Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Fitzpatrick lands NASCAR Daytona ride

Great news on two Canadian racing fronts today.

Stock car driver J.R. Fitzpatrick of Cambridge has landed a ride for Saturday’s Nationwide Series race at Daytona. He’ll be driving the #27 Baker Curb Racing Ford Mustang in the DRIVE4COPD 300, which will go to the post the day before the Daytona 500.

The 22-year-old runner-up
in the 2010 NASCAR Canadian Tire Series will be the only Canadian in Saturday’s race and will be sponsored by long-time partner Schick Canada as well as Energizer Canada Inc. 

Fitzpatrick, who scored two top-10 Nationwide Series finishes last year while driving for JR Motorsports, is champing at the bit to take on some of NASCAR’s biggest names

 “I can’t think of a better race to start the new season with,” Fitzpatrick said in a release. “Daytona boasts an atmosphere like no other and to be in a race with the opportunity to compete against guys like Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Tony Stewart is fantastic.  I’ve raced at Daytona before, a couple of years ago in the Truck Series, and ran well, leading the most laps in that event before taking fourth.”

That’s a bit of an understatement: he dominated that 2009 Camping World Series race in the later stages and with a little luck could have won it. I can still hear announcer Michael Waltrip shouting out Fitzpatrick’s performance. 

The DRIVE4COPD 300 gets the green flag Saturday at 1:15 p.m. EST. The pre-race show will start at noon on TSN2.

Meantime, retired boat racing star Ted Gryguc of Woodbridge is heading back to the big time.

He’s the mentor and coach of young Florida driver Shaun Torrente (pictured), who will team this year with Swedish driver Jonas Andersson starting at the opening race of the 2011 Formula One World Championship boat series, the Grand Prix of Qatar, on March 4-5.

The 31-year-old Torrente has 31 North American F1 career starts and has won a third of his races and currently sits seventh overall on the all-time winning drivers list.

He’ll be coached by Gryguc, a member of the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame who won various  championships when he was an active driver in the 1980s and ‘90s.

“Ted and I are close and we work well together,” Torrente said in a release.  “I know this is going to be a learning curve for the whole team but it’s challenges like this that make me want to push even harder to reach the success we expect at each event.”

Gryguc (he and Torrente had an F1 boat display at the Canadian Motorsports Expo two years ago) was Canada 's most prominent outboard racer from the late-1980s through his retirement in 1999. He won six Canadian High Point Championships and five Canadian National Championships and was the Mod VP World Champion.

In 1995, Gryguc bought a Formula 1 tunnel boat and captured three Canadian National Championships and three Canadian High Point Championships between 1995 and 1999 before calling it a day.

TV boss: NASCAR races too long

During a panel discussion at last weekend’s Canadian Motorsports Expo, someone asked the audience (it might have been Raceline Radio’s Erik Tomas) if they agreed that NASCAR races are too long and that there are too many of them.

Everybody put their hands up.

They’re in good company. The guy who runs Fox Sports, which will broadcast the first 13 races of the 2011 season, including the Daytona 500, thinks so too.

At least the bit about the races being too long (which means they get boring. Nobody said that but 'too long" is code for "boring").

Fox Sports chairman David Hill said during a media tour in Charlotte yesterday that he believes NASCAR races need to be shortened to fit into a three-hour broadcast window.

Hill said the length of races — many go for four or five hours — is one of the problems that's contributed to NASCAR's sinking television ratings.

"I think the racing is far too long," Hill said. Speaking of the slipping audience, he added: “There is more diversion, more opportunities for stuff than any other time in man's history."

Hill said the ideal for Fox would be a four-hour broadcast window, with 40 minutes of pre-race coverage and 20 minutes of post-race coverage. Asked if he'd push NASCAR to shorten any of its races, Hill didn't miss a beat.

"NASCAR doesn't negotiate," he said.

Maybe they’d better start.

Fox Sports chairman David Hill believes NASCAR races need to be shortened to fit into a three-hour broadcast window.

Hill said Monday night the length of races — many stretch well into a fourth hour — is one of the problems that's contributed to NASCAR's sinking television ratings.

"I think the racing is far too long," Hill said during Charlotte Motor Speedway's annual media tour. "There is more diversion, more opportunities for stuff than any other time in man's history."

