Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Electric cars already race in Ontario

Photographer John Larsen does an excellent job for us at the Rolex 24 at Daytona. It seems as if half the field each year is made up of Canadian racers - professional and gentlemen alike - and John has a real knack of getting pictures of them all.

Sunday night, I posted a blog entry about a new Formula E series that's planned for 2014. Electric-powered formula cars (being built by McLaren, by the way) will race in a 10-event series with Rome and Rio di Janeiro already named as the first two cities planning to host events.

I suggested there would undoubtedly be a North American presence and that resulted in John sending me the following note.

"Norris, further to your blog regarding a new E Formula, I would like to suggest they run an event in Orangeville. That’s right: Orangeville, Ontario.

"After all, they have run a couple of Orangeville Electric Grand Prix already!

"Initially it was around the local high school but was later moved to the fairgrounds. One of my good friends, Larry Barnett (a former amateur racer), has helped to organize this event for a number of years for high school students that have built and raced their own creations in two classes: 12-volt and 24-volt.

"The last event included a tunnel section - just like Monaco. TSN sent a crew for one of their Motoring shows. Students were even bused in to cheer on their teams.

"I have attached one of my photos from the 2011 competition."

Thanks, John.

I love that idea.

Rome, Rio and Orangeville.

Could it ever happen? Stranger things . . .

Electric-car racing and the NASCAR Canada schedule is out

My friend, Gary Morton, has another idea – and he might really be on to something this time.

You’ll recall that he was the fellow I quoted a few weeks ago as saying the solution to the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park controversy is to just do what the founders of the place did back in 1961: contract "motor" and "sport" into one word, Mosport, and call the place Canadian Tire Mosport Park and everybody would be happy.

Three things:

– First, and this sort of thing is inevitable, some people wrote and said Gary was way behind because this had been suggested before, which was news to me or I would have put it in the paper sooner.

– Many others wrote to say it was a wonderful idea, because they hadn’t heard anybody suggest anything like it before either.

– Last, it’ll never happen. Canadian Tire Corp. bought the naming rights to the place and that’s what they want to call it. The signage, the letterhead and the souvenirs have all either been changed, or are on order, and there’s no turning back.

In the short term, anyway.

But as I said, he has another idea and it has to do with electric cars and racing – two things that keep turning up in the motorsport news cycle with a degree of regularity these days.

For instance, last week it was announced that Rome would become the first European city where a round of the FIA Formula E Championship would be held, in 2014. The first city to announce a date in what is promised to be a 10-race series was Rio do Janeiro, in August.

Still no word on a North American city but there will be likely be one or two. A full schedule is promised soon.

This is for real, folks. The FIA is behind it and McLaren has announced that it will design and build the powertrain for the first Formula E cars, in partnership with Spark Racing Technology (SRT).

They’re going to build 42 cars to get the championship going with, hopefully, 10 teams and 20 drivers. Formula E, however, is an "open" championship and other car designers and constructors are being encouraged to build a Formula E car.

My friend "Mort" says he has the answer.

"Take the Delta Wing car and put an all-electric motor in it, preferably one built by Tesla," he writes. "Get the universities involved – Virgina Tech., U of T, Queen’s, Cal Tech., MIT, etc. It’s the perfect way to save open-wheel racing in North America."

He got a big response to his Mosport suggestion. We’ll see how he does on this one.

Other Monday Morning Morning Roundup items:

- The 2013 NASCAR Canadian Tire Series presented by Mobil 1 schedule was issued at the weekend and features 12 races at 11 tracks across five provinces. Of those dozen races, three of them will be held at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park north of Bowmanville – two on the road course and one on the oval speedway.

The series will open on the road course at Old Mosport on the traditional Victoria Day weekend in May and race there again in June on the oval. Labour Day weekend will be the biggie, though, when the stock cars share the stage with the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.

The Canadian series has two other road-course races, both in Quebec - at the Grand Prix of Trois-Rivieres and at Circuit ICAR at Mirabel Airport.

Short track oval speedway races will be held at Autodrome St. Eustache, Riverside Speedway in Nova Scotia, Motoplex Speedway in Vernon, B,.C., Auto Clearing Motor Speedway in Sakatoon, Delaware Speedway outside of London, Ont., and Barrie Speedway.

The season will wrap up, as it traditionally does, on Sept. 21 at Kawartha Speedway near Peterborough.

The schedule was issued at the Night of Champions Touring Awards at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte on Saturday night.

D.J. Kennington of St. Thomas, who won his second NASCAR Canada title in three years this season, was among those honoured at the affair. Martin Roy was named Rookie of the Year in the Canadian series and the Most Popular Driver award went to Ray Courtemanche Jr. (and I have no idea how that happened . . .).

– Lotus has been released from its contract by IndyCar, so the only engine suppliers in 2013 will be Chevrolet and Honda. They shouldn’t have any trouble supplying the field because I suggest car count will become a story again. We won’t cross that bridge till later but it is highly unlikely that 25 or 26 cars will be showing up for every race, as was the case this year.

– 12-year-old Devlin DeFrancesco of Toronto, who won a Canadian karting championship this season, travels to Brazil next weekend for the famous 12-hour Gran ja Viana 500 kart race. His teammates? None other than Tony Kanaan and Rubens Barrichello.

Another Canadian youngster will also be making the trip. Jamie Riberdy will represent the Brian Stewart Racing Karting Championship Series and his trip is being paid for by Luis Ruibal and Wagner Rossi of MG Tires.

Care to keep an eye on these kids? Follow the action at: www.betocarrero.com.br/500milhas

– The World of Outlaws sprint car series issued their 2013 schedule last week and it’s a killer. Get this: they will race more than 90 times from February until November. Their Canadian swing starts on Sat., July 27, at Drummondville, Que., and goes to Cornwall Motor Speedway on the Sunday. Then, it's on to Ohsweken Speedway on the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford two nights later on Tuesday, July 30.

The last two times the Outlaws raced at Ohsweken, NASCAR star Tony Stewart was the winner. Will he make it a hat trick in 2013? You can bet he’ll try.

– Austin is after the FIA to give it another date for its Grand Prix because it was discovered that the 2013 event (Nov. 17) is being held the same weekend as a Texas Longhorns football game.

They just found that out? That football schedule's been out for months! Don’tcha think somebody might have looked and told the FIA to take that into consideration? Just wondering . . .

Joann Villeneuve: When Ferrari called, we thought it was a joke

STAR EXCLUSIVE:

An interview with Joann Villeneuve, by Norris McDonald

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Thirty years ago in 1982, on an awful May 8, Gilles Villeneuve was killed at the Belgian Grand Prix.

A nation mourned.

Never before (with the possible exception of Montreal Canadiens hockey star Howie Morenz), and certainly not since, has a Canadian athlete received the respect in death accorded Villeneuve. A Canadian Forces plane was dispatched to bring his body home and the service, in his hometown of Bethierville, Que., was close to a state funeral.

