Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

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.

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.

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?

Top Ten motorsports stories of 2012

There were many more than 10 "Top Ten" motorsports stories in 2012 but somebody had to bite the bullet and make the calls, so I nominated myself.

I’ll tell you about four right off the top that didn’t make it – but boy, were they close.

1: Dodge winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup and then withdrawing from the series. You guys never heard of "Win on Sunday, sell on Monday?"

2: Juan Pablo Montoya escaping death in the Daytona 500 when his car hit a jet dryer that exploded (left). It was the second time in three Daytona 500s that the race was delayed because of something that had little to do with racing. In 2010, there were two long delays because of potholes.

3: Brad Keselowski attracting hundreds of thousands more fans to his Twitter account by tweeting during the lengthy red flag that followed Montoya’s accident – and NASCAR then forbidding him from doing it later in the season. Earth to NASCAR: Sprint sponsors the Sprint Cup and WANTS people to tweet.

4: Sebastien Loeb winning his ninth straight World Rally Championship title. I mean, what more is there to say?

So here are the Top Ten.

No. 1

Car owner Roger Penske and driver Brad Keselowski winning their first NASCAR Sprint Cup championships.

Penske, who’s dominated North American Indy car and sports car racing for decades, finally made it to the top step of the NASCAR podium after years of trying.

Keselowski comes from a racing family and won his first title on the basis of talent, moxy, drive and determination. Like champions in other leagues before him, he influenced Penske to build a team around him (he brought in his own crew chief, for starters). This title will likely be the first of many.

No. 2

Sebastian Vettel winning his third consecutive Formula One world championship, with Red Bull Racing (Christian Hornder, team principal; Adrien Newey, chief designer) scoring its third straight constructors championship.

After a slow start (he didn’t win his first race of 2012 until the fourth of the season, in Bahrain, and then he didn’t win again until the 14^th of the year, in Singapore), Vettel finally got the bit between his teeth late in the season and ran off a string of victories that put him in front to stay.

Fernando Alonso had a brilliant season for Ferrari (Joann Villeneuve, widow of Gilles, told me that Alonso made a slow car fast this year) and finished second, only three points behind the champion. If Alonso doesn’t get taken out of two races, in which he scored zero points, he might be champion today.

And Kimi Raikkonen finished an astonishing third in points after being out of F1 for the previous two seasons, preferring to drive WRC cars and NASCAR trucks. He was consistent all year and won a race, at Abu Dhabi, near the end of the season. The Iceman is back and will be one to watch in 2013.

No. 3

Canada losing two major international races was a real kick in the teeth for motorsport in this country.

Gone from the IZOD IndyCar Series calendar in 2013 will be the Edmonton Grand Prix and the NASCAR Nationwide Series will not return to Montreal for the annual NAPA Auto Parts 200 either.

Both were crowd-pleasers and both were broadcast live over international television.

Both were promoted by Octane Management, Inc., owned by Francois Dumontier of Montreal, whose other company, Octane Racing Group, promotes the F1 Grand Prix du Canada. Dumontier said he was losing millions on both races and unable to continue. Critics suggested there were other reasons.

The Grand Prix is not affected.

As well as taking two important races off the national calendar, Dumontier’s decisions put the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series in a bind. The stock cars were on the undercard in both Edmonton and Montreal and, when combined with losing a contract to race as part of the Honda Indy Toronto following the 2011 event, it meant the country’s only national racing series lost three major dates in 14 months.

No. 4

The branding of Mosport as Canadian Tire Motorsport Park knocked long-time Canadian racing fans for a loop.

Although selling the "naming rights" to North American sports arenas is a well-established practice (two exceptions, both in New York: Madison Square Garden and Yankee Stadium – some things are not for sale), the commercial branding of road racing circuits has never been popular. It has happened, though.

But Mazda incorporated the historic name of the circuit when it took over Laguna Seca race track in California and renamed it Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. Infineon Raceway, named arfter the technologies group, was previously Sears Point but Sears Point started life many years ago as Golden Gate Raceway so name-changes at the San Francisco-area circuit are not uncommon.

