Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Big F1 deal for BlackBerry; Villeneuve, Tracy at Mosport?

Iconic Canadian company BlackBerry, nee RIM, announced a big deal Monday with the Mercedes Formula One team that will see the BlackBerry name plastered prominently on the Silver Arrow race cars and on the uniforms of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg (pictured).

Details to follow. But first . . .

When Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, nee Mosport, announced last fall that it had landed a race in the NASCAR Camping World Series for this year’s Labour Day Weekend, I wrote that although I was pleased as punch that the event would happen, I was suspicious of the level of talent the circuit would be able to attract and promote.

Would Kyle Busch be there come September, I wondered? Joe Nemechek? Todd Bodine? James Buescher, who won the truck series championship in 2012?

Today, I still have no idea who’s coming to race and who’s not coming. But I do have a couple of names to drop.

A little bird told me yesterday that two of Canada’s biggest racing names are looking for sponsorship that could – repeat, could – see them in trucks at Mosport next Sept. 1, the Sunday of Labour Day weekend.

Name them, I said. And – as Popeye used to say – you could blow me down.

How about Jacques Villeneuve and Paul Tracy?

The little bird said, in addition to Villeneuve and Tracy, that Old Mosport co-owner Ron Fellows is hoping to be in a truck, as are two of the young chargers currently racing in the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series for stock cars, J.R. Fitzpatrick and Andrew Ranger, both of whom have had success in the Camping World Series, particularly Fitzpatrick.

My Spidey Sense tells me Max Papis might also be hovering around in the background.

I’m not as suspicious about that entry list any longer. If JV, PT and RF are in trucks with their pedals to the metal, we won’t need those other guys.

How would you like to be Lewis Hamilton?

You cut the McLaren apron strings and embark on a marvelous new adventure with Mercedes F1 and all you hear from just about everybody is that this was the stupidest thing imaginable and what was he thinking and he’s traded class for cash and, etc. etc.

The latest salvo was fired at the weekend by British sports car champion Allan McNish.

Writing for the British Internet site Express.co.uk, journalist Nick Stamford quoted the 43-year-old McNish as saying this:

"I don’t see Lewis winning races in 2013 – and there has to be doubts that the car will be good enough in 2014. And it is easy for a lean couple of years to develop into something longer. Just look what happened to Jacques Villeneuve after he joined BAR, having won the title in 1997. He never won another race. Lewis has got a tough task ahead of him at Mercedes. It is a gamble."

For his part, Hamilton prattled on and on at Monday’s 2013 Mercedes launch about how happy he is and I swear his words reminded me of Ebenezer Scrooge’s on Christmas morning:

"I'm happier. Just happier, I can't really explain it. Happier that I've got a new challenge, happy that I've got a new start, happy that I've got a fresh chapter in my life, happy that I've got this massive challenge, happy that I've got this excitement because I don't know if the car will be good or bad. I'm excited because I know that I can contribute and with a lot of hard work and perseverance I think we can get there."

I’d say Lewis is happy and excited, wouldn’t you?

And then there was that news involving Mercedes and BlackBerry. In a release Monday, Mercedes said:

"As the new Silver Arrow, the Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 W04, completes its first laps this morning at the Jerez circuit in Spain, the team is delighted to announce a significant new partnership agreement with BlackBerry (NASDAQ: RIMM, TSX: RIM).

"As the official mobile computing partner for the Mercedes Formula One Team, BlackBerry will collaborate with the team on technical and marketing opportunities.

"The new BlackBerry 10 platform will deliver tools and services for Mercedes,  and fan engagement will be improved through the joint development of apps. BlackBerry 10 smartphones will also be used by the team . . . throughout the Formula One season.

"The new partnership sees the iconic BlackBerry branding featured prominently on the chassis and headrest of the F1 W04 Silver Arrow, the race suits of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, and on the team's racewear kit."

In the same release, Blackberry’s marketing chief Frank Boulben said:

"Formula One is all about precision engineering, design and innovation – three values that mirror the approach that's gone into creating BlackBerry 10. It is a natural fit."

Good luck to Blackberry and good luck to Mercedes in this new partnership.

And, lastly, Bob Pockrass, writing in The Sporting News, reports that car owner Tony Stewart not only has faith and trust in Danica Patrick, who will drive with him in his Sprint Cup team this year that also includes Ryan Newman, but says people who criticize her really don’t know what they’re talking about.

Said Stewart, who knows how hard it is to go from IndyCar racing to NASCAR, having done it himself:

"Most of the people that do the picking and analyzing aren't people that actually understand how to analyze a whole race from start to finish and aren't qualified to make that judgment.

"But from our side as a team owner and teammate, I've seen great strides. She's made huge gains in a short amount of time and that shows talent."

There are seasoned observers out there who are suggesting that it is not beyond the realm of possibility that Patrick could win a race, or races, this season.

On Jimmie Johnson, rallying and no-name F1 drivers

Jimmie Johnson is the latest Sprint Cup driver to sign up to race a round, or rounds, of the NASCAR Nationwide Series in 2013.