Thousands attended and there was blanket television coverage on the national networks. All of Canada’s prominent politicians were there and the-then prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, escorted the widow, Joann Villeneuve, into the church before sitting with Joe Clark, the opposition leader, in a remarkable show of respect.

It remains a very emotional time for many.

Last weekend, through the kindness of Michael Taylor, CEO of MultiMedia Entertainment, I was able to visit with Madame Villeneuve for part of an afternoon prior to the 40th anniversary Canadian International AutoShow Charity Gala, where she was introduced.

Joann Villeneuve, Paul Tracy and Norris McDonald at last weekend's Canadian International AutoShow 40th anniversary charity gala

Joann, who also goes by Joanna, remained in Monaco — where the family moved after her husband was contracted to race for Ferrari — until 2004 when she relocated to Montreal and went into the real-estate business. She and her oldest daughter, Melanie, now own and operate a Quebec construction company.

Here is an edited version of our conversation.

Norris McDonald: There are lots of stories about your husband — the wild driving through city streets, the antics in his helicopter, selling the house without telling you. I’d like to know what’s true and what isn’t.

For instance, the late Prof. Sid Watkins liked to tell the story of being in a car with Gilles in Sao Paulo, which he called a frightening experience, and turning to say something to you in the back seat and you were on the floor.

Joann Villeneuve: No, that’s not true. Gilles never scared me in the car. There were reasons for this. I met him when I was 16 and I grew up with him. I actually thought everybody drove like him. To me, that was normal driving.

People like to tell the story about us going from Monaco to Balogna (470 kilometres, 4 hours, 25 minutes) in two-and-a-half hours and me being scared the entire drive. The story is real, but I wasn’t afraid. In fact, I slept the whole way. I don’t know why, but I never thought it was dangerous when I was with him.

He drove like that with the kids in the car, too. It never occurred to me to tell him to slow down.

NM: What about the helicopter? Jody Scheckter says Gilles would fly normally until he saw people looking up and then he’d start to show off. True?

JV: I have to admit that he did scare me once in the helicopter.

In the south of France, you have these huge wind storms that can last for three, four days and during one of those storms he decided it would be a good idea to fly into the mountains and test the auto pilot.

So we were flying up and down and sideways and every which way and he wanted to make sure this thing would actually work. I couldn’t tell him to just pull over and let me out, so I had to sit there and endure the wind storm.

He was thrilled. He said, “I got you to be scared once.”

NM: And what about selling the house (Villeneuve was racing snowmobiles at the time and had yet to start racing cars)?

JV: That one is true. He walked in one day — we were living in a mobile home — and told me we were moving. I said why?

“I sold the house,” he said. Why did you sell the house? “Because I had to buy a race car.”

We’d been married for three years. He was an impulsive person in everything he did. He didn’t think about the ramifications. He’d make a decision and he’d go through with it and see what happened after. He lived in the present.

We spent a few months with his parents and a few with my parents and then we got a small apartment in Berthierville. We moved a lot. But then we got the camper and we moved around the States and Canada a lot with that.

That was a very happy time. I loved the camper. I loved living in it. There were the two of us and the two kids (son Jacques and Melanie) and the German shepherd.

NM: But then you, as a family, got lucky. Really lucky. Gilles won the Atlantic race at Trois Rivieres in 1976, James Hunt went back to Europe raving about his talent, he makes one start for McLaren at the 1977 British Grand Prix and then he signs to race with Ferrari. This is rags-to-riches stuff.

JV: I think that when you live it, it’s different because you work so hard to get there and then once you are there it doesn’t seem that special; it just seems like a lot of hard work, dedication and determination has been rewarded.

But it was a big change for us, a nice change. You could relax about having enough money for groceries. The house was nicer.

But he was who he was. He never changed. Even when we were living in Monaco, in the garage he would rebuild the engine of the Bronco. We changed as a family, though, in that when you live in a place like Monaco, and you don’t have to worry about the next paycheque, life becomes easier. Your worries are different. Your outlook on tomorrow is much happier.

NM: We all know the stories, but from your perspective, how did it happen? How did Gilles get to Ferrari?

JV: What happened was that James Hunt went back to (McLaren boss) Teddy (Mayer) and said, “You have to pick this kid up.” Gilles went to England for the British Grand Prix on his own — we still had to count our pennies and I couldn’t afford to go.

He was supposed to do three races with McLaren, but they didn’t hold up their end of the bargain — there are always loopholes, you know — and Enzo (Ferrari) got wind that they weren’t keeping Gilles, so Enzo called Gilles and asked if he was available. He had seen Gilles on TV — he never went to the race tracks — and he said he really wanted this guy.

When we got the call, we thought it was a joke. Even in your wildest dreams, you never think that Ferrari is going to call. You say, “Oh, yeah — sure.”

I just gave the phone to Gilles and he started talking and after awhile, he realized it was probably the real thing. Even at that, when they asked him if he would go over to Italy to discuss a contract, it was still a matter of we were iffy that it was for real. But then they said, “We’ll send you the plane tickets,” and this and that and whatnot. It was then that we knew it was for real.

NM: You mentioned James Hunt. He was always on the prowl. Nowadays there are some who say he suffered from sex addiction. Did he ever make a pass at you?

JV: (laughs) If he did, I didn’t notice!

NM: You met Mr. Ferrari. What was he like? He seemed to be this gruff, demanding guy, pulling the strings of his puppets.

JV: He was that, but he was also a very nice guy. But very, very demanding. (Mauro) Forghieri (Ferrari designer and sometimes-team manager) would call after a race and say “We came first and second,” and Ferrari would say, “And the spare? How did the spare car do?”

But he had a wonderful sense of humour. He was a very special man, very particular, very impressive.

NM: When Gilles started racing in F1, did you go to the races or stay home with the children?

JV: I went, but I didn’t just sit there. I was involved in the timing — I was actually working at the race track. It becomes your world. But in those days, in the beginning, there were none of the amenities everyone enjoys today.

If it was cold, or raining, you would try to find some place warm. I would try to find a tire they just took off one of the cars. It would still be warm and I could sit on it and have a sandwich.

That was the first year. After that, they started to bring along a cook who would make the most fantastic pasta and slowly it started to get more organized, more comfortable. And they had to do that because the mechanics would arrive at six in the morning and work until midnight and they hadn’t eaten all day. So that was a good thing.

In all, I missed maybe five or six F1 races. We hadn’t found a babysitter, or something like that. I liked being part of the team because I got to listen in to the engineers and the mechanics and I thought that was fun and you got to know the sport, how the cars work. You get involved in it so you’re not bored for 12 hours out of your day.

