Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Marcelli to lead Canadian charge at 12 Hours of Sebring

The 60^th annual 12 Hours of Sebring, among the world’s most famous sports car endurance races, will be held in Florida next Saturday and will officially kick off two world series – the 2012 FIA World Endurance Championship and the 2012 American Le Mans Series season.

The entry list is a Who’s Who of international sports car racing led by Audi Sport Team Joest running the Audi R18s with Allan McNish, Tom Kristensen and Dindo Capello driving one, Timo Bernhard, Romain Dumas and a third driver to be announced aboard a second and Andrew Lottere, Benoit Treluyer and Marcel Fassier in the third.

There will be Lolas and Pescarolos and Ferraris and Corvettes and many other famous drivers like David Brabham, Emmanuel Collard, Giancarlo Fisichella and Oliver Gavin.

Canadian content will be supplied by four drivers, in particular. Kyle Marcelli of Barrie returns to the Le Mans Series Prototype Challenge class driving for Merchant Services Racing while Chris Cumming and Michael Valiante of Vancouver and LP Dumoulin of Trois-Rivieres will be driving Porsche 911 GT3s in the GT Challenge division.

Marcelli, one of Canada’s finest young racing drivers, is no stranger to American le Mans Series competition and is looking forward to the 2012 season.

Said Marcelli, in a note to fans sent just before he left for Florida Thursday:

"The 12 Hours of Sebring will surely be the toughest race on the 2012 calendar. Not only is it the longest race of the year for the American Le Mans Series but will also be the busiest as the track will be filled with over 60 of the worlds most exotic sports cars and prototypes. It will be a race of attrition for sure. It will be important we drive fast, keep our noses clean and work well as a team."

The race can be seen on ABC from noon till 2 p.m. next Sunday (yes, that’s an edited, delayed telecast) and live on your computer on Saturday at ALMS.com.

See George’s TV listings on the wheels.ca home page for details and start times for Sebring, NASCAR (below) and the start of the Formula One season next weekend in Australia.

Kasey Kahne, who replaced Mark Martin at Hendrick Motorsports this season, won the pole Friday for Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Las Vegas. Kyle Busch will start outside on the front row. Qualifying results here.

Sprint Cup drivers Paul Menard and Regan Smith and Smith’s wife were in an auto accident earlier this week but weren’t injured. Smith lost control of his truck on ice and crashed into trees near his home in Evergreen, Colo.

Danica Patrick says it was a poor choice of words to suggest she would run for the Nationwide Series championship in her first season. Full story here.

Although many people are suggesting her 21^st-place finish at Phoenix last weekend was a poor result, I’m not so sure. I think she wanted to finish a race - something she hadn’t done in three starts in her full-time NASCAR career. She crashed in the Daytona 500 qualifyer, the 500 itself and the Nationwide race at Daytona. For sure, she wanted to bring the car home in one piece at Phoenix.

The proof will be in the pudding this weekend. She finished fourth at Las Vegas last year. If she’s in the mix today, she’ll be okay. Otherwise, it’ll be a long haul for her.

Rubens who? And IndyCar races will be on TV

NASCAR SENDS JOHNSON, KNAUS A BIG MESSSAGE

Catching up on a week’s worth of motorsport news on a Friday night:

1. Why the fuss over Rubens Barrichello’s coming to North America to drive in IndyCar?

If it was Sebastien Vettel, I would say that is a shot in the arm. But Rubens Barrichello is a washed-up F1 guy (sorry, have to say it) and rather than “retiring” to sports cars or touring cars  he’s going to race Indy cars and I don’t see that as any great feather in IndyCar’s cap.

The future of IndyCar is James Hinchcliffe and J.R. Hildebrand, not Rubens Barrichello.

2. Everybody out there has to learn to relax. TSN will carry all of the IndyCar Series races this year, either on TSN or TSN2. And all the F1 races, including the Canadian GP, will go to air too. They’re still working out the details of which races will come from Sky, and which from the BBC, but that’s immaterial to me. We’ll be able to watch them, and that’s all that counts.

3. The fantastic documentary on the life of Ayrton Senna that played at the Toronto Film Festival two years ago and was in North American theatres last year is now available on DVD.

Senna can be purchased at Scott Maxwell’s Mini Grid shop on Mount Pleasant as of its official release date, which will be Tuesday.

