Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Hinch on SPEED, women on wall at Daytona

The first debris caution on Lap 28 of last Sunday’s Daytona 500 was called because two women had crawled underneath the fence separating the motorhome park from the speedway between turns three and four and were sitting on top of the wall behind the SAFER barrier.

While most of the drivers made their first pit stops, speedway security went over and told them to get down and not to do that again.

Although some people questioned their sanity, I gave them some slack. In 1975, on the Friday night of the Indy 500 weekend, I walked right up to the fence between turns three and four of the mile-long dirt track at the Indiana State Fairgrounds and was enthralled as the USAC Champ Cars turned hot laps.

Those pilots would start to broadslide going into turn three (Larry ‘Boom Boom’ Cannon was the most spectacular) and the mud was just flying right at me. Those guys knew what they were doing and I was not the least bit nervous standing there as they slid straight toward me before nailing the throttle and hurtling themselves into turn four and out onto the main straight.

I was buzzed and was ready to stand there forever.

Except a state trooper saw me and told me to beat it or he’d arrest me. So I moved on, just as I’m sure those girls did last Sunday. But for a short time, they sure had the best seats in the house. I know; I was there – kinda – 38 years ago in Indianapolis.

From the moment James Hinchcliffe of Oakville started his long climb up motor racing’s ladder, from karts to Formula Atlantic to the A1 GP and Indy Lights and finally the IZOD IndyCar Series, he has been a marvelous self-promoter.

He has a wonderful sense of humour (mostly self-deprecating) and a sparkling personality and he knew right from the start that if he was going to make it to the top, he would have to be more than a good racing driver; he would have to exploit his own strengths.

So every opportunity he got, he made himself available to the media. Want a photo of a driver clowning around? I’m your boy, he’d say. Need a driver to comment on camera about how wonderful Cleveland/Edmonton/Milwaukee/Toronto is? I’m here, he’d say.

When he was driving in Champ Car Atlantics, he provided colour commentary on international broadcasts of the Champ Car World Series races. He became an expert at utilizing social media and created a web site around the mythical community of Hinchtown, appointing himself mayor.

When Danica Patrick wound down her IndyCar career and left for NASCAR, and sponsor GoDaddy went looking for a replacement, it didn’t take them long at all to zero in on Hinchcliffe. He’s about to start his second season in the IndyCar series, driving the GoDaddy car for Andretti Autosport.

Now comes news, which was officially announced Thursday, that James has been hired by the FOX Sports Media Group to appear on SPEED Channel’s Sunday night racing newscast Speed Center and on Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain that comes on later in the evening.

He’ll join Speed Center host Adam Alexander and NASCAR driver Sam Hornish in reporting and analyzing the weekend’s racing during the newscast and will also be available for comment during the Wind Tunnel program.

This is great for SPEED, great for IndyCar and great for James.

It's also a lesson for every other ambitious young race-car driver out there: you have to do more than drive the car.

Lots more

Two weeks from now, on the eve of the iconic 12 Hours of Sebring sports car classic, the American Le Mans Series and the Grand Am Rolex road racing club will hold a press conference to announce the name, branding and logo for the unified sports car series that will start in 2014.

I don’t know whether to get excited, or not. I know the merger (the sale, actually) is going to happen, because they told me so last Sept. 5. But I’m not sure it’s wise to be beating the drums for 2014 before the 2013 ALMS season has even started. (The Grand Am season will be two races old by the time of the announcement.)

They will have plenty of time to do all this name-changing and branding and logo-ing in the fall. Then they'll have the winter to really go to town to publicize it all.

It’s almost as if they’re devaluing this season’s racing on purpose in order to get people excited about next year.

I don’t get it.

The World of Outlaws sprint car series is out in Arizona these days and a release they sent out on Thursday caught my eye.

Next Saturday, March 9, at Tucson International Raceway, the special Grand Marshal for a meet there will be one of my all-time favourite race track announcers, William "Windy" McDonald.

Windy announced forever at the now-lost Manzanita Speedway in Phoenix and I can still hear his distinctive, high-pitched, emotion-filled voice when he would say, after the sprint car warmups:

"Ladies and gentlemen, it’s SHOWTIME!"

Manzanita, or ‘Manzy’ as it was called, was located in a section of southwestern Phoenix that was, to be polite, rough. The sprint cars didn’t have to run mufflers, it was said, because the sound of the engines covered up the gunfire. (THAT’S A JOKE!)

Whenever CART, and later the IRL, raced at Phoenix International, my pals and I would always fly out. We did this for three reasons: Indy cars, Mexican food and the sprint cars at Manzanita – and not necessarily in that order.

I couldn’t believe it four years ago when they said Manzanita had been sold and would be turned into an equipment depot for a crane company. The almost-sacred place where guys like Billy Boat, Ronnie Shuman, Tracy Hines and J.J. Yeley had gone wheel to wheel would be no more and never again would I be able to hear Windy McDonald say, as the field for the evening’s feature came through four and onto the front straight, all lined up and ready to go:

"AND HERE THEY ARE – THE SPRINT CARS, ON PARADE!"

Maybe I’ll fly down to Tucson next weekend and take in that Outlaws show. And maybe have a word with Windy McDonald.

Maybe.

Fresh from his IndyCar test with Penske Racing, A.J. Allmendinger will climb into a Sprint Cup stock car for the NASCAR race this weekend at Phoenix International Raceway.

The deal, while rumoured for months, just came together Tuesday.

Allmendinger will replace Regan Smith in the Phoenix Racing car. Smith finished seventh in last Sunday’s Daytona 500.

Okay, so that’s the news. Here’s my question:

Why is this race team replacing a driver who finished seventh in the Daytona 500 with a guy who lost his full-time ride last year because of his conduct and has only been in a stock car once since?

