Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Is this how Schumacher makes his exit?

News from Italy today suggests that a restructuring within the Mercedes Formula One team could result in team boss Ross Brawn having a diminished role in 2011.

There have been reports in recent weeks that Brawn and Mercedes’ Norbert Haug have not been seeing eye-to-eye and that Brawn might be seriously thinking about retirement — again — as a result.

Seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher returned to racing with the team this year and his performance has not been of world-championship calibre. He has a three-year contract and has maintained that he intends to fulfill it, even though for  most of the year he has been upstaged by his younger teammate, Nico Rosberg, leading some observers to suggest that Schumacher’s sub-par performance might have more to do with him than with the car.

If Brawn steps aside as team principal, would Schumacher stop race-driving and take over that job?

He would very quickly become “the face” of Mercedes’ F1 team, which means he would still be front-and-centre in the motorsport world. If part of the deal was a testing role, it would be even better because he could continue to drive up-to-date Formula One cars.

It would be the perfect way to make a graceful exit from race-driving and to safeguard his reputation as one of the sport's all-time greats, which has been taking a bit of a beating this season.

It’s just a suggestion, but one that I believe has merit.

Yet another Canadian drove in Indy 500

When I wrote a column just prior to this year’s Indianapolis 500 about Canadian-born drivers who’d made the field for the soon-to-be 100-years-old event, it focused on Hal Robson who was the fourth Canadian (and first from Toronto) to compete in the world’s most famous race.

At the time, I waffled a bit as to the exact number because – well, you never know. The Canadian Motorsports Hall of Fame made a pretty big mistake in 1993 when it inducted Billy Foster as the first Canadian to make the field at Indy because it subsequently turned out that he was the fifth.

Well, the news today is that he might actually be the sixth.

After Foster was inducted (and I have to ‘fess up to the fact that I was the one who promoted his induction as Canada’s first Indy 500 driver), it was discovered that there had been several before him.

So far as is known, Pete Henderson of Fernie, B.C., (he was born in Ontario, went west as a child with his family and got into racing while a student at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa) was the first Canadian-born driver to make the field at Indy and that was in 1916.

Next came Ira Vail, who was born in Montreal. He raced at Indy in 1917 and might even be the first Canadian-born driver to win an Indy-car race, but that’s a debate for another day.

Third (again, so far as we know) was John Duff, who was born in China of Canadian parents from Hamilton. He won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1924 (who says Canadians can’t motor, eh?) and ran at Indy in 1926, where he qualified 28^th (and last) but kept it on the island and finished ninth.

But wait! It turns out there was another Canadian-born driver in that 1926 race. Or so it’s believed.

Ronald G. (Bon) MacDougall, who was born on Aug. 4, 1901 in Vancouver (although there are some who maintain he was born in Winnipeg), qualified ninth but only ran 19 laps before being sidelined by a water leak and officially finished 26^th.

Terry Cumming of Newmarket, who’s researching MacDougall’s career, reports that a newspaper once described him as "Canadian Dirt Track Champion." In an email, Cumming wrote:

"He also promoted races and drove and ran a car for awhile at the famous Legion Ascot Speedway in the Los Angeles area. He also promoted, raced or ran a car at other tracks like San Jose, Altoona, Atlanta and Abilene, Texas."

Thanks for the information, Terry.

If it works out that Bon MacDougall is, in fact, Canadian-born, the number of Canadians (according to my figures) to have driven in the Indianapolis 500 will increase to 18:

Pete Henderson, Ira Vail, John Duff, Bon MacDougall, Hal Robson, Billy Foster, Eldon Rasmussen, Cliff Hucul, Jacques Villeneuve Sr., John Jones, Ludwig Heimrath Jr., Scott Goodyear, Claude Bourbonnais, Jacques Villeneuve, Paul Tracy, Patrick Carpentier, Alex Tagliani and Marty Roth.

Anybody missing?

A reminder: motor racing is dangerous

We get lulled into a false sense of security when things go well at the professional level of motorsports.

NASCAR drivers crash into cement walls at God-awful speeds and get out, wave to the crowd and walk away. Same with Indy and Formula One drivers. Remember Mark Webber’s high-as-a-kite flip in his Red Bull-Renault earlier this season?

But it’s at the secondary level that things happen every now and again to remind us that racing might be a lovely game but it’s still very much a deadly one.

A child was killed driving a go-kart at a rent-a-ride location near Kansas City. A Leamington motorcycle racer died of injuries suffered at the Indianapolis State Fairgrounds on the same weekend a 12-year-old motorcycle rider was killed while racing at the famed Indianapolis Speedway.

