Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Canadian, U.S. investors reportedly eyeing F1 team

Lotus unveiled their 2013 car to great fanfare (if not universal approval) this week and the rest of the F1 teams are on tap to follow suit over the next few days and weeks.

McLaren is up next, and they will roll out the new model today - Thursday - while Ferrari and Force India will follow on Friday.

Here are the rest: Sauber on Saturday, Red Bull on Sunday, Toro Rosso and Mercedes on Monday and Caterham next Tuesday. Williams has scheduled a Feb. 19 launch and while Marussia has not set a date (as of today), it will follow Williams at some point.

Sticking with F1 for a moment, DTM racer Susie Wolff will be doing more with Williams this season, focusing on most of the team’s aerodynamic and simulator work.

And Autosport magazine is reporting that there is a move afoot to resuscitate the Spanish HRT team, which thankfully went out of business at the end of last season. Autosport says Canadian and American investors in something called Scorpion Racing are hoping to get the team back on the grid in time for the 2013 season and have the blessing, allegedly, of one Bernie Ecclestone, although Bernie is now saying they're probably too late.

I'm curious as to who the Canadian investor, or investors, might be.

Two Canadians have owned teams in Formula One – B.C.'s Walter Wolf back in the 1970s and, more recently, Alex Shnaider of Toronto, who bought Eddie Jordan’s team early in 2005 and unloaded it onto the Spyker Car company about 18 months later. Both Wolf and Shnaider got out while the going was good. Translation: before they lost their shirts.

There are relatively few Canadians with the money required to play in Formula One. And it is a sucker bet to begin with. Don't believe me? Ask Craig Pollock. Ask Richard Branson. Ask Alex Shnaider.

A lot of people think it’s easy. Back in 2004, I had a column in the Toronto Star in which I wrote the following paragraphs about idealistic people with stars in their eyes who think it's a dandy idea to try to break into F1:

“When Grand Prix racing came to Canada in August, 1967, eight Formula One manufacturers brought cars: Brabham, Lotus, Cooper, Honda, Ferrari, BRM, Eagle and McLaren.

“It is 38 years later and only two of those famous marques are still in business: Ferrari and McLaren.

“In all that time, untold others have tried to crack the lineup of the most famous, the most demanding and the most expensive auto racing series in the world. None of them ever made it for long. Despite idealism and big promises and big money, lest we forget:

“Matra, March, Surtees, Shadow, Iso, Tecno, Hesketh, Lola, Parnelli, Penske, Hill, Ensign, Ligier, Copersucar, Wolf, ATS, Arrows, Fittipaldi, Alfa Romeo, Theodore, Osella, Toleman, Zakspeed, AGS, Rial, Onyx, Eurobrun, Larousse-Venturi, Larousse alone (didn't he kill the other guy?), Andrea Moda and Footwork — to name some, but certainly not all.

“Even the Ford Motor Co. — the Ford Motor Co. — had to throw in the towel when it realized its Jaguar team was costing a fortune and going nowhere.

“The manufacturers that lasted — Ferrari, McLaren, Williams — did so because of elbow grease. They proved that the business of auto racing grows from the ground up, over many years. It's not something that happens at the snap of a finger.”

If HRT does make a comeback, it’ll be gone again before the Canadians and Americans who sink their money into it will know what hit them.

If you do have money to burn in something like F1, wouldn’t it be better to buy in as an associate sponsor of an existing top team (none will ever say no, you know) and get some enjoyment out of it?

It's a lot better than going bankrupt.

Social note: Ashley Judd and Dario Franchitti are calling it a marriage. I really thought they were forever.

Paul Tracy coming to Sportsnet; Kyle Busch to Expo

I’ll kick off this week’s Monday Morning Racing Roundup with a little good news about Sportsnet’s coverage of Indy car racing in the spring and summer.

Paul Tracy is going to do colour commentating on Sportsnet’s telecast of the Honda Indy Toronto and maybe other races in the IZOD IndyCar Series as well.

Tracy spilled the news himself during the telecast this weekend of the Rolex 24 at Daytona (more about that below) when he was being interviewed shortly after the race started on Saturday afternoon.

Asked by infield reporter Andrew Marriott if he would have a ride for next May’s Indianapolis 500, Tracy said he would not because he was moving on and would do colour work for Sportsnet. "I’m joining you guys," Tracy said, making specific reference to the race in Toronto.

Sportsnet took over the IndyCar series telecasts for 2013 after ex-series CEO Randy Bernard became disenchanted with TSN for not showing all the races live.