But Watkins Glen, Road America, Road Atlanta, Daytona, Indianapolis, Mid-Ohio, Le Circuit-Mont Tremblant and on and on are storied names that live on.

Now, with the branding of Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, the internationally known, loved and respected "Mosport" is no more.

Would they change the name of Silverstone? Brands Hatch? Monza?

Would it have been hard to incorporate "Mosport’ into the new name?

Of course not, which is a shame and shortsighted because, as will inevitably happen, at some point somebody in control of Canadian Tire is going to decide not to continue the arrangement, and what then?

On the bright side, the announcement of a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race there on Labour Day weekend in 2013 is a wonderful, positive step as new owners Carlo Fidani and Ron Fellows strive to update the aging facility to 2013 standards.

No. 5

D.J. Kennington’s winning of the 2012 NASCAR Canadian Tire Series championship was one of the most dominant displays of race-driving ever seen in all of Canadian motorsport.

En route to winning his second national title in three years, Kennington won seven of the 12 races , a series record; five in a row for another record; and six of the seven oval-track races, also a record. He also scored the most top five finishes in a single season.

His performance during the last race of year, at Kawartha Speeedway near Peterborough, was inspiring. Having to finish 21^st or better to clinch the title, he left no doubt about his intentions: he flat went out and won it.

In short, it was a banner year.

Which is a good thing, because there are – as they say – signs.

Signs of what, I don’t know. But they are there.

For the first time in his life, D.J. has a job outside of racing. He’s working for the county where he lives, which means (gulp) that he’s making pension contributions.

And he became the father of a son, Chase, just a few weeks ago.

You may now speculate about what all this means.

No. 6

Two women professional drag racers winning championships on the same day served to illustrate how women have shattered motorsport’s glass ceiling.

From Janet Guthrie at Indianapolis to Shirley Muldowney in Top Fuel dragsters to Danica Patrick about to become the first woman to compete full time in the NASCAR Sprint Cup, women racers have come a long way, baby.

On Aug. 5, at the O’Reilly Auto Parts NHRA Northwest Nationals near Seattle, rookie Funny Car driver Courtney Force (right, in photo)finished first in her class for the first time and Erica Enders (left in photo) won her second Pro Stock championship.

Auto racing is perhaps the only sport in the world where women can compete equally with men and more are not only getting involved but are becoming successful.

As 15-times NHRA Funny Car champion John Force (and father of Courtney) said: "It’s always been a man’s sport – but the rules are changing."

No. 7

CEO Randy Bernard’s firing by the IZOD IndyCar Series, although – according to some – justified, is yet another negative that Indy car racing is going to have to overcome.

Although the racing was great in 2012 and Oakville native James Hinchcliffe succeeding Danica Patrick in the Go Daddy car and Ryan Hunter-Reay’s winning his first championship were good stories, the off-track soap opera continued apace and garnered most of the headlines.

These included stories suggesting that Tony George was trying to buy back the series, Bernard himself tweeting that some of the team owners were plotting to get rid of him, driver Scott Dixon being penalized for something he didn’t do because race officials were watching THE WRONG REPLAY (I’m not making that up; can you see that happening in the NFL? ) and an absurd rule that penalized drivers for teams having to change leased engines before their time, which saw 11 drivers at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach – nearly half the field – assessed 10-grid-position penalties. (A guy who qualified 20^th was made to go back to the last race. Okay, I made that up but it shows how absurd the whole thing was.)

Now there’s a new fellow in charge. His name’s Mark Miles. He kinda sounds a lot like Bernard when he came in – someone who made another sport a raging success, in his case tennis rather than Bernard’s bull-riding, and somebody else thinking he’d be perfect for IndyCar.

And he’s starting out pretty much the same way, too: slowly, learning names, learning who’s who, learning the sport.

How many more times Indy car racing will be able to get away with this is anyone’s guess. But while some people are suggesting there will be about the same number of cars on the grid in 2013 as there were in 2012 – 25 or 26 – I say car count will be a concern as sponsorship (and interest generally) dwindles because of all the nonsense.