And now we’ve had a fatality at one of those “racing experience” amusements, in which people get a little bit of instruction and then are turned loose at a superspeedway to experience the thrill of driving a NASCAR-type stock car or an Indy car.

A California woman crashed a replica Indy car into a wall at the California Speedway in Fontana while taking part in the Mario Andretti Driving Experience.

The San Bernardino County coroner’s office says Ashley Phalen, 24, of Los Angeles lost control of the car, hit the wall and overturned. She died in hospital.

She was participating in what was described on andrettiracing.com as the “World’s Fastest Racing Experience.”  

The website said people can drive a race car with 600 horsepower for eight minutes and go as fast as 160 mph.

Maybe they shouldn’t.

 

F1 comes close to royal screw-up in Korea

Weekend headlines:
1. F1, NASCAR championship fights exciting
2. F1 comes close to royal screw-up in Korea
3. ESPN, NASCAR worry about TV ratings

Championship fights heat up
A sea change atop the standings in the Formula One world drivers’ championship has everybody sitting up and taking notice.
With his win yesterday in the first Korean Grand Prix, and the failure of both Red Bull cars to finish – Mark Webber crashed out and Sebastien Vettel lost an engine close to the finish of the race (full story here) – Fernando Alonso is the new leader with just two races remaining, Brazil in two weeks and then Abu Dhabi a week later.
Alonso has 231 points and has won three of the last four races (he finished third in the other one). Webber, with no points yesterday, is stuck at 220 points, 11 points behind. Lewis Hamilton, who was second at Korea, is third in the standings with 210 (minus 21 points) while Vettel has 206 (25 behind). Defending world champion Jenson Button is pretty much out of it in fifth place with 189 points (minus 42).
But with the new points system for 2010 awarding a Grand Prix winner 25 points, all of the top five – including Jenson – still have hope. Who would ever have thought that both Webber and Vettel would fail to score points at Korea? Which means it could happen again. There are 50 points still out there before the season ends and stranger things, as they say, have happened.
In NASCAR Sprint Cup action, Denny Hamlin – who else? – won the Chase race at Martinsville, Va., yesterday. Kevin Harvick and Jimmie Johnson, the only other two with a chance to win the championship, finished third and fifth, respectively (full story here).
Johnson still leads the Chase for the Championship but Hamlin is only six points behind with four races remaining. Harvick trails Johnson by 62 points but the race next Sunday is at Talladega, Ala., and Harvick won the race there in April.
As they say, tighten your seatbelts: it’s going to get exciting.

F1 comes close to royal screw-up in Korea
Anybody paying attention knows that when it comes to Formula One, it’s all about the money.
How else to explain what could very easily have been a catastrophe in Korea this weekend?
The track did not receive its final coat of asphalt, nor did it get final approval from the CIA’s chief technical inspector Charlie Whiting, until two weeks ago – well beyond the time limit imposed by the FIA rule book.
And Mr. Whiting must have been looking the other way when he affixed that final seal because here was a circuit with a quite dangerous pit entrance and and a very dangerous pit exit and it really makes you wonder, a) who could have designed such a mess in the first place and, b) how in the world it actually got approved?
But both Bernie Ecclestone and FIA spokespeople suggested that “commercial considerations” were behind the rush. In other words, the Korean government was paying millions of dollars for this race and it would have to go ahead, come hell or high water.
High water, as it turned out, almost sank it.
It had rained all Saturday night and most of yesterday and was still raining in the afternoon when the race was supposed to start. The field was flagged off on time but had to follow the safety car. Just short of four laps, officials threw the red and everybody went inside to dry off.
About 90 minutes later, the drivers finally got to go racing after following the safety car around for another 14 laps.
The problem wasn’t so much that it was raining but that standing water on the course made it too dangerous to turn the cars loose. They might not have had this problem if the FIA had insisted on a proper paving schedule and a proper crown but since everything was done in a rush they had to live with it
Then, as the race wound down, there was another problem. It was nearly dark. In fact, just before his engine expired 10 laps from the finish, Vettel was complaining that it was so dark he couldn’t see.
Although the TV cameras lightened up the pictures of the closing laps, you could tell how dark it was by the lights inside the control tower on the pit straight, which were vivid. And when Alonso, Hamilton and third-place finisher Felipe Massa made it up to the podium, it was officially night.
Now, although F1 wants to go all over the world to race, they want the times the races start to coincide with either afternoon or prime time in western Europe, where most of the people who are fans of F1 happen to live and where most of the sponsors are headquartered.
Which means the races often start later in the day than you would expect. In the case of Korea, it was 3 p.m. local time. But because of the rain delay, it was about 4:45 before they actually got full-on racing and Alonso finally took the checkered flag at about a minute before 6 p.m.
The TV commentators frequently mentioned the possibility of only half-points being awarded if the race had to be stopped before lap 42 of the 55-lap contest. It was nip and tuck to get it done.
They got away with it this time but they were lucky. A lesson learned - hopefully - going forward to India in 2011, Austin in 2012 and Russia in 2014.