And like they do with Formula One telecasts, TSN just picked up the feed from whichever network had the IndyCar telecasts in the U.S. It gave up trying to "localize" coverage years ago and just went with whoever was in the booth.

With Tracy’s news, it looks like Sportsnet is planning to put some extra effort into covering Indy car racing and I think that’s terrific.

They couldn’t have picked a better talent than Tracy, either. He’s got a wickedly quick wit and an encyclopedia-like mind when it comes to strengths and weaknesses of all the drivers. And he knows the history of the sport.

Good stuff. Now we’ll await news of the play-by-play announcer (Brian Williams, perhaps?) and the pit reporter (I have an idea who that might be, too).

Here’s some other great news. You know how I (and others) reported recently that Michael Waltrip would be a guest of the Canadian Motorsports Expo on Sat., Feb. 9? Well, on Sun, Feb. 10, the one and only Kyle Busch will fly in to make an appearance that will include an autograph and question-and-answer session.

Busch is no stranger when it comes to racing in Canada, coming north several times over the years to compete at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal and at Delaware Speedway just outside of London.

The seventh annual Expo will be held at The International Centre, adjacent to Pearson International Airport, and will go from Friday night, Feb. 8^th, through the Sunday afternoon.

For complete details of Waltrip and Busch’s appearances, as well as just about everything else the Expo has to offer, go to the show’s website at CanadianMotorsportsExpo.com

Talking about NASCAR, I’ve been thinking of the big social news of the off-season and that’s the romance involving Danica Patrick and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

I wasn’t going to say anything about it but now I can’t resist.

While pondering the ramifications of this little liaison, I was reminded of a column that was written several years ago by Dave Argabright in National Speed Sport News. In it, Argabright wondered about what would have happened if Patrick had taken a swing at Ryan Briscoe after he put her out of the 2008 Indianapolis 500? If she hit him and he hit her back, Argabright argued, he’d be a bully. If he sat there and took it, he’d be a milquetoast. (She was headed off by security before there was any confrontation.)

So I’m thinking that she is now going to drive a full season in the Sprint Cup series and what happens if she pushes someone a la Jeff Gordon, or there’s a bench-clearing brawl as happened late last season between Gordon and Clint Bowyer’s pit crews?

I’m thinking that not only has she got a boyfriend, she’s got herself a bodyguard. She’s got somebody riding shotgun for her.

Because as much as they say that each of them is on their own when they’re racing, I think Stenhouse will protect her, which is only natural.

This will become a story before the season is over. You watch.

The ISMA supermodifieds will be racing at Sunset Speedway south of Barrie on Sunday, Aug. 18. The supers will run Delaware Speedway near London on Friday and Saturday nights and stop in at Sunset on the way home.

2012 champion Mike Lichty of Kitchener and steady campaigner Mark Sammut of London will be among those entered. Ex-NASCAR star Johnny Benson Jr. will also be there.

The Sunset website has a photo of the No. 70 super of Gary Morton of Stouffville. He only drives one race a year now – the Oswego Classic. The rest of the time he has Brampton’s Dave McKnight in the car. So will it be McKnight, or Morton? We’ll find out Aug. 18.

I know endurance racing is a team sport, and particularly so when a race is 24 hours long, but I think it’s too bad that Scott Pruett, who tied Hurley Haywood’s record of five Rolex 24 at Daytona victories at the weekend, wasn’t driving when the Chip Ganassi-owned car got the checkered flag Sunday afternoon.

And who, pray tell, was driving? We know it wasn’t Pruett, and I can tell you it wasn’t his regular partner, Memo Rojas, either. No, it was Juan Pablo Montoya, doing a one-off. and I really wonder how Pruett felt about it.

Oh, he had the requisite smile pasted on his face in Winner’s Circle, and he said all the right things, but I suggest he was disappointed and angry. As well he should be.

Of course, Ganassi probably wanted Montoya to win something because he can’t win anything in NASCAR, despite having great equipment provided by Ganassi.

In fact, maybe that was the deal. Ganassi gave him something to feel good about because sometime this season, he plans to give Juan Pablo the old pink slip if his NASCAR performances don't improve substantially.

But Ganassi still owed something to Pruett for serving him so well over the years.

Wheels.ca’s Gary Grant, and photographer John Larsen, were in Daytona for the Rolex and did a great job Tweeting, Facebooking and posting to wheels.ca’s rolling blog all weekend.

But in case you missed their reporting, and didn’t see any of the race on Speed Channel, click here for full results. And click here for the results of the Continental Tire race that was held on Friday.