4. When NASCAR docked points from Jimmie Johnson and fined Chad Knaus $100,000 and suspended him for six races, this is what they were really saying:

One more false move and we will throw you out of this sport.

No, not Johnson. Knaus. And yes, it’s that serious.

It goes back to last season and the intercepted message at Talladega when Knaus told Johnson that if he won the race he would have to “crack” the back end of the car.

Now, maybe Knaus was just having fun; pulling NASCAR’s leg; whatever. But NASCAR took it seriously and, according to car owner Rick Hendrick, from then until the end of the season, the second that Johnson drove the car into the garage area at race’s end, or when it went off on the hook, NASCAR seized it and took it directly to the research and development centre in Charlotte where it was examined with a fine-tooth comb.

NASCAR never found anything but you can bet they did not appreciate being made to look stupid. So they were just waiting for an opportunity to send Knaus a message.

That opportunity came during pre-race tech inspection at Daytona. NASCAR officials determined that the C-posts, which come down from the roof to the quarter panel, gave Johnson's car an aerodynamic advantage and thus were illegal.

A friend said this a few days ago: “Were what they said were illegal really illegal?” And I said, “Probably not – but if NASCAR said they were, they were. NASCAR is the law.”

I suggest there will be no more fooling around on the part of Chad Knaus. No more creative interpreting of the rule book.

Because if something on that car is even so much as a hair off, I fear Knaus will be gone.

5. Speaking of Johnson, did you notice he let go of the steering wheel when he crashed at Daytona, just like Danica Patrick did when she went nearly head-on into the wall during one of the qualifying races?

You watch: the rest of the guys will do that, too. She’s having an effect on the Sprint Cup Series already. (And you thought she was just another pretty face . . .)

6. D.J. Kennington of St. Thomas will give the Nationwide Series some Canadian content in Phoenix this weekend. Kennington, who won the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series national championship in 2010, periodically drives in Nationwide races.

7. Speaking of NASCAR, the word is out that another manufacturer is trying to get into the Sprint Cup. I say it’s Honda and a friend of mine says Volkswagen or Hyundai. We’ll see who’s right.

8. Sticking with NASCAR, and speaking of my friend, he says Kurt Busch will replace Juan Pablo Montoya after three or four more races if Montoya doesn’t do something with the Target car. I think Montoya has to produce, that’s for sure, but I don’t think Kurt Busch is on anybody’s short list just yet.

(On the other hand, Jimmy Spencer has written a piece for SpeedTV in which he says Joey Logano is on the bubble and Kurt B. will replace him if he doesn't produce. I still don't see it. I mean, I can see Logano being let go but I can't see K.B. getting a big chance again any time soon. He's just too great a liability.)

9. Sir Frank Williams will step down from the board of directors of his Williams F1 team at the end of the month to begin the transfer of responsibility to - as he puts it - "the next generation." That will leave Bernie Ecclestone as the last remaining member of the 1970s "Piranha Club" that saw F1 go from a European club racing series to a multi-billion-dollar international jet-setting enterprise.

10. And, finally, the announcement by Mercedes that Canadian F1 hope Robert Wickens would drive for  them in the German Touring Car Championship (DTM) this season was supposed to have happened in the last two weeks. That it hasn’t is worrying.

Will the next Daytona 500 be at night?

KENSETH WINS FIRE-AND-RAIN-DELAYED GREAT AMERICAN RACE

If there's anyone left out there who's still wondering how NASCAR became the dominant force in auto racing in North America, all they had to do was watch it in action over the three days it took to run the Daytona 500 - which finally finished early today with Matt Kenseth in Victory Lane.

Sunday, when the race was held up initially because of rain and it looked like the delay would carry on into the evening and the race would have to go up against the Academy Awards in a TV ratings showdown, NASCAR wisely cancelled its marquee event until Monday.

Then, rather than start the race in the afternoon (which was possible) when most people in North America were at work and the TV ratings would be negligible, the NASCAR braintrust announced Monday morning that the Great American Race would start sharp at 7 p.m., right when prime time starts in TV land.

Before you could say NASCAR! (and with no NBA basketball because of the all-star break) just about every eyeball on the continent was on that race and I would be surprised if the ratings don't turn out to be better than if they'd been able to run the thing when first scheduled.

Sunday afternoon is a time for families, recreation or shopping. So the Daytona 500 would have had competition. But Monday night? Particularly when most of North America is caught up in a deep freeze?

