Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Racing preview: Wickens lands a ride

Let’s start the Weekend Racing Preview with a commercial.

Wheels.ca, for the first time in its history, has prepared and published a comprehensive auto racing preview section that can be found here.

Canadian F1 expert Gerald Donaldson tells us what to expect this year in Formula One, John C. Bassett has written about INDYCAR, Star sportswriter Mark Zwolinski examines Jimmie Johnson’s quest for a sixth NASCAR Sprint Cup championship, Sylvia Proudfoot previews the ALMS and Grand Am sports car racing seasons and I’ve prepared a guide to Southern Ontario racing in general (did you know Tony Stewart will be racing a sprint car at Ohsweken Speedway in July? Against his girlfriend? Well, you do now.) And retired Star sportswriter Rick Matsumoto interviews Paul Tracy and James Hinchcliffe on the subject of money, and how hard it is to get it in order to go racing.

So go to SPECIAL SECTION: AUTO RACING 2011 for everything you would want to know about what’s coming up this season.

You won’t be disappointed.

Robbie Wickens lands a ride

Good news for Canada’s only Superlicence holder, Robert Wickens of Guelph.

The driver, who finished second the last two years in European development series Formula 2 and GP3, has been signed to drive this year in the European World Series by Renault.

He’ll drive for the British team Carlin Motorsport with support from Marussia Motors LLC.  Wickens’s teammate will be British F3 champion Jean-Eric Vergne.

Marussia has taken Wickens on board to develop his talent as it builds toward a long-term future in Formula One, the company says in a release. The driver development project, founded in 2005, is led by Marussia Motors president Nikolai Fomenko, a former international GT racer who has twice competed at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and is now the host of the Top Gear Russia TV series.

The World Series program will see Wickens reunited with Carlin, who last ran him in 2008.

Last year, Wickens, 21, scored Marussia its first international single-seater win when his Marussia-branded GP3 car won the German Grand Prix support race at Hockenheim. He went on to score other wins at Spa-Francorchamps and Monza.

Wickens and Vergne will test this weekend in Spain. The Renault World Series will open for the season next month.

You require a Superlicence to race in Formula One and Wickens is currently the only Canadian to hold one.

With this news, it looks like Wickens will get the guidance and support he needs to get to the top rung of auto racing’s world ladder.

Great stuff!

Other news of note

— Ana Beatriz became the third woman to land a full-time ride in this season’s IZOD IndyCar Series when she signed this week with Dreyer & Reinbold Racing.

Beatriz joins Simona de Silvestro and Danica Patrick as full-time drivers in the series. Several other women — Pippa Mann, for instance — are said to be close to deals for part-time work.

“Bia” will be sponsored by the Brazilian petroleum distributor Ipiranga.

Hear that, Petro-Canada? I have some names of drivers you might consider sponsoring . . .

— First it was Juan Pablo Montoya and Jeff Gordon trading cars at Indianapolis - Montoya in Gordon's stock car and Gordon in Montoya's then-F1 Williams. Good stuff.

Then it was announced that Tony Stewart and Lewis Hamilton would trade places this summer. Okay . . .

Now, Jamie McMurray is going to drive Scott Dixon's Indy car and Dixon is going to drive McMurray's stock car. This is getting tiresome already.

— Word from Europe is that F1 hopes to run the Grand Prix of Bahrain as the final race of the 2011 season.

— NASCAR is moving its Hall of Fame induction ceremony to January from May, starting in 2012. Reason? To give the fans some “news” in the off-season, says CEO Brian France. Real reason? The Hall of Fame in Charlotte is pretty much a bust. Nobody’s going through it (an exaggeration, but attendance really is coming in way below expections) and nobody’s been really paying any attention to the induction ceremony itself.

Prediction: The next move will be to leave the Hall in Charlotte but hold the induction in Daytona, New York or Las Vegas. Like the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, nobody wants to go there so they hold the induction in New York in order to get media attention. Looks like the NASCAR Hall is going the same way.

— Both NASCAR races from Las Vegas this weekend can be seen on TSN2 — the Nationwide Sam’s Town 300 at 2:30 Saturday and the Sprint Cup Kobalt Tools 400 at 2:30 Sunday. Both will get the green flag at or about 3:15 p.m. Eestern, according to racefantv.ca

AIM aims for good Miami finish

AIM Autosport of Woodbridge’s Daytona Prototype team arrived at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Thursday to compete in this weekend’s Grand Prix of Miami.

Invigorated with a renewed sense of optimism following a productive off-season and the addition of Dinan-tuned BMW engines, AIM says in a release that it hopes to begin its 2011 campaign with a podium finish in Saturday’s race.