He'll be driving for Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s team at Phoenix on March 2.

What is supposed to be a major-league-level development series for the Sprint Cup series is turning, once again, into Sprint Cup lite.

The reason, of course, is that the sponsor situation is so tight now that one of the few ways a Nationwide team or car owner can attract the money needed to run those cars is to have a "name" driver in the seat.

And it’s not just the race itself that’s important to a sponsor. In return for signing a cheque for – at the absolute, bare bones, minimum – $500,000, a sponsor wants the driver to appear at his place of business, or at a cocktail reception, or at a barbecue for clients, as well as in the race car.

No longer are corporations or companies willing to take a chance on an up-and-comer. They want to introduce Jimmie Johnson, or Brad Keselowski, or Kyle Busch to their customers. Not Jimmy or Janet Maybesomeday.

Is it good for the sport? Of course not.

But there’s really nothing NASCAR can do about it. They tried to, a few years ago, when they ruled that a driver could only score points in one division. They made it so that Sprint Cup drivers couldn't score points in Nationwide, too. And that did help - for maybe a season. But now we're back to same old, same old.

Of course, if something happened to one of those guys while racing at a lower level, that then prevented them from fulfilling their racing and sponsorship obligations in the big league, then we might see an end to it.

But until that happens, and Sprint Cup team owners forbid it from happening in contracts they have with their star drivers – as has happened in other leagues, such as Formula One – you can fuggedaboutit.

Speaking of Formula One, the rollout of the new cars continues apace, as does the naming of racing drivers most of us have never heard of to rides in the World Championship of Drivers this year (Giedo van der Garde, COME ON DOWN!!!).

Thank goodness for Sebastien Vettel, Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton or my interest in what is supposed to be the top level of the sport featuring the best cars (they have those) and best drivers in the world (hmmmmm) might start to diminish.

But as long as those top four guys are around, plus Felipe Massa, Jenson Button and Mark Webber, I’ll be on the edge of my seat, as usual.

(My personal jury is still out on Romaine Grosjean. And is Sergio Perez really a McLaren driver? As in, is he good enough? We’ll find out, won’t we?)

Speaking of McLaren, it’s the marque’s 50^th anniversary and we’ll undoubtedly be hearing lots and lots about the team, and Bruce McLaren, over the next 10 or 11 months.

It’s hard to believe, but Bruce founded his own racing team 50 years ago. Then, at age 32 in 1970, he died when he crashed while testing one of his Can-Am Series cars at Goodwood in England.

I remember that day vividly. I was shaving to go to work and listening to Wally Crouter on CFRB – he had the top morning radio show in Toronto at the time – and he made the announcement of the accident and then ad-libbed a most magnificent tribute to McLaren.

In any event, a friend sent me this link the other day to the first of what I understand will be a three-video tribute to the history of the company. The other two videos will be released later this year. Click here for the video.

Here is big news. Antoine L’Estage and Nathalie Richard did NOT win the first event of the 2013 Canadian Rally Championship, the Perce-Neige Maniwaki Rally, in Quebec at the weekend. The perennial champions (I mean, they win everything, don’t they?) were forced out by mechanical gremlins. The rally was won by Patrick Richard of Squamish, B.C., with Rob Fagg of the U.K. co-driving.

Here’s some short-track news. Mike Lichty of Kitchener finished fifth Saturday night in the Gambler Classic for TQ midgets at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J. Along with the Rumble at Fort Waye and the Chili Bowl in Tulsa, the Gambler is one of the "don’t-miss" indoor racing events that are held each winter.

It’s too bad there isn’t something closer to southern Ontario. We were lucky that, for years, the TQs would hold an indoor event in Niagara Falls, N.Y., at the old Niagara Falls Convention Centre, which was eventually blown away to build a parking garage for the Seneca Casino. And promoters in London, Ont., tried for a couple of years at the arena there but weren’t successful.

My old pal Nate Salter held discussions for a TQ race with officials at the Direct Energy Centre at the CNE but I understand they didn’t want to share in the risk in case something like a snowstorm put the kibosh on a turnout, so Nate – correctly – decided he didn’t want to gamble his children’s inheritance and nothing came of it.

Oh, before I forget, Lou Cicconi Jr. won the Friday night pre-Gambler race at Atlantic City while Anthony Sesely won the Gambler feature Saturday night.

Drag racer Spencer Massey will return to Don Schumacher Racing for the 2013 NHRA Top Fuel season.

Massey is a top gun. I also was impressed when – during an interview I did with him several years ago as he prepared to haul his dragster from Castrol Raceway outside Edmonton to Toronto Motorsports Park outside Cayuga – he talked about how excited he was at the prospect of driving across Canada and seeing the country.

"I’ve heard about Canada all my life and I’m really excited about being able to see it and enjoy it," he said.

That’s boy’s No. 1 in my book.

Speaking of Toronto Motorsports Park (we weren’t – but you know how my brain works), they’ve got a lot of special road course and dragway gift certificate and special promotions on offer that they’re touting under the heading, "Make Their Heart Race This Valentine’s Day."