So the Daytona 500 had no distractions or other competition to speak of at all - and I won't be surprised if NASCAR now gives serious consideration to scheduling the 2013 race on a Monday night, rather than the traditional Sunday afternoon.

Having said that, isn't it weird - and I can't think of another word to explain it - that for the second time in three years a problem with the race track played havoc with the spectacle itself? And the delay pushed the end of the race - which took about six hours to complete - into the early hours of Tuesday, making it a three-day event.

Two years ago it was a pothole that just wouldn't stay fixed. Monday night, the most bizarre circumstance I think anybody involved in racing has ever encountered or experienced saw the speedway surface so badly damaged as the result of a fiery collision between Juan Pablo Montoya's car and a truck pulling a jet blower that it took more than two hours to repair it.

Earlier, five-time series champion Jimmie Johnson was crashed out of the race on the second lap, celebrity driver Danica Patrick's car was so badly damaged that she was knocked out of contention, and long-time favourite Jeff Gordon was eliminated by a blown engine.

So it had been a long night.

When they finally got the race going again shortly after midnight, with the grandstands still mostly filled and probably most of the TV audience sticking it out too, they had a couple of more "big one"-type crashes and a green-white-checkers finish that saw Kenseth win the classic for the second time, with Dale Earnhardt Jr. second and Greg Biffle third.

It would take too long to provide a blow-by-blow description of the last lap, but whether Biffle was blocking for Kenseth, or Earnhardt just couldn't push him past the leader, is something that could be debated in racing circles for some time.

On the other hand, it might not. As the racers like to say these days, it is what it is.

One thing's for certain, however. Jack Roush, whose Roush-Fenway Racing team owns the first and third-place cars, is off to a terrific start in 2012. His Ford engines not only powered the Daytona winner and the third-place car to the podium, but three of his other power plants finished one-two-three in the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona Grand Am Sports Car Series race at the end of January.

Five out of six places ain't bad. NASCAR will be pleased.

Daytona 500 tonight at 7 on TSN2/Fox

NASCAR now says it will try to run the Daytona 500 at 7 o'clock tonight - weather permitting.

NASCAR pulled the plug on the Great American Race shortly after 5 p.m. Sunday when inclement weather threatened to push the start time beyond the start of the Academy Awards telecast (see post below).

They say Tuesday is still an option if it continues to rain but after that it could be a problem because the circus has to be in Phoenix, Ariz., for a race next weekend.

I would think that if push came to shove that they'd delay or postpone the race in Phoenix in order to get in the 500, wouldn't you?

Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Meantime, the race will be televised on TSN2 and Fox at 7 p.m.

 

Did Oscar broadcast help scuttle Daytona 500?

It's 8:30 p.m. Sunday night as I write this and the Daytona Beach Dopler Radar shows no rain falling or expected in the immediate future and I suggest the reason they pulled the plug on the Daytona 500 for the first time in recorded history is not because it would too late to race but because of the Academy Awards.

Let me give you the background first. Then I'll explain my theory.

Persistent rain in the Daytona Beach area forced NASCAR to postpone the 500 from its scheduled 1 p.m. starting time. Shortly after 5 p.m., it was announced out of the blue that, for the first time in its 54 years, the race was being cancelled and would be held Monday, starting at noon. 

Fair enough.

But what if it had cleared up? Don't they have lights at Daytona? Even if it was 9 p.m. or so, couldn't they have gotten it in?

Maybe they could have, but there were other forces at work here.

NASCAR likes to tell everybody that more than a third of its audience is women. Which is true, because men like to drag their wives and girlfriends to the speedway or have them with them when they watch the races on television.

But I have noticed - and I am a keen observer of the human condition - that unlike men, every few (if any) women actually go to the race tracks by themselves, or with a friend. They are usually with their men or their families. Along the same lines, I would be very surprised if any more than one or two women actually sit home by themselves on a Saturday night or Sunday afternoon to watch NASCAR, or NFL football or Ultimate Fighting. If truth be told, they watch because their men friends want them to.

So women watch car racing, or whatever, as a mating or family activity. Fair enough. I know men who go shopping with their wives, or to the opera, just so their wives will go fishing with them. It's the way of the world. 

Sunday afternoon, as the rain continued, NASCAR realized it had a problem. Never mind the delay of the race, because they would be able to get that going whenever. The problem was that when they did, would anybody be watching?