No. 8

A.J. Allmendinger’s failed drug test and then his relatively quick return to Sprint Cup competition toward the end of the season.

People shook their heads when Allmendinger, a former Champ Car driver who made the switch to NASCAR and was given the ride of a lifetime by Roger Penske, failed a random drug test early in the summer. Penske fired him, as a result.

Although the story of the circumstances changed several times – his management team would say one thing and the Dinger would say another – Allmendinger eventually ‘fessed up to the fact that a friend had offered him what he thought was an energy pill (it was Adderall, an amphetamine) and he "foolishly" took it (you betcha).

But he proceeded to do something that none of the other NASCAR stars who’d flunked drug tests (Jeremy Mayfield, Aaron Fyke, come on down) had done previously: he immediately entered and completed NASCAR’s drug treatment program (called the Road to Recovery).

And then the stars aligned and he was in the right place at the right time in October (Kurt Busch went to Furniture Row Racing early and Phoenix Racing needed a driver) and he finished the year back in Cup.

Whether his rehabilitation will continue in 2013 is unknown at this point. He’s looking for a ride in any series but hasn’t received a firm offer.

No. 9

The signing of McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton by Mercedes to replace the second-time-retiring Michael Schumacher had (and continues to have) Formula One watchers scratching their heads.

With McLaren, Hamilton – who won one world championship with the marque – could expect continuing to win races. In 2012, McLaren won seven times and Lewis was the driver for four of them. Nico Rosberg won but one race for Mercedes.

There are suggestions that it all has to do with money and the exploitation of Hamilton’s brand. At McLaren, he was contractually hamstrung when it came to personal sponsorship but there apparently are no such restrictions at Mercedes and so long as he fulfills the testing, racing and PR obligations of his contract, he’s pretty much free to do what he wants on his own time.

But I have a friend who sees something more sinister. He suggests Bernie Ecclestone, McLaren and Mercedes cooked this "trade" up for two reasons: that the Mercedes board was lukewarm, at best, about continuing in F1 but now, with the addition of one of the top three stars in F1, they are firmly behind continuing; and/or McLaren wanted to find a way to continue with Mercedes engines in their cars going forward and Lewis’ driving for Mercedes is simply the price they had to pay for doin’ business.

We’ll find out in 2013 how things work out, won’t we?

No. 10

Roger Penske using the end-of-season NASCAR awards banquet to both plug the Indianapolis 500 and to try to get the open-wheel-drivers-to-NASCAR scenario reversed.

Penske, who received the Sprint Cup along with his driver Brad Keselowski, used his acceptance speech to suggest to multi-time NASCAR champion and former IRL star Tony Stewart that if Tony wanted to do "the double" in 2013, Penske would have a car and crew ready for him.

Within a day, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway let it be known it would move back the time of the Indianapolis 500 so that Stewart – and any other NASCAR stars who wanted to take a shot (Danica Patrick, for instance) – would have more time to finish that race and get to Charlotte in time for the start of the same-day Coca-Cola 600.

Several days later, Stewart met with Penske and said he’d like to try but that he wouldn’t do it. He said IndyCar is too competitive for a driver to just "show up" and expect to win and that he was too involved with his NASCAR operation to even begin to think about it.

Now, ever since Jeff Gordon called every team owner in CART in 1990 and asked for a ride, only to be rebuffed again and again, thus sending him south to race in NASCAR, supermodified, midget and sprint car drivers don’t consider for a second a career in Indy cars.

Since Gordon went to stock cars, so have Ryan Newman, Kasey Kahne, Stewart, Patrick and any number of others.

If Stewart and Patrick did "the double," you can bet pressure would be on some of the others to give it a shot, too. NASCAR is a Goliath but the Indianapolis 500 is still the biggest and most prestigious race in the world and most racing drivers would like to have it on their CVs.

The feeling is that a good performance in the Indy 500 might whet the appetite of some of the other NASCAR drivers to give the whole circuit a try. After all, Cale Yarborough drove at Indy in the late 1960s and liked it so much that he left stock cars for the Indy-car circuit in 1970 (he wasn't very good in an open-cockpit car, so went back to the taxis where he excelled).

