Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

F1, NASCAR points chases tighten

Weekend headlines:

1. F1 points race tightens with three GPs to go

2. NASCAR's phantom yellows explained using Bowyer as visual aid

3. Shane Hmiel critically injured; Canadian racer scores big win

JAPANESE GRAND PRIX

I remember Indianapolis 500s where drivers have lost control on the parade or pace laps and crashed out of the big race before it even started.

Tom Sneva, Roberto Guerrero and the late Jim Malloy come to mind.

But I don’t think I’ve ever seen (or heard of) a driver crashing out of a Grand Prix while just driving around the circuit from the garage area to the dummy grid, Until yesterday (Sunday), that is.

Lucas di Grassi was just zapping around to where the cars get lined up for the start of the Japanese Grand Prix at the Suzuka circuit – where the motors are switched off and the drivers get out and mill around with their teams, sponsors, celebrities and reporters before getting down to business – when he lost control and completely destroyed his Virgin team racing car.

It’s very fortunate he also didn’t destroy himself.

But the elimination of one car was just a sign of things to come.

When the lights went out, all hell broke loose and before the race finally got under way on Lap 6 (Sebastien Vettel led from start to finish in a Red Bull-Renault, with teammate Mark Webber second and Fernando Alonso third for Ferrari full story here), four more cars had been eliminated. although none of the drivers was injured.

The first sign anything was amiss came when Vitaly Petrov’s yellow Renault flew out of the mid-pack beehive about a half-second after the race started and smashed nose first into the outside wall. It turned out that he’d gotten a terrific start but managed to sideswipe Nico Hulkenberg’s Williams on the way past and this caused him to lose control. (He was later penalized five grid places at the next Grand Prix.) Hulkenberg was knocked out of the race at that point, also.

Meantime, Felipe Masss also got a swell start and went flying up the inside but somehow got onto the grass, which was not wise. In attempting to get his Ferrari back onto the macadam, he creamed the Force India of Antonio Liuzzi and they both went flying off into a sand trap and directly to the bottom of the results sheets.

(Massa’s employer, Luca de Montezemolo, said later that he expects Massa to "surprise everybody" in the next three races. What he didn’t say is that if Massa doesn’t knock everybody’s socks off, he won’t be driving for Ferrari next year. . .)

Okay, wait. There’s more.

At the start, Robert Kubica had managed to get his Renault between Vettel and Webber, who had started one-two. So, as they trundled around behind the safety car, it was Vettel, then Kubica, then Webber.

All of a sudden, Kubica pulled off the road. It took a moment or two for the TV commentators, et al, to figure out what had happened and it turned out that his right rear wheel had come off.

How often does that happen in Formula One? Where a wheel just falls off a car when there isn't a crash, or whatever?

BBC pit reporter Lee McKenzie tried to get an explanation but was foiled. All Kubica would tell her was that "the wheel fell off."

Good thing it didn’t happen when you were going 190 miles an hour, Robert.

In any event, they finally got the race going and, just as quickly, it was over. The first three – Vettel, Webber, Alonso – stayed that way the entire race. The two McLarens were going to finish Lewis Hamilton fourth and Jenson Button fifth, but Hamilton lost third gear toward the end (and McLaren installed a new gearbox just before the race, costing Lewis five grid spots, so what to think about that?) and Button passed him for fourth.

Sixth went to Michael Schumacher who finally showed flashes of being his old self. He tried to pass his young teammate, Nico Rosberg, who’s had his measure all season, and couldn’t. But the old mongoose pushed and pushed his younger teammate so that Nico finally couldn’t take it anymore and flat out blew it, crashing heavily.

Although I’m sure Schumacher hoped his young rival wasn’t hurt, you can bet he was cackling with some glee as he flew past the crashing Rosberg. "Take that, junior," is probably what he was thinking.

In the end, and with three races remaining (although there very well may only be two because the next race in Korea is in doubt), Webber has a 14-point lead over Vettel and Alonso, who are tied for second, with Hamilton fourth, 28 points behind, and Button fifth, another three back.

This is getting really exciting. The championship will likely got down to the last race of the season in Abu Dhabi.

If Timo Glock is in fifth place at the start of the last lap, I’m not going to watch.

Notebook jottings:

– One of the really neat things about Suzuka is that great big Ferris wheel. It dominates the circuit, unlike the original wheel at Le Mans that isn’t as big and is away from the track. You always know that F1 is at Suzuka when you see that Big Wheel.

– When Massa crashed and the cameras settled on the wrecked Ferrari, this is what Martin Brundle said: "(it’s looking) like Bambi when it was born – legs pointing every which way."

Do you think that was an impromptu remark or does he write clever things like that down to use on such occasions?

