."

Drivers blamed big-time dust for the crackups, caused when race officials took a grinder to smooth concrete on the pit straight in an effort to rough it up – a situation that caused qualifying to be postponed from Saturday until Sunday morning. Drivers hadn’t been able to get any grip on the concrete, causing them to slip-slide all over the place, hence the grinding.

As was the case in Bahrain with Felipe Massa, Power’s victory was a true feel-good story. The Aussie driver had suffered a broken back last August at Infineon Raceway in California when he crested a hill at just under 200 miles an hour and went straight into the side of the stalled car of Nelson Philippe of France, who was also injured.

Said Power: "I was in the hospital, and I was thinking, ‘Will I be well enough to race? And will I be fast enough to race?’

The answer to both those questions?

Yes.

The Sao Paulo Indy 300, according to my notebook jottings:

– The only Canadian in the race, Alex Tagliani of Montreal (the announcing team of Bob Jenkins and Robbie Buhl made a big deal out of his owning a house in Arizona, though), was knocked out of the running when he was near the front (at one time, he was up to second).

Dan Wheldon, who eventually finished fifth, drove into the back of Tagliani, who then piled into Tony Kanaan. Kanaan was able to continue, Tags was not.

– By the way, although Robbie Buhl has a conflict of interest (he’s an announcer for the race broadcasts and is a partner in the Dreyer and Reinbold Racing team, which fields Justin Wilson and Mike Conway), his exuberance and excitement make up for it. He’s an entertaining guy.

– Although they were able to pull this race off, it’s astonishing that experienced racing people continue to try to run races in places where super fast racing cars clearly don’t fit. Never mind having to grind the concrete surface overnight Saturday into Sunday. The course was incredibly bumpy and it’s a tribute to the skill and daring of all the drivers that they were able to run at such a fast pace and yet keep the cars from breaking loose.

This weekend’s near-fiasco was reminiscent of Champ Car’s attempt to hold a street race in downtown San Jose. Remember that? The track wasn’t wide enough in a couple of places for two cars to fit side-by-side and, the first year anyway, they had to run across a railroad track.

Okay, Sao Paulo wasn't that bad - but it was close.

– Race control warned Raphael Matos (who finished fourth) about blocking (or defending his position, as the road racers like to say), which is a no-no in IndyCar. Jenkins had barely gotten the words out of his mouth than the camera showed Scott Dixon moving out to blatantly block his own teammate, Dario Franchitti, who was trying to pass him.

Race control either didn’t say anything or Jenkins didn’t mention it. But I betcha Mr. Franchitti had a few choice words for Mr. Dixon later.

The Indy cars now go to Florida (St. Pete’s) two weekends from now. Ana Beatriz likely won’t be there (she was a one-off, up from Indy Lights, so must clearly be pleased with her result) but Graham Rahal will be, driving for Sarah Fisher.

NASCAR took a week off, but will be back next weekend at Bristol. Wonder who will be getting payback from whom? Which is a reasonable question, because it sure ain’t about the racing anymore.

　

F1 shouldn't let new team start Bahrain Grand Prix

Before I start, be sure to listen to my podcast interview with wheels.ca special F1 correspondent Gerald Donaldson by clicking here. We’ll do one before every GP this year.

And on Monday, I’ll be answering motor racing questions in a Live Chat on thestar.com at noon. Agree with what I say? Disagree (see letters to the Wheels editor for a few of those)? Or just want to exchange views about our favourite sport? Go to the home page of thestar.com and log in at noon Monday.

In news today, Sebastien Vettel has won the pole for the Grand Prix of Bahrain in the Red Bull (for full story, click here), with Felipe Massa (way to go, Felipe!) and Fernando Alonso second and third in their Ferraris. Ex-world champion Lewis Hamilton (McLaren) finished fourth, seven-time heavyweight champ Michael Schumacher (Mercedes) is seventh – he qualified behind new teammate Nico Rosberg, who’s fifth – and current title holder Jenson Button is eighth. Mark Webber is sixth in the other Red Bull.