Gilles was obviously the kind of guy who would fly in, land, go to the hotel, go to the race track, go to the hotel, go to the race track, back to the airport. That was his idea of visiting a country. We weren’t tourists because it was his job and the kids were at home and we had to leave quickly.

One year, I flew in and out of America — the Long Beach, Brazil and Argentina races were all within a month — and I flew back and forth to Europe. I flew on the Concorde and wasn’t that a beautiful plane?

NM: Let’s switch for awhile to Jacques Villeneuve, your son, who is the only Canadian racing driver to win the world championship. Were you there? Did you go to his races? Were you nervous, considering what happened to your husband?

JV: Oh, yes. I was nervous. But it was difficult for me to say to him that you can’t do that when his father had done it. It’s like a smoker saying to a kid you can’t smoke. It didn’t make sense to me and I just thought that whatever the destiny of someone is, they will eventually do it so just be there and help.

No, I was not there when he won the championship; in fact, I went to very few of his (F1) races. When he was in Formula 3, I drove him around everywhere because in Europe you have to be 18 to drive on the road and he wasn’t, so I had to take him. He could race but he couldn’t drive on the highway.

I went around Italy with him for two years but after that I think he needed the separation because it was hard for him to be Gilles’s son and, when I was there, there was added pressure — not from me but from the people.

I am very proud of what he accomplished. When he drove in CART and won the Indy 500 while driving for Barry Green’s team, it was a very well-run operation. And he won the championship at Williams.

The end of his Formula One career was a bit . . . difficult. It was not all of his own doing. When it’s your own doing, you adjust. When it isn’t your own doing. . . . He stayed loyal to people for quite awhile that maybe he should not have stayed loyal to.

NM: Legendary motorsport journalist Nigel Roebuck wrote recently that Gilles would most likely have gone from Ferrari to McLaren in 1983. Is he correct?

JV: Because of what happened (when teammate Didier Pironi disobeyed team orders and passed him for the win at the San Marino Grand Prix, the race that preceded Belgium), that was it for him, as far as he was concerned. Gilles was a very straightforward and honest guy; a shaking of hands was a contract to him. So when what happened happened, it was just this huge disappointment and in his mind, I think it was, “I’ve got to get out of this,” for no other reason than he was such an honest person and what happened was crushing.

NM: Roebuck has suggested McLaren had made overtures to Gilles before the San Marino race. He entertained some of us at the Canadian Grand Prix in June with a story about contract details and money being shown to Gilles on a pit board as he drove past in his Ferrari.

JV: I’m not sure about that specifically, but it rings a bell. There was something but it’s very vague in my mind. But there was something like that. We also had a family friend who travelled with us often during that period, who got on well with the people at McLaren. I know they were sending Gilles information through him so that Ferrari wouldn’t find out what was happening.

NM: When Gilles died, there are suggestions that you didn’t get much support from Ferrari.

JV: No, I got a lot of support. I don’t think they would have done as much for anyone else. It shocked a lot of people at Ferrari and I know it hurt Mr. Ferrari deeply.

But Enzo being Enzo, he had a very peculiar way of doing things. It wasn’t like, “Come over every weekend,” but I heard from him regularly for a long time afterward. He wanted to make sure things were being taken care of, being looked after. And I got Christmas cards for years.

Earlier this year, to mark the 30th anniversary, I was invited to the Fiorano Circuit (near Maranello), as was Jacques, who drove his father’s car that day, and all of Gilles’ mechanics came back to prepare the car. One of the gentlemen, who is 84 now, got in the car to rev the engine to warm it up. You could see the emotion in their faces and in their eyes. All those who are still living were there. You realized that Gilles was a very special person to them.

NM: Are you still a fan?

JV: To this day, I love the sport. I watch every race. I get up early in the morning to watch F1 live. I think Alonso deserves the championship this season because he’s raced consistently; Vettel has just been so lucky. Alonso has been making the car fast while Vettel has a fast car and that’s the difference.

I watch NASCAR, I watch the IndyCar Series. I watch all kinds of racing. My youngest daughter said to me once, “Mom, your perfect day is Formula One in the morning, NASCAR in the afternoon and IndyCar in the evening. You are worse than any guy.”

NM: Would you do it all again?

JV: Oh, yeah.

In every case, there are always good parts, bad parts. But I have no regrets. Gilles loved racing cars. He loved it so much.

From the beginning, he would race whatever was available. He didn’t have anybody questioning him about what he was doing. When you’re 16 and madly in love, and you just follow along, you don’t realize what you’re getting yourself into.

You didn’t marry a race driver. You ended up being married to one.

F1 racing won't last long at new Austin track

By all accounts, the U.S. Grand Prix at the brand new Circuit of the Americas in Texas on Sunday was a yee-haw, rip-roarin’ success.

The circuit looked terrific and challenging (although I was kinda irritated by the red, white and blue colours bordering the black macadam) and the race itself was one of the best of the season.

It’s too bad that next-to-nobody in North America saw it.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but not by much.

This spectacle that Bernie Ecclestone and the other fist-pumpers for F1 claim is better than the Olympic Games was attended in person by 117,000 people on race day, according to the organizers.

SPEED Channel, which carried the contest in the U.S., put out a release saying more than 500,000 people tuned in but it couldn't have been a lot more or else they would have said so. Although I haven’t seen exact figures, between 100,000 to 120,000 people in Canada usually watch F1 on TSN, so we’ll go with that figure even though the total is probably lower because not everybody was aware of the race being available live on CTV2.

So except for Mexico, that puts the total for North America at approximately - give or take a thousand here and there - 740,000.

That is nothing to get excited about.

Of course, millions around the world watched the race, which is good, but 740,000 in North America puts that race well below the total who watched the final NASCAR race of the season as well as the millions who were watching NFL football on Sunday, which is not good.

Far from good, in fact.

Although I am a fanatic for most forms of motorsport, as are – presumably – the people reading this blog, we are very much a minority in the two countries that count here, the United States and Canada.

No wonder I didn’t see any evidence of American corporate involvement at the Austin circuit. If it wasn’t for Pirelli – which is an F1 supplier, for heaven’s sake – there wouldn’t have been any sign whatsoever of interest on behalf of Big Business.

And the only other advertising signs I saw were for two traditional offshore F1 sponsors, LG Corp., which is a South Korean congolmerate, and UBS, which is a Swiss global financial services company.

Where was Budweiser? I mean, that’s how you know if something in the U.S. is truly major league, isn’t it? If there’s a Budweiser sign somewhere?

But there was no Bud.

So with minimal interest from corporate America, and way fewer than a million people actually watching, I don’t think F1 is going to last very long at the Circuit of the Americas.

They pulled it off this time by really socking it to those 117,000 people who showed up.