Discuss amongst yourselves.

– Rubens Barrichello obviously fuggetsaboutit. He gave Michael Schumacher plenty of room to pass, unlike Schumi’s stunt in Hungary when he just about put poor Rubens into the wall for daring to overtake him.

Is it because Rubens is a nice guy? Or that he didn’t know it was Schumacher?

Discuss, after you’ve decided whether Brundle has a quick wit or just prepares well.

– Hasn’t anyone told Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi that you’re not really supposed to pass in F1? He was passing people left, right and centre – and sometimes twice.

For instance, he passed Jaime Alguersuari once, then he went to the pits for tires. So he had to pass Alguersuari again, which appeared to brown off the Toro Rosso driver, who banged wheels with Kobayashi not once but twice to show his annoyance.

He also passed Barrichello (who didn’t?), Nick Heidfeld and Adrian Sutil. In fact, before he got past Rubens, he appeared to try a little NASCAR "bump and run" on him at the hairpin but it didn’t work.

He’s just an entertaining young guy.

– It was a weird telecast. I watched about 30 minutes of the "live" broadcast at 2 a.m. before falling asleep on the couch. They had side-by-side commercials – the race on the left and the commercial on the right – as they’ve been doing all season on TSN.

But when they repeated the race at 8 a.m., they went to full commercials, which meant leaving the race. Strange, considering you would think they’d just record the race live and then run the tape or whatever later.

– Hey, if they cancel the Korean GP, it will be nearly a month before we see F1 again – in November, from Brazil. What ever will we talk about?

NASCAR

Four years ago, Shane Hmiel was banned for life by NASCAR after failing three drug tests.

We’re not talking here about a little booze still in the system, as happened with Randy Lajoie, or what Jeremy Mayfield contends was an ingredient in over-the-counter cold medication, but really serious stuff.

I believe NASCAR did the right thing by banning Hmiel – after giving him every opportunity to rehabilitate himself, including arranging treatment, it was three strikes and you’re out – but I also have great sympathy for anyone suffering from a drug or alcohol addiction/dependency. Find me a family where it isn’t a problem.

Yup, and that includes Lindsay Lohan. People like her, and Shane Hmiel, suffer from an incurable disease. It can be arrested, however, and it’s wonderful to see people like them turn their lives around.

Shane Hmiel has been sober and drug-free for more than three years now and when he could no longer pursue a career in stock cars, he turned his attention to open wheel oval racing. This season, he’s been racing in three of the U.S. Auto Club’s national series – midgets, sprints and Silver Crown cars (champ cars) on both dirt and pavement. His ultimate ambition? To start the Indianapolis 500.

Saturday night at the Action Track in Terre Haute, Ind., during time trials for a Silver Crown race, Hmiel’s car caught a rut in the dirt surface midway between turns three and four and flew into the guardrail roll-cage first, collapsing it video here.

He was terribly injured – head, neck and back – and is in hospital in Indianapolis in stable but critical condition.

Let’s all hope that Shane Hmiel can draw on the same courage and intestinal fortitude in his fight to get physically well as he’s shown in his determination to get better emotionally.

THOSE DAMN PHANTOM YELLOWS

If you ever wanted a perfect example of the phantom NASCAR "debris yellow," in which an excuse is invented to throw the yellow flag and close up the field, it was right there for all to see in the closing laps of yesterday’s Sprint Cup race at California Speedway in Fontana.

With the disgraced Clint Bowyer in the lead and looking for all the world like the eventual winner of the Pepsi Max 400 (Tony Stewart finally took the checkers, with Bowyer second and Chase leader Jimmie Johnson third full story here), NASCAR called for a yellow to pick up a piece of debris up against the fence on the backstretch.

(I say "disgraced" because Bowyer was docked 150 points, his car owner Richard Childress was docked 150 points and the crew chief and car chief were each suspended for six races and the crew chief fined $150,000 after Bowyer’s race-winning car was found to be illegal after New Hampshire.)

When the yellow was thrown, Bowyer was instantly upset. ". . . that piece of debris has been back there the whole run (since the last yellow)," he said. "Why now?"

Well, I’ll tell you why. NASCAR didn’t want Bowyer to win that race. And I guarantee you that the No. 33 car, Bowyer’s mount, is either getting the fine-tooth-comb treatment now, or soon will be again, because of what happened a few weeks ago.

There’s actually more to it. If Bowyer/Childress had taken their punishment and promised never to do anything like that again (their "crime" it had to do with the placement and angle of the chassis on the frame rails), then they’d probably be okay.