En route to Florida, the team stopped at Roebling Road Raceway near Savannah, Ga., to shake down the team’s BMW-Riley No. 61. Having missed all the off-season test sessions and being unable to participate in the season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona, the test was the first time AIM had run its Daytona Prototype since the end of last season.

 “The deal came together late and the guys only had two weeks to fit the engine,” said AIM team principal, Ian Willis, also in the release.

“It turned out being more work than anticipated, but we’re fortunate to have a very talented crew and they were able to do an excellent job.”

Drivers Mark Wilkins of Toronto and American Burt Frisselle are back and have high hopes for the 2011 season, which will include a stop at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal in August, a race the team won several years ago.

You can watch the Grand Prix of Miami and see how Wilkins and Frisselle make out starting at noon Saturday on TSN2.

Toronto Indy owners buy Ohio track

The owners and promoters of the Honda Indy Toronto are now the owners of three races on the IZOD IndyCar Series calendar with the acquisition Wednesday of the fabled Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course near Lexington, Ohio.

It was announced in a release Wednesday night that Green Savoree Racing Promotions had purchased the race track from Dublin, Ohio-based TrueSports, Inc.

Founded in 2009 by motorsports executives Kim Green and Kevin Savoree, Green Savoree Racing Promotions is a motorsports event ownership and management company that also owns and operates the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.

“Properties like Mid-Ohio don’t come on the market every day,” said Savoree, in a release. “It was a great opportunity to invest in a property with a great history and tradition that, like us, has deep roots in sports car and Indy car racing. It was also a chance to extend our relationship with Honda, which is a long-time partner of Mid-Ohio and our other properties.”

Said TruSports Inc. President Michelle Trueman Gajoch: “This is a positive and very exciting deal, and one that serves all our interests. Kim (Green) and Kevin have a great track record as team owners and event promoters and will bring a new energy and perspective to the operation.”

The Mid-Ohio track was opened in 1962 for weekend sports car racing. In 1982, the track was purchased by Jim Trueman, founder of Red Roof Inns and father of Michelle Gajoch.

Trueman was one of the founders of CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) with Dan Gurney, Roger Penske and Pat Patrick. His Truesports Indy car team with Bobby Rahal driving won the 1986 Indianapolis 500 several weeks before his death.

Mid-Ohio, which is mid-way between Columbus and Cleveland, will celebrate its 50th season of racing in 2011.  The track’s schedule will include the Honda Indy 200 in early August.

As a postscript, I understand that in addition to Toronto, St. Pete’s and now the Mid-Ohio event, Green and Savoree have made inquiries as to the availability of yet another race on the IZOD IndyCar Series calendar.

Stay tuned. These men are on the move.

Racing reporter fired for cheering

In 2008, I was in the media room at the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal when Robert Kubica won his first Formula One race.

There were, I would estimate, about 100 reporters from around the world in that press centre at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve.

As Kubica crossed the finish line, most of those 100 reporters started to clap, whistle and cheer.

I was sitting beside my Toronto Star colleague, Gerald Donaldson  who was working for TSN at the time. Dean McNulty of the Toronto Sun wasn’t far away. We were about the only three in that room who didn’t show emotion.

I can’t speak for the others, but I was pleased to see Kubica win. It was his maiden victory in the top auto racing series on the planet and a year earlier he’d survived one of the most wicked crashes in modern F1 history at that very track, so it was a great comeback story.

But one of the things you learn early on in North America is that whether you’re covering hockey, baseball, football, golf, racing — what have you — you do not outwardly cheer for your team/favourite player. It’s considered poor form and an indication of bias. You cannot be seen as objective if every time your team scores/wins you jump up and down with excitement.

So you do it silently . . .

I’m telling you this today because Sports Illustrated dot com (SI.com) just fired one of its reporters for cheering the victory of Trevor Bayne at the recent Daytona 500.

He’s written a post about it on his own website (this is the link, if you’re interested) and acknowledges that he probably shouldn’t have done it but was carried away by the emotion of the moment.

I sympathize with the guy, because I know how he must have felt when that kid won that big race. But he shouldn’t have done it because that North American tradition (see above) extends beyond the press room and into the board room, where media executives worry about appearances and reputations.

It’s different in Europe. If you’re ever in a press box at a European soccer game, you think you’re in the middle of the grandstands. Reporters are cheering, arguing — you name it, they’re doing it. They freely (and cheerfully) acknowledge pulling for their city’s or their country’s team. And their reporting reflects it.

Same with the motorsports reporters. The British writers, in particular, make no excuses for focusing almost exclusively on British drivers or drivers who race for British teams. It’s what they’re paid to do.

So that was my first reaction when I heard that this American reporter had been bounced by SI for his outward display of enthusiasm for Trevor Bayne’s victory: too bad he didn’t cover F1. Or Old Country Soccer.

