Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Valentine's Day and Mosport

The racing world has been all a-Twitter since the weekend with news that NASCAR Sprint Cup star Tony Stewart and Syracuse-area sprint car racer Jessica Zemken are an item.

Stewart started sponsoring Zemken a couple of years ago and that’s when the gossip started. She’s since become an employee of Tony Stewart Racing — she runs in several series under his banner, including the World of Outlaws — and, as Stewart told people at the weekend, “we were travelling around together and discovered that we kind of enjoyed each other.”

So there you go.

As this is Valentine’s Day, however, I have a better story.

Actually, it’s Ryan Chalmers’s story. He’s the media-relations officer at Mosport,  so I’ll let him tell it.

“Throughout Mosport’s rich history, there have been countless people who have fallen in love with the track but here’s a tale of race fans who fell in love while at Mosport.

“Sarah Symington is a corner marshal at Mosport and her now-husband Mark is a member of the Race Medical team.  For years they would sit around the campfire after race days and talk. The problem was they were in relationships with other people.  One year, as fate would have it, they were both single.

“ ‘Some of our good friends thought that Mark and I should get together because they knew we would make a great couple,’ explained Sarah.

“ ‘They were right.’

“During the American Le Mans Series Grand Prix of Mosport in 2004, Sarah was stationed at Corner 10 and Mark was working Race Medical.  During the lunch break, there were an abnormal amount of people around her location and she couldn’t figure out why. Sarah had her back to the track as two ambulances, three rapid response vehicles and a chase car pulled up.

“’ I couldn’t figure out what was happening,” Sarah recalled.  ‘I was stunned as all of these people were staring at me and taking photos.

“ ‘I then saw a nervous Mark climbing over the wall and after asking how my day was going; he got down on one knee and pulled out a ring.  I said yes and jumped into his arms.’

“They were married on Oct. 14, 2006, and it was a race-themed wedding.  In the summers that have followed, they spend many weekends enjoying and working at the races.

“This race season will be a little different, as they are expecting their first child in July.

“ ‘We have already started making plans for the little one to join us at the race track,’ said the proud mother-to-be. 

“ ‘The most fitting part is that the baby is due on the Grand Prix of Mosport weekend.’ ”

Nice story,  Ryan. Thanks for sending it in.

 

3 cheers for Dale Earnhardt Jr.

The racing "feel-good story" of the weekend was Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s winning the pole yesterday for next Sunday’s Daytona 500 – he’s on the locked-in front row with food bank-sponsored Jeff Gordon – exactly 10 years after the death of his father in the 2001 “Great American Race.”

There may be those who think this was a little too coincidental (and it will be if Junior wins the big race next weekend, considering he hasn’t won a Cup race in years) but his 48.364-second run yesterday (186.089 mph) looked entirely on the up-and-up, particularly since the aging Gordon runs for the same team, Hendrick Motorsports. Full qualifying story here

Having said that, I’m worried about Dale Jr. Despite the run, he seems to have lost his self-confidence. He stutters and stammers his way through interviews and just can’t seem to look whoever’s talking to him in the eye – glancing this way and that to avoid eye contact.

For sure, a trip to Victory Lane is going to help but I think there’s something else going on with him, whether it’s concern about the racing business he owns with his sister Kelly (JR Motorsports) or leftover resentment from the falling-out he had with his stepmother following his father’s death.

One reason five-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson has been so successful, I think, is because he has absolutely no distractions. He’s a Sprint Cup driver, period. No Nationwide or truck series obligations. No ownership in anything racing-related. He just shows up and drives his Sprint Cup car and then goes home.

Other Sprint Cup drivers might be able to spread themselves around – Kevin Harvick, Carl Edwards, Brad Keselowski – but Earnhardt Jr. isn’t one of them and it’s showing.

I think he’s got great talent but whatever’s eating him up inside is dragging him down.

Meantime, attention will now shift to the qualifying races scheduled for Thursday. At one time, these races meant something, but no more.

Once upon a time, NASCAR locked in the front row through time trials and then split the field for the two qualifyers. If you finished in the top 15 in either of those races, you were in the Daytona 500. (They then filled the 43-car field with time-trials times, reserved spots, and so-on.)

This meant that by finishing in the top 15 in one of those races, Joe Schmoe from Peoria had a chance to race his way into the Daytona 500 – which used to happen on occasion. But no more.