But because they fought the charges all the way through the appeals process rather than just taking their medicine, they are in the sanctioning body’s bad books and if it isn’t an engine teardown one week or a seizing of the chassis for "further examination" the next, it’ll be a phantom yellow, or yellows, that continue to give that team fits.

In the end, Bowyer got past Johnson and held on for second place, which was redemption for him, presumably, but he wasn’t in Victory Lane and that - you can bet - was fine by NASCAR.

In the end, Johnson holds a 36-point lead over Kevin Harvick, with six Chase races to go. Denny Hamlin is 54 behind, Geoff Gordon is 85 and Stewart is 107 back. Those five are the only drivers who now have any chance of winning the championship; in all reality, it’s between the top three.

Other Chase drivers Greg Biffle, Carl Edwards and Kyle Busch saw their seasons end because of mechanical failures (they’ll be racing next week, of course, but the championship is now out of reach) while Kurt Busch’s title hopes went out the window when he and David Regan crashed together.

That little contretemps was just one of them racin’ deals. Regan was trying to finish off a classic slide job by going up to the wall in front of Busch and Kurt wouldn’t back off when he saw what was happening.

The result? KA-BOOM.

In the Nationwide Series race on Saturday, won by Kyle B., Danica Patrick was driving her best race since trying NASCAR and was running 14^th late in the contest when she was punted into the wall by some guy named James Buescher.

It’s kinda sad that some men just can’t handle being beaten by a girl.

OTHER RACING

Canadians figured prominently in two other U.S. racing stories this weekend.

– The winner of the Sunday modified feature headline race at Super D.I.R.T. Week held annually at the New York State Fairgrounds mile track in Syracuse was Stewart Friesen of Niagara-on-the-Lake, the first Canadian to win the big race in its 39-year-history.

When you beat guys like Brett Hearn, Tim McCreadie (Barefoot Bob’s kid), Billy Decker, Tim Fuller, Richie Tobias Jr. and Kenny Tremont – well, ya done good, kid.

– Anybody who reads my stuff knows that I’m not a big fan of points. If you race for a championship in a series, it’s my preference that the driver who wins the most races should win the title (because, in the end, that’s all that really matters).

So if the U.S. ARCA Racing stock car series was doing things my way, the 2010 championship would have gone to  Steve Arpin of Fort Frances, Ont., who won three of this year's 20 races, the most by anybody racing in that series.

Patrick Sheltra of Indiantown, Fla, won two races. He was awarded the championship yesterday after finishing fourth in the final race of the season at Rockingham, N.C. 

Arpin missed two ARCA races while off doing the Nationwide Series for Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s team or else the win margin might have been greater.

Steve Arpin’s got a bright future. It’s just going to take a little time.

NASCAR plans Toronto reception

When NASCAR Canada and Canadian Tire teamed up to create the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series, which is Canada's only national auto racing series, it ended the 2008 season on a high note.

A reception and banquet was held at a northeast Toronto hotel and a fine time was had by all. Vic Rauter was MC, all the Canadian Tire brass was there, and champion Scott Steckly's wife stole the show with one of the most gracious and emotional thank-you speeches I've ever heard at one of these events.

The media were there, the champion and runners-up were honoured and it was a fitting conclusion to the season.

Then NASCAR decided - for whatever reason - that since the Canadian Tire Series is a regional series (they lump it in with the four or five minor-league series they run throughout the U.S.), it didn't rate a banquet of its own.

It invited 2009 champion Andrew Ranger down to Charlotte for a "do" last December where all the champions of those series were honoured. There was nothing held in Canada.

That might be fine and good for the U.S. regional series' but, as noted above, the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series is a national series and deserves some special recognition that might result in post-season publicity in this country.

So NASCAR is doing something to correct this. It announced Friday that it will host a NASCAR Canadian Recognition VIP Reception on Wednesday, Nov. 10, in The Fermenting Cellar of Toronto's Distillery District to recognize the accomplishments of participants in the  Canadian Tire Series presented by Mobil 1 as well as competitors participating in the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series in Canada.

In addition to drivers and teams from both series, the invitation-only event will include sponsors, track operators and media partners, as well as representatives from NASCAR’s Canadian and U.S. offices.

“This is a great opportunity to honor the depth and strength of the racing talent prevalent at all levels of stock-car racing in Canada," said George Silbermann, Managing Director, Racing Operations for NASCAR.

"It is also the perfect setting for thanking our key corporate partners like Canadian Tire, Mobil 1, Whelen Engineering  and TSN, just to name a few.

“Gathering the Canadian motorsports community together in this way helps to highlight the passion and commitment that exists at the top of our sport, and at racing venues in provinces from coast to coast.”