The Academy Awards were scheduled Sunday evening and coverage started at 6 p.m. with what's called the Red Carpet. The Red Carpet is really a fashion show. It is primarily for women. The first question anybody asks the female movie stars is, "who are you wearing?" It is a time when women are watching and men are out buying Chinese food or Kentucky Fried Chicken for the family to eat in front of the TV.

So NASCAR knew that if the race had started at 1 p.m. like it was supposed to, it would have been over in time for the Oscars. But otherwise, it would be game over at 6 p.m. when all the wives in North America would say to their boyfriends and husbands, "I don't care if (take your pick: Kyle Busch, Jimmie Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick, A.J. Allmendinger, etc.) is winning, I want to know who designed Gwyneth Paltrow's dress."

Which is why NASCAR, wisely, decided to pull the plug on the Daytona 500.

Better to have lower ratings on Monday when everybody is working than to get killed in the ratings on Sunday night when they put their car race up against the Oscars.

Pole for Danica Patrick after handling first big crash with class

Two down and one to go.

Danica Patrick's introduction to NASCAR stock car racing at Daytona this week has encompassed two of the three things associated with that sport.

The three things are (not necessarily in this order): crashing, starting from pole and winning a race.

Thursday, she survived the first initiation - crashing nearly head-on into a wall at Daytona International Speedway while going more than 180 miles an hour.

Today - Friday - she shocked the NASCAR fraternity by winning the pole for Saturday's Nationwide Series race (and veteran Elliott Sadler opined that she was the most improved driver in NASCAR in the last three years).

Tomorrow or Sunday, she could find herself in Victory Lane after either the Nationwide race or the big one, the Daytona 500.

She's got two of the three things out of the way already, so who's to say how long it will take her to win that first race?

Thursday, as luck would have it, the Daytona 500 driver everybody had their eyes on during the first of two qualifying races delivered the goods — big time.

The problem, however, is that what she delivered wasn’t what anybody was expecting.

No, she didn’t win that first Duel at Daytona race, nor did she put on a particularly spectacular display of driving (although she was certainly competent in that area).

But boy, did she ever crash big.

Not her fault, of course. She was driving low on the track, in or around tenth place, minding her own business and less than a lap away from completing his first NASCAR Sprint Cup race when she was blindsided by a car driven by Aric Almirola and before anybody could say Holy Danica she was heading almost head-first into a retaining wall on the backstretch.

That she wasn’t hurt in the pileup is a miracle.

But she sure got everybody’s attention — and when I say everybody, I mean every body.

The crash was on all the major American TV newscasts Thursday night and pretty much everywhere on all the cable news networks.

It was almost as good as winning (which would also have received major attention, by the way) because that’s what sponsor GoDaddy and NASCAR are counting on.

The more eyeballs focused on Daytona, and NASCAR racing in general, the better.

Why? Here’s why.

According to The Nielsen Co., ratings for the 2010 Nationwide Series opener at Daytona were up 33 per cent with her in the race from the 2009 ratings.

Overall, 11 of the 13 Nationwide races Patrick ran in 2010 had better ratings than the 2009 events. Average viewership for her 13 events was up 9 per cent.

Patrick's merchandise sales last season ranked in the top 15 best-selling drivers at the NASCAR.com Superstore — and that was when she was a part-timer.

Through last week, Patrick already ranked in the top 10 in merchandise sales in 2012.

A survey last August of the NASCAR Fan Council showed that 80 per cent of those polled agreed with the statement, "Danica Patrick is good for NASCAR."

Nielsen N-Score data through January showed that Patrick ranks in the top five of most recognized NASCAR drivers among the U.S. population.

And the cover of the largest-circulation daily newspaper in the U.S. on Friday, USA Today, had a feature on — you guess it — Danica P.

"There's so much interest with Danica coming over to NASCAR (from IndyCar), I think it's going to really broaden our fan base," said Lesa France Kennedy, the CEO of NASCAR.

“When she shows up, it just has a different feel to it. She's a real dynamic individual to start with, and I think it'll be interesting to see her compete on the track. There's certainly a spotlight, without a doubt, but she seems to do well with that. She seems to do well under pressure."

You (or Lesa France) can say that again because it was a trial by fire for her Thursday. It was her first big crash in a stock car (and it really was a doozy) and she handled it calmly and with sophistication, finesse and aplomb.