Notebook jottings:
– The movie Secretariat is a good time-waster (here’s a link to a great song about him, complete with photos of the Big Horse in action) but I was reminded about something not in the film by the nearly dark Korean Grand Prix.
Secretariat ran his final race, the Canadian International, at Woodbine race track here in Toronto in the fall of 1973, his Triple Crown year. By race time, it was cold, rainy – and nearly dark. Horses, horsepower - it was very deja vu.
– One-time F1 driver Helmut Marko is a power-behind-the-throne at Red Bull Racing. When Vettel’s engine gave out, he was welcomed back to the pits by a smiling Marko who threw his arms around the young German driver, eager to console him in his hour of disappointment.
When Webber walked back to the pits after crashing, I didn’t see Herr Marko anywhere.
Gee, I wonder which of those two drivers is the Favoured One?
– There was a lot of bashing and crashing in this race. A lot of guys took a lot of chances and two of them will pay for it at the next race. Both Sebastien Buemi and Adrian Sutil were penalized five grid spots in Brazil for running into other drivers during the race.
Toro-Rosso’s Buemi nailed Timo Glock in his Virgin race car while Force India’s Sutil hit Kamui Kobayashi’s Sauber. Nobody was hurt – this time.
– The BBC’s Jonathan Legard seemed off his game a number of times yesterday. He mistook Nico Rosberg for Mark Webber at one point and made reference to how well Heiki Kovalainen was doing at another and that was after the Lotus driver had gone a lap down.
– Seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher had his best finish of the season – a fourth. He had the bit in his teeth from the get-go, making the very first pass in the race when it finally got the green on lap 18. On the other hand, defending world champion Jenson Button didn’t have a good day, eventually finishing 12th – about a minute behind the winner.

Falling TV ratings worry NASCAR, ESPN
A top-level meeting was held this past week involving senior executives from NASCAR and the U.S. cable network ESPN about falling ratings for the Chase races, which are off nearly 30 per cent from a year ago.
Several explanations were discussed, including NASCAR’s move from ABC to ESPN and the resurgance of NFL football, but no conclusions were reached.
Let me offer an opinion.
There are too many races, they are boring and they are predictable in that NASCAR appears on occasion to manipulate the finishes and fans are fed up.
Yes, the economy is one reason. People can’t afford to go to those races any more. Tracks have dropped the price of admission but most motels or hotels haven’t and once you factor in the price of food and gasoline to get to a race and home again you are talking at least $1,000 for a family of four and a lot of folks just can’t afford it any more.
But the economy aside, the product is just getting mind-numbing. The race at Martinsville, Va., yesterday was for 500 laps around a half-mile track. FIVE HUNDRED LAPS.
Short-track racing like you see at Martinsville is sometimes exciting in person but is so boring on television that you can get up from the couch and go outside and rake leaves for an hour and go back inside and turn on the race and find that, just like a soap opera, not a lot has happened.
And here’s something else that has to be addressed: Denny Hamlin and Jimmie Johnson, between them, have won the last eight races at Martinsville Speedway. EIGHT RACES.
Nobody else besides those two has won a race at Martinsville in FOUR YEARS.
(Uh, Martha, wanna spend a thousand bucks and go to Martinsville fer the Cup race and see whether Hamlin er Johnson wins? Dind’t think so . . .)
So whether they have to consider some sort of handicap system, as they do in horse racing, or what, I don’t know. But they have to do something or else those TV ratings are going to keep going down the elevator shaft.
Here’s something else to chew on. NASCAR used to run pretty much exclusively on Sunday afternoons. Race fans, particularly in the U.S., would go to their local track on Friday or Saturday night and then take in the Cup race Sunday. Like U.S. football – high schools Friday, colleges  Saturday, NFL Sunday – it worked.
But more and more, particularly in the summer, NASCAR is going to Saturday nights and that has been killing the local tracks. But I sense a backlash. I think fans are going to their local tracks and turning off NASCAR on Saturday nights and this could be carrying over to Sunday afternoons. NASCAR has got people pissed off and perhaps they’re fighting back by not watching.
In any event, there are no notebook jottings – of note – from the Cup race. I couldn’t handle it after awhile and turned it back on when I figured it was just about over.
I don’t think I missed much.
– Brad Keselowski won the Nationwide race on Saturday in St. Louis. Danica Patrick was 22nd after being punted into the fence again. Ron Hornaday won the truck race.
– Locals won the Australian V8 Supercar races in Surfer’s Paradise. Nearly 20 IndyCar, ALMS and Grand-Am drivers took part – plus a celebrity driver or two – but couldn't really get the hang of the touring cars.
Our own Jacques Villeneuve triggered a NASCAR-type Big One on Saturday, so he must have felt right at home.