Special recognition will be focused on the newly-crowned 2010 Canadian Tire Series champion, D.J. Kennington of St. Thomas, Ont., who won his first series title. 

Good for NASCAR and NASCAR Canada for making this happen.   

Something smells in Formula One

Are we being played for suckers, or what?

All hell broke loose at the British Grand Prix when Red Bull’s Sebastien Vettel broke his new front wing and the team replaced it with the one on Mark Webber’s car, leaving Webber with an old wing.

There was a lot of unpleasantness over that.

You’d have thought every Formula One team in the paddock would have learned a lesson.

But no, apparently.

I say “apparently” because I can’t believe the news out of Japan this morning.

It seems that McLaren has a new rear wing for the Japanese Grand Prix. During first practice, Lewis Hamilton crashed and damaged it.

Now, you can be sure that nobody suggested taking the one off Jenson Button’s car and putting it on Hamilton’s.

They wouldn’t have had to anyway because, surely, they would have had either a spare (in other words, a third wing) or the materials to repair the damaged wing with them. Right?

But, again, no.

Some employee from the McLaren factory in England is, at this very moment, reportedly flying 21 hours to Japan in hopes of getting there in time for qualifying on Saturday. He’s carrying – or so the story goes – new endplates to Suzuka in his hand-luggage. "We can repair the wing with the new endplates," team boss Martin Whitmarsh is quoted by Auto Motor und Sport.

Huh?

You can draw two conclusions from this.

1. The people who run F1 teams aren’t really very smart. Or . . .

2. Somebody is putting us on. F1 has an amazing way of generating news copy 365 days a year and a trumped-up story about a race against time sounds, well, really fishy.

By the way, Vettel and Webber were fastest in practice, with Robert Kubica third, the Ferraris of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa fourth and fifth, and Button sixth.

It probably won't matter because the weekend forecast is for rain.

And Michael Schumacher, who practiced in eighth place, is a master in the wet . . .

In California, Jimmie Johnson will be looking to extend his lead in NASCAR’s Chase for the Championship. The four-time national champion is on a roll and if he wins at Fontana Sunday, title No. 5 will be a real possibility.

TV Times:

F1 qualifying can be seen Saturday on TSN at 8 a.m. The Grand Prix will be live at 1:55 a.m. Sunday and repeated at 8 a.m., both on TSN.

NASCAR’s Sprint Cup race from California can be seen on TSN at 2 p.m. Sunday. At 1 p.m., also on TSN, a tape of the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series race from Kawartha Speedway will be shown. See D.J. Kennington win the national championship. See Kerry Micks spin out J.R. Fitzpatrick on the last corner of the last lap. See Fitzpatrick get angry.

Canadian motorcycle racer dies

Sad news to report today.

Jesse Phibbs, the 21-year-old motorcycle racer from Leamington who was critically injured in a 
flat-track race on the Indiana State Fairgrounds dirt mile in September, has died.

Phibbs was hit by another rider on the first lap of a heat race during the MotoGP weekend in Indianapolis. Ironically, a 12-year-old racer was killed the same weekend during a race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Jesse’s father, Matt Phibbs, told the Indianapolis Star that his son died on Tuesday at Victoria Hospital in London, Ont., of severe brain trauma. 

"He fought hard," Matt Phibbs said. "There was too much brain damage."

Jesse had been treated at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis for about a month before being transferred to a facility closer to his home.

He was in his first professional season.

Click here for an earlier story about the accident.

Hinchcliffe 'humbled' to win Moore award

Oakville’s James Hinchcliffe, who finished second in this season’s Firestone Indy Lights Series, was awarded the Greg Moore Legacy Award at the IZOD IndyCar Series’ post-season banquet in Miami on Sunday night.

The award, which is in its 11^th year and is one of the few things IndyCar has carried over from the days of the Champ Car World Series and CART, is given to the driver who best typifies the combination of Moore’s on-track talent and dynamic personality.

Moore, of Maple Ridge, B.C., was killed in California during a race in 1999.

Hinchcliffe, who won races this season in Long Beach, Edmonton and Chicago and finished on the podium five other times, finished second in the Lights standings to France’s J.K. Vernay.

Hinchcliffe said he was humbled to have been presented the Moore award.

 “It’s tough to put into words what that award means to me,” he told an interviewer. “Greg Moore was my hero growing up, and still is today.  He was such a good race car driver, but on top of that he was just an incredible person. 

“To have my name attached to an award that bears his is something that’s very special.  And on top of that, the list of drivers that have received this award previously is also very special.  It’s certainly something I’m very proud of.”

Reflecting on his season, Hinchliffe selected the Edmonton race as a highlight.