I suggest you check everything out at TMP’s website (click here), considering that Valentine’s Day is on Tuesday. . .

NASCAR cheaters outed, Adam to lead Sportsnet Indy team

Forever and ever, NASCAR has had a policy that, come what may, the order of finish in a race shall not be altered after the fact, regardless of the circumstances.

If you cheat to win a race, as some of the kings of the stock car sport, including Richard Petty, have done over the years, you will be fined and lose points and maybe even hanged (I just made that last bit up) but you will always be listed in the record books as the winner.

This is a paraphrase, but Big Bill France, who invented NASCAR back in the day, said this: “I don’t want the fans to leave a race thinking somebody is the winner and then read in the newspaper the next day that someone else won. ‘Disqualification’ is a word we will never use.’ "

As we all know, NASCAR owns the Grand Am sports car series. Next year, when the sale of the American Le Mans Series to Grand Am becomes final, NASCAR will control all of major-league professional sports car racing on the continent and NASCAR’s rules and philosophy will apply across the board.

I mention this today because of the news (and how come it took so long for this to be announced?) that the third-place-finishing car in last weekend’s Rolex 24 at Daytona, the No. 60 Daytona Prototype of Michael Shank Racing and driven by A.J. Allmendinger, Marcos Ambrose and Justin Wilson, was found — as the result of a post-race tech inspection — to have cheated.

No details, but the engine was illegal.

As a result, the team has been docked 30 points in the Rolex championship and has to give back the $35,000 it won for finishing third. As well, it was fined $15,000. The drivers were all fined 30 championship points, as was the engine manufacturer, Ford.

After all this, however, Michael Shank Racing was allowed to keep its third-place finish.

In my world, Michael Shank Racing would have been disqualified. Cheaters are disqualified in short-track racing, drag racing, F1 racing and IndyCar racing. Why should NASCAR-sanctioned events continue to be different?

I really didn’t know who to cheer for in Sunday’s Super Bowl. Neither of my teams, the Colts or the Giants, is in it so I didn’t care.

But on the USA Today website this week, I was reminded that San Francisco coach Jim Harbaugh, who was the Colts’ quarterback before Peyton, once owned a team in the Indy Racing League. In fact, he partnered with John Barnes back in 1998 to start Panther Racing, which had our very own Canadian, Scott Goodyear, as its original driver and has J.R. Hildebrand in the cockpit today.

Jim Harbaugh got interested in racing in the 1970s when he went to Indy 500 qualifying and saw Tom Sneva become the first racer to turn a lap of 200 mph at the Speedway. This interest intensified when he went to Indianapolis to play and the number for the No. 1 Panther car — No. 4 — was selected because it was Harbaugh’s number when he was on the field for the Colts.

So it's settled. I’ll be cheering for the 49ers on Sunday.

More news on the broadcast team for Sportsnet’s coverage of the IZOD IndyCar Series Honda Indy races in Toronto next July.

As I reported first in this week’s web-only Monday Morning Racing Roundup (it’s repeated in this weekend's Toronto Star Wheels section), Paul Tracy will be doing the colour. This was no scoop — Tracy announced it himself during an interview at the Rolex 24 at Daytona.

But I’ve since learned that the play-by-play will be handled by Canadian Motorsports Hall of Fame inductee Bill Adam, who's a former champion sports car racer, and the pits will be covered by Todd Lewis, who has done a terrific job over the years on the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series telecasts.

Or so I've been told . . .

Tyler Walker, a one-time regular on the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series tour who won the 2011 King’s Royal race at Tony Stewart’s Eldora Speedway in Ohio, has been arrested after leading police on a high-speed chase through three states.

Police originally tried to stop the BMW that Walker was driving in Nevada and, after a pursuit through Arizona and into Utah, officers were forced to use a spike belt. He’s now facing serious jail time after police found marijuana, alcohol, methamphetamines and drug paraphernalia in the car.

Walker once drove in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series but was suspended after failing a drug test.

Oh, speaking of Tony Stewart (we weren't, but he owns the previously mentioned Eldora Speedway), he'll be in Rochester, N.Y., Saturday night, attending a Rochester Knighthawks lacrosse game at the Blue Cross Arena. For $250, you get to attend a pre-game meet and greet with Stewart, an 8X10 photo and a ticket to the game.

The Knighhawks are owned by Curt Styres, brother of Ohsweken Speedway owner Glenn Styres. Glenn promotes a World of Outlaws race every summer and Stewart has won the last two. If you're looking for a tie-in, that's it.

Ferrari and Force India introduced their 2013 cars today. They both look gorgeous — as do the McLaren and Lotus cars unveiled earlier. The proof is in the pudding, though, and despite the good looks, we’ll have to wait till they get out on the track to see whether any of them are anything other than just another pretty car. . .

Canadian, U.S. investors reportedly eyeing F1 team

Lotus unveiled their 2013 car to great fanfare (if not universal approval) this week and the rest of the F1 teams are on tap to follow suit over the next few days and weeks.