And good humour: she finished her interview with pit reporter Dick Berggren thusly:

“Maybe the backup car’ll be faster.”

You can’t handle a near-disaster any better than that.

P.S. The Nationwide Series race will be telecast live on TSN2 Saturday starting at noon with the green flag expected at 1:15 p.m. The Daytona 500 pre-race show can be seen on Fox/TSN2 at noon Sunday with the green flag expected to fly at or about 1 p.m. Patrick will drop to the back of the pack for the start, as will several other drivers whose primary cars were wrecked during the qualifying races on Thursday.

I'll take some of that 1,000-to-one Danica action

Some bookmaker in Las Vegas has got Danica Patrick at 1,000 to one to win the Daytona 500.

I’d like that bet. In fact, I hope a whole bunch of people slap ten bucks down on Danica and maybe put the guy out of business if she should happen to win on Sunday (Fox/TSN2 at noon).

Who’s to say it won’t happen? Some kid named Trevor Bayne won it a year ago and, like Danica, he was a rookie.

He got lucky. Who says lightning can’t strike twice?

You can have all the talent in the world and win all sorts of other races and still roll snake eyes at Daytona.

Take Tony Stewart. He’s won the Sprint Cup championship three times and had 13 kicks at the Daytona 500 can and he still hasn’t won it.

It took Dale Earnhardt, arguably the greatest racer of his generation, 20 shots (count ‘em, 20) before he won his one and only. One of the times he lost came on the third turn of the last lap when he was leading and a tire went down. Darrell Waltrip ran the 500 17 times before he won.

Which means it’s virtually impossible to pick a winner going into Sunday’s race. Too many things can go wrong, starting with the potential to wreck.

Last Saturday night’s Budweiser Shootout started with 25 cars and 12 of them failed to finish the 75-lap feature because of three big crashes. The 500 on Sunday will start 43 and go for 200 laps and does anybody really think that any more than 20 will be running competitively at the finish?

Everybody — including the drivers — thinks it’s wonderful that NASCAR has managed to fiddle enough with the aerodynamics to bring back “pack racing” on superspeedways like Daytona.

“Pack racing” is why, when somebody loses control, just about everybody else winds up crashing.

“Pack racing” is what killed Dan Wheldon. IndyCar is doing everything it can not to have a repeat.

Not NASCAR. Bring it on.

For what it’s worth, I’ll be cheering for Tony Stewart on Sunday. If he can’t win, I want Jimmie Johnson.

I hope Danica Patrick drives a solid race.

And if anybody knows how I can get a little of that 1,000-to-one Vegas action, I have a sawbuck to waste.

Or maybe not.

Because, when it comes to the Daytona 500, you never know.

TSN to carry all F1, NASCAR races

BUT DID INDYCAR LEAVE IT TOO LATE TO GET A CANADIAN TV PARTNER?

Big news today on the TV racing front.

For all the F1 fans out there, TSN will once again provide coverage of all 20 rounds of the 2012 World Championship. Included in the coverage will be – as has been the case previously – all final qualifying sessions.

All races will be on the main TSN channel with the exception of the June 10 Canadian Grand Prix (I suspect it will be televised on the parent CTV main channel) and the Grands Prix of Germany and Hungary in late July.

The Hungarian and German GPs will be carried on TSN2 because the 2012 Summer Olympics, being held in London, will be being televised on the main TSN Channel.

So the good news is that TSN is providing the coverage. Exactly who will be providing the coverage is still a question.

As most of you know, F1 (meaning Bernie Ecclestone) made a deal with the Sky pay-TV satellite channel in the U.K. to televise races in 2012 and also with the BBC, which will televise 10 of the 20. No word, as yet, who TSN has got a deal with, but in the end it doesn’t matter a whole lot to me because seeing the races is the most important thing.

First telecast of the season will be on March 17 at 1:55 a.m. when final qualifying from Australia will be shown. The Australian Grand Prix will be shown live on March 18 at 12:55 a.m.

Moving right along, it was announced Monday that the ABC television network has selected the Honda Indy Toronto as one of the six IZOD IndyCar Series races it will televise live in 2012.

As expected, ABC will show the Indianapolis 500 for the – can you believe this – 48^th consecutive year, going back to the days of same-day-tape-delay.