All the new teams are at the back – Virgin, Lotus and and HRT in that order with HRT drivers Bruno Senna and Karun Chandhock last, between eight and 10 seconds off the pole pace.

Okay, does anybody remember F1's 107% rule? The FIA instituted that back in 1996 when they had F1 entries coming out of their ears (remember Simtek? remember Forti?) and most of those little, unsophisticated and underfunded teams simply couldn’t cut the mustard.

So the rule was, if a driver was not within 107% of the pole speed after qualifying, he couldn’t start the race because he’d be deemed a hazard.

(It was abolished in 2002 for two reasons: the number of cars entered had fallen – they needed a field – and the stewards had to keep making exceptions because name drivers like Damon Hill and Fernando Alonso would have off-days and be terribly slow in qualifying and wouldn’t have been able to race under that rule if it had been enforced as written.)

In any event, what are Senna and Chandhock, if not hazards? They are rookies and their untested and untried cars are slow and letting them race in Sunday’s Grand Prix is a recipe for disaster.

Between the end of qualifying today and the race tomorrow, the established teams and the stewards should ask the FIA to re-establish the 107% rule immediately. As Donaldson said in our F1 season preview interview (click here for the column), a fast car closing rapidly on a slower car is very dangerous and is exactly how Gilles Villeneuve died.

This is not Saturday night at the local race track. This is Grand Prix, second only to the Olympics (where, incidentally, you generally have to get through qualifying before going for the gold) in money, sophistication and world-wide interest, and is no place for amateurs.

By the way, Martin Brundle – on the qualifying broadcast today – said tens of millions of people were watching. Presumably, he was talking about the TV audience because it looked like tens were in the grandstands and it makes you wonder why F1 insists on going to those places where the local interest appears to be just about zilch.

No wonder F1 wants Montreal – and should get back to Indianapolis, too. (By the way, the real reason they don’t want to go back to Indy has nothing to do with money; the participants don’t find the city particularly stimulating – it’s a little too small-town for their tastes, with all them Steak 'n Shakes and the like – and that’s why they’re not there.)

All the seats and all the suites will be packed on first practice Friday morning in Montreal – and would be in Indy, too – and that’s what should be important to F1.

Racing news roundup: Large car count for Brazil

For the longest time this winter, it looked like the IndyCar car count would be low and cynics (including me) suggested there would be a scramble to make fields look presentable.

Well, what started as a bit of a crescendo has become a landslide in recent days as a full field – two dozen cars – will start the Sao Paulo Indy 300 in Brazil Sunday (TSN2, 11:30 a.m.).

With 24 cars on the F1 grid at Bahrain (go to wheels.ca to listen to my podcast interview with F1 expert Gerald Donaldson) and 45 or more showing up for NASCAR Sprint Cup races, IndyCar’s 24 (which will grow to 25 or more in St. Pete's in a few weeks) indicate the economy is back or the recession is over, take your pick.

The latest signing – announced Thursday – has Mario Moraes returning to KV Racing for the complete season. KV (Jimmy Vasser and Kevin Kalkhoven are partners– it used to be PKV Racing and that was for Jacques Villeneuve’s old manager, Craig Pollock, who’s kind of disappeared since he and JV broke up) now has three full-time drivers signed: Takuma Sato and E.J. Viso, in addition to Moraes.

Which means Paul Tracy, who will drive for the team at Indianapolis as well as Toronto and Edmonton, will be joining a pretty crowded shop.

Seven of the drivers in Sunday's race are from Brazil, with Ana Beatriz the only one-off.  The Indy Lights standout hopes to raise enough money to do the full season but she’ll be at Indy for sure.

There will be mixing and matching along the way. Beatriz likely won’t be at the next race in St. Petersburg, Fla., but Graham Rahal and Jay Howard will be in cars owned by Sarah Fisher (who will drive some ovals).

And supermodified star Davey Hamilton will be on the grid for several oval races as well.

In other news:

Mark Dilley announce today that his NASCAR Canadian Tire Series team will be fielded by Scott Steckly, the 2008 National Champion, for the 2010 season.