How d’ya like these prices (as sent to me by a friend who knows his way around this sport):

Three-day seating went for $6,500 per year for a seat licence in a five-year contract and then $9,500 for the seat. A 24-person suite cost $175,000 plus extra for food and drinks. On-site motorhome parking cost $15,000 and you had to sign a three-year contract. $500 was the going rate for the cheapest grandstand seat on the far side of the circuit. It cost $12 for a beer and $15 for a burger.

A tee-shirt with a COTA logo set you back $32 and a white shirt with logo cost $69.

Now, most sports stadiums and attractions draw really well the first time out and then tail off.

Remember when the IRL first went to the brand new Texas Motor Speedway? Well, 180,000 showed up for that first race but the second time the Indy cars went there, 100,000 of those first-nighters stayed home.

The first time the F1 series raced at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2000, more than 200,000 fans showed up. When F1 stopped racing at Indy in 2007, the crowd was down to 100,000 – still an enormous number but exactly half of what it once was.

Austin did well last weekend. And might do okay next year and even the year after that.

But without U.S. corporate support in the form of a title sponsor, way higher TV numbers and less gouging of the paying public, who will simply refuse to attend, F1 racing in America is once-again going to be a short-term proposition.

- NORRIS McDONALD

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Keselowski best thing for NASCAR in years

There are any number of "leads" a guy like me could write to start a story about Brad Keselowski, who won NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series championship for the first time on Sunday.

How about, "While five-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson likes to dine out on pasta fasul and fine wine, newly-crowned title-holder Brad Keselowski is happiest when tucking into a burger and fries."

Or,

"Jimmie Johnson’s net worth is estimated to be in the neighbourhood of $40 million while Brad Keselowski’s is a paltry $15 mill. But the newly crowned 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion is starting to close fast."

My favourite, however, and the way I will officially start this story goes like this:

"In 1998 when he was 14, Brad Keselowski started racing quarter-midgets. Two years later he switched to stock cars and, after a dozen more, won the 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship."

I’ll leave off the quotation marks now, because I’m right into it.

Keselowski, who also gave legendary racing team owner Roger Penske his first NASCAR Cup championship when he finished 15^th in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida Sunday, is the best thing to happen to NASCAR in years.

Johnson was a worthy champion but he really does enjoy the sophistication of Europe, his penthouse condominium in Manhattan, white shirts and ties and the good life in general.

And then there’s the Busch brothers. Kurt has won a championship and Kyle has been coming close and they are both insufferable, frankly. They try hard to be Jus’ Folks and fail miserably because they are arrogant and snooty under it all.

But Keselowski is down-to-earth and blue collar. He comes from a racing family. He worked for the family racing business when he first started out, came up the hard way and had to scratch and claw his way to the top.

After he won the title – it’s only his third season of Cup competition – and did the burnouts and sprayed the champagne, he talked about how lucky and fortunate he is to be in the position he’s in.

"I really feel the best is yet to come," he told a post-race media conference, referring to his car owner, Penske, and his crew chief, Paul Wolfe. "I think with the people on this team, we can do anything."

When I first met Keselowski during an appearance at the Canadian Motorsports Expo two years ago, he struck me as an extremely confident, disciplined and determined young man. He wasn’t arrogant; he was focussed. He knew exactly what he wanted and he knew very well how to go about getting it.

Which included, as it turned out, playing some mind games.

When A.J. Allmendinger was suspended for drug use earlier this year, several drivers – and Johnson was among them – worried aloud about the possibility of triggering a positive drug test by taking over-the-counter cold and flu medications.

Keselowski scoffed at them and suggested anybody who took anything for a cold was stupid, saying nobody ever really knows what’s in that stuff.

His message: take that, you losers.

During that media conference Sunday, he talked about being inspired by a video he saw featuring Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis. Said Keselowski:

"I saw this really cool video that Ray Lewis did and he said, 'Throughout my whole life I've been told that I'm not big enough, I'm not fast enough, I'm not strong enough and I don't have what it takes.' I've used that as a chip on my shoulder that's carried me through my whole career.

"It took 'til this year for me to realize, they're right. I'm not big enough, fast enough, strong enough. No person is. Only a team can do that. And these guys up here (members of the Penske team), they make me big enough, fast enough, strong enough to do anything we want to do and it's because of these guys. I can't be here without them. I really can't."

Keselowski had to finish 15^th or better in Sunday’s race to win his first title. He cut it close, finishing exactly that. Johnson, meantime, gave it the old college try – in fact, at one point, the points margin was down to three points in Keselowski’s favour – but a muffed pit stop in which a wheel nut wasn’t tightened correctly put Johnson back behind the eight-ball and then an engine failure in the closing stages sealed the deal.

Ironically, the race was won by Jeff Gordon, with Clint Bowyer second – and we all remember how the last Sprint Cup race ended for those two a week ago in Phoenix, don't we?

And Bowyer’s second-place finish vaulted him past Johnson in the standings. The official order of finish in the Chase for the Championship behind Keselowski was Bowyer second and Johnson third.

Quite a turnaround.

Penske said later that he planned to take the Sprint Cup trophy to Detroit and to present it to the executive committee of Dodge, which is leaving the sport for the immediate future. Team Penske will be with Ford in the years ahead, but the Sprint Cup is a nice going-away present for the Chryser/Fiat company.

Several other quick observations.

1. Danica Patrick finished high enough in the Nationwide Series race on Saturday to nail down tenth place in the season standings. This marked the first time a woman has finished top ten in any of NASCAR’s major divisions. It also kept her string of top ten series finishes alive, as she always fnished tenth or better in the standings in IndyCar.

2. In that Nationwide race, Joey Logana lined up Johanna Long for no apparent reason and drilled her nose-first into the wall. The season’s over but I hope he gets a $100,000 fine for that, which is the going rate.

3. Penske talked about the thrill of winning the Sprint Cup. It is another notch in his gold-handled cane. And it is a huge accomplishment. But in the end, we know where his heart lies and what he considers important. If there is an Indy car race and a NASCAR Sprint Cup race on the same day, we all know where he will be and it ain’t at the stock cars.

There was one other race this weekend, in which Lewis Hamilton beat Sebastien Vettel and Fernando Alonso to win the first U.S. Grand Prix at the new Circuit of the Americans near Austin, Tex.

There are now 13 points separating first-place Vettel and second-place Alonso and the season will go down to the wire at Brazil next weekend.

U.S. F1 race on CTV2; much NASCAR ado about nothing

There are so many things to say about the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Phoenix Sunday, in which there was a 27-point swing in the Chase for the Championship standings and Brad Keselowski is leading with one race go, that I won’t.

Instead, I have information about the televising of the U.S. Grand Prix next Sunday.

Many people have written me in the last few days to complain that TSN doesn’t have the F1 race from the brand new Circuit of the Americas circuit outside Austin, Tex., next Sunday on its schedule. Qualifying is scheduled for TSN2 on Saturday at 1 p.m. but there is no listing for the actual race the next day.