“Edmonton had to be the best race of the year for me, maybe even of my life.  It was a super difficult weekend, to be honest.  It took everything I had on that qualifying lap to get the pole and it was only just enough, the gap being something like one hundredth of a second.  

“And then in the race, J.K. (Vernay) was right on my gearbox every single lap.  There was no room for error and it’s the fastest, toughest track we race on.  The two of us were basically running qualifying laps the whole race.  To come out of that fight on top, and especially being on home soil, was definitely the highlight for me!”

The Oakville racer, who has now spent two years in Indy Lights after running in the Formula Atlantic Series before that, said he is optimistic about moving up to the Indy car circuit in 2011.

“Well I certainly think that my on-track performances have shown that I’m ready to make that step,” he said. “I want to make that step. . . But, let’s be frank here: the budget is still the No. 1 factor. 

“We started working hard months ago and I still have a lot of faith in the approach we’re taking.  I would say I’m optimistic and that we’re working harder than ever to make it happen.  I want nothing more than to be an IZOD IndyCar driver in 2011.”

Danica proves she's got the Right Stuff

Weekend headlines:

1. Franchitti wins championship but Danica wins respect

2. Chase tightens but all eyes are on Kyle Busch's antics

3. Petit Le Mans, World and Canadian rally sport, and lots more

IZOD IndyCar Series

The night-of stories were expected, and the day-after ones too, but it’s now two days after the final IZOD IndyCar Series race of the season and it’s time to focus on the real story of that joust, which happens to be Danica Patrick.

Granted, the fact that Dario Franchitti won his third championship in four years is a pretty good tale, as is Scott Dixon’s drive to victory in the Cafes dos Brasil Indy 300 at Homestead-Miami Speedway (full story here).

But that Danica Patrick scratched and clawed and flat-out raced her way to second place after many fans, most media and just about everybody inside the sport had written off her season is really front-page stuff.

Anybody who says they watched the last 10 laps of that race Saturday night and yet still has the nerve today to say that Patrick isn’t a race-car driver of the top rank couldn’t possibly be telling the truth (or, if they really had been watching, they must have been drunk).

For 10 laps, Patrick and Tony Kanaan were side-by-side, going 200 miles an hour, their wheels only inches apart. Neither one of them blinked; neither one of them lifted.

With three laps to go, Patrick dropped back slightly and dipsy-doodled around behind Kanaan in an effort to fake him into moving up the track to block her, which he did. When he literally wasn’t looking (he said later he hadn’t seen her), she shot down low on the inside and held that groove through to the checkers.

She also could have been trying to get him to use his "push-to-pass" button (which boosts an engine’s horsepower for 18 seconds; each driver starts a race with 15 pushes and must wait 10 seconds after each push for the system to reset; a push can be used to defend against a pass as much as it can be used to attempt a pass). Kanaan had started those last 10 laps with six pushes remaining while Patrick only had three.

Whether Kanaan used his last pushes to fend her off or whether she was on the button too, they were dead even starting the last lap and stayed that way all the way around.

She took second-place from Kanaan by 0.0111 seconds – about the thickness of the paint on the snout of her car.

It was her second storming second-place finish in IndyCar this year (she finished second in the Texas race in June) and it moved her into the top ten in the final standings (she’d finished in fifth place a year ago).

The rest of her season has been so-so, however, and had led to criticism of her for trying to drive in the NASCAR stock-car Nationwide Series at the same time she was driving Indy cars.

If nothing else, then, her performance Saturday night at Homestead-Miami Speedwayl will go a long way to prove that if she’s given a fighting chance in a good racing car, she can battle it out with – and beat – the best of them.

Franchitti is one of the best Indy car drivers of this generation. You don’t win three championships in four years, including two Indianapolis 500s, and not know what you’re doing.

But he couldn’t learn to drive a NASCAR stock car. World of Outlaws King Steve Kinser couldn’t either. Sam Hornish, a whiz in an Indy car, has struggled in the big stockers.

Whether Patrick ever gets the hang of NASCAR is still a question. But she sure showed on Saturday night that she can drive an Indy car.

IndyCar notebook jottings:

– There was nobody at this race. It was embarrassing to actually see how few people bothered to drive the 40 km south of Miami to watch what was a pretty thrilling showdown in person.

Homestead-Miami Speedway can hold 80,000 people. It has four sections that can hold 20,000 each. Three sections were closed entirely. The section near the fourth turn was open and was half empty – or half full, whatever.

I wrote a column for Toronto Star Wheels on Saturday, saying IndyCar has to take drastic action if it wants to stay in business. I got some nasty feedback from fans of the series but my point was made when the TV came on Saturday night.

There are those who will say that the race was held at a track owned by NASCAR (true) and that there is never any promotion there (also true).