In any event, Roger Penske is always thinking, always plotting, always looking for an angle, an edge. He fights fair but he fights really hard, too.

He knew exactly what he was doing when he stood up at that NASCAR function and started kidding around about Tony Stewart driving for him at Indianapolis.

Exactly what he was doing.

- Norris McDonald

U.S. lawsuit aimed at Ecclestone is serious

I don’t know what’s most important of the three big racing stories that broke yesterday and last night:

– Bernie Ecclestone is facing a serious U.S. lawsuit,

– IndyCar has a new boss, or

– Danica Patrick is dumping her husband.

Let’s go with the first one, because it has the most serious implications.

In a nutshell, a U.S. financial services company has filed suit accusing Ecclestone, his German buddy Gerhard Gribkowski and the company that owns Formula One, CVC Capital Holdings, of highway robbery.

It says in its suit filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York that CVC supplied money to Ecclestone to bribe Gribkowski to manipulate the 2005 sale of F1 so that the highest bidder, New York-based Bluewater Communications Holdings, would come up short.

It accuses Ecclestone and CVC of using money that Bluewater had invested in F1 to ensure that CVC had the highest bid.

German prosecutors have suspected for years that Ecclestone paid more than US$40 million to Bribkowski to get him to influence the sale of the world’s top auto racing series. While Bribkowski is currently serving eight years in prison for confessing to accepting the bribe, Germany has yet to charge Ecclestone for paying it because he insists he was being blackmailed.

According to a report by journalist Adam Cooper on the autosport.com website, the summary of the lawsuit concludes:

"Each of CVC, Alpha Prema, Alpha Topco, and Delta Topco (those last three companies belong to Ecclestone) extracted billions of dollars from Formula One that do not rightfully belong to them. CVC, Alpha Prema, Alpha Topco, and Delta Topco have profited enormously from CVC’s wrongful acquisition of Formula One, which is currently valued at $10 billion. Plaintiff has been damaged in an amount exceeding $650 million."

The German prosecution would appear to be small potatoes compared to this one, which bears watching.

Okay, over at Indianapolis, the people who owns the Indianapolis Speedway and the IndyCar Series have – yet again – named a new chairman and CEO who will calm the waters and "grow" the series.

I give him between two and three years, just about the same amount of time just about every CEO of Indy car racing going back to the formation of CART in 1979 has had.

Mark Miles, who turned professional tennis into a multi-billion-dollar business, is the new Top Gun at Hulman & Co., which owns IndyCar among other things. Randy Benard used to run IndyCar and he got that job because he turned professional rodeo into a multi-billion-dollar business.

See a pattern there?

The problem, of course, is that neither one of them knew, or knows, anything (or not much) about car racing. And this happens again and again and again.

When CART broke away from USAC originally, it hired a succession of lawyers and promoters to run things, guys like John Frasco, John Caponigro, William Stokkan (they hired him away from Playboy) and Andrew Craig. The one guy they could have hired who would have known how to handle the paddock was Cary Agajanian – and they didn’t want anything to do with him, probably for that reason.

A top-of-the-line auto racer told me last week that the reason Bernard was fired was because he browned off the car owners – and one in particular.

"He didn’t know how to handle them," this driver said. "He had no background in racing."

History is about to repeat itself, yet again.

Finally, it’s too bad but Danica Patrick and her hubby, Paul Hospenthal, are Splitsville.

These things happen.

What everybody wants to know is this:

Who broke them up?

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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.

Jeff Gordon's $100,000 fine is way over-the-top

NASCAR usually hands down penalties for infractions on Tuesday but was quick and decisive this week after that post-Sprint Cup race drama at Phoenix International Raceway on Sunday in which the pit crews of Clint Bowyer and Jeff Gordon engaged in fisticuffs.

Gordon triggered the brawling by delivering a little “payback” to Bowyer and crashing them both out of the race. Gordon then went to the garage area where words were exchanged with members of Bowyer’s crew and the fight was on.