“I am very happy to team up with Scott in 2010,” said Dilley, who’s cars were entered previously by now-retired veteran team owner Dave Whitlock.

Steckly, who’s team owner and driver for his 22 Racing Team, says he’s thrilled with the arrangement. “Mark is a great guy and a competitive racer and I’m am looking forward to fielding cars for him.”

The Steckly-Dilley team are expected to announce sponsor support in the near future.

The NASCAR Canadian Tire Series is composed of 13 races that take place on road courses, temporary street courses, and oval tracks across Canada. The events are all broadcast on TSN with at least one repeat airing.

The first race of the 2010 season will be June 5 at Delaware Speedway in London. A new addition to the schedule will be a race at the Honda Indy Toronto.

Meantime, 30 or so of the open wheel cars that made history in the Formula 1 World Championship from the late 1960s through the mid-1980s period will race on the support program at the Grand Prix of Canada, at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal June 11-13.

The Historic Grand Prix cars last appeared in Canada in 2004. Not only do the owners/drivers race the legendary cars, they showcase them in a tent that’s accessible to the public in the support race paddock.

Said Grand Prix promoter François Dumontier: “Each time the cars go on track, it is one of the most popular moments of the weekend. The list of cars entered is impressive. It is a true reflection of the history of the first decades of the Canadian Grand Prix. They include cars that our loyal fans can relate to and cars that were successful on Canadian soil."

In Woodbridge, AIM Autsoport announced this week that Maple resident David Ostella will return for a second season in 2010 to contest the Star Mazda Championship presented by Goodyear. The 18-year-old will be driving the AIM Autosport / Global Precast No 16 Formula Mazda and he is looking forward to the season’s first race at Sebring

Ostella had a strong debut season with AIM in 2009 – an AIM Team car won the 2008 championship – ending the year with seven top-ten results including a third-place finish at Iowa Speedway. He ended the season 13th overall out of 32 cars in the championship.

And finally, Alex Tagliani – the only Canadian racing full-time in the IZOD IndyCar Series this season – has a small speaking role in the upcoming film, “Score: A Hockey Musical.” Tags plays himself in the film along with other Canadians such as Walter Gretzky and Margaret Atwood in a scene that was filmed at a hockey rink in Toronto.

“Score: A Hockey Musical” — which combines musical numbers with Canada’s national sport — was shot in Toronto by director Michael McGowan (“One Week” and “Saint Ralph”), and features a story line about a teenage hockey phenom, played by Noah Reid, and his parents, played by Olivia Newton-John and Canadian singer-songwriter Marc Jordan, who are worried about the course the young hockey star’s life is taking.

Filming wrapped March 8. The movie will be released on Oct. 22 by Mongrel Media.

What’s in a name — if it works!

When I worked in Kingston, I was host of a television phone-in program called Feedback Live. All the local politicians would come on and I would question them about policies and issues.

It was a little off-the-wall. Speaker of the House Peter Milliken (he's the MP for Kingston and the Islands) was a guest a few times and when then-Ontario Premier Bob Rae came on, the first question I asked was whether he ever bought lottery tickets? (He said he did, occasionally.)

Anyway, one year at Christmas, the producer decided we should do a “remote” for our Christmas show. Instead of the guests coming to the TV studio, we would set up shop in a favourite local gathering place and invite the president of the Chamber of Commerce and the police chief and the coach of the junior A hockey team — and the politicians, of course — to drop in for an interview and to wish the viewers a Merry Christmas.

(There’s an auto racing point coming up; trust me.)

Anyway, we settled on Morrison’s Restaurant (anybody who's ever lived in Kingston or went to Queen's knows Morrison’s) and away we went.

However, at the last minute we hit a bit of a snag. One of the show’s sponsors backed out and the station had to find a replacement. And, wouldn’t you know it, it turned out to be another restaurant.

The show went on the air as, “Christmas at Morrison’s, brought to you by the Lone Star Café.”

Hoo-boy. I heard about that for weeks.