In addition to Indy and Toronto – and, by the way, Toronto’s own Scott Goodyear will be returning to the booth as analyst and colour commentator – ABC will also cover the season-opener in St. Petersburg as well as the stops in Milwaukee, Detroit and Mid-Ohio.

You will note that three of the six races scheduled for ABC (St. Pete, Toronto and Mid-Ohio) are owned and promoted by a company owned by Kevin Savoree and Kim Green. And a former partner of Savoree and Green, Michael Andretti, is promoting the Milwaukee race. This probably means nothing, but it’s interesting all the same.

All other races in the IZOD series, including the stop in Edmonton two weeks after Toronto in July, will be televised in the U.S. by NBC Sports Network, which used to be called Versus.

Although there has been no announcement, it is hoped that some kind of a deal can be made that would see most – if not all – of the IndyCar series races shown on TSN or TSN2. However, as IndyCar was so late in nailing down its final schedule - it only confirmed the Milwaukee race late last week - it might have created a scheduling problem for prospective TV partners in countries other than the U.S.

Finally, TSN announced Monday that every single NASCAR Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series race, starting with the Daytona 500 a week from next Sunday (Feb. 26), will be televised this year on either TSN or TSN2.

The first race to hit the airwaves, the Budweiser Shootout, will be televised this coming Saturday night at 8 p.m. on TSN2 (as mentioned in the item above). The two qualifying races that set the field for the 500, called the Gatorade Duel at Daytona, will go to air a week from Thursday (Feb. 23) at 2 in the afternoon.

(A little editorial comment here: once upon a time those qualifying races meant something. That was when qualifying at Daytona was straight up, when some weekend racer from Wisconsin could beat a Cup regular to a starting position – before nonsense like the top 35 cars in the points standings automatically being locked into the starting field and points being bought and so-on. The two races are mildly entertaining, but that’s about it now.)

Oh, the Nationwide Series stop at Montreal on Aug, 18 will be televised at 2 p.m. on TSN.

Danica can win in NASCAR, Randy LaJoie says

The sixth Canadian Motorsports Expo, held at Mississauga's International Centre over the weekend, has come and gone for another year and here are several of the highlights:

Retired racer Randy LaJoie (he was a Connecticut modified champion who "went south" in the early 1980s in search of fame and fortune in NASCAR and carved out a pretty good career for himself in the second tier Busch Series, where he won two titles) says he thinks it’s very possible Danica Patrick will win a race this year.

"I like Danica, I’ve known her and her family for years," said LaJoie, in conversation, talking about the move to NASCAR by the former Indy car superstar.

"She’s gonna do okay. I don’t know if she’s gonna win a (Sprint Cup) race. It’s pretty tough. I mean, there’s guys gonna start the Daytona 500 and some of them are zero for 300 (wins vs. starts).

"But she could win a Nationwide race. She ran real good at Daytona last July. You have to remember, though, that the team she’s driving for (JR Motorsports) hasn’t won a race in two years, other than in restrictor plates. She’s only as good as what she’s sitting in."

LaJoie also had thoughts on Dale Earnhardt Jr., who hasn’t won a Sprint Cup race in more than three years:

"His problem is between his ears. You don’t win 18 races (Cup career) and then stop. I’ve raced against him and he’s as good as anybody I’ve ever seen when his head’s in the game. We’ve seen Tony Stewart finally get his head in the game in the last 10 races (and he won half of them). If Junior could ever get like that, he’d be like that.

"It’s between his ears. His confidence level is beat up and I don’t know if he’ll ever get it back. He’s a darn good racer. You don’t win 18 Cup races and not be any good."

Sprint Cup star Carl Edwards was the big NASCAR guest who flew in on Saturday for a few hours and was utterly charming. He was terrific with fans and answered the usual questions from the media with patience and sincerity.

Edwards and Sprint Cup champion Tony Stewart were tied at the end of the final race of the season at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida last November but Stewart won the title because he won more races.

Edwards suggested that when his team conducted a post-season review, they decided they wouldn’t have done anything differently.

But in the next breath he acknowledged that there will be major difference in 2012: he’ll drive exclusively in the Sprint Cup and won’t also be racing in the Nationwide Series.

(If that isn't doing things differently, I don't know what is . . .)

"There were times when I had to leave the Cup team to fly off to do a Nationwide race," he said. "I had a lot of fun but I think I will be doing myself a service to drive just the Cup car and I think being this close last season kind of galvanized that I was doing the right thing to focus on just the Cup car."