Finally, three-time F1 world champion Sebastien Vettel was awarded the Mario Andretti Trophy as the Speed Performer of the Year on last night’s edition of Speed Center.

NASCAR champion Brad Keselowski finished second in the voting and Kyle Larson, an open-wheel short-track standout, was third.

IndyCar still doesn't get it, Pruett and Patrick news

NASCAR knows it’s in the sports entertainment business and acts accordingly. Formula One, not so much but it doesn’t matter because the fans are happy.

IndyCar has suffered from an identity crisis forever. Once the playground of cigar smokin’, beer-drinkin’, two-fisted, dirt-track cowboys, it became a wannabe F1 (the CART years) with all the arrogance that went with that, and then a kind of open-wheel anti-NASCAR, where everyone was just down-home friendly.

These days, it’s kind of flailing around. It had a fan-friendly CEO in Randy Bernard but the owners and some of the sponsors didn’t like him so off with his head. This week, it released a whole bunch of rules, regulations and procedural changes that don’t really mean anything and the one rule that could have been changed if they cared anything about the fans wasn’t.

I’m talking about the insane rule that penalizes the driver for something over which he or she has absolutely no control. Still in effect for the 2013 season is the regulation that stipulates a driver will be penalized 10 grid positions for an unauthorized engine change.

So let’s say I go to the Honda Indy Toronto in July and Oakville’s own James Hinchcliffe wins the pole position. There is joy in the land. But wait, after qualifying, it’s discovered that the engine in Hinchcliffe’s car has to come out and another one put in because the engine builder screwed up. So naturally, because this is all James’s fault, he will start the race from 10^th place instead of from first.

Is that stupid, or what?

If James went out during practice and spun  because he was going too fast before his tires were warmed up, or something similar, then throw the book at him, I say.

But how can any racing series apply such a draconian penalty for something that, to repeat, the driver has no control over?

It’s the fans who are cheated when that happens. Which shows that the people who run IndyCar still don’t get it.

Don’t forget the Rolex 24 at Daytona this weekend. It’s on Speed TV beginning at 3 Saturday till 11 and then from 9 a.m. Sunday till 4. And Wheels’s own Gary Grant will be there, along with photographer John Larsen, and will be covering all the Canadians in the big race (as well as in the Continental Tire race on Friday) on a live blog at wheels.ca. Don't miss it!

Meantime, Scott Pruett, driving a Target Chip Ganassi Racing BMW/Riley Daytona Prototype, will start from pole Saturday after turning a lap Thursday of 1:40.553 (127.455 mph). It marks the third time Pruett has started from pole at Daytona and if he wins, he will be tied with Hurley Haywood for most wins with five. Scott Dixon made it an all-Ganassi front row with a lap of 1:40.646 (127.337 mph). Nick Tandy was the fastest GT class qualifier with a time of  1:47.631 (119.074 mph) in a Porsche GT3.

Social note: Sprint Cup rookies Danica Patrick and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. are dating. Now, back to our regularly scheduled column.

I went out for brunch this week with my good friends Bill Brack, the champion racing driver, and Gerald Donaldson, the champion auto racing writer, and in the course of the conversation, Gerry pointed out that the words "race car" make up a palindrome: they say the same thing frontwards and backwards.

I just thought I’d pass that on.

Oh, and Gerry says there are now "embedded journalists" in F1, which means friendly, supportive journalists are allowed into a team's inner circle and guys who actually ask questions aren't.

Congratulations to Charlie Johnstone, long-time general manager of the Honda Indy. He’s been promoted to president of the Honda Indy. There will be two feature races for the Indy cars at this year’s Honda in July, with the first on Saturday featuring a standing start while the second one on Sunday will be a rolling start. (I still think my suggestion of going clockwise Saturday and counter-clockwise Sunday is better, but what do I know?)

The races will be on Sportsnet in Canada and the cable channel NBC Sports Network in the U.S. ABC used to include Toronto in the four- or five races it carries each year but not this year, which is too bad because it was great PR for our city.

The North American rally season opens this weekend in Michigan and the Can-Jam Motorsports Rally Team with Crazy Leo Urlichich driving and Carl Williamson co-driving is entered. Urlichich and Williamson plan to compete in all Rally America and Canadian Rally Championship events in 2013. More than 40 teams are entered in the Michigan rally, so the boys have their work cut out for them.

Have Bus Racing Tours will be at the Canadian Motorsports Expo Feb. 8 to 10 at The International Centre in Mississauga. They sent out a note the other day that there are (or were) 31 days till the Daytona 500 but only 25 days until they leave Toronto for Florida with a busload of NASCAR fans heading for the big race. Their whole 2013 schedule is at their website. Click here.