“How dumb, how stupid,” people would say. “A TV show about a restaurant being sponsored by another restaurant.”

The Morrison’s people weren’t impressed. The Lone Star Café folks thought it hilarious.

Which brings me to the Grand Prix of Bahrain. Have you noticed something?

The Renault team is being sponsored by the Russian car company that makes the Lada. (A car company being sponsored by a car company, get it?)

And BMW-Sauber is being powered by a Ferrari.

Maybe “Christmas at Morrison’s, brought to you by the Lone Star Café” wasn’t so dumb, after all.

NASCAR going down same road as the NHL

Well, the inmates are in charge of the asylum at NASCAR today.

No, I’m not talking about “payback” on the race track, which earned Carl Edwards a tap on the wrist for sending Brad Keselowski on a parasail ride at Atlanta Motor Speedway last Sunday.

NASCAR wants that sort of stuff to happen all the time now (“have at it, boys”), so penalized Edwards the grand total of nothing (which is what probation for three races adds up to be).

What I am talking about is that the drivers can do anything they want to do now – such as driving the wrong way along pit road. Hey, maybe the next time some driver gets all out of whack about something, he might just drive the wrong way on the speedway and, when questioned about it later by NASCAR, will point directly to what Edwards did last Sunday, without penalty, as justification.

Anybody who’s ever been along a pit road anywhere knows traffic goes only one way. You don’t even think that somebody might be coming the other way – which is why, at Indianapolis in 1973, a fireman running to the wreck that eventually killed Swede Savage was hit and killed by a firetruck that was going to wrong way along pit road.

But that’s all out the window, now. Not one word was mentioned about Edwards’ thumbing his nose at NASCAR and at safety by going the wrong way when he was parked following the wrecking of Keselowki.

Yes, there is a very fine line when it comes to officiating a violent, contact sport. The National Hockey League is in trouble at the moment – and knows it – over hits to the head. What was once a hard-hitting, tough, contact sport has become – as a direct result of lax officiating – one in which some of the participants are deliberately trying to injure their opponents.

Watch any NHL game now and I guarantee that you will see at least one incident in which someone – usually a defenceman – will line up a forward waiting for a pass with his head down and try to kill him. That’s right, kill him. Some people will argue otherwise, but that's what's happening.

Which is why the NHL is in such a dither, trying to figure out how to curtail what its leniency has allowed to happen. This is the road that NASCAR is going down and it had better watch it.

Everybody understands the reasoning behind why NASCAR has asked the drivers to get more aggressive. It’s all about TV ratings and selling tickets, both of which have dropped off in recent years.

Auto racing, at one time, was an extreme sport. Not any more. There were more athletes putting their lives on the line at the recent Olympics (witness the fatally injured luger, the upside-down bobsled runners, the gymnasts-on-skis) than do in auto races these days and many people are finding it boring.

So, in saying "have at it, boys," NASCAR is looking to put the "extreme" back into its sport. Rubbin' 'n' racin', tradin' paint - that sort of thing.

But when someone does what Edwards did last Sunday at Atlanta – deliberately spinning out a competitor at 180 mph – it’s called crossing the line and an appropriate penalty has to be levied, which three races on probation is definitely not.

NASCAR has to have a rethink – for two reasons:

1. Le Mans, 1955. A car went into the crowd during the 24-hour race and killed the driver and 84 spectators and injured more than 100 other people. NASCAR has had two really close calls in this area – Bobby Allison and Edwards, both at Talladega. (Keselowski’s accident last Sunday wasn’t really that close.)

But at the speeds the cars are running, the “have at it, boys” mentality (as the direct result of NASCAR’s encouragement) will increase the grim possibility of this sort of thing happening and can you imagine the uproar if something as devastating as the Le Mans disaster was to take place at Charlotte or Indianapolis or Daytona?

2. The involvement of law-enforcement officials.

If Brad Keselowki had been killed last Sunday, Carl Edwards would be facing criminal charges today.

Guaranteed.

Does NASCAR want that?