Because of NASCAR’s locking-in of the top 35 cars in points, those cars and drivers are guaranteed of starting next Sunday (including Steve Wallace, a Cup rookie who’s never started a race in the big league and was 10th in points in the 2010 Nationwide Series).

And then there are always one or two spots reserved for former winners, regardless of activity or age.

Which means that two spots in each race – four positions in all – are all that are up for grabs next Thursday.

So, why bother? Why not go strictly on time trials?

I guarantee that there will be at least one big wreck next Thursday and the drivers involved will look at their torn-up machinery and say the same things I’m saying here: what is the purpose?

It would be much fairer and much more exciting to go back to the old system and make those two races mean something.

NASCAR has other problems going into the qualifying races, as well as the headliner next Sunday.

The repaving of Daytona International Speedway has somehow affected the aerodynamics of the generic CoT (the Car of Today, which used to be the Car of Tomorrow) and rather than freight trains of racing cars flying around Daytona at 200 mph, you now have one car piggy-backing onto another and racing in tandem.

It looked every strange during the Budweiser Shootout on Saturday night (full story here) to see a car zipping around Daytona with another car’s nose stuck up its butt, much like one dog sniffing another.

NASCAR will apparently try to “fix” this before Thursday be changing the regulation concerning water temperature (I know, this has potential to get really confusing). The idea, apparently, is to ensure that the following car will have to break the tow of the car in front because to not do so will result in the engine overheating.

The other expected regulation change will have to do with the restrictor plate. The plates were opened up for last year’s Daytona 500 and the racing was better, even though the classic had to be stopped twice because of pavement problems.

Now, they might squeeze the amount of air going into the engine again to keep speeds below 200 mph (the piggyback cars were running more than 200).

Once upon a time, before the sanctioning bodies started screwing around like this, auto racing was pretty good. You wonder why they didn’t just leave well enough alone.

NASCAR NOTEBOOK:
– Danny Hamlin’s removeable steering wheel came off when he started his qualifying run yesterday, resulting in an embarrassing trip into the infield grass. It happens. But drivers are supposed to check those things before leaving the pits. If not them, who?

– Hamlin, by the way, won the Budweiser Shootout Saturday night but was disqualified for driving below the yellow line. Ryan Newman pushed him down there. Hamlin said he went below the line rather than rubbing fenders with Newman and maybe launching Newman’s car into the grandstands. He suggested that he won’t be such a Mr. Nice Guy if he’s in a position to win the Daytona 500.

Memo to NASCAR: When the white flag flies, throw out the rulebook. If a guy goes below the yellow line, so what? Otherwise, there might be a huge crash and when race cars start flying around at 200 mph, anything can happen.

You want an exciting finish, or a disaster? Take your pick.

– For at least the last two years, the rumour mill has been in overdrive concerning the relationship between Tony Stewart and Syracuse-area sprint car driver Jessica Zemken. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Stewart let it be known that the two are, in fact, dating. Ain’t that sweet?

– Mark Martin will start his 759th Cup race when he takes the green for the Daytona 500. Amazing.

– This is how stupid the whole locked-in points system is. I mentioned earlier that Steve Wallace is a guaranteed starter in the Daytona 500 with no Cup experience and a less-then-stellar minor-league career. (Being Rusty’s kid helps, doesn’t it?) In any event, this is what modern-day racing has come to. Said Steven yesterday:

“We’re locked into the 500, so speed doesn’t mean a lot to us.”

Gee, I thought speed was what racing and the Daytona 500 were all about.

– More and more, Cup racers are so media trained that they don’t listen to the question before spouting out an answer. Ace SPEED pit reporter Dick Berggren asked Juan Montoya about the two-car draft and Montoya went into a spiel about how his one car was behaving. Dr. Dick did not look pleased when the interview ended.

By the way, I have a feeling that Montoya is on the bubble so far as his NASCAR career is concerned. He's not winning and his surly manner is growing tiresome.

– It’s not NASCAR but it’s traditionally the NASCAR curtain-raiser during Speed Weeks in Daytona so we’ll put it in here anyway.

Bobby Gerhart won his seventh ARCA 200 at Daytona on Saturday. He started fifth and drove a smart, smart race.