The Bruce Peninsula and Georgian Bay will be the location and backdrop of the first Concourse d’Elegance to be held in Canada. Planned for Sept. 14, the Cobble Beach Concours d’Elegance will celebrate the world’s finest cars and join such esteemed locales as Lake Como, Italy, and Monterey, Calif., in presenting a red carpet automobile event. Proceeds will go toward funding a helipad at Sunnybrook Hospital in midtown Toronto. For more information and to purchase tickets (which start at $25 and go up to $1,100), click here.

It’s official. Montreal’s Alex Tagliani will return to Barracuda Racing (Brian Herta, owner) for the 2013 IndyCar season. Todd Malloy, son of Wheels contributor Gerry Malloy, is chief engineer.

Jarrett Andretti, son of John, grandson of Aldo, second cousin of Michael, third counsin of Marco and grandnephew of Mario, is continuing his development as a driver the way his daddy did it. Unlike Michael, who was a formula car driver from the start, John Andretti learned his trade in sprints and midgets before landing in CART and then NASCAR. Jarrett, who was the Oswego Speedway rookie-of-the-year in the supermodified division last year, will continue in super one-offs this season and also plans to run as many sprint car and midget car races as he can.

Never say never. Remember that offer by Roger Penske to Tony Stewart to race in the Indianapolis 500 that Stewart rejected? Well, it turns out the door was not completely closed, as Stewart revealed this week to journalists attending the annual NASCAR media tour in Charlotte, N.C. Said Tony:

"I talked to Roger and I actually had dinner with him in Indianapolis after the IMIS Trade Show reception. He didn’t necessarily back me into a corner, but he made me a generous offer and I made him a counter off that is an open-ended invitation. So even though we didn’t accept this year, maybe some year down the road we might be able to accept that offer. He never said no, so as far as I’m concerned we have an open invitation to run with him."

I, for one, would be very excited to see that happen.

Now, even the managers pay to play in Formula One

The European economy is in the ditch these days and it explains much of what has been going on in Formula One.

The situation is so critical that for the first time in the history of the sport, management positions appear to have been purchased.

At least one, anyway.

I’ve heard of pay drivers before but now we have pay managers.

Let me explain – but in order.

Timo Glock, who’s been a paid driver for Marussia (and I have no idea why, by the way), got the boot this weekend because the team needs a pay driver to partner its other pay driver, somebody named Max Chilton, a British driver who’s never finished higher than fourth in any professional series he’s been in.

Caterham, meantime, still has a seat open for a pay driver beside the pay driver they already have, Charles Pic, whose main claim to fame (besides finishing 21^st in points in F1 last season) is that he finished fourth in GP2 the year before Max Chilton did, – which suggests to me that if you want to get into F1 these days, you must first finish fourth in GP2.

But I digress.

Force India is in serious trouble and you wonder whether driver Paul di Resta will wake up one of these days and find himself in the same boat as Timo Glock – or out of the boat, as it were.

Force India majority owner Vijay Mallya (Bernie Ecclestone is believed to hold the mortgage . . .) is having a terrible time keeping his Kingfisher Airlines afloat (it might go bankrupt later this week) and the future does not look good for the race team, as a result.

Force India at one time was Eddie Jordan’s team. He got out while the going was good. Jordan was purchased by Canada’s Midland Group (headed by land developer Alex Shnaider of Toronto) but then sold to the Spyker car company. When Spyker couldn’t make a go of it, Ecclestone brokered the deal that transferred title to Mallya.

Mallya fell into financial difficulty previously but was bailed out by Sahara India Pariwar, an Indian company involved in sports promotion. Sahara paid Mallya $100 million US in 2011 in return for a tad more than 40 per cent of Force India. Hmmm. Wonder what the return’s been on that investment.

Moving right along, Williams has two pay drivers working for it, Pastor Maldonado and Valtteri Bottas. They used to have pay driver Bruno Senna but Bottas has the means to pay more so away went Senna.

And Esteban Gutierrez, who will partner Nico Hulkenberg at Sauber this season, is also a pay driver, although his third-place finish in GP2 in 2012 is an improvement on the previous fourth-place finishes of Pic and Chilton.

So when the 2013 season gets under way, there will be eight drivers out of 22 paying for the privilege of competing. And if di Resta gets deep-sixed to make way for a guy with money, there will be at least one more.

But pay drivers have always been around F1 – and other forms of racing – so it’s really not that out of the ordinary (although having more than a third of the field writing cheques is kind of disturbing).

What’s amazing today, though, is that the ability to pay has now moved into F1's management ranks.