Hill said the ideal for Fox would be a four-hour broadcast window, with 40 minutes of pre-race coverage and 20 minutes of post-race coverage. Asked if he'd push NASCAR to shorten any of its races, Hill didn't miss a beat.

"NASCAR doesn't negotiate," he deadpanned.

The 38-race schedule is divided by three networks, and Fox holds the rights to the first 13 events of the season. The network has three years remaining on its deal with NASCAR, a partnership that began in 2001, and Hill said it's too soon to speculate on if the relationship will continue past the current deal.

Personally, Hill said, he'd like to continue airing NASCAR on Fox. But because it's a business decision, the next few seasons will determine how aggressively Fox pursues a new contract.

Hill strongly defended the efforts of NASCAR chairman Brian France to stop the slide in both attendance and ratings.

"I really think they are trying," he said. "I like them all, they are fantastic. They do know they have problems, and they are trying very hard to fix them. It's tough."

Hill said Fox is content with the consistent start times NASCAR instituted last season to simplify the television schedule for viewers. But NASCAR president Mike Helton said during testing last week that the start times needed to be reconsidered because the season is so long.

Any consideration to shifting start times is probably to benefit ESPN, which broadcasts the second half of the season and struggled to hold viewers as the early NFL games came to a close. Hill said Fox wants all its races to air at 1 p.m., and wondered if there wasn't a simple solution for ESPN's woes.

"Why wouldn't you run races on Saturday nights and not against football?" Hill asked.

Also, Hill said Fox would place a heavy emphasis on drivers this season and move away from heavy coverage of the mechanics of racing. He wants NASCAR to place a greater emphasis on winning when it announces its new points structure Wednesday night.

Expo blog: Keselowski’s mid-air thoughts

When NASCAR Sprint Cup driver Ryan Newman said "we all have planes," he couldn’t have been thinking about Brad Keselowski.

Keselowski, the 26-year-old Penske Racing driver from Detroit who doesn’t really look much older than 20, flew into Toronto today (Sunday) for an appearance at the Canadian Motorsports Expo and although he didn’t fly Air Canada (as Indy car star Dario Franchitti did when he arrived Friday night for an Expo date Saturday) he did arrive by special charter.

"No, I don’t own my own plane," Keselowski told me in a brief interview shortly before he went onstage to chat with, and sign autographs for, about 500 people in Hall 1 of the International Centre.

"I was flown up. The pilots aren’t here (at the Expo); they’re at the plane making sure there isn’t ice on it."

This season – which starts in about a month with NASCAR’s most famous race, the Daytona 500 – Keselowski will drive the No. 2 Miller Lite Dodge Charger for Penske, a ride previously occupied by his teammate, Kurt Busch, who will race under the No. 22 Shell/Penzoil banner.

He finished January’s NASCAR test sessions at Daytona on Saturday with the fastest time set all month – 198.605 miles an hour. He hit it while running in a two-car draft with teammate Busch, whose car was a tad slower at 198.579.

Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, Joey Logano, Brian Vickers, Kasey Kahne, A.J. Allmendinger and Carl Edwards were also fast.

That last name – Edwards – led up to my next question for Keselowski: what’s going through you’re mind as you’re flying through the air at Atlanta Motor Speedway, as happened last year, as the result of being nudged by Edwards as payback for something or other.

"I was thinking, ‘I just hope I don’t go into the grandstands,’ " he said. "I knew right away that that could happen and I didn’t want to hurt anybody.

What about hurting yourself?

"Until the wreck is over, you rarely think about your personal safety. You’re thinking, ‘how can I save this race car and do the least amount of damage to it?"

As far as his apparently ongoing feud with Edwards is concerned, Keselowski was non-commital: "I have a lot of time left in this sport," he said, "and things have a way of working themselves out."

Keselowski won the 2010 Nationwide Series Championship but NASCAR has now decreed – in an attempt to keep Sprint Cup drivers from hogging the limelight in the lesser series – that all NASCAR licensed drivers must declare,  before the season starts, the series in which they'll run for points.

Translation: as a Sprint Cup star, Keselowski won’t be able to score points in the Nationwide series and won’t be able to defend his championship.

"There nothing I can really do about that," said Keselowski, who started thinking about being a race driver when he was "about 1."  