But that is a cop-out. People living in south Florida are not stupid. There were stories about that race in the papers and on radio and TV. They just weren’t motivated enough to bother going. The product, for one reason or another, isn’t good enough to get people to go out and buy tickets and that is what IndyCar has to address – and fast.

(In fact, it was reported last night that Andretti Autosport has lost a major sponsor. The 7-11 convenience store organization will not sponsor Kanaan’s car next season and one look at that grandstand - and the dismal ratings on a U.S. cable channel that few people get or even know about - will tell you why.)

As I said in my column (and which the people who wrote to me seemed to have missed) is that I like Indy car racing. I like the drivers and I like the competition. But millions of people don’t and if that series wants to survive, it has to make changes.

Soon.

– Franchitti defeated Will Power by five points to win the title. He trailed by 12 points going into the finale in Florida.

Right from the get-go, the Scot took it to his Aussie opponent. He’d won the pole on Friday and just took off when the green flew on Saturday. In fact, he led the most laps before easing off toward the end of the race, eventually finishing eighth.

And why did he ease off? Because Power got careless on Lap 134 of the 200-lap race and drifted up into the wall, doing damage to his rear suspension. Although the Team Penske crew made repairs, Power wasn’t comfortable going 200 mph in a damaged car and parked it.

Franchitti had to finish 10th or better at that point and was comfortable finishing eighth.

His teammate, Dixon, took the lead when he dropped back and wasn’t really challenged for the win.

His margin of victory, although only two seconds, could have been smaller if Patrick and Kanaan had ganged up on him instead of battling each other. Their argument, of course, was over who should have been the principal chase-er.

– Danica Patrick "interviewed" the new CEO of IndyCar, Randy Bernard during the pre-race show. It was softball stuff but she did get in a zinger: "How long is your contract?" meaning, how deep is his commitment to Indy car racing.

And he wouldn’t answer.

Hmmm.

I’ve been around long enough to know that if anybody – politician, newspaper editor, hockey coach – is in for the long haul, they will take whatever action – sometimes radical action – they think is best for the company or the country.

If they’re just there for the short term, they won’t rock the boat. And he doesn’t appear to be rocking any boats.

– At 7 o’clock Saturday night, TSN had auto racing (Indy car). TSN2 had auto racing (NASCAR) and the Speed Channel had auto racing (the ALMS Petit Le Mans). I’d like to see the numbers for all three and add them up. I bet the total would be north of 500,000, which would put auto racing ahead of the CFL, which typically attracts 400,000 or so (except for the Grey Cup, of course).

– Patrick was the best of the five women in the race. Sarah Fisher (who’s dropping hints she might retire as a driver to concentrate on running her team; she should hire Paul Tracy) was 22^nd, Simona de Silvestro was 23^rd and Milka Duno and Ana Beatriz both crashed.out while running near the back and finished 24^th and 26^th respectively.

– There were 18 lead changes involving eight drivers, including Canadian Alex Tagliani, who led one lap and eventually finished 14^th.

NASCAR Sprint Cup

When NASCAR President Mike Helton urged the company’s drivers to "have at it, boys," there’s really only one driver who took him literally – Kyle Busch.

Sure, there have been others who periodically got themselves a little excited – Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski come to mind – but only one driver has consistently acted in an anti-social manner all season and that driver has been Busch the younger.

His older brother Kurt, an arrogant elitist in his own right, seems downright genteel when compared to Kyle.

At one point this season, Kyle Busch threatened – over the radio, to his crew – to kill another driver. Of course it was probably in the heat of the moment, and nobody should have expected him to really do it, but a threat is a threat in any discipline or language.

His employer is Joe Gibbs, a successful football coach and racing team owner who is also a God-fearing man. As he did in pro football, Gibbs leads his team in a prayer before and after the race. I would not be surprised if he asks for strength to deal with Kyle Busch.

Busch’s bumper got him into trouble twice during the weekend, and he came out on the short end of the stick both times.

In Saturday’s Nationwide Series race at Kansas Speedway, he had a solid second locked up when he tried to nudge Joe Logano out of the way in order to maybe win. He missed, and had to check up before he ran into the wall.

In that split second, Brad Keseklowski blew past him on the low side to take second and drop Busch to third.

Kyle Busch is in the running for the Nationwide championship. Those points he lost when he pulled that little stunt could come back to haunt him before the season’s finished.

Yersterday, early in the Sprint Cup race that was eventually won by Greg Biffle, with Jimmie Johnson second (he’s now leading the Chase for the Championship) and Kevin Harvick third (full story here), Kyle Busch’s chrome horn got him into trouble again.