Poor Steve Arpin of Fort Frances, Ont., just can’t catch a break. I hope the sponsor he’s been courting for years, Mike’s Hard Lemonade, is patient because if Steve didn’t have bad luck, he wouldn’t have any luck at all.

He was cruising along in 14th position on Saturday, after qualifying third, when the car in front of him wabbled. Arpin tried to go low to avoid what looked like the beginning of a wreck and, instead, ran into a car being driven by Indy car refugee Milka Duno (who was driving a very good race – she was up to 12th after starting 23rd).

The ensuing “big one” eliminated Arpin, Duno and a bunch of others. Nobody was hurt but a little more of Arpin’s dream died.

Terry Jones of Amherstburg, Ont., finished 39th after his engine failed. He’d qualified 18th.

And Maryeve Dufault, of Sorel, Que., was 28th after starting 24th. She ran a couple of NASCAR Canadian Tire Series races in 2010.

ELSEWHERE:

– AIM Autosport of Woodbridge will run BMW engines in its Daytona Prototype sports car for the rest of the Grand Am Rolex season, which will include a stop at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal in August.
After skipping the Rolex 24 at Daytona for the second straight year, the team announced late last week that drivers Mark Wilkins of Toronto and American Burt Frisselle will return to race the car. More on this in a future post.

– Who said racing was a young man’s game? Steve Kinser – who’s what? 100? – won both opening World of Outlaws sprint car races in Florida at the weekend. He had a hard time on Friday night holding off Sammy Swindell, who’s what? 90?

Sammy, earlier, won the All-Star Circuit of Champions season opener. And, as we all know, he lost the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals feature a few weeks ago by just a few feet to his son, Kevin.

Are those guys drinking Geritol, or what?

– Nick Heidfeld is being auditioned by Lotus-Renault to take the place of the injured Robert Kubica. Nick Heidfeld? Please. Are there not other, better, drivers out there? What about Nico Hulkenberg? (I know; he'd got a deal with Force India but those things can be fixed.)

Having said that, I suggest that as soon as Kubica is able to get out of the hospital that he will be agitating to get back in the car. Racing drivers can’t bear the thought of losing their seat and will do everything in their power to stay in it.

Despite the severity of his injuries, I'll wager that Kubica is back before we know it.

Ford sues Ferrari over F150 name

The law says I can’t open a restaurant and call it “McDonald’s.”

I don’t know why, because that’s my name, but the law says otherwise.

So Ferrari introduced its 2011 single-seat racing car and called it the F150 and that’s got Ford all upset because the name of their best-selling pickup truck is the F150.

Ford apparently thinks there could be confusion in the marketplace. People might mistake a Formula One car for a truck and we can’t have that, can we?

The lawsuit, filed in Detroit (and didn’t the place look wonderful in that Super Bowl commercial?) said the action was based on Ferrari's naming of its new car the "F150" and its creation of the website www.ferrarif150.com

Ford said its trademark is being harmed and the suit asks the court to block Ferrari from using the trademark in the United States (presumably on telecasts of F1 races there, since Ferrari and Formula One don’t race in the U.S. at present).

Ford is also apparently seeking unspecified damages from Ferrari.

Ferrari, in response, has started to call the car the “Ferrari F150th Italia,” arguing that the F150 referred to the 150th anniversary of Italian unification and had nothing to do with an American truck anyway.

Somebody, I will write an essay about how there are too many people in the world with not enough to do. They spend all their time justifying their existence. It is why we are drowning in red tape and why there are lawsuits like this one.

And why McDonald’s won’t let me open a restaurant and use my own name.

What's up with IndyCar and Honda?

Things come out of the blue and make you wonder, what’s up?

As in, what’s really going on? What is this about?

At 7:04 a.m. today, the IZOD IndyCar Series saw fit to send out this announcement:

“The IZOD IndyCar Series announced today that it will not return to Twin Ring Motegi in 2012.

“The series will hold its final event at the 1.5-mile egg-shaped oval located north of Tokyo on Sept. 18, 2011. 

“ ‘We've enjoyed a great run at Twin Ring Motegi and thank our friends at Mobilityland and Honda Japan for hosting a great event over the past eight years," said Terry Angstadt, president of the commercial division for INDYCAR, the sanctioning body of the IZOD IndyCar Series. 