 

 

Sir Stirling Moss's fascinating house of gadgets

Best wishes to Sir Stirling Moss for a quick recovery from the serious injuries he suffered at his home in London at the weekend when he went to step into the elevator in his house and fell three stories.

The 80-year-old, who retired from Formula One after a 1962 accident that left him in a coma for four weeks, is reportedly "comfortable and recovering" at the Royal London Hospital, where he was admitted Saturday following the accident.

He suffered two broken ankles, broken bones in his feet and injured his spine in the accident, which happened when the elevator doors in his gadget-filled home opened when they should have stayed shut.

(Watch a fascinating video of Sir Stirling demonstrating his “gadgets” by clicking here.)

A statement on his website said: "He stepped into the narrow open shaft in the expectation that the lift would be present for him to walk into, as it should have been."

According to a story on news.scotsman.com. the elevator is one of a kind and just one of the many futuristic features in his home in Mayfair, London, including a table that lowers from the ceiling once guests sit down to dinner, a tray that carries letters and papers between the floors, and a bath that can be filled and emptied by remote control.

His home also contains the mangled steering wheel from the Lotus he crashed at Goodwood in 1962, leaving him partially paralyzed for six months.

Sir Stirling, who won 16 Formula One races and is still considered to be one of the greatest drivers of all time, retired after the crash.

A statement issued by the family said: "The family are very relieved that Stirling survived the fall, demonstrating that his body still has the same resilience to injury as it did in his racing days.

"He is comfortable, following a good night’s rest post-surgery and is well on the road to recovery. It is expected that it will take up to six weeks for him to recover."

NASCAR caught between rock, hard place

Now that I have your attention, I’ll get to the hole that NASCAR has dug itself into in a second.

First, a commercial – sort of.

This was in my Toronto Star Wheels column on Saturday, but in case you missed it . . .

For years, Gerald Donaldson, who’s acknowledged to be Canada’s foremost authority on all things Formula One (he’s been writing about the sport since the 1970s and has authored about two dozen books on the subject, including bios of James Hunt and Gilles Villeneuve), reported on the sport for TSN from press rooms around the world on Grand Prix mornings.

We haven’t heard much of, or from, Gerry in the last year or so because TSN cancelled its Sunday morning pre-F1 race program. When I heard they didn’t plan to revive it again this year, I called Gerry and asked him if he’d like to bring his expertise to wheels.ca

Instead of talking to Vic Rauter on TSN Sunday mornings at 7 or 7:30, I suggested he record a podcast with me after first practice on Friday and it would be posted to wheels.ca by noon and be up there through to the race on Sunday morning.

We would do this for each and every one of this year’s F1 races, starting this coming Friday with the Bahrain GP.

“Sounds like a swell idea to me,” said Gerry, who’s no stranger to Star readers, having provided dispatches to our sports pages during the Jacques Villeneuve era.

Our 10-minute podcast chat, complete with visual images, will report on practice times, drivers’ performance and, yes, all the gossip that Formula One is famous for. And we’re going to have some fun with it, too.

Practice for the Grand Prix of Bahrain will take place early on Friday morning, EST. Go to wheels.ca at noon for the first of Gerry Donaldson’s preview podcasts.

Okay, so now to NASCAR and it’s big mess.

In case you missed seeing the big accident just before the end of yesterday’s Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta, which was won by Kurt Busch, involving Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski, here it is.

Pretty blatant intent to wreck an opponent, wouldn’t you say?

If you look closely, you can see Edwards’s white driving gloves steer his car deliberately into the rear quarter-panel of Keselowski’s car just as we saw Michael Schumacher turn his Ferrari into the side of Jacques Villeneuve’s Williams at Jerez, Spain, in 1997.

There was no doubt about what Schumacher did in 1997, just as there is no doubt about what Edwards did yesterday.

In fact, Edwards’s arrogance about the whole business knew no bounds. After being disqualified and ordered out of the race, he responded by driving the wrong way down pit road on his way to the garage. He then gave several TV and radio interviews admitting that what he’d done had been deliberate before going to be interviewed by NASCAR officials.