"I can’t file a protest, or anything, so it kinda is what it is at this point. But we have some unfinished business; we can still run for the owner’s championship – we’re going to do that and see if we can get that for Roger.

"I hope we can live up to all the commitments that we had before, with sponsors and so forth. We certainly plan to run all the races. I’d love to be able to defend it (his title) but we’ll move on and focus on winning on the Cup side."

Keselowski said it’s a pleasure to be part of the Penske organization and considers his relationship with "the Captain" to be a good, personal one.

"I don’t know why, but he gets a stigma or something like he gives all his drivers ‘the speech.’ That doesn’t happen. If you didn’t have the skills or the lifestyle of which he approves to begin with, then you wouldn’t work there."

Having said that, Keselowski admitted that he was delighted to be part of the Penske empire.

"You know, I’m from Detroit and Roger obviously has his huge operation out of there so there’s a level of pride I have of being associated with him just from that standpoint.

"But then you look back at the history of excellence there and that makes it even more gratifying."

As he left the interview room to begin his public session, Keselowski was introduced to a family of four – the parents and two little boys – and he was just charming. His ability to relate to children will serve him in good stead as NASCAR evolves and will give him a leg up on other Cup drivers, some of whom are frequently less than cooperative when asked to interact with fans or media.

And his public performance that followed was similarly delightful. The fans were forthright with their questions, talking to him as if he were their friend or neighbour, and his cheerful demeanor indicated he was enjoying the session as much as they were.

Here are some of the questions he was asked, and the replies:

How busy are you?

"I do 73 races a year plus sponsor appearances."

Who’s your favourite drafting partner?

"The one you’re fastest with."

How do you like driving the Dodge?

"This is a funny story. My grandfather (John) went to Detroit in the 1920s, early 30s, to work in the auto industry. He wanted to get into racing – in this thing called NASCAR. He went to a dealership to buy a car and he couldn’t get a car from Ford so he went across the street and bought a Chrysler. Ever since, my family (father Bob, uncle Ron, brother Brian) have raced Chrysler products. So it’s great to be back with Dodge and Mopar."

How hard was it for you to get to where you are?

"To make it as a race car driver is like trying to make it as a band. There are so many talented drivers out there. My brother is trying to get to the top in car racing and it hasn’t happened for him yet."

One question included a sentence about Canadian speedways and Keselowski mentioned that he’d travelled to Delaware Speedway near London when his father, Bob, was racing. (In fact, it was while he was watching his father race that he became convinced he could become a race driver.)

Then he said this:

"I have a real appreciation for the local racer, who does all he can to get by. He probably has another job and he’s trying to raise a family as well. There’s quite a bit of sacrifice that we all make for the love of the sport. It’s great to see those folks out there, racing."

Expo blog: Jason White, A & W and other news

There was lots of news Saturday at the Canadian Motorsports Expo.

From the frivolous – did you know that Dario Franchitti has a Target department stores employee discount card? – to the serious – Jason White has a whole new deal in the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series – it was a busy day.

Here is more of the serious news.

– For the first time in years, a young, talented and fast Canadian Formua Ford driver will have his or her way paid to Britain next fall to compete in the annual Formula Ford Festival that is held each October at the famous Brands Hatch circuit. Please see post below for details.

– Gianmarco Raimondo of St. Catharines, who raced in the Formula 3 Italia series in 2010, is switching to the F3 Euro Series this year. Lewis Hamilton, Paul di Resta, Nico Rosberg and Adrian Sutil are just some of the F1 drivers who have passed through the Euro Series so Raimondo will have his work cut out for him.

– Ryan Coniam of Burlington, son of Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame inductee Warren Coniam, has purchased a supermodified racing car from former Winston Cup team manager and crew chief, Clyde Booth, and plans to run some ISMA races with it this summer. The car is being prepared by Brad Lichte and his racer son Mike in their Cambridge shops.

(Incidentally, Warren Coniam shook hands Saturday with Expo guest Max Papis. When "Mad Max" first landed a NASCAR ride, his crew chief was none other than Ryan Coniam.)

– Jason White, the stock car racer from Sun Valley, B.C., will continue to represent A & W on the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series championship trail but has upped his game.