“ ‘While our businesses move in different directions, we will keep the door open for future events at the track.

“ ‘As INDYCAR and the IZOD IndyCar Series continue to evaluate their long term plans, we must look to build the sport and its viewership.  We believe it is important that the final few events on our schedule give us the opportunity to be broadcast live during times that maximize our viewing audience as we build up to the championship. We will continue to meet with promoters domestically and internationally that want to pursue an IZOD IndyCar Series event.’ ”

Okay, so it and of itself, that statement seems to be that IndyCar won’t be going back to Japan simply because it doesn’t want to have a race televised live in North America at midnight.

But is that worth a one-item press release at 7 a.m. in the morning? Isn’t that a second or third item in the IndyCar news roundup that’s routinely sent out to media most days in the mid-to-late afternoon?

Or is this symbolic of something else happening?

In 2012, the plan is to relaunch the IndyCar Series. A new car and new engines are in the works. Honda, which has been the only supplier of power plants to the IndyCar Series for years, as well as sponsor of many of the races (see the Honda Indys Toronto and Edmonton) plus supplier of other economic benefits, such as advertising, is going to have competition.

Engine builders Chevrolet and Lotus and — who knows? —  maybe others will be racing against Honda on the track and jockeying for business off.

We have been led to believe over the years that Honda welcomed competition and looked forward to it.

Maybe not.

Kubica recovery off to good start

Formula One drivers are a breed apart in so many ways. Chief among them is an ability to recover quickly.

Stirling Moss broke his leg in a crash and was told it would take months to recuperate. He was back in a car four weeks later.

Niki Lauda was given the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church in 1976 after his horrible accident in Germany. He was driving again six weeks later, finishing fourth in the Italian Grand Prix.

It’s much too early to speculate on the recovery time for Lotus-Renault driver Robert Kubica, except to say that there are hints from his doctors that he is starting his recovery in a very strong way after nearly losing his right hand and suffering other terrible injuries to his right arm and leg in a rallying accident in Italy on Sunday.

Said his doctor, Giorgio Barabino, who is head of the intensive care unit at the Santa Corona hospital where Kubica is being treated, Kubica is coming along in an "excellent way."

"It's difficult to make predictions," he told the website IGV.it said. "What's certain is that it's rare to find such a strong patient.”

The statement,  "it's rare to find such a strong patient" gives you an idea of what those drivers are made of.

An official statement issued by the Louts-Renault team late yesterday said: “After spending the night under constant observation, (Robert) was briefly woken up by the doctors of the Santa Corona Hospital this morning. (He) was then able to talk to his relatives. He was also able to move his fingers, which is encouraging for the rest of his recovery process.

“Prof.  Mario Igor Rossello, Director for the Regional Centre of Hand Surgery at San Paolo Hospital in Savona, did not notice any swelling or infection on his right forearm, and this is another good sign, although it will be several days before it is known if the operation has been 100 per cent successful.

Kubica’s manage, Daniele Morelli,  said: “I finally talked to him and Robert has been shown to understand everything perfectly. His mental capacities are intact and we are extremely relieved. This really leaves us hope. Obviously he feels a lot of pain in his leg and hand. It will take time.”

But how much time?

If you use Moss and Lauda as barometers, perhaps not as much time as initially thought.

More details here

Photographs of the accident here

Robert Kubica critically injured

Ex-F1 and Indy car driver Derek Daly said years ago that one of the ways for a driver to move up auto racing’s ladder is to be ready to step in if another driver gets injured.

Although that might be reality, you’d kind of hope that Daly was talking about waiting a few days before making the phone call.

See if the guy was going to be okay. That sort of thing.

Apparently, the phone calls and the speculating started Sunday while Lotus-Renault F1 star Robert Kubica was still in the operating room following a dreadful accident during a rally in Italy in which he suffered multiple fractures to his right hand, arm and leg.

Late Sunday night, it became apparent that Kubica's injuries were even more severe than originally thought. Here is a link to the most recent update

F1 is a cut-throat sport but you really have to wonder when online reports initially suggested that Renault reserve driver Bruno Senna might have to start the season if Kubica can’t recover in time (which sounds to be the case) but that if his injuries are sufficiently serious to keep him out of F1 racing completely in 2011 that he could be replaced by . . . (the names of most of the current unemployed F1 drivers).