I have nothing against Allmendinger. He did his time. But while he’s a dynamite open-wheel race driver, he’s not that good in stock cars. And from what I know about Phoenix Racing, which could best be described as a low-buck team, it really doesn’t have the luxury of being Mr. Nice Guy when it comes to the rehabilitation of racing drivers. We’re not talking here about a team with the resources of, say, a Hendrick Motorsports.

In short, I don’t get it.

NASCAR and the sponsor Sprint announced this week that the Sprint All-Star exhibition race on the U.S. Memorial Day weekend would be more complicated than ever.

They didn’t phrase it that way, of course. They said changes they had planned would make the race more challenging for the drivers and entertaining for the fans.

Ho, ho, ho.

I say the words "total confusion" would be more like it.

This paragraph is is right out of the press release and, after reading it, I want anybody who understands what it all means to put their hand up so they can explain it to the rest of us. Here goes:

"The running order at the completion of the fourth segment (lap 80) will be repositioned based on the average finish for the first four segments directly behind the caution car prior to the opening of pit road for the mandatory four-tire pit stop. The order of the cars returning to the track will determine the starting order of the fifth segment."

That makes about as much sense as "Drivers and Danica, start your engines" did last Sunday.

I still can’t figure that one out either.

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Photo of Larry Cannon, courtesy the Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Photo of Windy McDonald, courtesy of the Arizona Republic

Photo of James Hinchcliffe and his lady, courtesy www.thebiglead.com

Facebook entry about Daytona 500 surprising

I consider myself a tolerant person. To each his (or her) own, I say.

And following that logic, I consider myself a fan of all types of auto racing. Yes, I like some forms more than others, but I appreciate it all and can watch it all and enjoy it all over the course of time.

And while I used to think that some types of auto racing were more difficult than others, that it was harder – say – to drive a Formula One car at tenth-tenths through the streets of Monaco than to handle a midget on the high-banked dirt oval at Belleville, Kansas, I have since changed my mind after actually going racing myself and discovering, in my own little world, that it’s just plain hard to do.

The drivers I have come to admire and appreciate the most are the competitors in a series that races in all sorts of different conditions in all sorts of different configurations. I used to think, for instance, that the CART Indy car drivers were the cat’s meow because one week they would be on a super speedway, the next on a road course, the next on a short oval and the next on a street circuit. The only thing missing from the national championship, I thought, was a round on a dirt track at – say – the Indiana State Fairgrounds or maybe the miles at Springfield or Du Quoin, Ill.

The drivers who race in the NASCAR Sprint Cup these days are a pretty versatile group. They have to go from the high-banked, restrictor-plate, flat-out-balls-to-the-wall Daytona Speedway to the short, tight, relatively flat Phoenix International Raceway to the even shorter and tighter Bristol Motor Speedway and then, later in the year, to the up-hill-and-down-dale, right-turn-left-turn, gear-up-gear-down Watkins Glen International and they do it all with speed and style and panache.

Yes, watching the Daytona 500 unfold last Sunday was maybe not the riveting sports spectacle that we all had anticipated (not really knowing how the Gen 6 cars were going to behave, for instance), but it was amazing to watch and appreciate the skill, daring and particularly the concentration of all those drivers rocketing around and around that race track at 200 miles an hour and not one of them making a false move. It really was – cliche time here – poetry in motion.

So it was both surprising and disconcerting to come across a Facebook entry from retired sports car racer Bill Adam that basically dissed the entire 43-car field on Sunday. Wrote Adam:

"Amazing race cars...", "the best drivers in the world....". Are these comments directed towards McLaren, Red Bull or Ferrari? Are they about Vettel. Tom Kristensen, or......??? Nope. All were just uttered on the NASCAR broadcast......

"So let me get this straight.........these drivers and cars ALL run flat out, all the way around the Daytona speedway, in this long follow the leader procession and the only time they have to lift off the throttle is to come into the pits. And this is racing ???? Give me a break !!!

"I WILL agree that they are amazingly boring, and that the drivers are the best drivers on the Daytona track - at this moment. Sad......Bill Adam."

 As I said, I’m a tolerant guy. I believe in freedom of speech. People can say what they want. I do it all the time; it’s how I make my living.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t shake my head on occasion and wonder where some of these people are coming from.

Yes, some of the things Darrell Waltrip said last Sunday were a bit over the top – but so what? It was the Daytona 500, stock car racing’s biggest day. Does anybody really think ol’ Dee Double-ya’s gonna say something like, "And look at these cars, the greatest race cars in the world – except fer Formula One cars, of course. Or sports cars. And there’s Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch and Dale Jr. and they’re the greatest racing drivers in the world – oh, maybe not as good as Sebastian Vettel, but they’re tryin’ jest as hard."

Give me a break.

Bill Adam has a wonderful road-racing curriculum vitae. He's a member of the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame and is about to debut as a colour commentator on Sportsnet’s coverage of the IZOD IndyCar Series this summer.

If anybody should appreciate the skill needed to be a top racer, and the hyperbole that tends to leak out of any announcing booth attached to any racing series just about anywhere, it’s him.

That Tony Stewart was the only one of the 43 NASCAR stars to go over to the hospital in Daytona and visit some of the fans who were injured in that Nationwide deal last Saturday should come as no surprise.

Stewart went to the Halifax hospital Sunday night and stayed for about two hours.

Despite being a champion stock car star, team owner and speedway owner, Stewart is still a short-track racer at heart. At local speedways, fans go down to the pits after the races to chat with the drivers and to drink beer and even help load up if some of the car owners don’t have a lot of help.

It’s a community feeling that you don’t get at the big league racing events.

Stewart knows of this and appreciates it. As well as racing at NASCAR events, you’ll find him behind the wheel of a midget at the Fort Wayne indoor races in January, at the Chili Bowl in Tulsa, with the World Outlaws sprint cars at Volusia County in February and half a dozen times during the summer, including at the Brantford-area Ohsweken Speedway in July, and when he’s in that environment he’s not Tony Stewart, great big important NASCAR driver, he's just another face in the crowd.