Bad to worse for Petty Motorsports

I posted a quick blog yesterday (see slightly revised version below) on the departure of Kasey Kahne from Petty Motorsports and suggested the financial pressures facing owner George Gillett (ex-Montreal Canadiens, ex-Liverpool Football Club owner) could soon have an impact on the race team.

It was reported overnight that Petty Motorsport employees have been told that they'll be paid through this weekend but that the team might not make it to the end of the season.

That means four cars and four drivers - including A.J. Allmendinger and Elliott Sadler - could be out of the series before the season ends at Homestead-Miami Speedway in November.

Full details of the latest developments, click here.

Meantime, the Korean Grand Prix will take place this weekend after all. Practice sessions held today showed the track holding up well. An early story can be found here. Canadian Formula One expert Gerald Donaldson will weigh in with a podcast report later today at wheels.ca

As mentioned, Kahne's departure came out of the blue.

You know, we watch NASCAR drivers crash week after week after week and, after awhile, it’s like a video game because nobody ever gets hurt ­­— apparently.

But they do. Don’t ever kid yourself: going into a wall at 190 miles an hour (give or take a mile an hour or two) is no picnic. But just like professional hockey and football players shake off the punishment they take during a shift on the ice or a series of downs on the field (and if you don’t think that hurts, you’ve never played those games), race drivers put it down as the price they pay for doing business — even though their upper bodies are often black and blue.

Except that, sometimes, a guy says: enough.

Kasey Kahne crashed at Charlotte last Saturday night and went home afterward, rather than continuing in the Sprint Cup Chase race. The Richard Petty Motorsports driver said he didn’t feel well enough to drive, so the team had to recruit start-and-parker J.J. Yeley to finish up for him.

When Kahne said he didn’t feel well enough to drive, he probably meant he wasn’t feeling well enough mentally and emotionally. There has been a lot of turmoil surrounding the driver and the Petty team most of this season.

First, Kahne announced he’d signed a contract to drive for Rick Hendrick’s organization in 2012, replacing Mark Martin in the No. 5 car. Although he said he’d finish the season with Petty, he arranged to drive next year for Red Bull racing (to replace either Scott Speed of Brian Vickers and which one is still up in the air and will likely depend on Vickers’ health). So Kahne was going elsewhere in just a few weeks.

Meantime, the Petty team has had some financial pressures. The primary owner is George Gillett, former owner of the Montreal Canadiens and recent owner of Liverpool in the English Soccer League. It’s thought that Petty Motorsports has had financial pressures because Gillett has been facing some himself.

Rumours have been around for months that Petty Motorsports was cutting corners because of these financial pressures. Like using cheap stuff. Such as lower-scale brake fluid, which is one of the first things that popped into Kahne’s mind when he lost his brakes and crashed at Charlotte last Saturday night.

Kahne, at the first of the week, suggested things were not right at Petty Motorsports. The team said a few things back.

Wednesday night, Kasey Kahne was released by Petty Motorsports. Or that’s what the press release said.

There was a trade, actually. Kahne went to Red Bull early and Aric Almirola, who’s been filling in recently at Red Bull for Vickers, will drive for Petty at this weekend’s Cup race in Martinsville.

It’s probably for the best. Kahne was obviously gun-shy about continuing at Petty and the last thing any team wants is a disgruntled employee.

But in the end, what’s more important is the future of Petty Motorsports. Already reportedly going from four cars to two in 2011, will Gillett’s financial pressures mean an end to that team?

What does Jacques Villeneuve really want?

So now Jacques Villeneuve is telling journalists in Australia that the Australian V8 Supercar Series is just peachy and he wouldn’t mind moving his family there and driving in it full-time.

I wonder if Jacques has any idea what he really wants.