Gordon is just a little guy and was hustled away from the scrum by other team members. Bowyer heard about the fight and went running from his car to join in although, when he arrived on the scene, he didn't seem all that anxious to trade any punches.

(An aside: everybody has been talking about how full of energy Bowyer was to go running several hundred yards at full speed. I say bosh to that: he’s a young professional athlete in peak condition and his sprint was no big deal. The person I was astounded by was the camerman who chased after Bowyer the whole way and managed to keep the driver in the centre of his camera's frame. That was impressive. Even if it was a camera on a golf cart, it was terrific TV. But I digress. . .)

I wrote in Sunday night's blog entry that I didn’t consider this to be any big deal and I would be surprised if NASCAR punished either of the drivers. Others disagreed and there were calls everywhere for Gordon’s head.

It turns out I misread the situation - although I don't agree at all with what NASCAR has done.

On Monday, NASCAR fined Gordon $100,000 for intentionally wrecking Bowyer. He was docked 25 points and put on probation till the end of the year. It also penalized his boss, Hendrick Motorsports owner Rick Hendrick, 25 owner points and put his crew chief, Alan Gustafson, on probation until Dec. 31. Bowyer's crew chief Brian Pattie was fined $25,000 and put on probation.

Now, it was no secret that Gordon was “laying in wait” for Bowyer to come around and Bowyer had been warned about this by his own crew. So why did he try to pass Gordon low and on the inside between turns 3 and 4 when he knew precisely what would happen - that Gordon would turn into him and try to wreck him?

On the other hand, I still don’t know what got Gordon so riled up in the first place. Their little collision several laps earlier looked to me to be just one of them racin’ deals.

Although $100,000 is small change to a multi-millionaire like Gordon, it was still an over-the-top penalty and NASCAR's inconsistency in this area is going to backfire on it one of these days.

One moment, NASCAR says "have at it, boys." Then, when somebody "has at it," it goes crazy and fines a guy $100,000 for something that happens all the time in every race. Repeat: all the time in every race. Nobody got hurt and it's too bad that Joey Logano got caught up in the wreck but that's something that happens all the time in every race too.

I don't believe for a second that Jeff Gordon tried to do anything other than to knock Clint Bowyer out of the race on Sunday. He did not do what Carl Edwards did two years ago to Brad Keselowski when he deliberately sent him flying through the air at 190 miles an hour. Edwards then drove the wrong way along pit road after he was black-flagged. For those much more serious transgressions, he received probation for three races. No suspension, no financial penalty, no nothing and yet, in my mind, his actions were much more dangerous and severe than anything Jeff Gordon did on Sunday.

Meantime, SPEED Channel is making hay while the sun shines with this one, promising "never-before-aired footage" from “inside the brawl” that it plans to broadcast Thursday night at 7 p.m. as part of a one-hour special about Michael Waltrip’s racing team.

Now, I’m one of those people who likes tradin’ paint and rubbin’ and racin’ and all those things that make stock car racing great but who draws the line at fighting. I like hockey, too, but I don’t see any reason why they still allow fighting in that sport either.

I have a friend who disagrees with me. His name is Bob Winegar and he’s a pretty good writer. He sent me this note early Monday morning. I publish it here as part of my never-ending quest to present all sides of a story, whether I agree with it or not.

Wrote Bob:

The NASCAR race in Phoenix yesterday had everything the sport has been begging for ever since Cale Yarborough-Bobby Allison or the antics of the Intimidator, Dale Earnhardt Sr.

The tall foreheads who run racing, whether it be NASCAR, F1 or IndyCar, seem to think that shiny cars, faster speeds, longer tracks or articulate drivers who give long-winded, plausible excuses for poor performance are the answer to enlightened entertainment, but the fans spoke yesterday, responding in cheers that haven't been heard around ovals for years, when Clint Bowyer took off like Usain Bolt, sprinting through the pits looking for Jeff Gordon in order to physically suggest that he stop wrecking him.