Relax, I say. You will be able to see it and, actually, a whole bunch more people will be able to watch it (if they want to) than would be able to if it was on TSN2.

And that’s because it will be live and in colour on Barrie TV station CTV2 (Rogers channel 20). CTV2 is owned by Bell Media, which also owns TSN and TSN2.

Next Sunday, when the F1 race is on in Texas, TSN will be carrying the Argos-Alouettes CFL Eastern Final football game and TSN2 will be televising the final NASCAR race of the season from Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida.

CTV2 started life in the 1950s as Barrie CBC affiliate CKVR. I worked at the Orillia Packet and Times in the early 1960s and it used to delight us how the news people at the TV station would just cut stories out of the Packet and read them over the air. If there was something really big happening in Orillia, like the Mariposa Folk Festival, CKVR might send a camera crew up Highway 11 to cover it. Otherwise, they’d just "clip and read" out of the paper.

In any event, it went on to become the "New VR" when Moses Znaimer bought it, and then it became "A Channel" after another ownership change and now it’s CTV2.

Most cable subscribers – in fact, maybe even all of them – get CTV2 Barrie as part of their basic cable package. Not everybody gets TSN2 as it’s only available as part of a premium package.

Now, why did TSN (presumably it’s TSN) go to the trouble of asking parent company Bell Media to find another outlet for the F1 race? It’s got the race scheduled to be shown on tape delay later Sunday on TSN2 so why the rush to get it on live?

Because TSN pays good money to buy the Canadian rights to F1, SPEED channel blacks out its signal into Canada as a courtesy when races are run. It also blacks out its signal when qualifying is held because TSN also broadcasts qualifying sessions live.

But SPEED (Rogers cable 409, by the way) shows practice sessions in Canada because TSN doesn’t. (You see where I’m going here, don’t you . . .) You can bet your last dollar that SPEED would see no reason to black out its signal if the U.S. Grand Prix from Austin wasn’t on live television somewhere in Canada next Sunday afternoon.

So TSN, to force SPEED to honour its agreement (it’s a gentleman’s agreement, by the way; there’s no formal contractual agreement forcing SPEED to black out its signal), manoeuvred to get the race slotted into CTV2's schedule in order to protect its Canadian rights and to satisfy its Canadian sponsors.

It will be interesting to see if they promote this.

Check George's TV Listings for Race Fans later this week for SPEED's coverage of practice sessions, F1 Debrief and so-on. And the time that CTV2 will show the Grand Prix on Sunday.

Okay, back to NASCAR and Phoenix, Ariz.

Brad Keselowski went into the race seven points behind Jimmie Johnson and emerged 20 points ahead. That is not a lot; Johnson trailed Denny Hamlin by 15 points in 2010 and still beat him at Homestead to win his fifth straight championship.

But Keselowski has the momentum now to win his first Sprint Cup title and to give Roger Penske his first NASCAR Cup championship. And how did this come to pass?

Because Johnson had a tire go down and hit the wall, doing enough damage to his car that he had to drop out of the race and go to the garage for repairs. That killed him for this race and might have done him in so far as a sixth championship is concerned.

(An aside: Jimmie "Five Time" Johnson sounds swell, doesn't it? Jimmie "Six Time" Johnson not so much. So if Johnson wins, we’ll likely have to dream up another nickname for him. But I digress . . .)

In the end, Keselowki finished sixth at Phoenix – Kevin Harvick was the winner – and Johnson got back on track in time to officially finish 32^nd. If he hadn’t been out there when the checkers waved, the gap would have been wider (more detals, official order of finish).

Now, toward the end of the race all hell broke loose – and, frankly, the way I saw it was that everybody’s frustrations just bubbled to the surface. Nobody really had any reason to be as angry as they seemed to be when fighting broke out.

I suggest NASCAR, in the end, might let everybody off the hook on this one.

It all started when Jeff Gordon and Clint Bowyer banged fenders. Bowyer’s right rear and Gordon’s left front touched and Gordon banged the wall. Bowyer kept going and Gordon took his time going around to the pits.

Everybody said – and this included Bowyer’s pit crew, who told him over the radio – that Gordon was "waiting" for Bowyer to come around again. As a result, with Gordon low on the speedway mid-way through turn four, Bowyer came up on him and went to pass him on the inside. Gordon turned into him and everybody crashed.

When Gordon went to the pits, Bowyer’s crew went after him and Gordon’s crew defended him. As NASCAR Canada announcer Adam Ross would say, a "brouhaha" ensued.

Several of Gordon’s crew kept him out of the fight and hustled him into his trailer. Bowyer, meantime, jumped out of his car in pit lane and ran into the garage area to get at Gordon, but was seemingly restrained from entering Gordon’s trailer.

Everybody was called onto the carpet in the NASCAR trailer. Competition director Robin Pemberton seemed to suggest later, though, that it was one of those things and there’s only one race left in the season and let’s all let bygones be bygones.

NASCAR traditionally hands out penalties on Tuesdays, so we’ll find out for sure then.

I have questions, however:

– Why was Gordon upset when, it seemed to me, he was as much at fault for the first collision as Bowyer?

– Why did Bowyer go low on the track to pass Gordon on the inside when everybody said Gordon was waiting for him? Why didn’t he go high on the speedway and pass Gordon up there? If he did that, nothing would have happened.

– Why did Bowyer then make an incredible show out of running from pit lane to the garage area at about a million miles an hour, only to stop dead when someone stepped in front of him as he ran up the ramp leading to Gordon’s trailer?

– As a result of the Gordon-Bowyer shenanigans, the race was red-flagged. During the intermission, car owner Richard Childress said on live television that his driver,  Harvick, who was in the lead, was short on fuel. The implication was that if the race went beyond a green-white-checkers finish that Harvick would run out.

– Why did NASCAR, which will throw the yellow for all sorts of invisible reasons, let the race continue when, first, debris clearly came off of Gordon’s car when he first tangled with Bowyer and then, second, during the green-white-checkers, Jeff Burton drove right into Danica Patrick, forcing her to hit the wall and dump oil all over the backstretch going into the third turn? (She still finished 17^th, for her first top 20 in Cup competition. She was 13th when Burton rammed her.)

In Patrick'a case, there definitely should have been a yellow. But then, maybe Harvick would have run out of fuel . . .

So many questions and so few answers.

As I said, I bet NASCAR doesn’t do anything. Oh, they might fine the crews for fighting but Gordon and Bowyer will likely escape sanctions.

And when everything's all said and done, it’s going to be a dandy finale at Homestead-Miami next Sunday.

Questions still surround proposed Fort Erie speedway

Another hurdle has been cleared by the developers of the proposed Canadian Motor Speedway in Fort Erie.

