Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Top Ten motorsports stories of 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

So here are the Top Ten.

No. 1

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

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

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

No. 2

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

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

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

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

No. 3

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

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

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

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

The Grand Prix is not affected.

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

No. 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No. 5

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

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

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

In short, it was a banner year.

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

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

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

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

You may now speculate about what all this means.

No. 6

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

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

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

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

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

No. 7

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

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

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

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

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

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

No. 8

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

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

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

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

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

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

No. 9

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

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

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

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

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

No. 10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exactly what he was doing.

- Norris McDonald

Electric-car racing and the NASCAR Canada schedule is out

My friend, Gary Morton, has another idea – and he might really be on to something this time.

You’ll recall that he was the fellow I quoted a few weeks ago as saying the solution to the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park controversy is to just do what the founders of the place did back in 1961: contract "motor" and "sport" into one word, Mosport, and call the place Canadian Tire Mosport Park and everybody would be happy.

Three things:

– First, and this sort of thing is inevitable, some people wrote and said Gary was way behind because this had been suggested before, which was news to me or I would have put it in the paper sooner.

– Many others wrote to say it was a wonderful idea, because they hadn’t heard anybody suggest anything like it before either.

– Last, it’ll never happen. Canadian Tire Corp. bought the naming rights to the place and that’s what they want to call it. The signage, the letterhead and the souvenirs have all either been changed, or are on order, and there’s no turning back.

In the short term, anyway.

But as I said, he has another idea and it has to do with electric cars and racing – two things that keep turning up in the motorsport news cycle with a degree of regularity these days.

For instance, last week it was announced that Rome would become the first European city where a round of the FIA Formula E Championship would be held, in 2014. The first city to announce a date in what is promised to be a 10-race series was Rio do Janeiro, in August.

Still no word on a North American city but there will be likely be one or two. A full schedule is promised soon.

This is for real, folks. The FIA is behind it and McLaren has announced that it will design and build the powertrain for the first Formula E cars, in partnership with Spark Racing Technology (SRT).

They’re going to build 42 cars to get the championship going with, hopefully, 10 teams and 20 drivers. Formula E, however, is an "open" championship and other car designers and constructors are being encouraged to build a Formula E car.

My friend "Mort" says he has the answer.

"Take the Delta Wing car and put an all-electric motor in it, preferably one built by Tesla," he writes. "Get the universities involved – Virgina Tech., U of T, Queen’s, Cal Tech., MIT, etc. It’s the perfect way to save open-wheel racing in North America."

He got a big response to his Mosport suggestion. We’ll see how he does on this one.

Other Monday Morning Morning Roundup items:

- The 2013 NASCAR Canadian Tire Series presented by Mobil 1 schedule was issued at the weekend and features 12 races at 11 tracks across five provinces. Of those dozen races, three of them will be held at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park north of Bowmanville – two on the road course and one on the oval speedway.

The series will open on the road course at Old Mosport on the traditional Victoria Day weekend in May and race there again in June on the oval. Labour Day weekend will be the biggie, though, when the stock cars share the stage with the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.

The Canadian series has two other road-course races, both in Quebec - at the Grand Prix of Trois-Rivieres and at Circuit ICAR at Mirabel Airport.

Short track oval speedway races will be held at Autodrome St. Eustache, Riverside Speedway in Nova Scotia, Motoplex Speedway in Vernon, B,.C., Auto Clearing Motor Speedway in Sakatoon, Delaware Speedway outside of London, Ont., and Barrie Speedway.

The season will wrap up, as it traditionally does, on Sept. 21 at Kawartha Speedway near Peterborough.

The schedule was issued at the Night of Champions Touring Awards at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte on Saturday night.

D.J. Kennington of St. Thomas, who won his second NASCAR Canada title in three years this season, was among those honoured at the affair. Martin Roy was named Rookie of the Year in the Canadian series and the Most Popular Driver award went to Ray Courtemanche Jr. (and I have no idea how that happened . . .).

– Lotus has been released from its contract by IndyCar, so the only engine suppliers in 2013 will be Chevrolet and Honda. They shouldn’t have any trouble supplying the field because I suggest car count will become a story again. We won’t cross that bridge till later but it is highly unlikely that 25 or 26 cars will be showing up for every race, as was the case this year.

– 12-year-old Devlin DeFrancesco of Toronto, who won a Canadian karting championship this season, travels to Brazil next weekend for the famous 12-hour Gran ja Viana 500 kart race. His teammates? None other than Tony Kanaan and Rubens Barrichello.

Another Canadian youngster will also be making the trip. Jamie Riberdy will represent the Brian Stewart Racing Karting Championship Series and his trip is being paid for by Luis Ruibal and Wagner Rossi of MG Tires.

Care to keep an eye on these kids? Follow the action at: www.betocarrero.com.br/500milhas

– The World of Outlaws sprint car series issued their 2013 schedule last week and it’s a killer. Get this: they will race more than 90 times from February until November. Their Canadian swing starts on Sat., July 27, at Drummondville, Que., and goes to Cornwall Motor Speedway on the Sunday. Then, it's on to Ohsweken Speedway on the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford two nights later on Tuesday, July 30.

The last two times the Outlaws raced at Ohsweken, NASCAR star Tony Stewart was the winner. Will he make it a hat trick in 2013? You can bet he’ll try.

– Austin is after the FIA to give it another date for its Grand Prix because it was discovered that the 2013 event (Nov. 17) is being held the same weekend as a Texas Longhorns football game.

They just found that out? That football schedule's been out for months! Don’tcha think somebody might have looked and told the FIA to take that into consideration? Just wondering . . .

On Formula One and trucks at Old Mosport

There were two announcements from NASCAR in recent days about the Camping World Truck Series.

One was that there would be a race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park next Labour Day and one that there would be a race at the half-mile dirt speedway in Ohio owned by Tony Stewart.

Guess which announcement has received the most attention south of the border?

The road-course race at Old Mosport isn't even on the radar down there. Columnist after columnist and website after website are all full of the race at Eldora Speedway.

In all the stories, there is much talk about NASCAR returning to its short-track roots. There are sugggestions that the dirt race will be the first of many and that the focus of the truck series will start to shift back to what NASCAR once was: a small oval speedway racing series.

So this makes me wonder who will be driving those trucks next September when the series comes to Canada because I'm not sure a short-oval, dirt-track racer is going to be all that comfortable shifting gears and turning right while going up hill and down dale.

With NASCAR more and more becoming a "pay-driver series," particularly when it comes to the trucks, I worry that many of the Camping World Series regulars might take a pass on CTMP and their owners rent their rides out to the highest bidder.

I mean, will Kyle Busch be here (he owns a team in the truck series and frequently drives)? Joe Nemechek? Todd Bodine? Series champion James Buescher?

Just wondering . . .

It looks as if - for the moment, anyway - Ferrari will drop the idea of appealing the finish of last weekend's Brazilian Grand Prix because of suspicions that Sebastian Vettel's pass of Jean-Eric Vergne was illegal.

But then you see a headline like this - "Ferrari never intended to diminish Vettel's victory" - and it really makes you wonder.

If that's so, why did they bring it up in the first place? And who amongst us wants to bet that it won't be brought up again? 

It's bad enough during the racing season, but the off-season headlines and stories are often a joke.

Here's a sampling.

"Force India seeking talent, not money" (Sure.)

"Ferrari says Vettel overtake matter is closed" (Ditto)

"Perez expects title in first year" (Is he crazy?)

"Webber will not play supporting role" (Wanna bet?)

 

We all know better, don't we?

 

Have a great weekend.

Could Ferrari protest rob Vettel of F1 championship?

Two quick notes to set up what follows:

1. I’m just rereading Tom Bower’s incredible book about Bernie Ecclestone. Anybody naïve enough to think F1 is one big happy family should read it. Most of the people at the top levels of the sport would slit the throat of their own mothers if it would give them an advantage. It makes me laugh to think people actually think the IndyCar series is dysfunctional. They ain't seen nothin'. If it’s not for Ecclestone and his brilliant negotiating skills (no, it’s not his power; it’s his ability to manipulate and to play one off against another), then Formula One would collapse. The teams live to do one thing and one thing only — to drive everybody else into the ground on or off the track. They will stop at nothing.

2. I continue to be astounded that the world’s most expensive sport continues to rely on volunteers to perform duties of utmost importance during the running of Grands Prix. Most are capable; some are not. This anecdote is about a different series but the circumstance are similar. At the second Molson Indy Vancouver in 1991, I was standing near a hairpin turn that was at the end of a long, high-speed, straight. There was a restart, and the CART cars were thundering in a pack toward that corner when a marshal standing on the inside of the circuit inexplicably started to wave a white flag. Another marshal saw this and literally tackled the marshal with the flag. The next morning while checking out of the hotel, I discovered that the marshal who’d waved the white flag was the sister of the desk clerk, did not have very much experience officiating races and was “helping out” because her boyfriend was a marshal and they were short. Keep that in mind when you read the linked story. There were flashing yellow lights at the Grand Prix of Brazil last Sunday but there was also a marshal waving a green flag. Yikes.

Okay, the story.

According to chief F1 writer Andrew Benson, in a story published on the BBC website in England today, Ferrari is studying whether to file an official protest over the results of last weekend’s GP in Brazil because of video evidence they have that appears to show Sebastian Vettel passing Jean-Eric Vergne in a flashing yellow light zone.

If they do, and Vettel is found guilty, he could be penalized 20 seconds and the resulting loss of points would hand the 2012 championship to Fernando Alonso.

Here is the video (click here)

Here is the link to the BBC story (click here)

Watch the video and read the story.

As you do, think of (1) above.

And when you get to the part about someone waving a green flag at the same time the yellow lights are flashing, think of (2).

Here's how to get 'Mosport' back into Canadian Tire park's name

Ever since Mosport International Raceway became Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, there has been controversy about the name change.

Many people — me included — wondered why they couldn’t have kept “Mosport” as part of the new name.

Today, I am pleased to announce that my good friend Gary Morton has come up with the solution.

“When they were trying to invent a name for the place back in 1960-61,” he said, “is it not true that the name they agreed upon - ‘Mosport’ - is, in fact, a contraction of the words ‘motor’ and ‘sport?’ ”

(You can see where he’s going with this, can’t you . . .)

“So, because ‘motor’ and ‘sport’ became Mosport back then,” continued Mr. Morton, “why not do it again and call Canadian Tire Motorsport Park,  ‘Canadian Tire Mosport Park?’ ”

I think he’s got a point.

In fact, I think it’s brilliant.

Comments, please.

James Hinchcliffe of Oakville has been voted most popular driver in the IZOD IndyCar Series.

The HRT-Cosworth F1 team is on its last legs and unless some sucker — er, “investor” — has millions of dollars just lying around that he/she wants to flush down the toilet, it’s unlikely to be on the grid come 2013.

Things are so bad that when eight members of the team went to its Madrid headquarters Tuesday to pick up their final paycheques, a fight broke out. No details have been issued about what prompted the fisticuffs but a good guess would be that there were no paycheques there to be picked up.

The team’s owner, Thesan Capital SL, said on Nov. 12 that it was for sale.

Spanish police said the fight ended when officers arrived and no one was arrested.

Meantime, Williams F1 announced today that former F3 and GP3 champion Valtteri Bottas of Finland will join veteran Pastor Maldonado for the 2013 season.

This means Bruno Senna is out of a ride but he is not without options. Although Romain Grosjean is still listed as the second driver at Lotus beside Kimi Raikkonen, he hasn’t been confirmed and his crash-filled 2012 season, which included a one-race ban for careless driving, could work against him.