Instead of running his own car, White will now pilot the No. 21 A & W Dodge Challenger that will be prepared by 2010 NASCAR Canada champion D.J. Kennington and his father Doug. Team manager and race day Crew Chief will be former series competitor Derek Lynch.

– I reported in a post that I published just before the recent Chili Bowl Midget Nationals that for the first time in several years, Glenn Styres wasn’t entered. Styres owns Ohsweken Speedway near Brantford and is the defending Southern Ontario Sprints champion.

Well, it turns out that while Styres wasn’t there, two of his cars were. Jerry Coons Jr. drove one and finished 11^th in the feature race, which was won by Kevin Swindell. The other Styres car was raced by J.J. Yeley but was eliminated earlier in the week leading up to the feature.

And speaking of Ohsweken, the annual visit by the World of Outlaws sprint cars will be a one-night-only show this year – on Wednesday, July 27^th. When the Outlaws visited Ohsweken for the first time, the place was sold out. Then, owner/promoter Styres went to two-night shows and there were empty seats both nights. So it’s back to one-night-only in 2011 – but there’s a rain date on the 28^th just in case things are too damp to run the night before.

Get your tickets early, because they’ll go fast now.

– Franchitti was the featured guest on Saturday and met the media for a half-hour round-table session in which he said all the usual things about how the IndyCar Series had "turned the corner" and the "future looks bright" and etc. The session brightened up considerably, however, when he spoke of how comfortable he was when he raced in Toronto and how delighted he was to get the news that his team’s primary sponsor, Target department stores, was moving into Canada.

"I was watching CNBC and I heard that and I said, "Yessss," Franchitti said. "You guys are going to love shopping at Target," he joked (unaware, apparently, that Canadians – in droves – drive to Niagara Falls, N.Y., and Buffalo, to shop at their stores there).

"In fact, I have a Target employee discount card, which is a great thing to have," he said. "I get one and my housekeeper gets one and she’s really happy about it."

Franchitti noted that he’s raced Target-sponsored cars in Canada before but "they didn’t have a presence here and now they will, and that’s really cool."

Franchitti also noted that the series has to get the "next generation" into cars – he specifically mentioned James Hinchcliffe or Oakville as a prime candidate for a quality seat – and that TV coverage needs an overhaul, noting that current camera angles don’t properly illustrate how fast the cars are actually travelling when racing.

The Expo winds up today with a visit from NASCAR Sprint Cup star Brad Keselowski, who flies into Toronto boasting the fastest speed set during January testing at the newly paved Daytona International Speedway.

Expo blog: FF Festival driver search launched

For the first time in years, a young, talented and fast Canadian Formua Ford driver will have his or her way paid to Britain next fall to compete in the annual Formula Ford Festival that is held each October at the famous Brands Hatch circuit.

A project initiated by Brian Graham Racing Sports and Entertainment, in partnership with Grote Industries (manufacturers of vehicle lighting and safety systems), the aim is to give one Canadian racer a chance to compete against the best Formula Ford drivers in the world.

At a news conference Saturday, Graham and his associates issued a challenge to Canadian corporations to get behind the project and, if funding is sufficient, a second driver will also get to go.

Graham, whose Formula Ford racing team has fielded entries in recent years for up-and-coming racers like Kyle Marcelli and Conor Daly, said that in the beginning, candidates will be restricted to the two Central Canadian FF sanctioning groups – the Quebec Formula Tour and the Ontario Formula Ford Challenge.

He noted that in addition to giving one or two deserving racers an opportunity to show their stuff at the British Festival (Danica Patrick caught the attention of Bobby Rahal as the result of her performance at the Festival), the prize could prove an incentive for young Canadian karters to pursue formula car competition in Canada rather than going to the U.S. to race in the Star Mazda Series or the Skip Barber Championship.

Graham said five candidates will be short-listed at the end of the Canadian season in September and that, in addition to speed in competition, they will be judged on technical feedback, media competence and how they present themselves overall.

Canadian racing legend Ron Fellows has agreed to serve on the panel to decide the winner, or winners.

At one time, young Canadians – Brian Stewart, Danny Burritt, Luke de Sadaleer and Andrew Bordin, among others – won either one-offs or "seasons in Europe" to prove themselves but a lack of funding and interest saw those programs die off.