He might got out and win the race but when he’s in Victory Lane he thanks the fans for coming out and the guys he’s raced against for letting him do it and he’s just down-home natural. When he got out of his car after he won that race last Saturday in Daytona, the first thing he talked about was the crash and his concern for what might have happened to people in the grandstands – his people.

Those folks might wear the T-shirts and buy the souvenirs and cheer for the Martin Truex Jr.’s and the Greg Biffles and the Joey Loganos but they are not "their people."

But they sure are Tony Stewart’s people and that’s why he was at the hospital and the others weren’t.

For years, tickets to sporting events had a little disclaimer printed on the back about how the holder accepted the risks associated with attendance. In fact, I have an old ticket stub around here someplace from Maple Leaf Gardens (Leafs vs. Red Wings, 1952) that has a message like that on it.

One winter, some fan sitting up behind one of the nets got a puck in the mouth and sued the living daylights out of the NHL, the Gardens and the Toronto hockey club. There hasn’t been anything on the back of hockey tickets since except advertising.

There have been suggestions that NASCAR and the Daytona Speedway will fight lawsuits launched by some of the fans who were injured last Saturday when parts of a racing car and a wheel flew into the grandstands. Apparently, on the tickets they held, they were reminded that the sport of auto racing is dangerous and to keep their heads down. Or words to that effect.

If NASCAR doesn’t quietly try to settle out of court, they’re foolish because they’ll lose. Maybe not immediately, but at some point. Better to get it over with quickly before it gets out of hand.

Humpy Wheeler has been quoted as saying that Charlotte Motor Speedway, which he used to run, settled for between $10 million and $15 million with the families of three people killed in the 1990s when a wheel off an IRL car flew into the stands and hit them.

This is nowhere as serious, in that nobody was killed. But 28 people required medical treatment and nearly 10 of them were still in the hospital Wednesday, so their injuries sound somewhat serious. If NASCAR is smart – and I think NASCAR is very smart – they will reach agreement first with the two or three who are most hurt and then pay off the others on a sliding scale.

When I say it’s inevitable that they’ll have to pay up, let me tell you a little story. It is the way things work in the United States of America.

I have a friend we’ll call Bill (not his real name and, in fact, not even close). Bill was working on a barge in a river in northern New York one January day about 10 years ago when the local power authority opened a dam without telling anybody and the barge my buddy Bill was on was ripped from its moorings.

Bill was thrown into the river and it’s just by the grace of God he was plucked out of the frigid water. Hypothermia was setting in and it took about two days in hospital for him to thaw out and get some colour in his cheeks.

On the third day, he was feeling pretty chipper and another friend of ours, a lawyer, dropped in for a visit. The conversation went something like this:

"Bill, if you want to sue for negligence, I guarantee you will win. If you want to settle for $100,000, I can have a cheque for you by next Monday afternoon. However, although it will have to work its way through two or three courts and will take about a year, I can probably get you at least $1 million. Your choice, but I take 10 per cent regardless."

Bill thought for a moment and opted for the latter. Just over a year later, the power company cut him a cheque for $1.2 million and he’s been living happily ever after ever since.

NASCAR should get in there fast before my pal Bill’s lawyer starts laying out the options for people in Halifax hospital.

A grandma tunes in to watch 'that girl' at Daytona

My friend, the late Art Wright – Arthur L. Wright to his friends – had a favourite expression.

When commenting on something that didn’t particularly excite him, be it a house party he’d attended or a month in his life, he would describe it as being "largely uneventful."

I think if Art was still around – he died in 1979 – he would use those words to describe Sunday’s Daytona 500, much of which was made up of racing cars following each other around and around in one great, long, line.

Even the crashes – there were only two – were largely uneventful, as compared to some of the ka-boomers we’ve come to expect from NASCAR over the years.

In the end – and yes, the last lap was very exciting and even my pal Art would have been on his feet cheering – Jimmie (Five-Time) Johnson managed to hold on to the lead and score his second Daytona 500 victory, with Hendrick Motorsports teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. second and Mark (the Ageless Wonder) Martin in third.

Defending Sprint Cup champion Brad Keselowski was fourth, Ryan Newman fifth, Greg Biffle sixth, Regan Smith seventh, Danica Patrick eighth, Michael McDowell ninth and J.J. Yeley tenth.

Drivers thought to have had a chance of winning the classic – Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, Kasey Kahne, Kyle Busch, Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards – were eliminated from contention either by crashes or mechanical gremlins.

For a detailed race story, with full results, click here.

That Johnson won is no surprise. He has won the Sprint Cup championship five times – in a row, actually – and although his record in this particular race has been abysmal the last six years, he won it for the first time in 2006 so has been to Victory Lane in Daytona before.

The big surprise – for many people – was the performance of Danica Patrick, who started from pole but was widely expected to fall back and maybe, maybe, finish, now that she is finally racing full-time in the Big League.

But Patrick held her own the whole race and only inexperience and the selection of the wrong partner going down to the checkers kept her from scoring a podium finish.

The Sprint Cup competitors now move on to Phoenix and the contrast will be telling. Daytona is a big, wide, high-banked, 2-1/2 mile restrictor-plate speedway while Phoenix is a mile-long oval that’s narrower and fairly flat – just the sort of place to separate the men from the boys, and maybe the girl.

NOTEBOOK JOTTINGS

– Although there were 28 lead changes recorded at the start/finish line, a bunch of them took place during a succession of green-flag pit stops that you don’t often see in Sprint Cup racing.

So there might have been lead changes but they weren’t noticeable.

For instance, Patrick and Jeff Gordon led the field down for the start. Gordon managed to get up in front of Patrick and Kyle Busch fell in behind her and they went round and round like that for 28 laps before NASCAR threw a caution because of debris on the track.

When was the last time you can remember a NASCAR Sprint Cup race going 28 laps without a lead change and the first three cars were in the same order the whole time?