One day, it’s Formula One. He can’t wait to get back into that series as a driver. Or else, he would – with partners – be really interested in buying an F1 team.

The next day it’s NASCAR. He’s working on deals to do some driving because he’d really like to be in that series full-time.

Now he’s in Australia with a whole bunch of other international drivers – Dario Franchitti, Alex Tagliani, Helio Castroneves and others from IndyCar, ex-F1 and Champ Car star Sebastien Bourdais (the organizers missed a real bet there by not inviting Paul Tracy . . . ) and others – to race the V8 cars this weekend at Surfer’s Paradise, where they used to hold the Indy car race.

Villeneuve told the Sydney Daily Telegraph that, “I would love to come and race here because it is such a great place. I wouldn't mind coming and doing it full-time because it could be a lot of fun."

He told the paper that the reason he’d prefer to do the series full-time rather than just drive one-offs is because Australia “is a long way to come and I have two little boys and you can't just leave for a month or two. It is much better to come and do it full-time and that is what I would do.”

Of course, he might also have just been parroting the usual line that F1 drivers use when interviewed by journalists in whatever country they’re in.

“This (insert name of country) is every driver’s favourite Grand Prix,” they’ll say. “The circuit is really challenging and the ambience is amazing. We can hardly wait to come back every year.”

So maybe that’s what Jacques was doing. Making the journos feel good.

Or, maybe he was serious.

But I don’t think so. The V8 cars might be big Down Under, but not anywhere else and for a guy like JV who thrives on being in the spotlight, there are better places to be.

The day A.J. Foyt made ABC blush

Chris Economaki turned 90 a few days ago but he hasn’t lost a step.

His column in the current issue of the publication he’s edited all of his working life, National Speed Sport News, suggests that Volkswagen will soon enter Formula One and the only question remaining is whether the team will be branded Audi or Porsche.

As a kid, and when it was a weekly supplement in the local daily newspaper, Economaki sold Speed Sport for a nickel (he got to keep a penny) at speedways near his hometown of Bergen, N.J. He eventually bought the publication and turned it into the “bible” of motor racing coverage, publishing reports of professional races and racers from Formula One to late-model stock car dirt track racing.

In the early 1960s, the late Roone Arledge decided to introduce auto racing to the weekly ABC Wide World of Sports program and went looking for someone who could explain the sport to an unsophisticated audience.

He settled on Economaki, who’d started announcing races at county and state fairs in order to promote his newspaper. (Aiming his pre-race patter at crowds on the midways, he’d say things like, “the drivers are on the track warming up, ladies and gentleman. . . . oh, there’s a car on fire, let’s hope the driver makes it out safely . . . racing will start in about 20 minutes and tickets are available starting at 25 cents.”  The grandstands were invariably packed by the time the first green flag flew.)

Economaki was a natural on television. Working with the late, great Jim McKay, he covered Indy 500 time trials, U.S. Auto Club dirt races like the Hoosier Hundred at the Indiana State Fairgrounds (you can find portions of some of those telecasts on YouTube), NASCAR’s Daytona 500 and Southern 500 and, later in his career, Formula One races. He was so good at the latter that he left ABC in the 1980s to work for both CBS and NBC on their F1 coverage teams.

As you can imagine, Economaki has a million stories. He told one of his favourites several years ago when he appeared on a panel at the Canadian Motorsports Expo, held each January at the International Centre in Mississauga.

It seemed that Arledge had put a new director in charge of the live telecast of a race from the Illinois State Fairgrounds in DuQuoin. One morning, the director saw legendary racer A.J. Foyt walking around the one-mile dirt speedway. The next morning, he saw Foyt out there again, walking the mile. The director told Economaki that he wanted him to do an interview with Foyt and to ask him about his daily walks.

This was a live telecast, remember. So the show went on the air at 4:30 Saturday afternoon and it opened with Economaki’s interview with Foyt.

Moments before, the director had reminded Economaki that he really wanted to know what Foyt was doing each morning, walking around the speedway.

So early in the interview, Economaki looked at Foyt and said: “A.J., people have seen you in recent days out on the speedway, early in the day, walking the entire length of this great, one-mile track. Why are you doing this, A.J.? Are you studying the track? Looking for changes in the surface? Looking for places where your driving style might give you an advantage?”

And A.J. Foyt, who never was known for tact, looked at Chris Economaki and replied:

“Actually, Chris, I just can’t have a dump until I go for a good long walk every morning.”

Needless to say, the young director was never again put in charge of a live telecast at ABC.

And Chris Economaki? Still truckin’.