McLaren is up next, and they will roll out the new model today - Thursday - while Ferrari and Force India will follow on Friday.

Here are the rest: Sauber on Saturday, Red Bull on Sunday, Toro Rosso and Mercedes on Monday and Caterham next Tuesday. Williams has scheduled a Feb. 19 launch and while Marussia has not set a date (as of today), it will follow Williams at some point.

Sticking with F1 for a moment, DTM racer Susie Wolff will be doing more with Williams this season, focusing on most of the team’s aerodynamic and simulator work.

And Autosport magazine is reporting that there is a move afoot to resuscitate the Spanish HRT team, which thankfully went out of business at the end of last season. Autosport says Canadian and American investors in something called Scorpion Racing are hoping to get the team back on the grid in time for the 2013 season and have the blessing, allegedly, of one Bernie Ecclestone, although Bernie is now saying they're probably too late.

I'm curious as to who the Canadian investor, or investors, might be.

Two Canadians have owned teams in Formula One – B.C.'s Walter Wolf back in the 1970s and, more recently, Alex Shnaider of Toronto, who bought Eddie Jordan’s team early in 2005 and unloaded it onto the Spyker Car company about 18 months later. Both Wolf and Shnaider got out while the going was good. Translation: before they lost their shirts.

There are relatively few Canadians with the money required to play in Formula One. And it is a sucker bet to begin with. Don't believe me? Ask Craig Pollock. Ask Richard Branson. Ask Alex Shnaider.

A lot of people think it’s easy. Back in 2004, I had a column in the Toronto Star in which I wrote the following paragraphs about idealistic people with stars in their eyes who think it's a dandy idea to try to break into F1:

“When Grand Prix racing came to Canada in August, 1967, eight Formula One manufacturers brought cars: Brabham, Lotus, Cooper, Honda, Ferrari, BRM, Eagle and McLaren.

“It is 38 years later and only two of those famous marques are still in business: Ferrari and McLaren.

“In all that time, untold others have tried to crack the lineup of the most famous, the most demanding and the most expensive auto racing series in the world. None of them ever made it for long. Despite idealism and big promises and big money, lest we forget:

“Matra, March, Surtees, Shadow, Iso, Tecno, Hesketh, Lola, Parnelli, Penske, Hill, Ensign, Ligier, Copersucar, Wolf, ATS, Arrows, Fittipaldi, Alfa Romeo, Theodore, Osella, Toleman, Zakspeed, AGS, Rial, Onyx, Eurobrun, Larousse-Venturi, Larousse alone (didn't he kill the other guy?), Andrea Moda and Footwork — to name some, but certainly not all.

“Even the Ford Motor Co. — the Ford Motor Co. — had to throw in the towel when it realized its Jaguar team was costing a fortune and going nowhere.

“The manufacturers that lasted — Ferrari, McLaren, Williams — did so because of elbow grease. They proved that the business of auto racing grows from the ground up, over many years. It's not something that happens at the snap of a finger.”

If HRT does make a comeback, it’ll be gone again before the Canadians and Americans who sink their money into it will know what hit them.

If you do have money to burn in something like F1, wouldn’t it be better to buy in as an associate sponsor of an existing top team (none will ever say no, you know) and get some enjoyment out of it?

It's a lot better than going bankrupt.

Social note: Ashley Judd and Dario Franchitti are calling it a marriage. I really thought they were forever.

Paul Tracy coming to Sportsnet; Kyle Busch to Expo

I’ll kick off this week’s Monday Morning Racing Roundup with a little good news about Sportsnet’s coverage of Indy car racing in the spring and summer.

Paul Tracy is going to do colour commentating on Sportsnet’s telecast of the Honda Indy Toronto and maybe other races in the IZOD IndyCar Series as well.

Tracy spilled the news himself during the telecast this weekend of the Rolex 24 at Daytona (more about that below) when he was being interviewed shortly after the race started on Saturday afternoon.

Asked by infield reporter Andrew Marriott if he would have a ride for next May’s Indianapolis 500, Tracy said he would not because he was moving on and would do colour work for Sportsnet. "I’m joining you guys," Tracy said, making specific reference to the race in Toronto.

Sportsnet took over the IndyCar series telecasts for 2013 after ex-series CEO Randy Bernard became disenchanted with TSN for not showing all the races live.

And like they do with Formula One telecasts, TSN just picked up the feed from whichever network had the IndyCar telecasts in the U.S. It gave up trying to "localize" coverage years ago and just went with whoever was in the booth.

With Tracy’s news, it looks like Sportsnet is planning to put some extra effort into covering Indy car racing and I think that’s terrific.

They couldn’t have picked a better talent than Tracy, either. He’s got a wickedly quick wit and an encyclopedia-like mind when it comes to strengths and weaknesses of all the drivers. And he knows the history of the sport.

Good stuff. Now we’ll await news of the play-by-play announcer (Brian Williams, perhaps?) and the pit reporter (I have an idea who that might be, too).