– I made a notation in my book at this point: "Very conservative race." My pal Art would have said it was "largely uneventful."

– Brad Keselowski illustrated why he is the Sprint Cup champion. On Lap 137, in a crash that involved Trevor Bayne and Edwards, Bayne and Keselowski got together and Bayne spun, collecting other cars in the process. Keselowski looked to be on the verge of losing control but managed to straighten his car out and to keep going. A lesser-talented driver would have lost it and it would have been game over. But not Keselowski, who not only kept going but was in contention for the win right to the very end.

– I thought the TV show was okay. Dave Despain, on his Wind Tunnel program on SPEED Sunday night, said the technicians and the announcers had all done a wonderful job. (Of course, FOX was the presenting broadcaster and SPEED is owned by FOX so what would you expect?) But as I said, I thought it was okay.

But a friend of mine, who shall go nameless, did not. He was not impressed, at all. Far from it, in fact. Here is what he wrote to me after the telecast:

"After months of waiting, we saw the worst broadcast and almost as bad a race that has ever started the NASCAR season. Race? I use that term very loosely, since it was only a race from the last 15 laps to the finish and even then, many of the regular contenders had been eliminated.

"I am so totally outraged and appalled at the blatant favoritism towards Danica. I’m convinced it broke some broadcast standards, as low as they may be. As if that wasn’t enough, that low standard was only matched by the infuriating number and length of commercial interruptions, mostly without the ‘side-by-side’ image. Three laps of on-track was followed by five laps’ worth of interruption all day long. It must have set a new record. Even the broadcast image quality was crap."

I suggest this guy is not alone in his criticism.

Before we return to the "Danica 500," however, I have one other observation.

– I have always considered auto racing to be an individual sport. I know, I know: everybody calls it a team sport but, frankly, I have always considered the "team" aspect to be secondary to the individualism of the driver.

I have now officially changed my mind – at least so far as racing at Daytona and other restrictor-plate speedways is concerned because without a "drafting partner," be it a teammate or a buddy, you are unable to do anything. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

This was illustrated perfectly on Saturday near the end of the Nationwide Series race. Brad Keselowski was running near the front of the pack and his Penske teammate, Sam Hornish Jr., was way, way behind. He’d "lost the draft" and was helpless.

This is what Keselowski heard over his radio: "Feel like going back and rescuing a teammate?" Although he was given a choice of saying no, the team wanted him to give up his position and to drop back to where Hornish was and then between the two of them they would be able to catch him back up so he could go racing.

And that’s what happened. Keselowski waited for Hornish and then the two of them drafted their way back into contention. They did this so well, in fact, that Keselowski was going for the win when he was blocked by Regan Smith and that move triggered the pileup that saw Kyle Larson’s car come apart and injure all those spectators.

Hornish? He finished second in that race behind Tony Stewart. But without Keselowski and the draft, he’d have been nowhere.

– Okay, let’s get to Danica Patrick.

She won the pole, she was in the top ten all day Sunday and usually in the top five, she led five green flag laps (the fans in Daytona were all standing and cheering when she took the lead for the first time), making her the first woman to do that in Sprint Cup competition and her eighth-place finish was the best finish by a female.

Tommy Kendall said on Wind Tunnel that her performance didn’t surprise him, that he’d told Tiger Woods’s agent back in 2003 that she would change motor racing in North America and that her top ten finish would give "the haters" reason to reconsider their bias.

I wish he hadn’t used the word "haters." I happen to be a fan of Danica Patrick and I think she is going to go on to become a great NASCAR driver (I love how pissed off she was that she’d only finished eighth – as others have also pointed out) but I also have respect for people – and I have friends who feel this way – who don’t like the constant promotion and think she is doing more harm to the sport than good.

I don’t think the word "hate" or "hater" is appropriate. Maybe they dislike her, maybe they resent her, but I don’t think they "hate" her. At least, I hope not.

NASCAR, of course, knows a good thing when they see it. She is a star and when you have a star you exploit it. I suggest when the TV ratings come in for this Daytona 500 that they will be among the highest, if not the highest, every recorded.

And I’ll tell you why.

Sunday night about 6 p.m., my wife was talking to her mother, who is the grandmother of seven.

"So what did you do today, mom?" she asked.

"I watched the Daytona 500."

"What? You don't like racing. You’ve never done that before. Why?"

"I wanted to see how that girl would do."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, illustrates perfectly why the spotlight these days is always on "that girl."

I ask you: what are NASCAR and the TV announcers supposed to do?

Pretend she isn’t there?

The race drivers are safe now, what about the fans?

Back in the 1990s, when three fans were killed at Charlotte Motor Speedway and another three at Michigan International after wheels flew off Indy cars and landed in the grandstands, officials at most speedways responded quickly.

They increased the height of the catch fencing surrounding the tracks and ordered the bending of the tops of the fences so they hung well out over the racing surface in order to keep flying debris from going into the crowd.

So it’s hard to say what could be done to improve safety even more at Daytona International Speedway after Saturday’s last-lap crash in the Nationwide Series race injured 33 spectators (the number keeps changing), at least two of whom are reportedly in critical condition.  Link to story here.

But you would have thought the reaction might have been a little more urgent than that exhibited by the speedway’s president, Joie Chitwood, who, after delivering the almost-obligatory observation that the thoughts and prayers of everybody were with the victims, was quick to add that repairs were being made to the facility and everything should be ready for the running Sunday of the Daytona 500.

Everybody is so media trained these days that the words of the officials and even most of the drivers who were interviewed sounded as if they came directly from press releases.

How refreshing it would have been for someone in a position of authority to have said something like this:

"It’s absolutely terrible what happened here today and we’ve got to take a really hard look at how we can better keep these cars together and not have parts and wheels flying out of control and injuring people. Yes, these cars are going 200 miles an hour but we’ve got to come up with a fail-safe way of keeping them inside the arena. Anything less is unacceptable."