On Monday, the Ontario Municipal Board rejected all appeals against the planned speedway, which will include a one-mile paved oval track with seating for 65,000 spectators plus a road course.

Good luck to them. There are still some hoops to jump through - completion of environmental reports, that sort of thing - but the green light seems to be getting closer.

I first wrote about this project in 2009 and interviewed Jay Mason, a Niagara Falls entrepreneur who was involved at the time who suggested that if everything went the way everybody hoped it would, there could be racing at the track as early as 2011.

Well, it shows how the wheels can grind slowly when it comes to projects of this size.

There remains some cynicism about the viability of the track. What might have made sense in 2009  might not make as much today.

For instance, one-day pleasure trips by Americans to Canada are down 70 per cent because of the passport requirement, which has hit the casino businesses in Windsor and Niagara Falls particularly hard.

Americans will buy passports if they want to go to Europe. Whether an American family of four will spend more than $300 on passports in order to attend a car race in the Niagara region of Canada is suddenly a big question.

All of the stories about this place, of course, mention NASCAR. The developers are careful not to, but it's no secret that if you're going to build a big oval speedway that NASCAR has to figure into your plans somewhere along the line.

But anybody who knows anything about auto racing knows that you do not snap your fingers and expect an answer from NASCAR. It is not a case of "if you build it, they will come," when NASCAR is involved.

And, in fact, NASCAR has made it clear previously it is not all that interested in the Fort Erie track, suggesting that races at Watkins Glen and Michigan International Speedway are of higher priority.

Of course, the International Speedway Corp., which owns NASCAR, also owns Watkins Glen and Michigan, thus explaining its reluctance to go into business against itself.

Plus, NASCAR is likely in the days ahead to announce a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race for Canadian Tire Motorsport Park for 2013 and to suggest that perhaps a Nationwide Series stock car race will be possible for 2014.

If that happens, the new Fort Erie speedway would have trouble attracting any of NASCAR's major series.

The promoters of the IZOD IndyCar Series race in downtown Toronto recently re-upped for three more years, so the earliest an Indy car race could be contracted for the Fort Erie track would be 2016. Even then it would be unlikely because the Toronto race attracts government money and a race at a privately owned circuit probably would not.

Return on investment, then, becomes a problem without major races at the facility. Whether motorcycle races or sports car racing would attract big enough crowds to turn a profit and pay off investors is of concern.

At the end of the day, though, Canada needs a big oval speedway. Despite the obstacles, here's hoping it gets built.

Talking about Canadian Tire Motorsport Park - or Old Mosport, as I call it on occasion - the Castrol control/scoring tower – which started life in 1962 as the Esso tower at Mosport Park – was demolished Monday after 50 years of service.

The tower was removed in order to lengthen the pit lane for an anticipated NASCAR race in 2013. It was about to become redundant in any event because a new corporate and media centre, plus offices, is under construction across the track on driver’s left at turn ten.

Other than the name change, the Castrol tower stayed just about the same for all of those 50 years. On the ground floor, there was a medical room where members of the Ontario Race Physicians organization could do their work; a large area where press conferences were held; a small reception area where competition reports and statistics were prepared – and where lunch was served – and a unisex washroom. Upstairs were executive offices, a working press room where the track announcers occupied a corner, and men’s and women’s washrooms.

At one time or another, each and every one of the greats, and not-so-greats, in the world of motorsport passed through that building. Now, only the ghosts remain.

I could write a book about that place - but here are just a couple of quick reminiscences off the top of my head.

In 1977, A.J. Foyt came up from Indianapolis to promote an Indy car race at Mosport – the Molson Diamond Indy – and went on and on about how wonderful the track was. There was a big, somewhat gruff, reporter there from a newspaper in Dayton, Ohio, who was taking delight in egging Foyt on.

"Tex," he’d say, "just exactly what is it about this place that makes you so keen to race here?"

And Foyt would give the guy a steely eye and then say something like, "I like racin’ on real road courses and there ain’t nowhere better’n this place."

And the reporter would follow up. "Tex," he’d say, "you seem to like just about everything at this place. Is there anything you don’t like?"

And Foyt would grit his teeth and give the guy an even steelier eye and say, "Nope, I can’t say there’s anything wrong with this place at all."

And then the reporter dropped the clunker: "Tex,' he said, "how much are they payin’ you to say all this?"

And Foyt snapped at the guy: "None of your business. And if you ask me another stupid question like that, we’re goin’ outside."

Later that same year, Ian Ashley lost control of his Hesketh at the end of the Andretti straight and wrapped himself and the car around a television tower.

About an hour later, I was in the late Harvey Hudes’s office (he owned the circuit, in partnership with Bernie Kamin) when three very upset people – two women and a man, all in their 20s or early 30s – walked in and asked to use the phone.

The man placed an overseas call to England and got Ashley’s mother on the line.

"It’s Tony," he said (I think this was Anthony Horsley, known as Bubbles, who was a great friend of Lord Hesketh) and I’ve got bad news. Ian’s had an accident. They’ve flown him to hospital."

Of course, Ashley recovered and, in fact, raced in the first Molson Indy Toronto at the CNE in 1986. But I was struck by Horsley’s calmness once he got on the phone – he’d been as upset as the two women when he first walked into Hudes’s office – and by the reaction of Ashley’s mother when she was told about the accident.

I was close enough to the phone to hear her response. "Oh, dear," she said.

So very British.

I could go on. But it’s gone.

And great things are right ahead for Old Mosport, I think.

'Double-header' race weekends did in Randy Bernard

The significant racing news that Sebastien Vettel won his fourth straight Grand Prix of 2012 in India Sunday (details here) and that Jimmie Johnson is back where he belongs atop the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series standings (details here) was overshadowed late in the day by word that Randy Bernard had been dismissed as CEO of the IZOD IndyCar Series.

The statement by the board of directors of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway announcing that he would step down immediately was all warm and fuzzy but the fact of the matter is that the long knives had been out for Bernard almost from the time he took the job and a controversial move in recent weeks is finally what did him in.

And what was that, you ask?

I maintain it was the very sudden and last-minute decision to schedule three "double-header" racing weekends in Toronto, Detroit and Houston in order to come up with the 19 races he’d publicly promised for the 2013 season.

Bernard had talked during much of 2012 about increasing the number of races from 15 to 19 next year and there was speculation about new races in places like Providence, Rhode Island, and the Mugello circuit in Italy, as well as the return of road courses like Road America and even Watkins Glen.

But when the 2013 schedule was issued, Providence wasn’t on it, nor were the other venues, and, instead, two races on the same weekend were included in three markets - two of them (Detroit and Toronto) not very far apart in distance (390 km) or time (six weeks).

Now, were the teams consulted? All of a sudden, their costs for a race weekend were doubled.