Here’s some other great news. You know how I (and others) reported recently that Michael Waltrip would be a guest of the Canadian Motorsports Expo on Sat., Feb. 9? Well, on Sun, Feb. 10, the one and only Kyle Busch will fly in to make an appearance that will include an autograph and question-and-answer session.

Busch is no stranger when it comes to racing in Canada, coming north several times over the years to compete at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal and at Delaware Speedway just outside of London.

The seventh annual Expo will be held at The International Centre, adjacent to Pearson International Airport, and will go from Friday night, Feb. 8^th, through the Sunday afternoon.

For complete details of Waltrip and Busch’s appearances, as well as just about everything else the Expo has to offer, go to the show’s website at CanadianMotorsportsExpo.com

Talking about NASCAR, I’ve been thinking of the big social news of the off-season and that’s the romance involving Danica Patrick and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

I wasn’t going to say anything about it but now I can’t resist.

While pondering the ramifications of this little liaison, I was reminded of a column that was written several years ago by Dave Argabright in National Speed Sport News. In it, Argabright wondered about what would have happened if Patrick had taken a swing at Ryan Briscoe after he put her out of the 2008 Indianapolis 500? If she hit him and he hit her back, Argabright argued, he’d be a bully. If he sat there and took it, he’d be a milquetoast. (She was headed off by security before there was any confrontation.)

So I’m thinking that she is now going to drive a full season in the Sprint Cup series and what happens if she pushes someone a la Jeff Gordon, or there’s a bench-clearing brawl as happened late last season between Gordon and Clint Bowyer’s pit crews?

I’m thinking that not only has she got a boyfriend, she’s got herself a bodyguard. She’s got somebody riding shotgun for her.

Because as much as they say that each of them is on their own when they’re racing, I think Stenhouse will protect her, which is only natural.

This will become a story before the season is over. You watch.

The ISMA supermodifieds will be racing at Sunset Speedway south of Barrie on Sunday, Aug. 18. The supers will run Delaware Speedway near London on Friday and Saturday nights and stop in at Sunset on the way home.

2012 champion Mike Lichty of Kitchener and steady campaigner Mark Sammut of London will be among those entered. Ex-NASCAR star Johnny Benson Jr. will also be there.

The Sunset website has a photo of the No. 70 super of Gary Morton of Stouffville. He only drives one race a year now – the Oswego Classic. The rest of the time he has Brampton’s Dave McKnight in the car. So will it be McKnight, or Morton? We’ll find out Aug. 18.

I know endurance racing is a team sport, and particularly so when a race is 24 hours long, but I think it’s too bad that Scott Pruett, who tied Hurley Haywood’s record of five Rolex 24 at Daytona victories at the weekend, wasn’t driving when the Chip Ganassi-owned car got the checkered flag Sunday afternoon.

And who, pray tell, was driving? We know it wasn’t Pruett, and I can tell you it wasn’t his regular partner, Memo Rojas, either. No, it was Juan Pablo Montoya, doing a one-off. and I really wonder how Pruett felt about it.

Oh, he had the requisite smile pasted on his face in Winner’s Circle, and he said all the right things, but I suggest he was disappointed and angry. As well he should be.

Of course, Ganassi probably wanted Montoya to win something because he can’t win anything in NASCAR, despite having great equipment provided by Ganassi.

In fact, maybe that was the deal. Ganassi gave him something to feel good about because sometime this season, he plans to give Juan Pablo the old pink slip if his NASCAR performances don't improve substantially.

But Ganassi still owed something to Pruett for serving him so well over the years.

Wheels.ca’s Gary Grant, and photographer John Larsen, were in Daytona for the Rolex and did a great job Tweeting, Facebooking and posting to wheels.ca’s rolling blog all weekend.

But in case you missed their reporting, and didn’t see any of the race on Speed Channel, click here for full results. And click here for the results of the Continental Tire race that was held on Friday.

Finally, three-time F1 world champion Sebastien Vettel was awarded the Mario Andretti Trophy as the Speed Performer of the Year on last night’s edition of Speed Center.

NASCAR champion Brad Keselowski finished second in the voting and Kyle Larson, an open-wheel short-track standout, was third.

IndyCar still doesn't get it, Pruett and Patrick news

NASCAR knows it’s in the sports entertainment business and acts accordingly. Formula One, not so much but it doesn’t matter because the fans are happy.

IndyCar has suffered from an identity crisis forever. Once the playground of cigar smokin’, beer-drinkin’, two-fisted, dirt-track cowboys, it became a wannabe F1 (the CART years) with all the arrogance that went with that, and then a kind of open-wheel anti-NASCAR, where everyone was just down-home friendly.

These days, it’s kind of flailing around. It had a fan-friendly CEO in Randy Bernard but the owners and some of the sponsors didn’t like him so off with his head. This week, it released a whole bunch of rules, regulations and procedural changes that don’t really mean anything and the one rule that could have been changed if they cared anything about the fans wasn’t.

I’m talking about the insane rule that penalizes the driver for something over which he or she has absolutely no control. Still in effect for the 2013 season is the regulation that stipulates a driver will be penalized 10 grid positions for an unauthorized engine change.

So let’s say I go to the Honda Indy Toronto in July and Oakville’s own James Hinchcliffe wins the pole position. There is joy in the land. But wait, after qualifying, it’s discovered that the engine in Hinchcliffe’s car has to come out and another one put in because the engine builder screwed up. So naturally, because this is all James’s fault, he will start the race from 10^th place instead of from first.

Is that stupid, or what?

If James went out during practice and spun  because he was going too fast before his tires were warmed up, or something similar, then throw the book at him, I say.

But how can any racing series apply such a draconian penalty for something that, to repeat, the driver has no control over?

It’s the fans who are cheated when that happens. Which shows that the people who run IndyCar still don’t get it.

Don’t forget the Rolex 24 at Daytona this weekend. It’s on Speed TV beginning at 3 Saturday till 11 and then from 9 a.m. Sunday till 4. And Wheels’s own Gary Grant will be there, along with photographer John Larsen, and will be covering all the Canadians in the big race (as well as in the Continental Tire race on Friday) on a live blog at wheels.ca. Don't miss it!

Meantime, Scott Pruett, driving a Target Chip Ganassi Racing BMW/Riley Daytona Prototype, will start from pole Saturday after turning a lap Thursday of 1:40.553 (127.455 mph). It marks the third time Pruett has started from pole at Daytona and if he wins, he will be tied with Hurley Haywood for most wins with five. Scott Dixon made it an all-Ganassi front row with a lap of 1:40.646 (127.337 mph). Nick Tandy was the fastest GT class qualifier with a time of  1:47.631 (119.074 mph) in a Porsche GT3.

Social note: Sprint Cup rookies Danica Patrick and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. are dating. Now, back to our regularly scheduled column.

I went out for brunch this week with my good friends Bill Brack, the champion racing driver, and Gerald Donaldson, the champion auto racing writer, and in the course of the conversation, Gerry pointed out that the words "race car" make up a palindrome: they say the same thing frontwards and backwards.

I just thought I’d pass that on.

Oh, and Gerry says there are now "embedded journalists" in F1, which means friendly, supportive journalists are allowed into a team's inner circle and guys who actually ask questions aren't.

Congratulations to Charlie Johnstone, long-time general manager of the Honda Indy. He’s been promoted to president of the Honda Indy. There will be two feature races for the Indy cars at this year’s Honda in July, with the first on Saturday featuring a standing start while the second one on Sunday will be a rolling start. (I still think my suggestion of going clockwise Saturday and counter-clockwise Sunday is better, but what do I know?)

The races will be on Sportsnet in Canada and the cable channel NBC Sports Network in the U.S. ABC used to include Toronto in the four- or five races it carries each year but not this year, which is too bad because it was great PR for our city.

The North American rally season opens this weekend in Michigan and the Can-Jam Motorsports Rally Team with Crazy Leo Urlichich driving and Carl Williamson co-driving is entered. Urlichich and Williamson plan to compete in all Rally America and Canadian Rally Championship events in 2013. More than 40 teams are entered in the Michigan rally, so the boys have their work cut out for them.

Have Bus Racing Tours will be at the Canadian Motorsports Expo Feb. 8 to 10 at The International Centre in Mississauga. They sent out a note the other day that there are (or were) 31 days till the Daytona 500 but only 25 days until they leave Toronto for Florida with a busload of NASCAR fans heading for the big race. Their whole 2013 schedule is at their website. Click here.

The Bruce Peninsula and Georgian Bay will be the location and backdrop of the first Concourse d’Elegance to be held in Canada. Planned for Sept. 14, the Cobble Beach Concours d’Elegance will celebrate the world’s finest cars and join such esteemed locales as Lake Como, Italy, and Monterey, Calif., in presenting a red carpet automobile event. Proceeds will go toward funding a helipad at Sunnybrook Hospital in midtown Toronto. For more information and to purchase tickets (which start at $25 and go up to $1,100), click here.

It’s official. Montreal’s Alex Tagliani will return to Barracuda Racing (Brian Herta, owner) for the 2013 IndyCar season. Todd Malloy, son of Wheels contributor Gerry Malloy, is chief engineer.

Jarrett Andretti, son of John, grandson of Aldo, second cousin of Michael, third counsin of Marco and grandnephew of Mario, is continuing his development as a driver the way his daddy did it. Unlike Michael, who was a formula car driver from the start, John Andretti learned his trade in sprints and midgets before landing in CART and then NASCAR. Jarrett, who was the Oswego Speedway rookie-of-the-year in the supermodified division last year, will continue in super one-offs this season and also plans to run as many sprint car and midget car races as he can.