At some point recently, the investment company Aabar, based in Abu Dhabi, which owned 40 per cent of the Mercedes F1 team, wanted to vamoose. Parent company Daimler agreed to buy Aabar’s holdings (the two companies have other business dealings together, including an interest in the Tesla electric car company) and promptly offered 30 per cent of that total toWilliams executive director Toto Wolff.

Wolff said, "I’m in, as long as you let me run the team (or words to that effect)," so Dailner agreed and the deal was done. Better Wolff should be the executive director of a team that might win the world championship in 2013 than do the same job with a team that won’t.

Daimler then unloaded the remaining 10 per cent onto Mercedes F1 team executive chairman Niki Lauda.

While Wolff left Williams to run Mercedes, Lauda was already there (in an undefined roll, albeit with a fancy title). Is it possible that Niki agreed to buy into the team in order to keep his job?

I mean, if he refused, was there somebody standing by ready and willing to ante up in order to be executive chairman of an F1 team?

Who knows? And maybe this sort of thing happens all the time and is perfectly normal.

But I have a feeling that new ground has been broken here and no longer are the drivers the only ones in F1 who are ponying up.

Michael Waltrip coming to Canadian Motorsports Expo

 Auto racing headline of the week:

“McLaren pleased with Perez so far”

Sergio dropped into the McLaren factory the other day to say hello and the brass thought this was really swell.

Such is the state of motorsport journalism in the dead of winter.

Here, however, is some real information.

Two-time Daytona 500 champion Michael Waltrip is coming to Toronto.

Well, not exactly Toronto. Mississauga is more like it, but you get the drift.

He’ll be appearing at the 7th annual Canadian Motorsports Expo being held Feb. 8-10 at The International Centre out by Pearson International.

The veteran NASCAR television personality, team owner and racer (like Sprint Cup champion Brad Keselowski, he’s also active on Twitter — @mw55) will appear at the Expo on Sat. afternoon, Feb. 9, to sign autographs and take part in a question-and-answer session with fans.

Waltrip’s appearance is in keeping with the Expo’s practice of bringing major racing stars to Toronto. Matt Kenseth, Brad Keselowski and Dario Franchitti are some of the others who have appeared.

According to Expo sponsor Inside Track Motorsports News, Waltrip has driven in 770 Sprint Cup races over 28 years. Most of the time these days, however, he’s busy directing staff in the preparation and entering of cars in NASCAR Sprint Cup races for drivers Martin Truex Jr., Clint Bowyer and Mark Martin.

Except when it comes to Daytona. Waltrip will again try for his third Daytona 500 victory this year, driving a Toyota in a one-off for Swan Racing. He’ll have Tony Eury Jr. as his crew chief for the 500. And to warm up for the big stock cars, he’ll be driving in the Rolex 24 sports-car race at Daytona next weekend.

Said Waltrip, in a release: “With the racing season less than a month away, it’s a very busy and exciting time. MWR (Michael Waltrip Racing) had its most successful season ever, in 2012, and we’re really looking forward to 2013.

"Add into the mix that I’ll be racing in the Rolex 24 and the Daytona 500, and I suspect I’ll have plenty to talk about with the fans at the Canadian Motorsports Expo. I look forward to meeting as many of them as possible and signing a lot of autographs.”

Said Expo co-promoter Rob Morton, also in a release: “In addition to being a two-time winner of the Daytona 500, Michael Waltrip is one of the most popular and recognizable personalities in all of racing. He’s involved in all aspects of the sport, which gives him a unique perspective. We’re very excited that he’s coming to the CME.”

We’ll pass on more information about the Expo as it becomes available. It’s always a great show.

..

Robert Kubica, who came within an eyelash of losing his life in that terrible rally crash in 2011, is soon going to test a German Touring Car Series Mercedes.

But before getting too excited about this, remember that it’s only a test. He’s going to be rally racing again this season and several of the European Rally Championship dates he’ll be doing are on the same weekends as DTM races.

The Danica Patrick Show - all the time

If there was ever any doubt that Danica Patrick would dominate the runup to this year's Daytona 500, well -- guess again.

 

In final testing at the weekend before next Saturday's Busch Clash -- er, Sprint Unlimited at Daytona pre-pole-qualifying race -- Patrick was third

fastest in the morning session but not in the top three in the afternoon and yet the headlines on all the stories I've seen said things like, "Patrick quick at Daytona," and "Danica showing early speed."

 

Get used to it, all you Danica haters out there. All eyes will be on her as she embarks on her first Sprint Cup season in NASCAR. And come Daytona 500 time, the broadcast team will remind you again and again how she's doing, whether she's first or last.