And if I’d been a fly on the wall inside the NASCAR trailer, I bet you this is what Edwards said.

“I'm sorry his car got upside down. I didn’t mean to endanger any fans or to hurt him. I planned to spin him out in order to ruin his race, as he’d ruined mine (they’d had a coming together early in the race and Edwards had spent most of the race in the garage while his crew repaired the damage.)

“Having said that (Edwards probably continued), what happened out there is exactly what you suggested we do. You said you wanted us to put excitement and emotion back into racing and that’s exactly what I did today.

“You can’t have it both ways. If you penalize me for doing what you told us to do, the commentators in newspapers and on radio and TV will have a field day.”

For the record, on Jan. 21, Jenna Fryer, the AP’s main motorsports reporter, filed this dispatch from NASCAR HQ (I’ve edited it down a bit):

CONCORD, N.C. – Have at it, boys.

NASCAR is . . . encouraging drivers to show more aggression and emotion, in large part to answer a growing fan sentiment that the sport has gone stale.

“There’s an age old saying that NASCAR, ’If you ain’t rubbing, you ain’t racing,’” NASCAR president Mike Helton said Thursday. ``I think that’s what the NASCAR fan, the NASCAR stakeholders all bought into, and all expect.’’

“We will put it back in the hands of drivers, and we will say ’Boys, have at it and have a good time,’” vice president of competition Robin Pemberton said Thursday.

As NASCAR exploded over the 1990s past its small Southern roots into a billion-dollar, corporate-fueled sport, its participants seemed to morph into robotic sponsor shills too frightened to make waves. NASCAR wasn’t immune, either, and started policing on-track aggression and off-track emotion.

Intentional on-track retaliation was met with immediate punishment, while transgressions such as shoving a competitor or cursing in a television interview were met with monetary fines and/or points deductions.

Fans were incensed that the rough and tumble sport they once loved had been molded into boring, follow-the-leader racing, and their favorite drivers had become too vanilla.

It wasn’t until last fall — when (Denny) Hamlin waged a months-long feud with up-and-comer Brad Keselowski, and Tony Stewart and Juan Pablo Montoya intentionally wrecked each other in the season finale — that NASCAR finally saw the lift the emotions and personalities can deliver to the sport.

What wasn’t said in that piece was the worrying decrease in TV ratings and the empty seats at all of NASCAR’s big events toward the end of the season that forced the sanctioning body to take some action.

Retired driver Kyle Petty, appearing the Speed TV's Victory Lane program last night, sounded like a hangin’ judge. He wants NASCAR to throw the book at Edwards and to actually suspend him for his move on Keselowski.

(Kyle actually had a pretty good line: “Brad Keselowski said the ball’s in NASCAR’s court. We’re going to see if they’ve got a pair now.”)

But Petty admitted that he’d intentionally wrecked people. So in  the end, all that’s different here is that the car got airborne.

This is what I think NASCAR will do.

Edwards will either face a substantial fine or a one-race ban for deliberate dangerous driving - for going the wrong way along pit road after he was disqualified from the race. That, frankly, was really stupid. Nobody's expecting a car to be coming that way.

They will also put him on probation for the rest of the season for wrecking Keselowski. (I betcha they have a quiet word with Keselowski, too, suggesting he steer clear of Edwards as much as possible.)

They can’t do much else. To suspend Edwards for rough riding would be to contradict everything they’d said about emotion and tradin’ paint. NASCAR’S credibility is at stake here

A decision on the penalty or penalties is expected later today or tomorrow.

It was Kurt Busch’s first victory of the young season. He was followed across the line (in the second of a green-white-checkers finish – there was a crash the first time they tried to finish the race as the result of the Edwards-Keselowski wreck) by Matt Kenseth and Juan Montoya.

Kasey Kahne, who dominated much of the race, finished fourth and Paul Menard, in his best finish in Sprint Cup competiton, was fifth.