But he didn’t and now he’s had to pay for it.

It’s a grim reminder for everybody else: if your driver, or your team, wins, keep your hands in your pockets and your lips sealed.

Wait till you get home to celebrate.

TAGLIANI TEAM SOLD

Although it’s a bit of a tangled web, in that I thought there had been one sale of this team already, the news today is that Alex Tagliani’s FAZZT racing team that competes in the IZOD IndyCar Series has been taken over by Sam Schmidt Motorsports.

Here is a link to the story.

NASCAR VETERANS TO RACE AT FLAMBORO

Flamboro Speedway near Hamilton will celebrate its 50th anniversary this summer and to mark the occasion, a special Race of Champions will be held there on July 1, Canada Day, and feature three NASCAR legends.

Jimmy Spencer, Ken Schrader and Sterling Marlin will join a field of local competitors to compete in a main event featuring the Freedom Village Thunder Car class — a division known for full-contact racing.

The afternoon event will be a special race format, including heat-race qualifying and a B-feature race that will advance only the top 15 finishers to join the NASCAR stars for a 25-lap shootout.

Sounds exciting, doesn't it?

SPECIAL SECTION: AUTO RACING 2011

Everything you want to know about Formula One, NASCAR, INDYCAR, Sports Cars and more is included in this special Wheels section on auto racing.

Why would Hamilton, Stewart trade places?

When you do something spectacular or silly once — like bungee-jumping off the Rainbow Bridge, say, while naked — it’s unique. When you do it twice, it’s copy cat. It’s why bother?

Which makes me wonder why there seems to be any interest whatsoever in  the announcement at the weekend that stock car racer Tony Stewart and world champion F1 racing star Lewis Hamilton plan to trade places at Watkins Glen some time this year and drive each other’s car.

What’s the point?

It’s been done before, of course. That time, it truly was unique — and there was a purpose behind it.

In June 2003, just before the Canadian Grand Prix, Williams F1 (then known as Williams Grand Prix Engineering) sent a BMW-Williams race car and driver Juan Pablo Montoya to Indianapolis to trade places with NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon and his DuPont Chevrolet.

The story line for the switcheroo was that the Indianapolis Motor Speedway wanted publicity for two big races coming up at the track — the Brickyard 400 and the U.S. Grand Prix.

The real reason, although never publicized, was to give Gordon a test in an F1 car. Montoya was just along for the ride.

And the reason for the test? F1 was being dominated by Michael Schumacher and it was boring. There were no stars on the horizon. Montoya was leaving for McLaren at the end of the season and Williams had a seat open. Williams was being sponsored by Hewlett-Packard; its major associate sponsor was Budweiser. Both U.S. companies were keen to have an American driver in the car.

Gordon, at the time, was dominating NASCAR, and had for several years. The thinking was that he might be looking for a challenge.

That he was up for the test, let there be no doubt. In six laps, Montoya’s best time around the 4.28 km Indianapolis Grand Prix track was 1:15.2. Gordon’s best lap was 1:16.5.

To put that into perspective, Michael Schumacher's pole-winning time for the 2002 U.S. Grand Prix was 1:10.7. But remember: that time was set after two days of practice, with rubber on the track. Montoya and Gordon went out on a green track and had six laps apiece. Total.

Also for the record, Gordon, during his setup run in the Winston Cup car, turned in a lap of one minute, 38.8 seconds; Montoya's best time during his six laps was 1:39.9.

Now, Gordon was just completely knocked out by the experience, suggesting that he’d never done anything in his life to compare with driving a Formula One race car. Montoya also expressed interest in the stock car, but for him it must have been like going from a roller coaster to the Log Ride.

The “Tradin’ Paint” exercise attracted major media from around the world. The three major U.S. TV networks attended (Fox wasn’t really a player at the time) and the Speed Channel recorded a one-hour special.

In the end, although intrigued, Gordon didn’t bite. Frank Williams said in Montreal that although he’d love to have Gordon in the car in 2004, the price he'd have to pay for a rookie driver was too high (which was a very funny line, when you think about it).

So there was a purpose to that exercise in 2003. What purpose will be served by having Stewart and Hamilton trade places?

Unlike Montoya, who found himself unemployed in F1 and was rescued by Chip Ganassi, who’d run him in CART, Lewis Hamilton will never race in NASCAR.

And Tony Stewart, unlike Gordon at the time, is neither good enough nor ambitious enough to even think about F1 as a future career.

It doesn’t make sense. So why do it?

Particularly when, like just about everybody else who follows motorsports these days, you immediately think of two words when a race driver considers leaving his or her comfort zone: Robert Kubica.