Were the title sponsors? Suddenly, the property to which they’d attached their name had been devalued.

Were the promoters? I suppose, but I ask you: how do you take a once-a-year headline attraction and turn it into two of them on the same weekend? How can you convince people that two Indy 500s are better than one?

And that’s the point here. Would you run the Indy 500 one day and then run it all over again the next? Or the following weekend? Would Formula One do that in Montreal? Hey, come Saturday for Grand Prix I and Sunday for Grand Prix II. Would NASCAR do this?

Of course not.

Supporters of Bernard, who mostly liked the fact that he wasn’t Tony George, thought this was just swell. Indy car racing used to do this all the time in the old days, they all said.

Well, Indy car racing didn’t do this all the time in the old days. Yes, there used to be "twin" Indy car races back in the day, but instead of a 250-mile race on a Sunday, they’d run two 125-miles races so there would be two complete starts and two complete races instead of just one. They’ve done that sort of thing recently at Texas Motor Speedway.

But "twin-125s" as they were called were (and are) a far cry from what is being proposed here, which is a full race on Saturday and then a full race again Sunday, which is – frankly – nuts.

(An aside: how do you promote two Honda Indy races in Toronto? You run one on Saturday the traditional way – clockwise through the streets of the CNE. On Sunday, you run the second-race counter-clockwise. In other words, on Saturday, the right-hand turn at the Princes’ Gates is Turn One; on Sunday, it would be a left-hand Turn Ten. That, ladies and gentleman, is the only way you can sell this thing. But I digress . . .)

When Bernard first came on the scene, he freely admitted that he had never seen an IndyCar race – or a car race of any kind, for that matter. He was attractive to the series owners, apparently, because he had taken rodeo bull riding from stock shows and rodeos to Las Vegas and the millions of dollars that went along with that.

His inexperience showed, and many members of the Old Guard (not just a few; most of them) were feeling let down almost immediately, as a result.

His time as CEO of IndyCar was not a dead loss, though: getting the new car accepted, built and on the track was, I believe, the highlight of his tenure.

But the negatives far outweighed the positives. As I’ve written often about them before, I’m not going to repeat them, except to say the ill-advised double-headers were just the latest in a long line of less-than-stellar decisions.

I shake my head when I read the comments of people who claim to be fans of the series, about how they will never watch another race, and so-on, because Randy Bernard got fired. I mean, does it really matter who runs the series as long as the racing is good?

I wonder how some of these people would have felt back in the so-called glory days of CART (or are they old enough to remember)? The people who ran that series didn't exactly enjoy job security, either.

The guys in charge – John Franco, William Stokkan, Johnny Capels, John Caponigro, Andrew Craig, Chris Pook, Bobby Rahal and Dale Coyne (the latter two took turns running the series when the owners fired all the other guys) – lasted an average of about 2.5 years in the top job, which is about the length of time Bernard was around, so he fits right in.

And since none of these critics knows anything about running a racing team, starting with the enormous costs, the fact that they would side with a guy who also knows (or knew) next to nothing about that too probably explains a lot about the weeping and wailing going on.

The kicker, for me, is the constant bleating about the long-term TV deal that stupid nasty old Tony George signed with Versus (now the NBC Sports Network – and how come that rebranding didn’t work the miracles it was supposed to?)

Here are the facts: IndyCar signed with Versus because nobody else wanted to televise Indy car racing. Nobody. Some people think TV networks should be lining up to televise the series but the stark reality is that it is a niche within a niche; except for NASCAR Sprint Cup, auto racing in North America is not a draw and that includes Formula One. Unless a sport, like baseball and NFL football, regularly attracts millions of viewers, TV networks aren’t interested and that’s why, with the exception of the Indianapolis 500, Indy car racing can't get no respect.

But Indy car fans should not feel too badly. The NHL is on Versus and that’s because nobody watches hockey either.

I don’t think Tony George will be put in charge of IndyCar again – at least in the short term. The board will likely hire a Bernard clone – someone great with the fans but who has a better understanding of the sport and the owners.

But that isn’t to say that George won’t eventually be the boss again. At some point, the Indianapolis Speedway will grow tired of subsidizing the IndyCcar series to the tune of $10-million-plus a year and he’ll probably come up with enough cash to buy it.

As my great friend Brian Stewart, of Firestone Indy Lights fame, says: it's all about the money. Nothing else matters.

And that, friends, will never change.

Vettel wins Indian GP, young U.S. sprint car star dies

Tyler Wolf, a 20-year-old heading-for-greatness sprint car racing star, has died of injuries suffered in a crash Saturday night at the legendary Calistoga Speedway in California.

Wolf was the 2011 Silver Dollar Speedway sprint-car champion, the youngest driver on record to win the title.

In F1 racing, meantime:

Sebastien Vettel won the Indian Grand Prix today from pole and increased his lead in the world championship but it was blunted by Ferrari's Fernando Alonso, who battled through from his fifth-place starting position to finish second.

Vettel's Red Bull-Renault teammate, Mark Webber, was third with McLaren-Mercedes teammates Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button fourth and fifth and Ferrari's Felipe Massa sixth.

Kim Raikkonen (Lotus-Renault), Nico Hulkenberg (Force India-Ferrari), Romain Grosjean (Lotus) and Bruno Senna (Williams-Renault) rounded out the top ten.

Alonso was the driver of the race, never giving up and chasing Vettel through to the end.

With his fourth consecutive victory, Vettel increased his lead in the championship to 13 points but it could have been more if Alonso hadn't risen to the occasion.`

On Saturday:

Sebastien Vettel won the pole today for Sunday's Indian Grand Prix. His Red Bull-Renault teammate, Mark Webber, qualified second ahead of the two McLaren-Mercedes drivers, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button.

Fernando Alonso will take his Ferrari to the line fifth on Sunday, with teammate Felipe Massa sixth. Kimi Raikkonen (Lotus-Renault), Sergio Perez (Sauber-Ferrari), Pastor Maldonado (Williams-Renault) and Nico Rosberg (Mercedes) will go off seventh through tenth.

Now, by the time you get around to reading this, the 41st anniversary Formula Ford Festival at the legendary Brands Hatch circuit in England will be well under way and Canada’s representative, Garett Grist of Grimsby, will be doing his best to follow in the footsteps of last year’s entrant, Xavier Coupal of St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que.

Coupal’s will be a tough act to follow.

But first.

The Formula Ford Festival was started in 1972 and has attracted top racers from around the world every year since. F1 drivers Button and Webber are among the winners. Danica Patrick finished second in 2002. Roberto Moreno, Eddie Irvine and Jan Magnussen are others who’ve made their marks at Brands.

Last year, Ontario Formula Ford team owner Brian Graham of Innisfil, with the help of major sponsor Grote Industries (manufacturers of vehicle lighting and safety systems) and other contributors (more about them below) led a Canadian assault on the Festival, the first “sponsored trip to Europe” for a Canadian driver since the 1970s.