 

And it's all about marketing, remember. NASCAR knows it has you and all the other auto racing fans out there. They are going after the casual auto racing fan and even the non-auto racing fan and while the name Trevor Bayne doesn't resonate much anywhere, the name Danica Patrick does and that's why everybody involved in the promotion of NASCAR is told to focus on her.

 

Having said that, the fact that she was third fastest in any session is not bad. She won't win this season, probably, but she'll certainly be competitive.

 

The "new" Cup cars will be on display in that Unlimited race for the first time, by the way. These are the new generation "Car of Tomorrow" cars that actually look a little bit like the cars you find in GM. Ford and Toyota showrooms.

 

NASCAR's first era was dominated by Detroit iron and where the slogan "Win on Sunday, sell on Monday," meant something. Then the sport's biggest star, Dale Earnhardt, was killed in a crash at Daytona and NASCAR opted for a generic car that was super safe to avoid further catasrophies. Because the fans couldn't tell the cars apart, the marketing of the drivers kept NASCAR on top but didn't do a lot for the manufacturers.

 

Now the pendulum is starting to swing back. 

 

Kevin Swindell, son of sprint car champion Sammy Swindell, is a very talented racing driver but he hasn't had the success in other racing series that he's had at the annual Chili Bowl, held indoors each January in Tulsa, Okla.

 

Swindell has won sprint car races, midget races and stock car races. But he hasn't been able to string anything together.

 

The Chili Bowl, though, is a different kettle of fish. Saturday night, Kevin won his fourth consecutive Chili Bowl and his dad finished second. Brad Sweet was third.

 

Like most successful short-track racers, Kevin Swindell is aiming for a career in NASCAR. If he can transfer that obvious talent to the bigger, heavier stockers, he'll have a great career ahead of him.

 

It's a shame that Kevin Swindell hasn't even thought about Indy cars. And that the generation before him - his father, Steve Kinser, Jac Haudenschild, those guys - was totally ignored. You know, if Jeff Gordon, sprint car driver, hadn't been snubbed by CART and had spent his wonderful career in Indy cars, that series wouldn't be in the mess it is today.

 

Although the cheerleaders for the series continue to suggest that when the season opens in March in St. Petersburg, Fla., 24-26 cars will be on the grid, the feeling here in the media centre in Detroit is that 22 to 24 is more likely.

 

I say 20-22. We'll see who's right.

 

The speed sport is well represented at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this year.

 

Media days Monday and Tuesday precede the public show that opens next Saturday. Attendees will see a Red Bull F1 car at the Infiniti display, Dario Franchitti's Indy 500-winning car at Honda, a Ferrari at - well - Ferrari and on and on.

 

Don't forget to go to wheels.ca for everything you would ever want to know about the Detroit show - we have 14 people here Tweeting, blogging, Facebooking, etc.

IndyCar team manager Phil LePan of Toronto dies

Sad news today.

Philip Buchan LePan of Toronto, better known to his many friends and admirers in the world of motorsport as Phil LePan, has died. A memorial service and interment is planned for Sat., Feb. 16 at 2 p.m., at the Mount Pleasant Cemetery Visitation Centre.

Racer Scott Maxwell emailed me the news earlier this week and said that “before moving on to bigger and better things, Phil was my team manager in Formula 2000 way back in 1989-90. Not only was he a great crew chief but he was one of the kindest and classiest people in motorsports.”

In a tribute published on the Speed Channel’s website, writer Marshall Pruett said Phil had worked for several Indy car teams after starting his big-league career with Team Lotus in Formula One.

He was team manager for Player’s/Forsythe Racing in 2003 when Paul Tracy won his championship and also was team leader with Kraco Racing, Team Green in 1995 when Jacques Villeneuve won the Indianapolis 500 and the CART championship and this past season with Dale Coyne Racing (Justin Wilson up).

Pruett quoted Tracy thusly:

“His whole life was about racing. That’s what he lived for. As a team manager and a guy I worked with for seven years . . . he wasn’t a guy who pushed himself out to the spotlight as the star team manager or crew chief. Some people try to become a bit of a personality with a position like that . . . but he wasn’t that guy. If you wanted to find Phil, he was in the garage with the mechanics and I liked that about him.”

Said another Canadian, Alex Tagliani, also to Pruett: “Phil was always one speed, and that was very good for us. He was someone that always was composed and kept things in perspective.”

Phil LePan leaves his wife and two sons.

Auto show season is upon us and Toronto Star Wheels and wheels.ca are gearing up to bring you complete coverage of all of them.