Edwards said he can hardly wait to get behind the wheel of the 2013 Ford Fusion.

"We got a glimpse of it last summer, " he said. "I couldn’t believe it. I got interest in racing because I like fast cars, I like cool cars, and that 2013 car is going to be spectacular."

We’ll revisit the Expo over the next days or weeks because lots went on and there were many people there who had all sorts of good things to say.

Meantime:

– The Bud Shootout goes to the post next Saturday night in Daytona and that race will be telecast live on TSN2 at 8 p.m. The Daytona 500 is just two weeks away and it’s about time we got racing again, I say.

– The IndyCar "Leader Circle" program, in which the series doles out $1.3 million in subsidies to some teams, but not all, has left a bad taste in some mouths but you have to wonder why.

The IZOD IndyCar Series is that – a series. Not one race, or a few races, but all of them. Only those teams that ran the entire series last season should have been included in the first place. So why Michael Shank Racing, which has run exactly zero races, or Rahal-Letterman (ditto) or Bryan Herta Motorsports (a couple) expected to be subsidized, is puzzling.

If anybody got screwed here, it was Eric Bachelart’s team. Conquest Racing ran the whole season last year (as it did for many years) and should have been on the list before any part-time or starter team was included.

Of course, nobody should be subsidized. When Tony George started the IRL, half the teams couldn’t afford it so the subsidy was invented. It’s a carryover from those days and has no place in the "new and improved" IndyCar series.

Oh, and to the people who ask why Chip Ganassi and/or Roger Penske are included on the subsidy list, the answer is simple: they are as entitled as anybody else to that money. There is no means test. It’s a vote of confidence in loyalty and commitment and when it comes to those qualities, Ganassi and Penske have them in spades.

- There are those who seem to think that Paul Tracy's season depended on that $1.3 million subsidy from IndyCar but, as a Tracy confidente told me at the Expo on Sunday, it was over a long time ago. "It's done," he said. "Go back a year and the tweets then are the same as now - 'negotiating, really close, gonna sign soon, etc.' Didn't happen then, won't happen now."

– Laugh of the week:

Headline on autosport.com last Monday – "Kimi fastest on Day One of Jerez test."

Sure. Right.

Oh, I know: Kimi was on a flyer and the others were out on reconnaisance laps.

Yup. That explains it.

- Second best laugh of the week.

Headline on autosport.com this weekend - "Trulli hails best-ever first test."

He'll still finish 20th or worse.

‘Racer’ to jail headline caught my attention

The headline in the Mississauga News stopped me cold:

“Racer sentenced to nine months in jail,” it said.

“Shut the front door,” I said to myself, as I searched for the name of the race car driver who’d been sent to jail for — what?

It turned out not be someone who races at Mosport or Toronto Motorsports Park or any of the many southern Ontario speedways where real racers race.

It was a report about a street race in which the defendant, who was charged with dangerous driving causing death, was sentenced to nine months but, with time served, will be back on the street in a little over six.

The original charge was criminal negligence causing death but it was dropped to driving dangerous on a plea bargain.

Nine months for racing on the street? An illegal act, in which a 20-year-old guy was killed, and probably many more people scared out of their wits at the sight of this happening?

How about 10 years?

I don’t care, as the story said, if the accused pulled out of the race early, and tried to help the mortally wounded fellow (how nice of him). Racing on a public highway is the height of selfishness, irresponsible and illegal, and somebody is dead and that is worth a lot more than nine months in my book.

Of course, I’m talking to the wind here. People are appointed to the bench in this country and then they get sent to Judge School where the emphasis in sentencing is on rehabilitation rather than revenge. Some judge somewhere along the line determined that nine months for a death caused by street racing is an appropriate penalty, and this precedent thus became the norm.

So, if some brave judge somewhere in Canada actually sentenced somebody to 10 years for committing this heinous act, it would be overturned on appeal because the law of the land says a life lost as the result of street racing isn’t worth more than nine months.

Only when an influential cabinet minister, or a member of the judiciary, loses a loved one like this will anything ever change.

Meantime, the guilty man — who, according to his lawyer, is now very involved with his church (care to bet how long that will last?) — won’t be allowed to drive legally for the next two years.

That won’t mean he won’t drive, of course. He didn’t care about the law this time; who’s to say he’ll care about it in the future?