It’s very interesting that one of the major F1 sites – which was among the first to publish the news of Kubica’s accident and included speculation about who might replace him – removed the speculation as more information about Kubica’s condition became available. Other sites didn't immediately and you wonder what happened to good taste.

Kubica is the first Polish driver to compete in F1 and he lived through an incredible accident at the 2007 Canadian GP in Montreal while driving for BMW Sauber. He returned to Montreal a year later and won the race – his first F1 victory (which is one of the many reasons he's a favourite among Canadian F1 fans).

He moved to Renault last year after BMW withdrew from Formula One at the end of 2009. In group testing of 2011 F1 cars at Valencia last week, he set the fastest time in the final session, then entered the Ronde di Andora Rally in Italy where the car he was driving ran into the end of a wall protecting a church.

According to his manager, Daniele Morelli, the impact caused serious harm.

We wish Robert Kubica all the best. When, and if, it’s confirmed that he will be not be able to drive for Lotus-Renault in the 2011 World Championship, let the speculation about his replacement begin.

But not before.

(Postscript: To be fair, as more information about Kubicia's injuries became available, most sites removed the speculation and by late Sunday night it had all but disappeared.)

More sad news

Leighton Irwin, a true original of early Ontario post-war road racing, died in Orillia this past week of kidney failure.

He started in racing as a corner marshal at Mosport, then became a club racer, did some rallying and was a mechanic for Bruce Jensen (father of Indy Lights team owner Eric Jensen) in Formula B and then Formula Atlantic.

Gary Grant, who runs thegarageblog.com, and long-time Canadian open-wheel racer Gary Magwood were up to see Leighton shortly before he died at Solders Memorial in Orillia. Grant has written a lovely tribute on his website and has links to photos and articles by and about Leighton.

You can find them here

Meantime, supermodified ace Don (Big Daddy) McLaren died at age 75 in Lowell, Mass. He qualified for 10 International Classic 200 races at Oswego Speedway in New York, where he won three regular-season features. He won 20 features with the New England Supermodified Racing Association and one with the International Supermodified Association.

In all, he won more than 200 races between 1951 and 1984. He was elected to the New England Racing Hall of Fame in 2002.

Speaking of the New England Racing Hall of Fame, my old friend Stanley (Skip) Matczak was inducted in January. Skip did most of the hard, physical work over the years but the brains behind Matczak Racing belonged to his late wife, Lois.

And Skip knew it. As he stood up to receive his applause, he asked those in attendance to “clap loud enough for Lois to hear you.”

And finally, Edward (Big Eddy) Piersal, who sold programs at Oswego Speedway for 45 years, died recently. Piersal and the late Pete Trenca were great ambassadors for that track. Now both are gone.

Dynamic duo back again

Antoine L'Estage of Ste-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., and Nathalie Richard of Halifax won the Rallye Perce Neige at the weekend in a Mitsubishi, defeating Bruno Carre and Yvan Joyal of Laval, Que., by nearly 30 seconds in the first event of the 2011 Canadian Rally Championship.

2010 Canadian Novice Champion Ugo Desgreniers of Orford, Que., and Erik Kirby of Sherbrooke finished third.

The Canadian championship, won last year by L’Estage and Richard, is made up of six events. The next rally is the Rocky Mountain Rally, May 26-27, in Calgary.

In closing . . .

They penalized a Green Bay Packer player for showing off after he scored a touchdown in last night’s Super Bowl. Good grief. Professional racing drivers do that sort of thing all the time.

It's a good thing that Alex Zanardi and every NASCAR race winner (donuts), fence climber (Helio Castroneves and Tony Stewart), Polish Victory Lap driver (started by the late Alan Kulwicki) and mosh-pitter (Carl Edwards) don’t play football . . .

If those guys were on the field, it would be a sea of yellow out there.

More boos for Indy car signings

The big news in the IZOD IndyCar Series world today is that KV Racing has signed Takuma Sato and E.J. Viso to drive for the team again in 2011.

Wow. Break out the champagne. Happy days are here again.

The fact that neither one of those two guys will ever win a race in that series, or capture the imagination of the viewing public, seems to have been lost completely on the owners of that team, multimillionaire Kevin Kalkhoven and former driver Jimmy Vasser.