Fans force NASCAR to 'go green'

Weekend 'headlines'

1. Will there, or will there not be, a Korean Grand Prix?

2. DTM to U.S. spells bad news for ALMS

3. Busch exploits NASCAR pit-road speeding rule

Okay, those 'headlines' aside, there really isn’t a "headline-type" story to kick off this particular Monday Morning Racing Roundup. So we’ll just go with some thoughts, speculation and questions about a whole lot of things with a primary focus on Formula One and NASCAR.

Korean Grand Prix

– Does anybody really know whether (or not) there will be a Korean Grand Prix next weekend?

The FIA, in the form of a committee headed by chief tech inspector Charlie Whiting, has given its seal of approval to the circuit, which only got its final coat of asphalt last weekend.

Doesn’t that stuff need time to cure?

Some people are speculating that the race could be cancelled until 2011 if the F1 cars go out on the circuit for the first time on Friday and rip it apart.

Others are suggesting there might be some damage (remember Dallas in 1984 and Montreal in 2009?) but that the race will take place.

And then there are the rest who say Bernie Ecclestone is orchestrating the whole thing and that everything’s fine but the best way to create headlines is to inject doubt into the discussion.

One way or another, it will be an exciting weekend. Let’s cross our fingers that the race takes place and that it’s a safe and exciting one.

Mark Webber is in the lead for the world championship, with Sebastien Vettel and Fernando Alonso tied and only 14 points behind. Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button are in fourth and fifth places.

– Red Bull has produced a video of what the new Korean Grand Prix track looks like and how a lap might play out. You can watch it here.

– Jacques Villeneuve’s partner in trying to purchase an F1 team, Ivone Pinton, has some interesting things to say about JV and their plans together. You can read it here.

– And if you have a few minutes, here’s a link to the 1967 Italian Grand Prix, starring Jimmy Clark, Graham Hill, Chris Amon, Jackie Stewart, John Surtees, Jack Brabham and all the other heroes of the day.

– Oh, and did you like that little signing ceremony in Moscow, where F1 has agreed to race in Russia in 2014? Bernie didn’t sign the contract with just any old promoter. He signed it with Vladimir Putin, who takes turns either being president or prime minister of that country.

It’s nice to have the big dog on your side, isn’t it?

DTM coming to the U.S.

– A very strange announcement was made at the weekend, but one that could have some serious implications for one of two sports car racing series in North America.

The German Touring Car Championship (DTM) announced that it would run a 12-race U.S. series in company with the NASCAR-owned Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series, beginning in 2013.

The announcement said the DTM – which features marques such as Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz – would run support races at some NASCAR Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series events as well as on Grand Am weekends.

There hasn’t been any official reaction and details remain a bit sketchy but I suggest this could have a pretty serious effect so far as Grand-Am Series rival the American Le Mans Series is concerned.

A few weeks ago, Audi made a surprise announcement that it would not run a prototype in next year’s ALMS series (other than at Sebring and the Petit Le Mans) and speculation at the time had a financial disagreement between head office and Audi’s North American arm as the reason.

But it now seems possible that the ALMS project was cancelled because the new DTM Series was close to becoming reality.

And will BMW continue to race in both the ALMS and the new DTM?

Meantime, the ALMS prototype "rock," Highcroft Racing, is toying with the idea of trying some IndyCar Series races in 2011.

Hmmm. What does it all mean?

Fans force NASCAR to "go green"

– Gosh, there was another NASCAR "green" announcement at the weekend.

Actually, I think it was the very first "green" announcement that NASCAR has ever made (if a 15 per cent ethanol-gasoline blend can really be called "going green").

But NASCAR is counting its decision in 2008 to start using unleaded fuel (three cheers for that one; only about 10 years behind the times, but better late than never, eh?) and its announcement in 2009 and again this year that it's  considering – repeat: considering – doing away with carburetors in favour of fuel injection as "green" initiatives.

(I don’t mean to nit-pick, but give me a break.)

While the auto manufacturers have been pushing for fuel injection, it might very well have been the fans who forced ethanol on NASCAR. Most people are concerned about climate change and global warming and may have indicated to NASCAR that concern for the environment was one of the reasons they were staying away from races in person and on TV.

So if it means another couple of thousand bums in seats, and a couple of hundred thousand more viewers, what’s the harm of a little ethanol in the gas? (Although you can bet Sunoco had some concerns. . .)

NASCAR being NASCAR, however, it also played the "America-first" card.

If Brian France, who made the ethanol announcement during a press conference in Charlotte on Saturday, used the word "American" once, he used it several dozen times, as in: NASCAR would burn "American" ethanol from "American" crops manufactured by "American" workers.