Other notables: Four-time defending champion Jimmie Johnson was 12th and Tony Stewart 13th. Pole-winner Dale Earnhardt Jr. was 15th. Jeff Gordon was 18th and Kyle Busch (what’s happened to him this year?) came home 25th. Mark Martin finished 33rd.

For the record: Keselowski was 36th and Edwards was 39th.

One last observation about Atlanta:

The spring race always has empty seats because it’s cold outside in Georgia at this time of year. It was hard to tell if there were more yesterday than usual.

However (and there’s always one of those, isn’t there?), motorhome row for spectators along the backstretch at Atlanta is always a doorhandle-to-doorhandle deal but yesterday it was half-empty and that, ladies and gentleman, is not a good sign.

National Speed Sport News Editor Emeritus Chris Economaki said it three years ago during a panel discussion at the Canadian Motorsports Expo: “The bloom is off the rose.”

It’s going to take more than feudin’ `n’ fightin’ to fix this.

P.S.Kevin Harvick won the Camping World Truck Series race Saturday afternoon at Atlanta. Kyle Busch was second and Aric Almorolo was third.

NASCAR will now take a week off before Bristol in two weeks.

But that's okay because Formula One and IndyCar start their seasons next Sunday.

PRUETT WINS GRAND AM ROLEX RACE AT HOMESTEAD-MIAMI

Scott Pruett (with Memo Rojas) held off David Donohue (and Darren Law) to win the Grand Prix of Miami, which was the second round of the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series championship held at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Saturday.

The team of Alex Gurney and Jon Fogerty finished third, just edging the AIM Autosport of Woodbridge No. 61 Pacific Mobile Ford-Riley piloted by Mark Wilkins of Toronto and Burt Frisselle of Aspen, Colo.

Th AIM team skipped the 24 Hours of Daytona in order to concentrate on the shorter Grand Am Rolex races and was thrilled to come away with a solid finish.

Said Wilkins: "First off, a big thanks to the entire crew who have worked so hard the last two weeks to get us here. They have done a fantastic job and put in some long hours. These guys are dedicated and have always given us a good car.

"Ian (Willis – a founding partner in the team) and Jim (Malicki) always seem to find the magic setup that works for us as well. It is a strong effort and both Burt and I are glad we could bring this one home."

 Said winner Pruett: "I sure didn't want to see that last caution (brought on by a car fire on pit road), but I was happy for the fans. This is tough competition. You never know what's going to happen until the checkered flag falls. It was pretty exciting in my seat, that's for sure."

He’s right about the competition. It’s great racing.

I have no idea, however, what fans he was talking about – unless they were the ones watching TV. I have never – and I mean never – seen as empty a stadium for a big-league car race as Homestead-Miami was at 5 p.m. Saturday afternoon when this run was held.

There was not a soul in the grandstands. And I have stood in the infield there for this very race (the Grand Am Rolex Series has shared the speedway with the IRL in the past) and I can tell you there were not many people in there, either.

In the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge race that preceded the Rolex run, the team of Jack Roush Jr. and Billy Johnson won, with Terry Borcheller and Andrew Hendricks second and Joey Hand and Michael Marsal third.

Roush and Johnson were in a Mustang GT while the second and third-place cars were BMW M3 Coupes.

Canadians in the race:

Kenny Wilden of Oakville, who won this series a year ago, finished fourth (with partners); Scott Maxwell of Toronto, who was champion two years ago, was seventh; Dave Lacey of Toronto was 11th. All were driving Mustangs in the GS class.

In the ST Class,  Lawson Aschenbach and David Thilenius drove Karl Thomson’s Toronto-based Compass 360 Honda Civic to a second-place finish behind winners Tom Long and Derek Whitis.

Jose Leroux and Carlos Tesler-Maber drove another Compass 360 entry to a 10th-in-class f inish; Jesse Combs and Gregory Liefooghe were right behind, in 11th in class, in another Compass 360 Honda Civic and Ryan Eversley and Zach Lutz were 30th (64th overall) in yet another Compass 360 entry.

Gunter Schmidt of Midland and Thomas Lepper didn’t start in their Sick Kids Foundation Chevrolet Cobalt SS.