But we didn’t. What we heard was that it would be business as usual come sunup Sunday. Oh, Chitwood did say the speedway would review what happened but he didn’t sound as if there was anything to really get excited about.

When burning fuel sprayed spectators near the fence along the main straight at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway when there was a crash at the start of the Indy 500 in 1973, officials responded by removing all of the seating close to the wall and restricting fan movement there when the cars are at speed.

That’s something officials at Daytona and other speedways will have to specifically review in the aftermath of Saturday’s disaster.

People routinely walk near the fence during NASCAR races and a video taken by a fan Saturday shows dozens of people start to crowd toward the fence when the last-lap accident began happening.

Cars started to crash together at the beginning of the tri-oval but it took a few seconds for them to reach the centre of the sweeping turn near the start/finish line. In those seconds, people moved toward to fence to get a better look and they were most vulnerable when the car of Kyle Larson left the ground and smashed into the catch fence.

In an instant, the front end of Larson’s car was torn off (the rest of his racer landed back on the speedway and he exited the car unharmed) and the engine and front wheel assembly ended up on the spectator side of the safety wall. At least one tire went flying up into the crowd.

The 33 people hurt are the most ever injured at a NASCAR event. Several years ago, at Talladega, eight people were taken to hospital when Carl Edwards’s car nearly went through the fence. And there have been several instances since where cars came close to leaving the racing surface but didn’t and spectators escaped injury, as a result.

NASCAR – and all big-league racing – now has a challenge. The cars and the facilities (i.e., the SAFER barrier) have been made so much better that injuries are rare and there hasn’t been a fatal accident since Dale Earnhart Sr. died at Daytona in 2001. So the drivers are safe.

But what about the fans? Nearly three dozen fans injured at a sporting event is not good for business. The danger of being a spectator at a NASCAR race – as was the case with Indy cars in the 1990s – is now very real and this must be addressed as quickly as possible.

Repairing the facility and flagging racing cars off for the next event isn’t good enough. A call to action is what’s needed.

Tony Stewart won the race, by the way. He made it to Victory Lane for the seventh time. Sam Hornish Jr. was second and rookie Alex Bowman finished third. A link to the full race story is here.

By the way, they say that everything comes in threes so this should put an end to whatever’s been going on at Daytona Speedway recently.

Three years ago, you’ll recall, they had a hell of a time getting the 500 over with because a huge pothole opened up in the first turn and they had to keep stopping the race to fix it.

Last year, Juan Montoya crashed into a jet dryer and the resulting fire scorched the track so badly it took forever to clean up the mess and finish the race.

Now this.

Maybe whatever it is, is over.

The Daytona 500 pre-race show is scheduled to start on TSN at noon Sunday, with the race itself scheduled to get going at 1 p.m. or shortly after.

I think it would be nice if somebody from NASCAR or the Daytona Speedway said they’re sorry about what happened.

But don't hold your breath.

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CRASH PHOTO BY FRED STOLL/DAYTONA BEACH NEWS-JOURNAL

LINK TO VIDEO OF CRASH

Harvick wins Sprint Unlimited, Patrick fastest in NASCAR practice

Kevin Harvick won the Sprint Unlimited pole-winners-only exhibition race at Daytona Speedway Saturday night, with Greg Biffle second and Joey Logano third.

Brad Keselowski, the Sprint Cup champion in 2012 who wasn't in this race (and how dumb is that?), did a fine job commenting on this and that as a guest announcer and even had the obligatory hand motions down pat.

He has a future in the booth if he should ever stop racing.

The new "gen 6" cars looked pretty good out there, although they appear to be a handful as compared to the previous gen cars. They were all fish-tailing around at one time or another and there was even a mini Big One caused when Tony Stewart's mount got away on him.

Mark Martin, Jimmy Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin were among the seven cars eliminated in the Lap 15 dustup.

The fun and games are now over, however, as Daytona 500 qualifying goes Sunday at 1 p.m. Danica Patrick turned the fastest lap of the 44 cars that took time Saturday and has to be a favourite for the pole. Her boss Stewart was plenty quick, too.

Earlier:

NASCAR fans who tune into the Sprint Unlimited race (nee the Budweiser Shootout, nee the Busch Clash) Saturday night might be surprised to find that the two top stock car drivers in the world won’t be racing in it.

Yes, the Clash (it will always be that to me) is an exhibition race reserved for pole winners from the previous season as well as for drivers who’ve won previous shootouts.

By that score, Brad Keselowski and Clint Bowyer, who finished one-two in the Sprint Cup championship in 2012, are ineligible. Although both had dazzling seasons last year, neither of them won a pole. So they can't race Saturday night.

Keselowski will be part of the broadcast team for the race. Darrell Waltrip and Larry McReynolds will anchor the show, which will be seen on CTV2 (in the Toronto area, that’s the old CKVR-Barrie station) at 8 p.m.

Now, even though Keselowski and Bowyer won’t be out there (NASCAR has been known to manipulate things on occasion in the past; you’d think there’d be some way to get those guys into that thing, wouldn’t you?), most of the rest of everybody’s Sprint Cup favourites will be racing, including Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Tony Stewart, Jimmy Johnson, Kyle Busch and the rest – except, of course, the champion and first runner-up.

Nuts.

The reason the race is on CTV2 is because although TSN holds the rights to NASCAR in Canada, there's no room to get the race on the air. Women’s curling is on the main network Saturday night and the NBA All-Star game is on the secondary channel.

TSN plans to telecast the entire Sprint Cup schedule in 2013 as well as all the Nationwide Series races, on either TSN, TSN2 or CTV2.

After the Saturday night Clash, all of the drivers in that race, plus Keselowski, Bowyer and the rest, will run time trials Sunday afternoon at 1 p.m. as qualifying begins for next weekend’s Daytona 500.

(See George's TV Listings for Race Fans for the channel that time trials will be on, plus times and channels for all the other pre-Daytona 500 NASCAR programming, including the two qualifying races next Thursday afternoon.)