Following David Reutimann through a turn, he just couldn’t help bumping into Buzzi’s kid and sending him backwards up the track and into the wall. Kyle advanced one position and Reutimann was wrecked.

You know what’s coming next, don’t you? Kyle Busch is in the Chase and when you’re in the Chase you want to be able to collect as many points as you can in as many of the 10 races that you can and the last thing you want to do is get somebody angry at you.

So here comes Reutimann. He runs into Busch and walls him enough that Busch has to go to the pits for repairs. He eventually finished 21^st but could have been a lot higher.

Busch said some interesting things about the situation. In short: he admitted hitting Reutimann but Reutimann’s not in the Chase and how dare he retaliate against a guy who’s in in the Chase when he could have waited till the regular season races next year to do it.

You know, when you’re in the Chase, you’re royalty. At least, that’s what I think Kyle Busch was saying. When you’re not in the Chase, you’re a peasant – apparently.

That’s why nobody likes Kyle Busch. Nobody ever liked Dale Earnhardt either, except they really did.

But not Kyle.

(P.S. Kyle, all you had to do when you hit Reutimann was get on the radio to your crew to run down to Reutimann's crew and say sorry. Right then and there. But no-o-o-o-. He should have waited till next year to deliver his payback. Hey, Kyle: have you ever waited?)

NASCAR notebook jottings:

– Except for the tiff between Busch and Reutimann, it was a quiet race. The full house at Kansas Speedway undoubtedly enjoyed the spectacle, because that speedway is a lovely facility and the weather appeared to be gorgeous, but there wasn’t that much to really get excited about.

– The last time I was at Kansas Speedway, the tornado sirens went off (the sky got as black as ink) and I was huddled, with about 500 other guys, in a men’s washroom in the infield that was made of concrete blocks.

The sirens react to barometric pressure and their wail as the tornado skipped around just outside the race track struck fear in my heart. They would be almost silent and then would get louder and louder until they were almost shrieking as the twister came ever closer.

And then it was over. The sun didn’t come out but after the emergency it was just another cloudy day.

– As the camera panned the cars going through turns three and four, you might have noticed a water tower in the distance. There’s a plaza over there that includes a Ted’s Montana Grill – a restaurant chain that serves beef and bison that Ted Turner raises, now that he’s not married to Jane Fonda anymore and doesn’t have CNN to play with.

The tornado sirens started up again when we were in there, too.

Other racing

– I tried, but I couldn’t get myself too excited about the ALMS finale, the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta. I’m not sure that endurance racing lends itself all that well to TV, particularly after dark.

In any event, the Peugeot team of Stephan Sarrazin, Franck Montagny and Pedro Lamy led a one-two sweep for the French manufacturer whose No. 2 entry piloted by Anthony Davidson, Marc Gene and Alex Wurz finished just ahead of the Audi entry driven by Allan McNish, Dindo Capello and Tom Kristensen.

The Audis might – might – have finished second but when Capello left the pits late in the race he found that his balaclava had somehow slipped down inside his helmet and he couldn’t see. So he had to pit to get that little problem sorted out and that ensured the Peugeot team the sweep.

David Brabham, Simon Pagenaud and Marino Franchitti (Dario’s brother) won the LMP2 class (and won the ALMS prototype championship again). In GT2, the Ferrari driven by Gianmaria Bruni and Tony  Vilander ran out of petrol two corners from the finish, handing the victory to the Corvette team featuring Oliver Gavin, Jan Magnussen and Emmanuel Collard.

I think that was the first victory for Corvette since they parted ways with Ron Fellows, and it was a fluke at that.

Kyle Marcelli of Barrie was the most successful of the three Canadians in the race, finishing 24^th overall in the prototype challenge class. Mark Wilkins of Toronto had some mechanical difficulties and was 34^th while Toronto’s Tony Burgess was on a team that wasn’t running at the finish.

– Sebastien Loeb won his seventh straight World Rally Championship title when he won the Rally of France yesterday. It was his 60^th career victory in the series and his sixth this season for Citroen.

Kimi Raikkonen had not one crash but two on Saturday, driving for the Citroen Junior team, and it is no wonder he is trying to get back into F1 where he might get some respect again. He’s crashed so many times this year in the rally sport that he’s become something of a joke.

– Speaking of rallies and success, Antoine L’Estage and Nathalie Richard of Ste-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., won the Pacific Forest Rally this weekend to take the lead in the Canadian Rally Championship by two points over Pat Richard of Squamish, B.C., and Allan Ockwell of Toronto.

The rally was the fifth event of the national championship series, presented by Subaru and supported by Yokohama. One rally – the Tall Pines at Bancroft in November – remains.