Stock car racing is not an intellectual pursuit, even though Mr. Bland Jimmie Johnson -  he with the high IQ and low anger profile - may think otherwise. It's blue collar, derived from guys who were plumbers or construction workers or delivery guys who got together once a week to put the pedal to the metal and get the frustration of working for The Man out of their system - and if somebody's nose had to be altered in the pits in order to make a point, such as was often the case at the CNE or Flamboro Speedways in the early 60s, then so be it. Which was one of the reasons why attendance figures of 15,000 at the CNE and 6,000 at Flamboro were the norm.

Now many oval tracks are on life support. No fighting, few wrecks and nice, polite drivers who say, "After you, Alphonse."

And no attendance.

So it's hats off to baser instincts, who gave us - the mere fan - something to cheer about yesterday. Like the old days. And to the starter who, like they used to do at Pinecrest Speedway, "let 'em all go" even though poor Danica got it in the rear!

Thanks, Jeff and Clint, for reminding us that it's not the shiny car but the hammerhead behind the wheel who's made stock car racing the great sport it is!

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.

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.

McReynolds right sometimes, but wrong too

When something of importance takes place in the racing world, particularly the stock car racing world, the SPEED channel emails to reporters a release of quotes from their panel of experts who are quick to comment.

Such was the case Tuesday when SPEED sat down with Larry McReynolds to talk about the departure of the Eury family from Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Nationwide Series team – Tony Sr. first, followed by Tony Jr.

Then, later in the day, out came a series of quotes from McReynolds and others concerning the reinstatement of A.J. Allmendinger by NASCAR following treatment after he failed two drug tests.

Now, sometimes McReynolds has amazing insight and is bang-on with his observations. Other times, he shows that he’s making it up as he goes along and doesn’t really understand what he’s talking about.

Tuesday’s two sets of quotes illustrate both tendencies perfectly.

On the departure of the Eurys from JR Motorsports, McReynolds said this:

"I think their current driver lineup is running as well as they’re going to run. In the Nationwide Series, Danica Patrick is probably as good as she’s going to be. She’s going to run between ninth and 15th and maybe score a top five on a really good day. I don’t care if you put Chad Knaus in as her crew chief, she’s going to run where she is running. As much as I’d love to say she could run fender-to-fender with Ricky Stenhouse, Jr., Austin Dillon or Elliott Sadler, I don’t think it’s there. Danica is great for our sport and I’m excited about her running full time in the Cup Series, but she has run 51 Nationwide Series races  and that’s a lot of races.

"By the same token, Cole Whitt is going to run where he is running. He was thrown into the deep end pretty fast. I think he’s between a sixth and 12th place driver right now. That’s where he ran with the Eurys, and that’s where he’s going to run without them."

Who can argue with that analysis? Larry McReynolds is absolutely correct.

On the other hand, this is why he should be very careful when he spouts off on subjects that maybe he’s not a hundred per cent up on. Or else, he’s misunderstood what he’s been told.

This is what he said about the possibility of A.J. Allmendinger returning to racing in the IZOD IndyCar Series with Roger Penske’s team:

"What I think might be going on, though - and I talked to Robin Miller (SPEED open wheel reporter) earlier today about this before we even knew A.J . was reinstated – is that A.J. is under consideration for Roger Penske’s IndyCar ride. Roger has an open seat. I know Roger has offered it to a couple of drivers who have turned it down. A.J. was in Fontana last weekend with Roger, and A.J. came from open-wheel racing. That might be the best place for him right now. It might not be what he wants, but it probably is the best option for his career at the moment. What top rides are available in NASCAR? None at the moment. I truly think he’d be better off driving an Indy car for Penske than taking a middle-of-the-road ride in the Cup Series."

Okay, this is what popped out of that paragraph and hit me right square between the eyes:

"Roger has an open seat. I know Roger has offered it to a couple of drivers who have turned it down."

Huh? Drivers have turned down an offer from Roger Penske to drive one of his Indy cars?

I don’t think so, Larry.

In fact, not a chance.

That would be like me saying, "Rick Hendrick has an open seat. He offered it to a couple of drivers who have turned it down."

Which would never happen.

But in case you’re right and I’m not, names please.