Never say never. Remember that offer by Roger Penske to Tony Stewart to race in the Indianapolis 500 that Stewart rejected? Well, it turns out the door was not completely closed, as Stewart revealed this week to journalists attending the annual NASCAR media tour in Charlotte, N.C. Said Tony:

"I talked to Roger and I actually had dinner with him in Indianapolis after the IMIS Trade Show reception. He didn’t necessarily back me into a corner, but he made me a generous offer and I made him a counter off that is an open-ended invitation. So even though we didn’t accept this year, maybe some year down the road we might be able to accept that offer. He never said no, so as far as I’m concerned we have an open invitation to run with him."

I, for one, would be very excited to see that happen.

Now, even the managers pay to play in Formula One

The European economy is in the ditch these days and it explains much of what has been going on in Formula One.

The situation is so critical that for the first time in the history of the sport, management positions appear to have been purchased.

At least one, anyway.

I’ve heard of pay drivers before but now we have pay managers.

Let me explain – but in order.

Timo Glock, who’s been a paid driver for Marussia (and I have no idea why, by the way), got the boot this weekend because the team needs a pay driver to partner its other pay driver, somebody named Max Chilton, a British driver who’s never finished higher than fourth in any professional series he’s been in.

Caterham, meantime, still has a seat open for a pay driver beside the pay driver they already have, Charles Pic, whose main claim to fame (besides finishing 21^st in points in F1 last season) is that he finished fourth in GP2 the year before Max Chilton did, – which suggests to me that if you want to get into F1 these days, you must first finish fourth in GP2.

But I digress.

Force India is in serious trouble and you wonder whether driver Paul di Resta will wake up one of these days and find himself in the same boat as Timo Glock – or out of the boat, as it were.

Force India majority owner Vijay Mallya (Bernie Ecclestone is believed to hold the mortgage . . .) is having a terrible time keeping his Kingfisher Airlines afloat (it might go bankrupt later this week) and the future does not look good for the race team, as a result.

Force India at one time was Eddie Jordan’s team. He got out while the going was good. Jordan was purchased by Canada’s Midland Group (headed by land developer Alex Shnaider of Toronto) but then sold to the Spyker car company. When Spyker couldn’t make a go of it, Ecclestone brokered the deal that transferred title to Mallya.

Mallya fell into financial difficulty previously but was bailed out by Sahara India Pariwar, an Indian company involved in sports promotion. Sahara paid Mallya $100 million US in 2011 in return for a tad more than 40 per cent of Force India. Hmmm. Wonder what the return’s been on that investment.

Moving right along, Williams has two pay drivers working for it, Pastor Maldonado and Valtteri Bottas. They used to have pay driver Bruno Senna but Bottas has the means to pay more so away went Senna.

And Esteban Gutierrez, who will partner Nico Hulkenberg at Sauber this season, is also a pay driver, although his third-place finish in GP2 in 2012 is an improvement on the previous fourth-place finishes of Pic and Chilton.

So when the 2013 season gets under way, there will be eight drivers out of 22 paying for the privilege of competing. And if di Resta gets deep-sixed to make way for a guy with money, there will be at least one more.

But pay drivers have always been around F1 – and other forms of racing – so it’s really not that out of the ordinary (although having more than a third of the field writing cheques is kind of disturbing).

What’s amazing today, though, is that the ability to pay has now moved into F1's management ranks.

At some point recently, the investment company Aabar, based in Abu Dhabi, which owned 40 per cent of the Mercedes F1 team, wanted to vamoose. Parent company Daimler agreed to buy Aabar’s holdings (the two companies have other business dealings together, including an interest in the Tesla electric car company) and promptly offered 30 per cent of that total toWilliams executive director Toto Wolff.

Wolff said, "I’m in, as long as you let me run the team (or words to that effect)," so Dailner agreed and the deal was done. Better Wolff should be the executive director of a team that might win the world championship in 2013 than do the same job with a team that won’t.

Daimler then unloaded the remaining 10 per cent onto Mercedes F1 team executive chairman Niki Lauda.

While Wolff left Williams to run Mercedes, Lauda was already there (in an undefined roll, albeit with a fancy title). Is it possible that Niki agreed to buy into the team in order to keep his job?

I mean, if he refused, was there somebody standing by ready and willing to ante up in order to be executive chairman of an F1 team?

Who knows? And maybe this sort of thing happens all the time and is perfectly normal.

But I have a feeling that new ground has been broken here and no longer are the drivers the only ones in F1 who are ponying up.

IndyCar team manager Phil LePan of Toronto dies

Sad news today.

Philip Buchan LePan of Toronto, better known to his many friends and admirers in the world of motorsport as Phil LePan, has died. A memorial service and interment is planned for Sat., Feb. 16 at 2 p.m., at the Mount Pleasant Cemetery Visitation Centre.

Racer Scott Maxwell emailed me the news earlier this week and said that “before moving on to bigger and better things, Phil was my team manager in Formula 2000 way back in 1989-90. Not only was he a great crew chief but he was one of the kindest and classiest people in motorsports.”

In a tribute published on the Speed Channel’s website, writer Marshall Pruett said Phil had worked for several Indy car teams after starting his big-league career with Team Lotus in Formula One.