– James Hinchcliffe of Oakville was second by an eyelash in the Indy Lights preliminary to the IndyCar finale at Homstead-Miami Speedway on Saturday. "Hinch" finished the season in second place in the championship and is looking to move up to the IndyCar series in 2011.

Philip Major of Ottawa finished eight in that race.

 

Will Villeneuve buy F1 team Toro Rosso?

Reports from Europe today indicate that the Formula One team, Toro Rosso, is for sale for a paltry $30 million but if that’s true, it’s more of a dump than a sale.

Jacques Villeneuve, Canada’s only F1 world champion, tried for an entry in the 2011 championship but, when rebuffed, said he would try to buy into an existing team.

Now, perhaps, he could wind up owning the whole Toro Rosso organization.

Unless he squandered it away (unlikely), Villeneuve should have millions salted away from his time at BAR, when he not only was the driver (for a $20 million yearly retainer) but a silent partner in the ownership of the team with his former manager, Craig Pollock.

Whether the team is actually for sale is not known. Owner Dietrich Mateschitz, who owns the Red Bull energy drinks company and the Red Bull F1 team in addition to Toro Rosso, says the reports are not true.

But the rumours started a week ago and haven’t gone away. In F1 circles, where there’s smoke there’s usually fire.

Owning a team, of course, is one thing. Keep it running is another. You can take that $30 million and multiply it by at least three to come up with the budget for Year One. Then there would be Year Two, Year Three and so-on.

I once wrote a newspaper column about all the F1 teams that had been started since 1970 and there were dozens. Of those dozens, only a few are still in business.

You have to know what you’re doing and have deep, deep pockets to get into that game.

If Jacques is sampling the bait, good luck to him. But I still think he’d be better off to concentrate on NASCAR.

Weekend racing:

—   The 10-hour Petit Le Mans will start tomorrow morning shortly after 11 a.m. (Speed TV) and the big guns — Peugeot and Audi — will be there and are expected to dominate.

Three Canadians — Tony Burgess and Mark Wilkins from Toronto and Kyle Marcelli from Barrie — will be competing in the race at Road Atlanta in Georgia.

The championships in all four American Le Mans Series classes will be up for grabs when the green flag drops at 11:15 a.m.

Current LMP class leaders, the Patron Highcroft trio of David Brabham, Simon Pagenaud and Marino Franchitti, can clinch back-to-back titles.

Mosport GT class winners Patrick Long and Joerg Bergmeister in their Flying Lizards Motorsports Porsche head into Saturday’s race with a sizeable lead, while Green Earth Team Gunnar drivers Gunnar Jeanette and Scott Tucker own a slim six-point advantage in the LMPC class.

Tim Pappas and Joern Bleekemolen are on top in the GTC category.

Burgess, a 10-time Petit Le Mans participant, is coming off his best series finish to date, placing third overall and in class at Mosport in August while driving for Autocon Motorsports.

Marcelli is new to the American Le Mans Series this year, but is no stranger to sports car racing. He made the successful jump from the Cooper Tires Prototype Lites program and hasn’t looked back.

“This season has been a learning experience for sure,” the 20-year-old said. “It hasn’t been as easy as I anticipated, but so far it has been a dream come true.”

The prototype pilot will be making his first appearance at Petit Le Mans.

Wilkins, normally a driver in the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series, will team up with Scott Tucker and Christophe Bouchut in the Le Mans Prototype Challenge class, just as he did at the 12 Hours of Sebring and the six hour race at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.

The trio won their class in both those events and have also had strong overall results. This will be the first Petit Le Mans for Wilkins.

—   A year ago, Australian driver Will Power was in a California hospital, wondering if his racing career was finished. He’d suffered a serious back injury at Sonoma and the future looked bleak.

Tomorrow (Saturday) at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Floria, Power could very well win the 2010 IZOD Indy Car Series championship. He’s 12 points ahead of second-place Dario Franchitti of Scotland and can win his first series title by finishing in front of Franchitti, who’s seeking his third championship.

Pre-race activities will start on TSN at 6 p.m. (or whenever the Argos football game ends) with the green flag set for closer to 7. Twenty-seven cars will start the race, but Paul Tracy won’t be in any of them.

—      Jimmie Johnson continues his drive for five consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup championships this weekend at Kansas Speedway as the Chase for the Championship continues. You can watch the race on TSN on Sunday at 1 p.m.

—   And the 2010 Canadian Rally Championship, presented by Subaru and supported by Yokohama, continues with the fifth of six events in the series, the Pacific Forest Rally, at Merritt, B.C.

The event will see nearly 30 cars take to the forest today (Friday) and tomorrow for over 150Km of competitive distance.