Coupal was selected to go and pretty much set the international racing world on its ear.

The Festival deal is that you arrive at a strange track and climb into a strange car and go. The cream has to rise to the top pretty quickly because there are 200 other young chargers there and there’s limited practice time. Then they send you out for one of 10 heats with upwards of 20 cars in each and you swim or you sink.

Coupal finished second in his heat and started from pole in the feature. He was knocked off the track during the race and eliminated, but he still set fastest lap — an amazing performance.

This year, Graham — with help from a selection committee that included me — chose Grist as the second winner of what’s being called the Team Canada Scholarship. A former Ontario karting standout who cut his single-seater racing teeth in Ontario Formula 1600s, Grist had a “superb season” this year in the highly-competitive U.S. F1600 Formula F Championship Series and that’s what won him the opportunity.

“I am really excited to be selected for the 2012 Team Canada Scholarship,” Grist said in a release. “It’s a great opportunity to represent Canada at one of the biggest Formula Ford races in the world. For anyone racing F1600, this is the event that you want be in at some point in your career. Xavier (Coupal) set the bar pretty high last year, so I know I have my work cut out for me.”

“This was a very, very, difficult decision (to pick Grist),” said Graham, also in a release. “The final group of five drivers were so impressive. We went back and forth trying to pick this year’s winner. If we had the funding, we’d send all five, as they are all deserving winners.

“That being said, we are very excited that we will have Garett piloting the Team Canada entry at this year’s Formula Ford Festival and are confident we will be challenging for top honors come Sunday’s Final at Brands Hatch.”

Graham’s been able to raise sufficient funds to take a driver to England and, of course, to hire Cliff Dempsey Racing to field a car, which is the biggest expense. He would like to have enough money to take at least two drivers and for them to do the Festival and then stick around to race for the Walter Hayes Trophy at Silverstone a week later.

The key is awareness.

“We have to start building interest earlier,” Graham told me in conversation at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park a few weeks ago. “If we want this to grow, we can’t start beating the drums in July — it has to be a year-‘round project.”

To this end, Paul Einarson has notified Graham that his organization, the British Auto Racing Club (he’s the club’s Race Director), will make a modest annual contribution to the scholarship fund starting in 2013 .

Wrote Einarson: “This is to say thanks to Brian Graham and his associates for developing this program as a ladder to international racing opportunities for Canadians. I have copied the other Race Organizers in Ontario on this and challenge them to contribute similarly.”

Good for Brian Graham for getting this going, good for the sponsors and supporters who have already signed on, and good for Paul Einarson for starting the ball rolling on a grassroots support movement.

To learn more about the Team Canada Scholarship, visit www.teamcanadaracing.org and to follow their progress this weekend, please visit the Team Canada Scholarship Facebook page at:

https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/216921815005015/.

This year’s Team Canada Scholarship was made possible with the support of primary sponsors Grote Manufacturing and The Race Drivers Guild of Canada, who were both instrumental in the program’s creation.

Also supporting the Scholarship are Hallman Construction, LSI International, Gen. Lew Mackenzie RET, Bollenbach Insurance, EFormulacarnews.com, Door Doctor, Harvan Engineering, Rod-End Mechanical, Bamford Produce, RMB Inc, the Leda Krikorian Foundation, Altwood Doors, Bruce Gregory/Calabogie Motorsports Park, Canadian Tire Motorsports Park, Inside Track Motorsports News and Formula Tour 1600.

AJAC ‘best of’ list the only one that counts

Although this is primarily an auto racing blog, there are occasions when I, as editor of Toronto Star Wheels and Wheels.ca, will discuss policy. This is one of those times. NM

Every time a freelance journalist drives a car for review in Toronto Star Wheels, we acknowledge that the vehicle was provided by the manufacturer.

When one of our journalists goes to Europe or the United States for an unveiling or to attend a car show, we state at the end of the article that the manufacturer paid for the trip.

We are transparent about this, almost to a fault.

More: Behind the wheel of the best – this year’s TestFest winners

The policy was initiated by the late Dennis Morgan, the founder of Wheels, to deflect suggestions of conflicts-of-interest. “We could not do what we do without the assistance of the auto manufacturers,” Morgan said.

“We have to tell our readers.”

In fact, with the exception of Consumer Reports magazine, most media — newspapers, automotive websites, magazines — are dependent on the manufacturers, although many won’t admit it.

Only recently did one of Canada’s national newspapers — the original one — start to publish a paragraph acknowledging this reality. Rarely do you find this admission anywhere else.

The reason, of course, is that none of us (except for the previously mentioned Consumer Reports) can afford to buy the cars, motorcycles or light trucks in order to review them. We have to partner with the automakers in order to do our job.

There are those who will say that this arrangement automatically compromises the reviews we publish, which is true to a point: if Wheels writers trashed just about every vehicle they tested, I think it’s fair to say we wouldn’t have as much cooperation from the automakers as we do.

But automakers are like classical musicians: they want to be reviewed and they are not averse to criticism. And Wheels writers never pull their punches. If there’s something wrong with a vehicle, they will say so and the manufacturers appreciate it. But with the bad always comes good, and our correspondents include that in their reviews too.

I can say with pride that the men and women who write for us are the best in the business. Many of them were in Niagara-on-the-Lake this week participating in the annual Automobile Journalists Association of Canada TestFest, in which members drive and evaluate 2013-model-year cars on sale in Canada.

The best in 11 categories were chosen (see Page 13 of today’s Wheels section for the winners) and the 2013 Canadian Car of the Year and the Utility Vehicle of the Year selected. The last two winners won’t be announced until the Canadian International AutoShow in Toronto next February.

As is the case with individual journalists and publications, the cars entered in the TestFest were provided by the manufacturers. In fact, they paid $7,900 per car for the privilege of having the vehicle judged. The tests were conducted in a manner that encouraged fairness: journalists assigned to a category drove all the vehicles along the same route and under the same conditions and filled out a secret ballot. The scores on the ballots were then tabulated by Canadian accounting firm KPMG and they determined the winners.

Toronto Star Wheels is an AJAC-oriented publication. We like the way TestFest is organized as well as the methodology employed. It’s not foolproof, but it’s about as close as you can get to impartiality.

In recent years, other auto-writer groups have issued “best of” lists and sometimes they were published in Wheels. That won’t happen any more, for several reasons.

First, the potential for confusion in the marketplace increases exponentially with the number of lists published.

Second, and most important, the AJAC results have more legitimacy than a discussion leading to consensus, usually done over dinner that is sometimes arranged by an automaker, which is the way some of those other organizations operate.

There is only one Canadian Car of the Year and one Utility Vehicle of the Year and they are selected by the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada.