Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

On NASCAR, pit crews and the Petit Le Mans

The Delta Wing finished sixth at Road Atlanta

News and musings following a big weekend of auto racing:

Bruno Spengler, a French-born Canadian citizen from Saint-Hippolyte, Que., won the German Touring Car (DTM) Championship Sunday for BMW.

He won the title in grand style by racing to victory in the last DTM race of the season at the Hockenheimring.

It was Spengler’s first championship. He was the good soldier for Mercedes for years and years but was never able to close the deal. He moved to BMW this season when the marque returned to the DTM after a 20-year absence and stepped right up.

The other Canadian in the field, Robert Wickens of Guelph and Toronto, retired after 20 laps. His rookie reason in touring cars was not the success that he, and his fans, had hoped for.

For complete details, click here

NASCAR Canada held a reception on Saturday at the Hyatt-Regency Hotel on King St. W. to honour the 2012 Canadian Tire Series champion, D.J. Kennington of St. Thomas, the other drivers in the series, and the many officials and sponsors that make the National Championship the success that it is.

Dana Gladstone of major sponsor Canadian Tire said a few words, as did series director Brad Moran. The drinks were free and the hors d’ouvres were hot. It was very nice.

However (there’s always one or two of those, aren’t there?), when NASCAR purchased CASCAR from founder Tony Navotny in 2006, it was a big deal. Following the 2007 season, its first under the NASCAR banner, the Canadian Tire Series participants were treated to a lovely banquet at an east Toronto hotel. TSN’s Vic Rauter was the MC and all the drivers, wives, crew members and sponsors turned out for what was a really swell time.

Since then, everybody’s had to make do with an annual two-hour reception and, frankly, it’s not enough for a National Championship.

This should be a Big Deal – and it’s not.

One other thing. If I went to Florida as a representative of the media of Canada and mispronounced the names of – say – some of NASCAR’s favourite sons ("I’d like to say thanks to Bill FRANK and the FRANK family . . .") I think I’d be run out of town on a rail.

This is the fourth or fifth year that I’ve had to listen to some NASCAR executive fly up to Toronto and mangle the name of the patron saint of Canadian motorsport, Gilles Villeneuve, while mispronouncing the name of the race track in Montreal that’s named after him.

Memo to NASCAR: It’s Sir-quee Jeel Veel-noov, NOT sir-cut gil vilnuff.

You would think someone would have had the good manners to ask how to say it corrrectly by now, wouldn’t you?

Okay, enough of that.

Jim and Joel Robinson, who produce the Canadian Tire racing TV programs for TSN, were singled out for praise and they do a great job. Here’s a link to a video that’s representative of their work.

Now, the reception was rife with rumour that NASCAR is on the verge of making an announcement about either a truck series race or a Nationwide Series race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park next season.

One fellow "in the know" said it was a lock that the Camping World Series trucks would be the headliner at the track next May 24 long weekend.

But with the Nationwide cars out of Montreal for 2013, I still say the possibility of that race being moved to Old Mosport is very real. And the fact that a Nationwide car was practising out there in the last two weeks just adds to the intrigue.

We should know in the next week or two at the most whether one or more of NASCAR’s touring series will be at CTMP next year. Cross fingers.

Just before I wrap up the "Canadiana" portion of this column, I must say that poor James Hinchcliffe must rue the day he agreed to travel to Australia to participate in a V8 Supercar race on the Gold Coast Down Under.

They ran two races at the weekend and he didn’t finish either one of them.

Click here for a link to a video showing how his first race went. And the second one wasn't much better.

Okay, moving right along, the Daytona Beach city council has approved an application filed by International Speedway Corp. to develop some land it owns adjacent to the storied speedway as well as an application from the Daytona Speedway itself for redevelopment.

Want to take a guess what that all means?

Hint: look all around downtown Toronto and what do you see?

Condominiums.

Actually, I’m surprised they’ve waited this long. And I’m puzzled why they haven’t started down that road at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, too.

The NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship ran its sixth Chase for the Championship race at Kansas Speedway Sunday and it was won by Matt Kenseth. For complete details, click here.

Question: Kenseth has won two of the six races in the Chase to date. Why is he in NINTH place in the standings.

Why don’t the drivers who make it into the Chase start off even, as is the case in most other sports when the playoffs start?

Why aren’t the Chase drivers scored differently in the playoffs, with winning being the only thing?

It is wrong that Brad Keselowski and Kenseth have each won two races in the six that have been run since the Chase started (Clint Bowyer and Denny Hamlin won the others) and yet Keselowski is in first place in the standings and Kenseth is in ninth.

Nuts.

The North American sports car season is finito. Saturday at Road Atlanta, the American Le Mans Series ran its Petit Le Mans 10-hour race and the winners were (this can get complicated):

- Neel Jani, Nicolas Prost and Andrea Belicchi finished first overall and first in Prototype 1 driving a Lola-Toyota.

- Scott Tucker, Christophe Bouchut and Luis Diaz were second overall and first in P2 in an HPD ARX-Honda.

- Alex Popow, Ryan Dalziel and Toronto’s Mark Wilkins won the Prototyep Challenge class in an Oreca-Chevrolet. They were seventh overall.

-Scott Sharp, Toni Vilander and Johannes van Overbeek were first in GT in a Ferrari Italia.

- Henrique Cisneros, Mario Farnbacher and Jakub Giermaziak won the GT Challenge class in a Porsche 911 GT3.

Muscle Milk Picket Racing won the team and drivers’ championship in the glamour-puss P1 class. Lucas Luhr and Klaus Graf fought back from early-race adversity to wrap up both titles.

Now, an incident at Kansas Speedway and another at Road Atlanta illustrated perfectly this weekend why auto racing is the most complex and exciting team sport there is.

At Kansas, Jimmy Johnson’s pit crew kept him on the lead lap while doing repairs to his car after he backed it into the outside wall early in the race. He recovered to finish ninth and to score enough points to stay just seven behind Chase leader Keselowski, who finished eighth.

It took the Muscle Milk crew a little longer – an hour, actually – to repair the damage after Luhr tangled with a GT Challenge car early in the Petit Le Mans. But their expertise and effort was unparalleled on this day and they got the car back on track for the drivers to score sufficient points to wrap up the championship.

Great stuff !

And one last thing: Don Panoz’s pet, the Delta Wing project powered by Nissan, finished sixth overall in the Petit Le Mans, driven by Gunnar Jeannette and Lucas Ordonez.

You will recall that Jeanette was knocked for a loop late in the week during practice and the race car emerged a mess. Once again, it was the crew that saved the day.

They repaired and reworked the car in time for Saturday’s race – an amazing achievement.

Panoz, in an interview, said he still thinks there is an open-wheel future for the car. 

Take it to Indy next May, I say. If Andy Granatelli could get his turbine to work there in 1967, Dr. Don should be able to find a way to get the DW into the 2013 classic's qualifying line, don’tcha think?

Racing roundup: On Danica, Jimmie Johnson and others

Musings, ramblings and confessions after a weekend of auto racing:

– You have to laugh about everything that’s happened to poor Danica Patrick this year, her first full-time season in the NASCAR Nationwide Series. She’s done just fine qualifying and the speed is there but Murphy’s Law has never been more clearly defined than when applied to her when she's road-course racing.

Earlier this year, at Road America, she was less than a half-lap from a top five finish when Jacques Villeneuve forgot to brake and knocked her off the track.

Last week at Watkins Glen, she was on the inside going into Turn One when a car that went flying past her on the grass re-entered the track right in front of her and stopped. She had nowhere to go and hit it dead-on, knocking her out of the race.

Saturday at le Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal, she qualified fourth and was leading the race - leading - when somebody threw a shoe on the track and she hit it. I mean, really. She had other mechanical problems but when she hit that shoe her race went south, so the timing couldn’t have been worse.

One of these days, she will win and that will get the monkey off her back. There’s no doubt the talent’s there; she’s just got to get it all together – speed, strategy, race craft and, most important for her, luck.

Justin Allgaier won his first road-course race at Montreal and the third of his Nationwide career, with Sam Hornish Jr. second and Jacques Villeneuve third. Details here

Now, it has been suggested by some that NASCAR kept throwing yellows so that a "regular" could win the race instead of a ringer, particularly if said ringer happened to be the son of the guy the Montreal circuit’s named after.

If not for the phantom yellows that left him low on fuel, or so go the the theories, Jacques Villeneuve would have won the race.

Now, JV denied that he was running out of gas on the final lap (although he did run out on the cooldown lap) and lost the race because Allgaier ran into him. Maybe. But there’s no doubt he was worred he was going to stall out because he was running noticeably slower on the last lap than the eventual winner.

Having said that, Allgaier didn’t have any fuel problems, so if NASCAR was playing fast and loose with the yellows, it didn’t appear to hurt him.

And nobody was shedding any tears for Villeneuve anyway. The Danica punt in Wisconsin was still fresh in everybody’s mind and he turned Alex Tagliani around late in the Montreal race. The fact that he was angry after being hit by Allgaier was really very amusing. Did somebody say it was like the pot calling the kettle black?

Two other quick notes: For the last fillup, Allgaier pitted later than the others, which explains why he had more fuel when the race got down to the short strokes. And why did he do that? Because at Road America in 2011, he ran out of fuel on the last lap. He obviously learned a lesson.

Oh, and Ron Fellows, Mississauga’s most famous athlete, finished fifth a week ago at Watkins Glen and was fifth at Montreal on Saturday. He is an absolutely incredible race driver.

– NASCAR hasn’t got a clue about yellows on road courses, period, as we saw at Montreal, and they sometimes over-react on ovals, too. David Gilliland lost control early in the Michigan Sprint Cup race Sunday afternoon and went flying through the infield grass but then got straightened out and went back on the track, albeit half a lap behind.

But he didn’t hit the wall and there was no damage or debris anywhere. But as soon as he started sliding, the yellow was on and there was really no need for it.

It’s a good excuse to close up the pack, though. Isn’t it . . . ?

– In the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series race at Montreal, J.R. Fitzpatrick of Cambridge won, with Andrew Ranger of Roxton Pond, Que., second and Robin Buck of Campbellville third. Scott Steckly of Milverton was fourth, he’s the defending national champion, and the leader of this year’s championship chase, D.J. Kennington of St. Thomas, finished fifth. Next race is at Barrie Speedway Sept. 8.

- As NASCAR doesn’t have a clue about yellow flags on road courses, neither does it have a clue so far as passes for the lead on road courses are concerned. Their rule is that in the case of a yellow, the order of finish from the last completed lap will be the order for the restart. Fine on ovals, stinks on road courses.

Ranger had passed Fitzpatrick fair and square and was clear and away in front of him when somebody spun at the back of the pack and since they all hadn’t completed the lap, the order had to revert to the previous . . . yada, yada, yada – you know what I’m saying, eh? – and when they restarted the race J.R. was back in first and Ranger was second and that is not fair, not fair, not fair. (I sound like Jack Lemon as Prof. Fate in The Great Race. . .)

– Okay, moving right along, I apologize for making the same mistake over and over. Every time I write anything about Lewis Hamilton, I say he’s won two world championships. Of course, he’s only won one but that hasn’t seemed to penetrate my thick skull. The latest example was in a story I wrote on the weekend that appeared on wheels.ca and in Toronto Star Wheels. I could change it online but not in the paper. Sorry.

It’s like every time I go to write 1996. It always comes out 1969. Why?

– They say auto racing has the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. We saw both in the Sprint Cup race at Michigan Sunday.

With nine laps to go, Jimmie Johnson took the lead in the race and the TV cameras showed his crew chief, Chad Knaus, fist-pumping with delight. Three laps later, his engine let go and Greg Biffle went blowing by him.

Biffle went on to win the race and Johnson drove straight to the garage area. He passed a dejected Knaus, who was walking in the same direction. Details here

Remember that Grand Prix of Monaco a half-dozen years ago, in 2006, when Kimi Raikkonen dropped out while in second place and he got out of his car and was so angry that he kept his helmet on while he walked around the course to his yacht in the harbour, where he disappeared below decks?

Well, Johnson got out of his car yesterday and didn’t take off his helmet. He walked from his car, between several transport trucks and through the hospitality area on the way to his motorhome.

He was obviously so upset that one of his PR aides, a woman, started to follow him and then thought better of it, staying behind in the garage area.

It's not often that you see Jimmie Johnson so browned off.

– By the way, while the Nationwide stock cars were at Montreal, the Camping World Truck Series was the support race for the Sprint Cup cars in Michigan and that race Saturday was won by Nelson Piquet Jr.

Piquet, who was forced to leave Formula One after admitting to participation in the conspiracy to fix the Singapore GP in 2008, would appear to have completed his rehabilitation. Look for him to move up to Sprint Cup before long.

– Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas won the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series race at Montreal on Saturday. Paul Tracy was third (with others). Alex Tagliani finished seventh. John Edwards and Robin Liddell won in GT. Jeff Segal and Emil Assentato driving the AIM Autosport of Woodbridge Ferrari were second in GT. Paul Dalla Lana of Toronto, who was featured in Wheels last weekend and who won the GT class at Watkins Glen a week ago, had a miserable race in Montreal and didn’t finish. There were only 21 cars in the Montreal race – and people can make as many excuses as they want but it’s the border. Americans competing in semi-professionals series like the Grand Am Rolex and the American Le Mans Series and who are field-fillers will run all the races in the U.S. and skip the ones up here. It’s a shame.

– At Road America, where 35 cars showed up for the American le Mans Series race (as compared to 26 that started the ALMS race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park/Mosport in July, see?), the closest finish in the history of the series took place with the P1 Lola-Mazda entry of Chris Dyson and Guy Smith defeating Klaus Graf and Lucas Luhr in their Muscle Milk HPD ARX-Honda by 0.083 seconds.

Tony Burgess of Toronto (and others) was third overall. Martin Plowman and David Heinemeier were first in P2, Tom Kimber-Smith, Jon Bennett and Alex Powpow were first in Prototype Challenge (Kyle Marcelli of Barrie, and others, who was on pole in PC, finished third in class and seventh overall), Bill Auberlen and Jorg Muller were winners in the GT class and Cooper MacNeil and Jeroen Bleekemolen were first in GT Challenge.

By the way, P2 driver Scott Tucker finished 11^th and 12^th overall in the race and third and fourth in the Prototype 2 class. How?

He teamed with Christophe Bouchut in one car – he did the first stint of driving – and with Luis Diaz in the second – he drove the final stint in the second car.

– In Canadian Touring Car Championship action at Montreal, Sasha Annis won the first race in Super Touring, with Jocelyn Hebert tops in Touring Class and Karl Wittmer in B-Spec. In the second race, Marc-Antoine Camirand was the winner in Super Touring, Damon Sharpe won Touring Class and Wittmer repeated in B-Spec.

The Touring Car championship will wrap its season over Labour Day weekend at Calabogie Motorports Park.

– Robbie Wickens of Guelph and Toronto had his best weekend in the German Touring Car Championship since he started his rookie season in the spring. He qualified ninth and finished seventh at the Nurburgring driving for Mercedes. Canadian driver Bruno Spengler won the race in a BMW.

– In World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series action, Sammy Swindell got over his disappointment at missing out on starting the Knoxville Nationals by winning the feature at Grand Forks, N.D., at the weekend.

In other sprint car news, Dustin Daggett of Grand Ledge, Mich., won the Northern Summer Nationals Championship by finishing first in the feature at Chatham-area South Buxton Speedway Saturday night.

- And two weeks out from the Budweiser Oswego Classic 200 for supermodifieds, Joe Gosek won his 42nd feature at the famous northern New York Oswego Speedway, which puts him fourth on the all-time win list behind Eddie Bellinger Jr., Bentley Warren and Jim Shampine.

And by finishing fifth in the super feature, Otto Sitterly of Canajoharie, N.Y., won his fifth Oswego Speedway track championship. I think Sitterly has one of the neatest names in all of auto racing, right up there with Parnelli Jones. I also think Otto has the talent to go to Indy. His sometimes-supermodified teammate, Davey Hamilton, could help pave the way.

Will Power wins Indy race; AIM Ferrari tops in Grand Am

THIS FERRARI PREPARED BY AIM AUTOSPORT OF WOODBRIDGE WON THE GT CLASS IN THE GRAND AM ROLEX SPORTS CAR RACE AT HOMESTEAD-MIAMI SPEEDWAY SUNDAY. DETAILS BELOW.

WEEKEND HEADLINES:

1. Will Power wins IndyCar race – and why isn’t he in F1?

2. Toronto-based team, Ferrari, win big in Grand Am

3. Canadians fail to score points in first DTM race; other racing

Precede: Tom Cotter, one of the world’s most sophisticated PR people, was on Speed TV’s Wind Tunnel program last night and illustrated why he’s so good at what he does.

Guest host Bob Varsha reminded viewers that Bernie Ecclestone had mused at last weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix that the New Jersey Grand Prix, tentatively scheduled for 2013, might not happen until 2014.

So Varsha put it to Cotter - who was out of the PR business and writing books before being enticed back by New Jersey race interests: what, exactly, is going on? Cotter, old pro that he is, talked and talked but didn’t answer the question – although, to be fair, he hinted later in the interview at what might be the difficulty when he said they can’t start selling tickets to any F1 race till that year’s schedule is formally issued.

So, although the circuit in New Jersey (across the Hudson River from New York) will likely be ready to go well in advance of spring/summer 2013, a reading of the tea leaves suggests Bernie was hinting that the race might not make it onto the F1 calendar until 2014.

Or maybe not.

1. Power proves (again) he’s in a class by himself

Will Power won the IZOD IndyCar Series race in Brazil Sunday for his third victory of the four-race 2012 season. He’s won two of the four poles so far this season and it was his third consecutive victory in Brazil.

Second-place went to Ryan Hunter-Reay while third went to Takuma Sato, who made it to the podium all the way from the back of the grid where he’d been sent because of an "unauthorized" engine change (see comment below).

James Hinchcliffe of Oakville came home sixth after starting fourth. Hinch had a good race, considering he lost three positions in the early laps because his car wasn’t handling. In fact, he led the race at one point.

He’s third in the standings with 123 points after four races. Power leads with 180, followed by Helio Castroneves (fourth Sunday) with 135. Full story and results here.

Notebook Jottings:

– Power is almost unbeatable every time he climbs into an Indy car. Nobody has been faster on pure speed this season and when it comes to race craft, he is a master. He’s a clean racer, too.

I know that F1 is all about the money and that Power is not a ride-buyer. But if talent counts for anything these days, and if given a chance, I have no doubt he would capture attention in F1.

– Speaking of F1, an interested spectator in Sao Paulo was Ferrari driver Felipe Massa, who spent much of the time over the weekend hanging around with ex-F1 star Rubens Barrichello. In fact, Massa accompanied Rubens to a post-session engineering de-briefing. Might Massa be the next F1 driver to sign on with an IndyCar team?

– The rigidity of the people running the IndyCar series continued apace as four more drivers – Sato, Katherine Legge, Sebastien Bourdais and Oriole Servia – were penalized 10 grid positions for "unauthorized" engine changes (you can’t change an engine in IndyCar until it runs x-number of miles, even though this is an engine transition year and teams are swapping power plants left and right because they keep either blowing up or preparing to blow up).

And Justin Wilson’s car – he’d qualified it sixth – was sent to the back at the start because it flunked post-qualifying inspection. Its sin? In IndyCar, you have to have a tiny little TV camera on your car or else a dummy camera and Wilson didn’t. Off with his head!

– Okay, now get this: IndyCar has penalized every driver in the field for an engine change at one time or another this season. They penalized more than half the field at Long Beach, making for all kinds of fun: some drivers were penalized 10 places (Hinchcliffe) and others were only penalized four. J.R. Hildebrand, for instance, only had to go from 16th back to 20th because there were so many penalized drivers behind him that there wasn’t room for him to go back any further. (I mean, how stupid.)

But for the Indy 500, they’ve cancelled that rule. You can make any number of unauthorized engine changes during the month of May but you won’t be penalized. You will only serve the penalties at the race, or races, following Indianapolis.

"We do not intend to apply any penalties that will disrupt the Indy 500 starting field from their qualifying positions," IndyCar vice president of technology Will Phillips said. "We’re not saying there will not be any penalties; the penalties just won’t be served at Indianapolis. They’ll carry that penalty forward to the next event. Likewise, if someone racks up two penalties, they will go forward to the next two events."

Maybe even three, four or five events. If Dragon Racing changes engines four or five times in May (it’s possible; they’re running Lotus’s), Sebastien Bourdais and or Katherine Legge could be penalized 10 grid positions at the Honda Indy Toronto in July!

(Which makes Toronto race fans second-class citizens, when you think about it. They won't penalize drivers at Indy because it's a really important race but they will penalize them at Fort Worth of Milwaukee or Toronto because those aren't really important races.

(If you know what you are doing, you penalize drivers across the board, like they do with jockeys in horse racing. If a jockey is set down 10 days for rough riding, and the Kentucky Derby is five days later, he  or she can't ride in the Derby. Think Ron Turcotte and Secretariat's last race in Toronto. Turcotte couldn't ride Big Red at Woodbine because he was under suspension for something that happened at Aqueduct.

(Which is the way it should be. The engine change rule in IndyCar is ludicrous but it is what it is and if you change an engine at Indy, you should be penalized at Indy.) 

I’m actually beginning to think the whole IndyCar rules thing is farce.

Here’s another example. John Barnes, who runs Panther Racing and has been one of the most loyal car owners in recent years (one of those guys who – like the late Carl Hogan – spends a lot of his own money to keep his team going) was fined $25,000 and put on probation till the end of the year for Tweeting this: "Today is the day to resolve TURBOGATE! I hope @indcar gets their act together. It has been embarrassing."

Nothing like speaking the truth – but for that, it’s off with his head!

– Turbogate, by the way, came about because Honda, which has been getting its ass kicked by Chevy since the first race of the year, complained to IndyCar that it needed more power, and IndyCar said, sure, go ahead and make changes to your turbocharger. Chevrolet (correctly, I say) then complained that IndyCar was changing the rules after the game had started. The Barnes Tweet referred to the day of the appeal – which Chevy lost, by the way.

So I have to ask: Does Chevy really need the IndyCar series? Really need it? We’re going to find out at the end of the contract, aren’t we?

– There was a great crowd in Sao Paulo, as there was in Long Beach two weeks ago. The IndyCar series seems to be on the upswing. Will that carry through to Toronto? Let’s cross our fingers and hope so.

AIM Autosport Ferrari wins GT Class at Miami race

It was raining so hard Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway that all the animals were running around in pairs. That explains why the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Race received the checkered flag with an hour still remaining in the two-hour, 45-minute event.

Ricky Taylor and Max Angelelli driving a Corvette Daytona Prototype won, with Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas second in a BMW-Riley and Darren Law and David Donohue third in a Corvette.

Big news for Canadian race fans, however, was the first victory for the AIM Autosport of Woodbridge Ferrari 458 Italia Grand Am in only its third race. Jeff Seagl and Emil Assentato did the driving.

Here is a report from Adam Saal:

Combined with a second-place finish one race ago at Barber Motorsports Park and an eighth-place showing in January’s season-opening Rolex 24 At Daytona, the No. 69 Ferrari team and its drivers have taken an early-season lead in the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series GT Team and Driver Championship standings.

"It was a great day for us," Segal said. "We’ve put a lot of hard work into this program, getting this new Ferrari up to speed, and there’s just been a lot of work behind the scenes by Ferrari and Michelotto, and a lot of hard work by AIM Autosport Team FXDD to adapt to this car. I’m really happy for all of them.

"I’m excited about the direction this program is heading. Obviously, we have a lot of races left to go, but I think everybody is comfortable with the car, we’re comfortable with each other, so we’re hoping that this is the start of a good run this season."

The only other Canadian in the Rolex race, Toronto’s Paul Dalla Lana, finished 10^th in GT in a BMW M3.

The day before, in the Continental Tire Series race, David Empringham and John Farano of Toronto finished second in a Porsche Carrera. Dalla Lana was fourth in a BMW M3 Coupe. Ashley McCalmont of Ancaster, who’s being coached these days by Kenny Wilden, was 13^th in a Camaro GS.R.

Toronto’s Compass360 Racing team had four cars entered in the ST class and recorded fifth, tenth, 13^th and 27^th-place finishes. Multimatic Motorsports of Markham had cars finish ninth and 24^th in ST and 15^th in GS.

3. Spengler, Wickens blanked in Germany; other races

The German Touring Car Series season got going in Hockenheim, Germany, Sunday and the two Canadians in the 22-driver field, failed to score points.

In fact, Spengler, of St. Hypolite, Que., who was fastest in morning warmup in his BMW, was crashed out after only a few laps.

Wickens, of Guelph and Toronto and seen as a potential F1 driver, finished 14^th in his Mercedes but was pretty much eliminated early in the contest when he was assessed a drive-through penalty for speeding in pit lane.

The race was won Mercedes driver Gary Paffett.

In Moto GP competition at the Jerez circuit in Spain, Casey Stoner won the race with Jorge Lorenzo second and Dani Pedrosa third.

Ryan Dungey won the Supercross in Salt Lake City.

NASCAR links below.

World Rally Championship back on Speed TV

CANADA'S ROBERT WICKENS SIGNS AUTOGRAPHS FOR FANS OF THE GERMAN TOURING CAR SERIES THAT BEGINS ITS SEASON THIS WEEKEND IN HOCKENHEIM. DETAILS BELOW. PHOTO, COURTESY MERCEDES-BENZ

Good news for all you rally racing fans out there.

Speed TV will start broadcasting coverage of the World Rally Championship this weekend. The WRC, which many people consider to be the pinnacle of motorsport, hasn’t been seen regularly in North America for the last six years.

All that will change on Sunday night (April 29) at 11 p.m. when Speed will broadcast a one-hour wrapup special on the Argentine Rally that’s happening this weekend. After that, on May 27, which is Indy 500/Coca-Cola 600 Sunday (a.k.a. the Memorial Day holiday in the U.S.), highlights of that weekend’s New Zealand Rally will be shown at 1 a.m.

You can check on times and future rally coverage, as always, by going to "George’s TV listings for race fans " that can be found 24/7 on the home page of wheels.ca

Two NASCAR drivers and a bunch of NFL quarterbacks are in the top ten on the Forbes magazine list of the most influential sports people in the United States.

No. 1? None other than NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson. No. 7 is Dale Earnhardt Jr.

The rest of the list, after Johnson: Tim Tebow, Peyton Manning, boxer Manny Pacquiao, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Earnhardt, Drew Brees, Eli Manning and basketball player Jeremy Lin.

More than 1,000 adults were questioned about dozens of athletes to measure likeability and whether they were considered influential to marketers.

It was Johnson’s second year as No. 1.

And there’s not a baseball or hockey player, pro golfer or MMA fighter in the bunch.

Okay, I’m confused (no nodding in agreement out there).

Honda and Chevy started the season providing engines to certain IndyCar teams, as did Lotus (really Judd). All those manufacturers said emphatically that they had all the business they could handle and nobody had better come knocking at their doors because they were full up.

They did suggest, however, that they all might be able to (operative word "might") come up with some extra engines for the Indianapolis 500 so there could be the traditional 33 cars in the field and maybe even an extra car or two so there could be bumping.

A month or so ago, Roger Penske (who is partners with Chevrolet and Ilmor in the production of the Chevy engine used in IndyCar) suggested that Lotus/Judd was in trouble and teams would soon be coming looking for additional Chevrolet and Honda engines.

The IndyCar establishment and Lotus very quickly pooh-poohed that idea.

Now, just this week, two of the Lotus teams, Bryan Herta Autosport (Alex Tagliani) and Dreyer & Reinbold Racing (Oriol Servia) bailed out of their contracts with Lotus. Herta won’t race in Brazil this weekend and D&R will be through as of the checkered flag in Sao Paulo Sunday.

Which suggests to me they are going to need engines for Indy and beyond and weren’t those other manufacturers full up?

Then we have the strange entry filed for Indy this week by Michael Shank Racing with Jay Howard the nominated driver (which indicates it really is all over for Paul Tracy). Shank doesn’t have an engine deal with anybody.

And the vultures are waiting to see if Lotus can even keep going through Indianapolis. There are whispers the company could soon go belly up. If that disaster should happen, HVM Racing (Simona de Silvestro), Dragon Racing (Sebastien Bourdais and Katherine Legge) and Newman-Haas Racing (Jean Alesi, allegedly) would need engines.

On top of everything else, GM (Chevy) has filed a protest against IndyCar’s decision to allow Honda to make a change to its turbocharger. There was talk that Chevy wouldn’t go to Brazil but now the suggestion is that this could all wind up in court

This is turning into an unholy mess. The IndyCar executives led by CEO Randy Bernard did not handle this wholesale change to the series well at all.

The plan for the 2012 season was to have a new car and new engine manufacturers who would supply their own unique aero kits to fit on the Dallara chassis. The aero kits had to be shelved for at least a year and now one of the power-plant manufacturers is on the brink of folding, leaving upwards of seven cars scrambling for engines. The other two engine manufacturers are at each other’s throats over rules and rule-changes.

Will the Indy 500 have a short field? Possibly. And will somebody’s head roll? Maybe.

Somebody tried to do too much, too soon and once again IndyCar is suffering.

When will this ever end? Or will it?

Finally, Canada’s Robert Wickens will make his debut as a member of the Mercedes Junior Team in the DTM touring car series this weekend and both Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher will be on hand to watch him do his stuff.

Of course, the DTM is huge in Germany (55,000 tickets pre-sold) and Rosberg and Schumacher will be treating the crowds at Hockenheim to the sight of them driving classic and modern Silver Arrows racing cars – Rosberg in the car driven to an F1 championship in 1955 by Juan Manuel Fangio and Schumacher in the 2011 F1 car.