A total of 45 drivers are entered in what broadcaster Ken Squier has dubbed the "Great American Race" and 43 will start the classic, meaning only two drivers will miss the show.

One of the 45 is Brad Keselowski’s brother Brian, who will be driving a start-and-park entry for Hamilton Means Racing, which usually campaigns a car in the Nationwide series.

Speaking of the Nationwide series, Nelson Piquet Jr. will fun full-time in it this season, after apprenticing in trucks last year.

And speaking of trucks, Canadian Tire Motorsport Park co-owner – and racing champion in his own right – Ron Fellows said at the Canadian International AutoShow on Thursday that he thinks chances are very good that he will have a ride for the Sprint Cup race at Watkins Glen in August and "be in a good car."

Fellows has won in every classification of racing he’s entered, with the exception of the Sprint Cup, and considers that to be "unfinished business."

And why did I start this item with the words, "speaking of trucks?" Because Canadian Tire Motorport Park will be the scene on Labour Day weekend of a NASCAR Camping World Series Truck Race.

Okay, so it doesn’t work. I’m moving on anyway.

Social note: Jacques Villeneuve is a new father – again. His wife has given birth to their latest child - a third son - and mother, father and baby are doing fine at the family home in Switzerland.

James Hylton, who's 78 and been driving in NASCAR'S top division since 1964 and made more than 600 starts, winning two races, has announced the 2013 season will be his last as a driver. I love guys with energy and endurance and Hylton tops the list.

And Kyle Marcelli of Barrie, who's considerably younger than Mr. Hylton, has signed to drive this season for BAR1 Motorsports in the LMPC class in the American Le Mans Series. The ALMS will be at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in July.

And finally, Katherine Legge and Sebastien Saavedra are both pay drivers. It says something about the IZOD IndyCar Series that they are apparently more important to a car owner than Indy 500 pole winner Ryan Briscoe, who has more talent than both of them combined and yet because he expects to be paid, he can’t get hired.

- Norris McDonald

Rob Faulds to anchor Sportsnet IndyCar races

In recent entries, I’ve talked about the broadcast team that Sportsnet is putting together to announce certain races during the 2013 IZOD IndyCar Series season.

As most of you know, Sportsnet has taken over telecasting of Indy car races from TSN and plans to do much more than pick up the U.S. broadcast feed.

Yes, the camera work will still be provided by either ABC or the NBC Sports Network but the people in the booth providing the audio for at least three of the races will be under contract to Sportsnet.

I previously revealed that Todd Lewis will be reporting from the pits and that Paul Tracy and Bill Adam would be in the booth. I said Adam would do the play-by-play and Tracy would do the colour but I found out at the weekend that I was an announcer short.

A source I will call "Deep Turbo I" told me I was right about Adam but wrong about his role. Adam, a sports car champion who is an inductee of the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame, will do colour alongside Tracy.

The host and play-by-play announcer will be Rob Faulds, a Sportsnet anchor with strong play-by-play credentials.

Faulds, Adam, Tracy and Lewis will entertain and inform during pre-race and post-race shows on Sportsnet at the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg March 24, the Indianapolis 500 on May 26 and the Honda Indy Toronto races on July 13 and 14.

"Deep Turbo I" told me that Faulds did play-by-play on Toronto Blue Jays telecasts in the early 2000s and has done Ottawa Senators and Montreal Canadiens NHL games.

And why is it necessary to have someone other than Tracy do colour?

Because, said Deep Turbo II (I had more than one source on all this), Adam has experience on live television and Tracy does not.

"Everybody knows Paul is a ‘talker,’ and will probably be great," Deep Turbo II said. "But he’s never done colour on TV and they (Sportsnet producers) didn’t want to take the chance that he might freeze up.

"It’s happened before where somebody came in with great credentials and then had no idea what to say when the red light went on."

"Deep Turbo I," meanwhile, said although the schedule calls for three races, there could be one or two more – "depending on economics and viewer reaction."

It’s great that Sportsnet is doing this. We have two Canadians racing in IndyCar – James Hinchcliffe and Alex Tagliani – and a little extra effort to reflect this is appreciated.

TSN used to make an effort, in Indy car as well as F1, but has been content in recent years to show the races and not do anything else.

NASCAR is still on TSN, of course, as is F1. But I wouldn’t be surprised if, at some point, Sportsnet took a crack at those series, too.

A quick comment on the commenting attached to my entry of yesterday.

Someone thinks I was being critical of Michael Waltrip going after Tim Hortons for a sponsorship. If that was the impression I left, I’m sorry, because I didn’t mean that.

I think it’s wonderful when a great Canadian corporation like Timmy’s gets involved in car racing.

Some people who own franchises have sponsored racers in the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series for stock cars and others have supported drag racers. But those would be classified as "regional" sponsorships, as distinct from a full-on national, corporate sponsorship.

In fact, I think the last time there was one of those was in 1987 when Ludwig Heimrath Jr. of Toronto drove in CART for Dick Simon Racing.

So if Michael Waltrip can sell Hortons on the merits of a Sprint Cup sponsorship for the Daytona 500, I say go for it.

Another commenter suggested I was behind the times in reporting that A.J. Allmendinger had nothing lined up in NASCAR for 2013 and that he would be driving some races again for Phoenix Racing.

That might yet happen, but as of today there is no deal.

Michael Waltrip coming to Canadian Motorsports Expo

 Auto racing headline of the week:

“McLaren pleased with Perez so far”

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

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

Here, however, is some real information.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

..

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

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

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

Tony Kanaan wins Long Beach GP (not really, but . . .)

WEEKEND HEADLINES

1. Rosberg wins F1 race for Mercedes - what a coincidence

2. Power wins IndyCar race but Kanaan is real winner

3. NASCAR goes crazy over truck race at Rockingham. Really.

4. Other racing

Nico Rosberg won the first race of his 111-race Grand Prix career and he drove a Mercedes Silver Arrows into Victory Lane for the first time since 1955 to do it at Sunday’s Grand Prix of China.