There’s an unintentionally funny line in the press release, the one that says (quoting Sato): “Everyone back in the shop worked really hard to push the performance up over the winter.” Translation: the team spent the winter building dozens of replacement parts for the car Sato drives in anticipation of all the crashes he’ll have this year.

What are those two doing even driving in that series?

I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but guys who own Indy cars and Indy car teams really don’t get it. This series has the potential to explode in the next two or three years but only if there’s an almost wholesale change of drivers beyond the top 10 (the Powers, Franchittis, Patricks, et al).

Ride-buyers like Sato and Viso, or retreads like Sebastien Bourdais, just aren’t going to do it.

This is not Xenophobic. Like most people, I want to see the best drivers in the world in Indy cars. But there’s something seriously the matter when talented and capable domestic drivers (and by domestic, I mean North American) are consistently overlooked in favour of drivers from overseas, particularly when domestic teams have domestic sponsors.

I mean, look at Dale Coyne, who’s tested Bourdais as well as Alex Lloyd and Martin Plowman, both Brits. His primary sponsor is the Boy Scouts of America. This is as cockeyed as having Englishman Dan Wheldon driving for a team whose primary sponsor was the U.S. National Guard. These things just don’t compute.

(There’s nothing new here, by the way. When the IRL was invented in the mid-90s, Tony George and Cary Agajanian had to BEG John Menard to put Tony Stewart in his car. You can look it up.)

What got me started down this road was the post below, particularly the portion I devoted to a discussion of Newman-Haas Racing’s apparent (nothing is cast in stone, but you know how these things go) inclination — if they only have enough money to run one car — to go with veteran Oriole Servia instead of Canadian newbie James Hinchcliffe.

Now, I like Oriole Servia. I remember being in the infield at Nazareth Speedway on the Friday of the CART race there in 2000 (that was the one that got snowed out; it was gorgeous two days before) and I'm looking at Paul Tracy and Little Al Unser and all those guys out practicing and there's someone in a yellow car with no sponsor, just the number, who's just BOMBING around that place.

I was really impressed, and had to find out who was in that car and it turned out to be Oriole Servia. So he can drive. But that was then and this is now and – with all due respect – he will be of absolutely no use going forward as the face of the “new and improved” IZOD IndyCar Series.

His presence in the Newman-Haas car won’t sell any tickets for next July’s Honda Indy Toronto, that’s for sure. Kevin Savoree, Kim Green (owners of the race) and their GM, Charlie Johnstone, have a really big job ahead of them to re-awaken the interest in that race, which is about nil in this town at the moment, and it would be in their best interests to encourage car owners and IndyCar officials to go after new blood like Hinchcliffe.

To be frank, Paul Tracy and Alex Tagliani are not going to do it either.

But “Hinch,” Robert Wickens, Daniel Morad, Alex Ellis, Andrew Ranger, Gianmarco Raimondo, Jonathan Summerton, John Edwards, J.C. Vernet, Pippa Mann, Brian Clauson, Dakoda Armstrong and Otto Sitterly MIGHT! But it's never going to happen if those drivers are on the outside looking in.

Do I get worked up about this stuff? You betcha.

Bourdais back in Indy cars? Boo!

Well, another “old” guy is apparently on his way back to Indy cars.

Sebastien Bourdais tested this week with Dale Coyne Racing (who ran Milka Duno last year) and indications are that the ex-Champ Car World Series and Formula One ace will be in a seat when the season starts. Story link here

Now, the veteran Bourdais – like his old pal Paul Tracy (still working on financing to take to Conquest Racing for 2011) – is a wonderful driver. But if Indy car racing — which is now officially called the IZOD IndyCar Series — wants to grow, it’s got to inject some new blood to attract a younger demographic.

I was talking about this with a friend yesterday. Newman-Haas Racing has tested two drivers this winter, veteran Oriol Servia and rookie James Hinchcliffe of Oakville. According to my friend, who was talking to the team, if they get enough money to run two cars, Servia and “Hinch” will be their drivers.  But if they only have money for one driver, they’ll probably (emphasis on probably) go with Servia because, or so the thinking goes, it will be better to have a veteran in the seat.

From a “crash damage” perspective, perhaps they’re right. Veterans usually don’t crash as often as rookies. But from a series marketing perspective, Oriol Servia is old news. I know who Oriol Servia is and admire his talent. But Indy car racing has already got me (and other people my age). What they have to do is attract a whole new audience. To do that, they need James Hinchcliffe.