Not like those un-American IndyCar people, who would rather get their ethanol from Brazil.

He didn’t say that, but it was the underlying message.

Chase for the Championship

– Jamie McMurray, who is really one of the nice guys in NASCAR racing, won the Bank of America 500 at Charlotte on Saturday night. Kyle Busch finished second and Jimmie Johnson was third (full story here).

It was an okay race. Here are some notebook observations:

– Denny Hamlin, who remains in second place in the Chase for the Championship standings behind Johnson (who’s fighting for his fifth consecutive title, remember?), has an opportunity to either pull even or perhaps even pass his rival next weekend when the Sprint Cup Series moves to Martinsville, Va.

Hamlin always wins in Virgina – either at Martinsville or Richmond. He won the race in March at the half-mile "paper clip" track while Johnson was ninth.

– Okay, on Saturday night, Kurt Busch spun, bringing out the yellow. This happened in turn four and by the time he got straightened out and made his way around to the pits for fresh tries, he was in danger of going a lap down.

So rather than slowing down when he entered the pits, as the rules state, he bombed right along pit road at full speed.

The NASCAR rule book says if you are caught speeding on pit road during a caution, you have to go to the back of the longest line for the restart.

But that is where Busch was going to be anyway, and by speeding he avoided falling a lap behind.

Busch was smart to do that but NASCAR would be wise to close that little loophole before next season.

– Say what you will about NASCAR drivers, they are fabulous when it comes to car control. Besides Busch, Johnson, Marcos Ambrose and Jeff Burton all spun and managed to keep their cars off the wall and pretty much out of harm’s way.

And the guys closing in on them at speeds of more than 150 miles an hour did an incredible job of missing them.

Translation: no Big One in this race.

– When Johnson spun, you could hear people screaming – screaming – with delight. It makes you wonder why they hold that race at night. It’s always chilly in the fall, which means you have to bundle up (I know, you have to do that at baseball games too) but it also means that you’ve had the entire day to get hammered. Start the race at noon. That way, people will still be relatively sober and will only cheer wiith delight when somebody spins instead of SCREAMING.

– I’ve seen drivers overshoot their pits a bit and have to reverse a few feet in order to get in. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like Tony Stewart on Saturday night, who actually backed up several car-lengths after missing his entrance. It was unusual, to say the least, to see a car going backwards along pit road.

– Canadian Patrick Carpentier finished 37^th in his fifth Sprint Cup start this season.

 

What's Bud Moore doing in NASCAR hall?

Before focusing on the subjects of today’s post — how in the world is Bud Moore in the NASCAR Hall of Fame when legends like Cale Yarborough and Glen Wood aren’t? Plus a preview of Saturday night’s Chase race at Charlotte — there’s two things I have to get out of the way.

—      You know how, when the winner of an IndyCar race or a NASCAR race gets out of his car and prepares to mount the podium, there’s an explosion of confetti-like red, white and blue streamers? Well, the other night when the last of those Chilean miners was brought to the surface, there was a blast of the same stuff.

I swear, it looked like a Victory Lane celebration.

And then the first thing this fellow, who’s been trapped underground for — what? — 70 days, does is stand at attention beside the president of Chile and sing the country’s national anthem.

Huh?

As the days of that drama dragged on, all I could think about was The Big Carnival (a.k.a. Ace in the Hole), a Paramount Pictures movie in 1951 that starred Kirk Douglas and Jan Sterling.

If you know the story of that film, you’ll know what I'm getting at.

Now, there’s a big consumer and trade show on at the International Centre in Mississauga this weekend. The 23rd annual Toronto International Snowmobile ATV & Powersports Show presented by TD Insurance starts today and goes through Sunday.

Here are a few of the features to look for:

— The Extreme Freestyle Snowmobile Event, a high-flying show featuring two-time Winter X Games  gold medalist Joe Parsons and others performing back flips and other mind-boggling snowmobile stunts, will be presented five times over the course of the weekend.

— Three halls will be full of exhibitors and corporate displays from Ski-Doo, Arctic Cat, Polaris, Yamaha, Honda and John Deere. And there will be two test tracks on the premises where people attending the show can take test rides.

Okay, so back to Bud Moore and his election on Wednesday to the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Of course, he’s worthy. Each and every one of the 25 nominated drivers, mechanics and owners (see them all here) could have been selected and there wouldn’t have been much of an argument.

But my nit is with the process.