The fact that shareholders at a Mercedes-Benz meeting last week called for the company to pull out of F1 racing and that the team is most unhappy with the way Bernie Ecclestone has been manipulating the signing of the new Concorde Agreement has nothing at all to do with the two surprising victories – apparently.

To get the nuts and bolts out of the way before getting into my latest conspiracy theory, Rosberg won the first pole of his career on Saturday and then ran away with Sunday’s race to finish well clear of second–place finisher Jenson Button, who was driving a McLaren powered by a Mercedes engine.

McLaren-Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton was third, for the third time in three races this season, while Mark Webber finished fourth for Red Bull-Renault - his third straight fourth-place finish. Defending world champion Sebastien Vettel was fifth (complete results here).

They say the best time to tune into an NFL game is after the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter and that was the case with Sunday’s Grand Prix, as all of the excitement happened in the last few laps.

With five laps to go in the 58-lap contest, Kimi Raikkonen was holding down second place for Lotus-Renault, with Vettel third, Button fourth, Webber fifth and Hamilton sixth. At the finish, it was Button second, Hamilton third, Webber fourth and Vettel fifth with Raikkonen all the way back in 14^th as his two-stop gamble saw his tires disintegrate.

It was a good race with lots to talk about afterward, such as Michael Schumacher’s second retirement in three races (he’d started second but his crew failed to tighten his right-front wheel at the first pit stop and he was forced to pull off the circuit before he crashed), whether Button could have caught Rosberg if his crew hadn’t taken so long to tighten his left-rear tire on his final pit stop (nearly 10 seconds), and whether the Mercedes F-duct front wing system gives that team an unfair advantage (at least until everybody else copies it).

One side note:

I don’t want to sound like Don Cherry but F1 will rue the day it did not put a stop to side-by-side "racing" on pit lane. McLaren released Hamilton from a pit stop early in the race and Lotus gave Raikkonen the signal to go as Hamilton drew alongside. Raikkonen and Hamilton then went side-by-side till the end of the pit (albeit on the speed limiters), at which point Raikkonen gave way to Hamilton.

Analyst David Coulthard went so far as to say the pit lane "is part of the race track" but it shouldn’t be. As in IndyCar, teams should have to hold the driver till the coast is clear. Otherwise, there will be a collision in there one of these days and somebody will get hurt. That shouldn’t have to happen in order to force F1 to act.

Now F1 travels to Bahrain where the majority Shiite population feels oppressed by a minority Sunni family headed by Sheikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. This political unrest forced the cancellation of the race last year and there are again fears of revolution.

As Bob Varsha said on Speed TV Sunday, "We worry that this sporting event will turn into a news event." For that, we will have to wait and see.

Meantime, I have to say that I never believed that a car race could be fixed until it was proved that Nelson Piquet Jr., Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds conspired at the 2008 Grand Prix of Singapore to create a situation (Piquet would crash on purpose) that would benefit his teammate, Fernando Alonso, who then went on to win the race.

The reason they did this was because Renault had not won a race for close to two years and was reportedly considering leaving the sport.

In no way do I think Nico Rosberg or anybody else in Sunday’s Grand Prix did anything knowingly illegal or immoral, but I still find it really interesting that – on the heels of suggestions that Mercedes might not continue in the sport – the team suddenly has wonderful success.

When there is big business at play, and there are billions of dollars at stake, anything is possible. Anything. And it goes beyond Formula One. The National Hockey League’s mission statement is that come hell or high water, it will sell hockey in the United States. Ergo, it is no coincidence that, with the exception of the Vancouver Canucks, every professional hockey team in Canada stinks. Remember that, and believe it.

The Mercedes shareholders revolt is being led by a fund manager named Ingo Spech of the Daimler shareholder Union Investment. Worried that Mercedes is losing ground to rivals BMW and Audi, Spech called on Daimler to pull its Mercedes team out of F1, just as BMW withdrew several years ago. His motion reportedly drew support from other large investors.

In a parallel development, Ecclestone announced several weeks ago that he had agreed terms on a new contract with a "majority" of teams but not Williams and Mercedes.

Mercedes has not commented publicly but reports suggest the company - if it remains unhappy - could either challenge the contract, citing the European Union’s competition laws, or else walk away from F1.

So with Mercedes and its shareholders down in the dumps over its involvement in F1, what better medicine than success? So a company that hasn’t won a Grand Prix since 1955 - Juan Manuel Fangio was the driver then - suddenly wins one.

And to put an exclamation mark on that, there are Mercedes engines in all of the first three cars. And Nico Rosberg, who’s always shown lots of promise but hasn’t been able to follow through until now, suddenly delivers in spades.

It will be verrrry interesting, as Arte Johnson used to say, to see if Rosberg can keep it up.

Why do I say that?

Well, do you remember the Belgian Grand Prix of 2009? That was two years after two Indian businessmen bought the Spyker F1 team (which had previously been owned by Canadian businessman Alex Schnaider’s Midland Group, who’d bought it from Eddie Jordan) and renamed it Force India.

Force India had entered 29 races and hadn’t scored a point and there were suggestions that if it didn’t finish high enough in the standings to qualify for a share of F1's travel and TV money that it would either be shut down or put up for sale again.

That year, there were 20 cars in F1. Nobody wanted to lose another two. Veteran Force India driver Giancarlo Fisichella qualified most of the time at the back of the pack that season. In fact, three times in 20 races he was dead last; twice he was 19^th, twice he was 18^th – and, well, you get my drift.

The race before the Belgian GP that year was the European Grand prix at Valencia. Fisichella qualified 16^th and finished 12^th. The race after Belgium was in Italy, where he qualified 14^th and finished ninth.