The biggie, right off the button, is the North American International Auto Show at Detroit, which opens to the public next weekend but has media preview days scheduled for this Monday and Tuesday.

We will be there, in force, to keep you fully informed about everything happening at that show.

Starting Sunday evening, wheels.ca’s home page will be humming with live blog files from writers Jim Kenzie and Jil McIntosh on the unveiling by General Motors of the 2014 C7 Corvette. Former Wheels editor Mark Richardson will report on what’s up with Nissan and Peter Gorrie will be dining with Toyota Canada executives and reporting on what they have to say.

I’ll be in Detroit with photographer Steve Russell and writer Brian Early to cover the world premiere of the all-new CLA-Class Mercedes-Benz at a special reception .

Early will blog and I will kick off two days of video reporting, with the help of Russell.

Monday, we’ll be back on the air early in the day with the 7:15 a.m. announcement of the North American Car and Truck of the Year. For the rest of Monday and on Tuesday till early afternoon, writers Kathy Renwald, Tim Miller, Steve Bond, Anne-Marie Marais, Gary Grant and Lesley Wimbush will cover all of the manufacturers’ unveilings on Twitter and Facebook as well as on our rolling blog at wheels.ca.

Yes, we’re promising blanket coverage but for an auto show as important as Detroit, we think our readers deserve nothing less.

And of course, we’ll wrap up the whole show — news, information, photographs and analysis — in next weekend’s issue of Wheels.

I started this piece by using the words “auto show season,” and that’s because the Montreal auto show is opening next week and correspondent Costa Mouzouris will be there to report. The Chicago show opens Feb. 9 and Richardson will be there and, of course, the Canadian International AutoShow here in Toronto will kick off on Feb. 15 and if you think our Detroit coverage is thorough, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Please join us at wheels.ca and Wheels for the Detroit auto show and stay with us through the Toronto show for the most comprehensive coverage you’ll find anywhere.

The Pro Mazda Series (nee Star Mazda) will run six of its 16 scheduled races this season in Canada. 

The first two will be held at the Honda Indy Toronto July 13 and 14 and then there will be two run the very next weekend as part of the American Le Mans Series weekend at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (nee Mosport).  

The final two will be part of the traditional Trois-Rivieres race weekend Aug. 10 and 11.

The season will open at the Circuit of the Americas in March as part of the Grand Am Rolex weekend there and wind up in Houston as part of the IndyCar meeting in October.

Finally, the Mopar Canadian Superbike Championship will kick off June 7-9 at Shannonville Motorsport Park near Belleville. July 5-7 will see the riders doing battle at Autodrome St-Eustache in Quebec and then they'll tow to Atlantic Motorsport Park near Shubenacadie in Nova Scotia July 26-28.

Two races will be held at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park Aug. 9 to 11 and the season will wrap up Aug. 23-25 at Le Circuit-Mont Tremblant in the Quebec Laurentians.

Why is F1 still planning to race at Bahrain in 2013?

I have been A.W.O.L. this week and much of last, and I apologize. This thing I have called a job keeps getting in the way.

Lots to talk about, so here goes.

Red Bull racing director Helmut Marko says Fernando Alonso was too “political” in 2012 and that’s why he lost the title by three points to Sebastian Vettel.

I suggest having a Lotus nearly land on his head might have had more to do with it.

Marko, of course, is a master politician who took a shot at Mark Webber the day before he slandered Alonso.

Marko learned his lessons well from Flavio Briatore, who was famous for hiring the drivers he managed after first launching psychological warfare against the guys he already had.

There is no apparent connection between Marko and Nico Hulkenberg, his current choice to partner Vettel in 2014, but you can bet there’s a link somewhere.

The current F1 is a wasp’s nest of conflicts-of-interest that likely couldn’t happen in most other professional sports. We live with it, though, because there isn’t an alternative.

Talking of F1, the auto racing websites and specialty periodicals are full of the usual non-stories you find at this time of year (“Bernie will step down from F1 post if thrown in jail” – ya think?) when there is a very serious story that could be reported.

And that story is: Why is F1 still planning to race in Bahrain in 2013?

If you Google “Bahrain Grand Prix” and “news,” the first 10 entries are all dated April 2012 when racing and Bahrain were last together.

And there’s the rub. Both the New York Times and National Post published op-ed articles in recent weeks about the situation there, which is worse than it was the last time anybody bothered to take a look. Dissent of any kind is not allowed, more protesters have been killed (about 100 at last count) and the jails are full of people who’ve dared to publicly challenge the regime of King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa.