Hinchcliffe is a wonderful “talker” (anybody who’s heard his racing TV colour work knows that). And he’s tuned right in with the Facebook and Twitter crowd. (Okay, so’s Paul Tracy but where Tracy chats with dozens of people, Hinchcliffe is connected with thousands.)

The IZOD IndyCar Series is on the cusp of greatness. The new CEO, Randy Bernard, has done wonderful things in less than a year and I (and others) expect even more great things to happen in future.

But he can't do everything and the team owners have to understand that for the sport to take off, the cast of characters in the cockpits has to change.

Guys like Servia and Bourdais are okay, but Hinchcliffe and a whole bunch of other talented 20-to-25-year-olds would be a whole lot better.

 

Chris Economaki's column is missing!

I started subscribing to National Speed Sport News in the mid-1980s for one reason and one reason only: Chris Economaki’s column.

Each week, when the weekly paper arrives in the mail, the first thing I do is turn to page 4 to read his column, which for ever and ever has been a potpourri of inside information, editorial comment and the odd bit of gossip.

That column has been required reading for anybody interested in motorsport because it covers – just as the paper itself does – every aspect of racing from stock cars and sports cars to Indy cars to F1 and the sprints and midgets too. In other words, just about anything on four wheels finds its way into NSSN.

Economaki first started working for the New Jersey-based National Auto Racing News in the 1930s as a newsboy (they changed the name to National Speed Sport News in the 1940s). In the beginning, he hawked the paper at speedways; then he started filing stories. In 1950, he was hired as editor and publisher and became, over time, the most respected auto racing reporter in North America – if not the world.

His knowledge, influence and accessibility to racing people made him indispensable to the rapidly growing industry and when ABC’s Wide World of Sports started broadcasting auto racing in the 1960s, it was Economaki who was hired to provide colour and analysis.

As well as a reporter, he was also a natural entertainer. One of my favourite memories was when he was doing colour during a telecast of the Detroit Grand Prix F1 race. It was a blisteringly hot day, so he wore purple shorts and purple knee socks (what a sight that was!) and, at one point, was shown going into a portable toilet to get out of the sun.

Anyway, imagine my surprise (and the surprise of many, I would imagine) when I received my first issue of 2011 a few days ago (the Canadian Post Office can be terribly slow sometimes . . .) to discover that Chris Economaki’s column has disappeared from page 4. In place of his photograph is a logo and his Editor’s Notebook column is now called Speed Sport Notebook.

Now, Chris Economaki is not dead. But he’s 90 now and he’s starting to slow down a bit. According to the newspaper, he will continue to contribute items to the notebook and that’s fine. But after 25 or so years of seeing his mug on page 4 of that newspaper every week, I feel a little sad because he’s one of a kind and nothing or nobody can replace his observations and/or commentary.

Or wit. In April 2000, on a Sunday morning, I was sitting in the lobby of a Holiday Inn in Bethlehem, Pa., which is just down the road from Nazareth. There was a CART Indy race scheduled for Nazareth Speedway that day and there was two feet of snow on the ground, which had fallen overnight. Economaki came walking into the lobby, looked out the window at the still-raging blizzard and said: “All the drivers are wondering which button on their steering wheel is for the defroster.”

Anyway, life goes on and I will continue to subscribe. (They have an excellent web site now but I keep forgetting my password and it gets embarrassing to keep asking them to send me a new one. However, I’ll have to swallow my pride again one of these days and do it – although I must admit I like reading the paper best.)

And the reason I will continue to read it is because the lineup of talent is better than you'll find at any other racing publication or website: Keith Waltz, Dave Argabright, Gary London (he's a riot), Bill Oursler, Susan Wade (she does a great job on drag racing), Ron Hedger, Keith Shampine on supermodifieds and Mike Kerchner are all terrific reads, week in and week out. And their F1 correspondent, Dan Knutson, is second-to-none.

But it won’t be the same any more without Chris on page 4 and that’s too bad.

Know why?

Because it’s a reminder that my life is tickin' right along too.

P.S. His absence is showing. The latest issue (the second of 2011) contains two corrections in the new column. That sort of thing rarely happened when “Ye Ed” was on the job.