The selection committee for this particular hall of fame is made up of NASCAR insiders. And, in the end, they’re going to vote for their buddies, or for the people they think NASCAR would approve of more than others.

Curtis Turner, for instance, has been nominated twice and it’s highly unlikely he’ll ever make the cut because he was a pain in the ass. NASCAR suspended him for life (later lifted) for trying to start a drivers’ union. The negative publicity generated by some of his stunts (he once landed his plane on the main street of Easely, a town in North Carolina, because he and his passengers were running “dangerously low on whisky”) was enough to make NASCAR cringe.

But if you look at Curtis Turner’s record (here), plus the fact that he was the guy who built Charlotte Motor Speedway, site of this weekend’s Sprint Cup race, you really have to wonder how he was rejected and a guy like Lee Petty selected.

In the case of Bud Moore, many of the people on the selection committee either drove for, or worked for, Bud Moore through the years. So when it came time to mark the ballots, guess who got their votes?

I know, it’s natural to vote for somebody you know over somebody you only know about but there’s got to be a better way. Fewer people on the selection committee, for starters (there are upwards of 40 that sit on it now) would be a good idea. And those people should be more arm’s length.

Otherwise, that Hall of Fame will very quickly lose its legitimacy (as compared to halls of fame like baseball’s, or football’s, or the NHL’s where the requirements for induction are rigorous).

Meantime, a future Hall of Famer is sitting on the pole for Saturday night’s Bank of America 500 at Charlotte. Jeff Gordon just edged Carl Edwards, A.J. Allmendinger and Mark Martin for the pole with a time set Thursday night of 28.192 seconds, which translates into a speed of  191.544 mph.

Chase contenders Jimmie Johnson will start 10th, Denny Hamlin will go 23rd and Kevin Harvick will be one spot behind in 24th.

Johnson and Gordon traditionally do well at Charlotte and Johnson won this race a year ago. Hamlin and Harvick don’t do well at that track, so Johnson could really stretch out his lead this weekend.

A non-Chaser, however, could throw a wrench into the mix. Kurt Busch won both the Sprint All-Star Race and the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte back in May so will be looking for a three-peat there.

NASCAR Hall of Fame conflicts continue

The conflicts-of-interest so far as NASCAR’S Hall of Fame is concerned will continue Wednesday. Darrell Waltrip will be part of the Speed Channel broadcast team that announces the new inductees, of which he happens to be among the nominees.

Last year, Junior Johnson – who was eventually selected – was a nominee as well as a member of the selection committee. I wonder who he voted for?

Waltrip, who was a pretty good driver (was he great? as in Jimmie Johnson great?), says he’ll be “crying either way” when the five new members are announced on a special telecast on Speed Wednesday afternoon at 4 p.m.

Waltrip is a great entertainer (probably better in the booth than he was on the speedway) and it’s always fun to hear his pontifications when he’s part of a race’s broadcast team.

But should he be an integral part of the telecast announcing the new Hall of Fame class? Probably not.

Would the Academy Awards have someone who’s in the running for an Oscar act as MC of the awards ceremony? I don’t think so.

But what’s done is done. Maybe, however, one of these years NASCAR and its partners will “get it” and start to separate church and state.

Meantime, they shut out the short-track racers last year when the selections were announced. Richie Evans, the greatest short-track racer in the history of NASCAR, was passed over. Richie only won nine modified championships, including eight in a row, in a 13-year period, but that wasn’t good enough. His battles with Jimmy Spencer, Maynard Troyer, George Kent and Jerry Cook were legendary but did’t count for much in the end.

Richie was a great racer. But he didn’t fit the modern NASCAR image and that’s why he probably didn’t make it in last year and likely won’t this year either (although I hope I’m wrong).

When I say he didn’t fit the image, he smoked in the car (it’s true; if there was a red flag, you could see the flicks of the lighters as guys like Evans and Kent would light up). As soon as the races were over, the beer came out. The way he dressed would not qualify him for the cover of GQ, if you get my drift.

After last year’s balloting, there were several new nominees for 2010 and among them was Evans’s great on-track foe, and Rome, N.Y., neighbour, Jerry Cook (six championships, including four consecutively).

Cook was spic-and-span as compared to Richie. His uniform was clean. His wife travelled with him to all the races. He might have enjoyed a beer on occasion but I never saw any around his pit. He was an all-business modified racer, like Spencer.

As Cook’s career wound down, he was hired by NASCAR to run the modified series and continues to work for NASCAR today, but in another capacity.

My guess is that if a short-tracker makes the cut, it will be Jerry Cook.

All of this year's nominees can be found here.