Now, last year, F1 was kind of caught in the middle, in that the schedule was set, the race was on and the violent demonstrations pretty much came out of nowhere. There was great international criticism of F1 and the FIA for going ahead anyway but, as I said, I don’t think they had much choice.

But the 2013 race? Bernie and Jean Todt and the rest of them have had a year to figure out a way to not go there and they haven’t done a thing. They sat on their hands and they should be ashamed.

F1 was decisive in the 1980s and refused to race in South Africa after 1985 because of apartheid. The much-maligned Jean-Marie Balestre, who was president of the FIA at the time, made that decision.

Where is the leadership today? Are not Ecclestone and Todt aware of what’s happening in Bahrain? And if not, why not?

The Bahrain Grand Prix will be a much bigger story this year than it was last and the people who run F1 are courting disaster by still planning to go ahead.

Moving right along, I have a friend in the U.S. who made his living managing a string of 30 or so small-town radio stations throughout the Midwest. He did that for about 15 years. No, he did not have a “job for life,” but he felt pretty comfortable in his position.

One day, the president of the company called and said he’d sold the stations to Gannett. My friend knew instantly that he was out of a job. The new owners would send in their own people to do things their way.

Which is why I, along with many others, was worried about the future of sports car racing in North America when it was announced late last year that the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series and the American Le Mans Series would “merge” in 2014. Specifics about the class structures would be announced in January.

It turned out it wasn’t really a merger. It turned out the Grand Am Rolex Series, which is owned by NASCAR, had purchased the ALMS and I was concerned because of what happened to my friend: the new owners would want to do things their way.

I needn’t have worried. With the exception of the elimination of the poorly populated P1 class, everything else is status quo (GT classes in both series will continue in the new Grand Am, for instance) and I am very optimistic about the future.

NASCAR did not get to be the Goliath it is today by being stupid. I am confident the people in charge will do a good job with sports-car racing.

Short Takes:

— I’ll always think of it as the Busch Clash but that non-points, pre-Daytona 500 pole-winners-only invitational that went on to become the Budweiser Shootout will now be known as The Sprint Unlimited at Daytona. NASCAR calls it “the fans’ race.” Gee, I always thought they all were. . . .

— Carroll Shelby, Skip Barber, Bobby Rahal, Andy Porterfield and Bill Noble are the latest to be named to the SCCA’s Hall of Fame. . . .

—   A.J. Allmendinger and Regan Smith will split the driving chores at Phoenix Racing this Sprint Cup season. . . .

—   The Ontario Topless Sprints series, which was soft-launched a year or so ago, has an aggressive 2013 planned with five stand-alone events and a number of co-sanctioned races planned. The non-winged sprinters will start the season June 15 at the Chatham-area South Buxton Speedway. . . .

—   This in from Adam Saal, who handles PR for some of the drivers assigned to Woodbridge-based AIM Autosport:

“The No. 69 AIM Autosport Team FXDD and No. 61 R.Ferri AIM Motorsport Racing with Ferrari F458s wrapped up their first official event as a two-car GRAND-AM Rolex Sports Car Series team with positive results this past weekend at the Roar Before the Rolex 24 At Daytona test. The No. 69 AIM/FXDD Ferrari F458 and drivers Emil Assentato, Anthony Lazzaro, Nick Longhi and Guy Cosmo ended up ninth fastest overall in the GT ranks at the end of the three-day test while the debuting sister No. 61 AIM/R.Ferri Ferrari F458 improved in every session. Full-season No. 61 teammates Jeff Segal and Max Papis will be joined by Ferrari stalwarts Toni Vilander and Giancarlo Fisichella for the season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona later this month.”

Fastest driver at the test was Vancouver’s Michael Valiante, who was behind the wheel of a Daytona Prototype entered by Michael Shank Racing. Scott Maxwell of Toronto was fastest in testing for the Continental Tire support race. . . .

—   Despite rumours to the contrary, Danica Patrick will be front and centre in Go Daddy commercials during this year’s Super Bowl telecast. . . .

—   At least four young Canadian drivers have signed on to compete in the U.S. Formula 2000 Series this year.

Once upon a time, in the 1970s and ‘80s, the world came to Canada to race in memorable series like Formula Atlantic and the Porsche Cup. Except for the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series, there is no national racing series in Canada – particularly a single-seat, open wheel series where these young drivers could hone their skills at home instead of heading for the U.S.

Surely there is someone out there with the skill, drive, ambition and connections to get such a series off the ground again. Guys like  David Deacon and Jack Christie did it before; can they (or someone else) not do it again?