Graham has been toying with the idea of reviving such a program for several years and, with the backing of Grote and his business partners, has decided the time is right to launch the project.

Congratulations!

Expo blog: Remembering Don Biederman

The first panel discussion of the Canadian Motorsport Expo's weekend took place Friday night.

Led by veteran track owner and Race Time Radio host Joe Chisholm, a group including legendary Canadian stock car racer Junior Hanley and featuring photographer Dave Franks and three gentlemen closely associated with the late Don Biederman - Bob Sumak, Peter Andeloro and Ross May - discussed the life and career of 'Daytona Don.'

Biederman raced late-model stock cars primarily in Ontario but was enough of a gunslinger that American and Maritime promoters would pay him appearance money to race at their speedways in order to boost their gates.

His most famous victory of many chalked up over the years came in 1977 when he won the Oxford 250 in Oxford, Me., defeating upwards of a half-dozen Winston Cup regulars in the process. As well, he raced in more than 40 NASCAR Grand National events and finished in the top ten on a number of occasions.

A good friend away from the speedway, Biederman was all business at the track because he raced for a living. He passed away in 1999 at the age of 59.

Of the many stories his friends related, two stuck out as illustrations of the type of man and racer Don Biederman was.

Hanley reminisced about a time when he and Biederman were invited Down East to participate in races in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Said Hanley: "Just as I came out of the tunnel in Montreal, my crankshaft let go. Don hooked everything up and towed us all the way to the New Brunswick speedway so we could go racing."

Another time, Biederman was invited to race at a track in Rockville, Ill. After the feature there, he drove all night to get to Cayuga Speedway, south of Hamilton, for a race the next day. Said his friend Andeloro, "Don looked at me and said, 'You know, if I could just get 10 minutes' sleep, I could be tough.' So we told him to go have a sleep and we'd look after things."

It was that kind of dedication that made Biederman great, his friends agreed.

And the difference between then (when Biederman and Hanley raced) and now is that there are more people on a race team today.

Everyone agreed that, these days, there are specialists for tires and specialists for transmissions and specialists for just about everything having to do with the race car. Back then, two or three guys - led by the driver - did it all.

Talking about doing it all, host Chisholm said that when he purchased Sauble Speedway in 1994, one of the first to drop by was Biederman, who told Chisholm that he was going to teach him something.

Whereupon, Biederman went to the back of his truck and took out a broom. He then suggested the best way to prepare a track for racing was to sweep it clean - from the bottom of the track up to the top and from there into a garbage can, rather than the other way around, from top to bottom.

Chisholm said that he and Biederman talked for a couple of hours and by the time their conversation ended, Biederman had swept the track clean all the way from Turn 3 through Turn 4 and he'd done it his way.

One surprise: Hanley suggested that drivers looking to improve their performance on oval tracks might consider attending road-racing school. "I know the ones who've done that have been better afterward," he said.

Dario Franchitti, Ron Fellows and Max Papis will headline Saturday's Expo.

Expo blog: Continental Tire joins CCTC series

Organizers were thrilled with the turnout for the first day of this year's Canadian Motorsports Expo. Despite the weather, the biggest crowd in years attended on the first day.

"This is really something," said Ed Butt, father of Expo founder Glenn Butt. "It's great to see and this thing will just get bigger and better."

The big news today was an announcement that the Castrol Canadian Touring Car Series will have a new presenting sponsor for the 2011 season - Continental Tire.

Said series founder John Bondar: "Continental has been involved for several years in Grand Am Series racing in the United States and we're thrilled they have come on board with us ."

Bondar also said the series had undergone a rebranding developed by Baker Vandertuin Inc. of Toronto and Compass360 Inc., also of Toronto involving a new web site and slogans such as "Kicking it into high gear."

Meantime, Kyle Marcelli of Barrie said that although it hasn't been officially announced, he will be returning to the American Le Mans Series in 2011 with Intersport Racing.

"I have a fully funded ride in the LMP Challenge class," he said. "I want to win the championship before moving on - hopefully - to a factory drive."

Tonight, legendary stock car racer Junior Hanley will lead a panel discussion on the life and career of the late Don Biederman. Tomorrow, Dario Franchitti, Ron Fellows and Max Papis will be available for autographs and interviews while Brad Keselowski will be the star on Sunday.