He was team manager for Player’s/Forsythe Racing in 2003 when Paul Tracy won his championship and also was team leader with Kraco Racing, Team Green in 1995 when Jacques Villeneuve won the Indianapolis 500 and the CART championship and this past season with Dale Coyne Racing (Justin Wilson up).

Pruett quoted Tracy thusly:

“His whole life was about racing. That’s what he lived for. As a team manager and a guy I worked with for seven years . . . he wasn’t a guy who pushed himself out to the spotlight as the star team manager or crew chief. Some people try to become a bit of a personality with a position like that . . . but he wasn’t that guy. If you wanted to find Phil, he was in the garage with the mechanics and I liked that about him.”

Said another Canadian, Alex Tagliani, also to Pruett: “Phil was always one speed, and that was very good for us. He was someone that always was composed and kept things in perspective.”

Phil LePan leaves his wife and two sons.

Auto show season is upon us and Toronto Star Wheels and wheels.ca are gearing up to bring you complete coverage of all of them.

The biggie, right off the button, is the North American International Auto Show at Detroit, which opens to the public next weekend but has media preview days scheduled for this Monday and Tuesday.

We will be there, in force, to keep you fully informed about everything happening at that show.

Starting Sunday evening, wheels.ca’s home page will be humming with live blog files from writers Jim Kenzie and Jil McIntosh on the unveiling by General Motors of the 2014 C7 Corvette. Former Wheels editor Mark Richardson will report on what’s up with Nissan and Peter Gorrie will be dining with Toyota Canada executives and reporting on what they have to say.

I’ll be in Detroit with photographer Steve Russell and writer Brian Early to cover the world premiere of the all-new CLA-Class Mercedes-Benz at a special reception .

Early will blog and I will kick off two days of video reporting, with the help of Russell.

Monday, we’ll be back on the air early in the day with the 7:15 a.m. announcement of the North American Car and Truck of the Year. For the rest of Monday and on Tuesday till early afternoon, writers Kathy Renwald, Tim Miller, Steve Bond, Anne-Marie Marais, Gary Grant and Lesley Wimbush will cover all of the manufacturers’ unveilings on Twitter and Facebook as well as on our rolling blog at wheels.ca.

Yes, we’re promising blanket coverage but for an auto show as important as Detroit, we think our readers deserve nothing less.

And of course, we’ll wrap up the whole show — news, information, photographs and analysis — in next weekend’s issue of Wheels.

I started this piece by using the words “auto show season,” and that’s because the Montreal auto show is opening next week and correspondent Costa Mouzouris will be there to report. The Chicago show opens Feb. 9 and Richardson will be there and, of course, the Canadian International AutoShow here in Toronto will kick off on Feb. 15 and if you think our Detroit coverage is thorough, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Please join us at wheels.ca and Wheels for the Detroit auto show and stay with us through the Toronto show for the most comprehensive coverage you’ll find anywhere.

The Pro Mazda Series (nee Star Mazda) will run six of its 16 scheduled races this season in Canada. 

The first two will be held at the Honda Indy Toronto July 13 and 14 and then there will be two run the very next weekend as part of the American Le Mans Series weekend at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (nee Mosport).  

The final two will be part of the traditional Trois-Rivieres race weekend Aug. 10 and 11.

The season will open at the Circuit of the Americas in March as part of the Grand Am Rolex weekend there and wind up in Houston as part of the IndyCar meeting in October.

Finally, the Mopar Canadian Superbike Championship will kick off June 7-9 at Shannonville Motorsport Park near Belleville. July 5-7 will see the riders doing battle at Autodrome St-Eustache in Quebec and then they'll tow to Atlantic Motorsport Park near Shubenacadie in Nova Scotia July 26-28.

Two races will be held at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park Aug. 9 to 11 and the season will wrap up Aug. 23-25 at Le Circuit-Mont Tremblant in the Quebec Laurentians.

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?

Merry Christmas to all race fans

To the people who read this blog, I wish you all - critics and friends alike - a very Merry Christmas and a great 2013.

With luck, we can look forward to great races and racing in Formula One, NASCAR, IndyCar and sports cars (not to forget the dragsters and the short tracks), as was the case in 2012.

Talking about sports cars, the announcement everybody has been waiting for following the sale of the ALMS to the NASCAR-owned Grand-Am Series will come on Jan. 4 in Daytona Beach when the class structure will be unveiled and explained.

Fingers crossed on that one.

In a day or two (it is the holidays, after all) I'll post a roundup, with comments, of all the important racing news that's relatively recent.

I'll also discuss the difficulty of coming up with a definitive Top Ten Stories of the Year list.

Meantime, enjoy the day. Joy to the World.

Oh, before I go, in case any of you missed my annual Christmas story that was published last weekend in Toronto Star Wheels, entitled When Murphy met Baby (it's about a taxi driver who hooks up with a hoodlum for a drive to Rochester), here's the link.

I think you'll like it. 

- Norris McDonald