But at Belgium that year, he qualified on the pole – yes, really – and finished second in the race. The points he earned, plus the fourth-place finish at the Italian GP by his teammate, Adrien Sutil, gave the team enough points to finish high enough in the standings to qualify for financial aid.

What a coicidence. . .

As I said, if something has to happen in F1 (or any other mega-billion-dollar sport) to make somebody happy, it happens.

2. Kanaan wins Long Beach Grand Prix, Hinch second

Okay, Tony Kanaan didn't win. He officially finished fourth in Sunday's Grand Prix of Long Beach (official results here) but because the IZOD IndyCar Series penalized 14 of the 26 starters for unauthorized engine changes, and gave those 14 drivers 10-grid-position penalties, I think it must be taken into consideration when calculating who really won the race in California on Sunday.

Officially, Will Power won the race, with Simon Pagenaud second and Hinchcliffe third. Fourth was Kanaan and fifth was J.R. Hildebrand.

However, because of the stupidity of sticking to the engine-change rule rather than taking the spirit of the rule into consideration (which would have seen the penalties suspended – see my blogs on this in posts below), here is the way the race should really have been scored:

Kanaan qualified 10^th but was made to start 19^th (which is not a 10-grid-position penalty but this thing is so complicated that you will just have to bear with me). He officially finished fourth, which is an improvement of 15 positions. But because he was only penalized nine places instead of 10, we have to dock him a position, so he only improved 14 positions. But nobody did it better on Sunday in Long Beach than this.

Hinchcliffe qualified sixth but then was made to start 16^th – a full 10-grid-position penalty. Because he eventually came home third, that means he improved his position 13 places, which puts him second behind Kanaan's 14, in my books.

Will Power finished third in my "race" because he qualified second, was made to start 12^th, and then finished first for an improvement of 12 positions. Good for him – but not as good as Kanaan and Hinchcliffe.

Oh, before somebody says J.R. Hildebrand should have made it onto my podium, consider this: he qualified 16^th, was only penalized four places instead of 10 (he should have had to go off 26^th but you’d have to ask the geniuses at IndyCar why he didn’t) and so by improving his position from 20^th to fifth, he made up 15 places but really only nine.

UNDERSTAND???

I’m going to stop now because I’m getting a headache. Let’s just hope IndyCar never does this to us again.

3. NASCAR tries to inject excitement into non-crashing boredom

After putting on two of the most boring big-league races in the history of NASCAR, the sanctioning body’s management group pulled out all the stops Sunday afternoon by arriving en masse at Rockingham Speedway in North Carolina to watch a Camping World Series truck race that turned out to be about as boring as the Nationwide and Sprint Cup races that preceded it.

NASCAR is all about crashing. If there is no crashing, there is no excitement. The strategy of the drivers and teams is predicated on yellow flags necessitating pit stops where tire changes, fuel fill-ups and chassis changes can be completed.

No yellows means big trouble because, on top of everything else, the fans get restless.

Friday night’s Nationwide race at Texas Motor Speedway was a yawn (Ricky Stenhouse Jr. the winner). Saturday night’s Sprint Cup race there was no better (Greg Biffle the winner, with but two yellows – including one for a hat that blew out on the track). The commentators spent much of the time explaining why "long green runs" are bad for teams.

So Sunday afternoon, NASCAR president Mike Helton and his entourage flew into Rockingham to say how much NASCAR liked being back at one of its spiritual home tracks. Unfortunately, the truck race that followed (Kasey Kahne the winner, with James Buescher second (James who? See what I mean?) and Matt Crafton third (ditto) was about as unexciting as the two stock-car snoozers.

Rockingham used to be NASCAR’s third race of the season. For years and years, the series would start with the Daytona 500, then go north to Richmond, Va., for the second race, Rockingham for the third and Atlanta the fourth (usually held the same weekend as the start of Ontario’s March break, which used to guarantee a huge snowstorm for all those folks driving their kids to Myrtle Beach or Jacksonville).

But those races were cold for everybody. It was winter, after all. So NASCAR wised up and went west and that’s why, after Daytona, there are now races in sunny (or sunnier) southern California, Arizona and Nevada.

They made those changes eight years ago and since Rockingham only had one race on the NASCAR schedule at the time, it meant the end of racing at the facility. Traditional NASCAR fans were not happy

Owner Andy Hillenburg, a former racer, bought the place at auction five years and has been sprucing it up since. He finally convinced NASCAR to give him something – anything – and they responded by adding a truck race there to the schedule.

Hillenburg said he was happy with the turnout Sunday – the NASCAR communications folks used the term "nearly full grandstands" – but it could have been better. A lot better. In fact, there were a lot of empty seats. But that’s understandable, because truck racing ain’t Cup and Cup is what used to pack the place.

But it’s a start and Helton’s presence was a bit like a blessing from the Pope. The symbolism was obvious: keep tryin’, son, and someday you might see stock cars at this place again.

The bloom is off the NASCAR rose (and if there are any more races like the ones on the weekend, that rose will soon be wilting). Going forward, you can predict the strategy: it was a Southern sport to begin with; to revive it, what better way than to return it to its roots.

And there's probably no better place to do that, than at the Rock.

4. Other racing:

Klaus Graf and Lucas Luhr, driving the Muscle Milk Honda Performance Development ARX-03 LMP1 car, won the Tequila Patrón American Le Mans Series at Long Beach for the second straight season Saturday.

Tommy Milner and Oliver Gavin gave Corvette Racing its first victory at Long Beach since 2009 and its first in ALMS since Mosport last July by finishing first in the GT class.

Kyle Marcelli of Barrie finished fourth in the Prototype Challenge class. Tony Burgess of Toronto was eighth in PC.

In World of Outlaws Sprint Car Racing, Joey Saldana won the round at Paducah Speedway in Kentucky.

The ALMS and the Outlaws will both be racing in southern Ontario in July - the sports cars at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park (nee Mosport) and the Outlaws at Ohswegen Speedway near Brantford.