There is also a seat open at Force India beside Paul Di Resta and that team could use the $14 million that Senna has in sponsorship. Other possibilities are Caterham and Marussia, who both have only one driver (Charles Pic, Timo Glock) under contract for next year.

The 2012 Rotax Max Challenge Grand Finals are taking place at the Kartodromo Internacional do Algarve in Portimao, Portugal, today through Friday and Canadians are looking good in at least four classes.

To follow all the action, and to keep track of Our Guys, go to ekartingnews.ca

Speaking of Mosport (we were up above, remember?) Reg Wesson, president of the Oakville Trafalgar Light Car Club for many years, died this week on Tuesday. Those of us who are older will remember that it was the Oakville club that ran the very first race meet at Mosport when it opened back in 1961.

Fernando Alonso - the most disliked F1 driver in Brazil

When the Grand Prix of Brazil ended on Sunday, and Fernando Alonso was still second in the world championship of drivers, thousands of Brazilians at the Interlagos circuit and millions more throughout the country rejoiced.

Why?

It was not primarily because Sebastien Vettel won his third consecutive driving title, which he did by finishing sixth behind winner Jenson Button in an astounding drive from the back of the pack after crashing shortly after the start (details here).

It was because Alonso, the most disliked racing driver in Brazil, had come up short, albeit by a mere three points, and that was the cause for the celebration.

And why is the two-time world champion from Spain so despised in the South American country?

Because every time there is sleight-of-hand that benefits Alonso, the loser has been a Brazilian driver.

Nelson Piquet Jr., who is reinventing himself in NASCAR currently, was a young F1 driver with Renault when, in 2008, acting on instructions from the disgraced team principal Flavio Briatore and the equally disgraced chief engineer Pat Symonds, he deliberately crashed his car at a strategic moment in the race and this enabled his teammate, Alonso, to leapfrog to the front of the pack and go on to win the Grand Prix of Singapore.

If that wasn’t bad enough, last week at the U.S. Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas outside Austin, Tex., Ferrari had to figure out a way to move Alonso up in the starting order. He hadn’t qualified well and was starting eighth – and on the "dirty" side of the brand new race track.

So Ferrari deliberatly broke an FIA seal on the gearbox of Brazilian hero Felipe Massa’s racing car, which resulted in a five grid-position penalty. Massa went from sixth on the grid to 11th and Alonso moved up a spot, which put him on the "clean" side of the macadam.

The manipulation of Piquet Jr.in Singapore was bad enough but when Ferrari used Massa to benefit Alonso in Texas, it was the last straw. And then, of course, they had to watch Massa on Sunday ride shotgun for Alonso, even giving up his second-place position late in the contest so his teammate could score more points.

Yes, Massa still finished on the podium but his post-race interview with Nelson Piquet Sr. was telling. He suggested that instead of playing second banana at Ferrari in 2013, he’d be driving to win right from the beginning of the season – something that hadn’t appeared to be the case this year.

The dramatics aside (I have contacts in Brazil, and that's how come I know this stuff),  the curtain-closer on the 2012 season Sunday was a race to remember, starting with the weather.

The race began with the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace track damp. A number of cars were sliding around – Alonso lost third place early in the race when he hit a wet spot and went off – and many times during the race you saw team managers looking at the sky and wondering what kind of tires to fit on the cars.

It ended in pretty much a downpour and the McLaren rainmeister, Button, who seems to excel when conditions are awful, was the winner by about 20 seconds.

The drama was incredible.

Vettel went into the final race leading the championship by 13 points. He didn’t qualify well and had a poor start. Approaching the fourth turn, with everybody bunched up, he was suddenly backwards on the race track and by the time he got straightened out he was dead last.

The fact that he was able to battle his way back into the points after his team told him the car’s floor was damaged beyond repair as a result of being assaulted by Bruno Senna and he would just have to make the best of it was nothing short of miraculous.

Then, for awhile, it looked like German driver Nico Hulkenberg, driving his last race for Force India-Mercedes (he’s going to Sauber-Ferrari in 2013), was going to win his first F1 race. But then, when racing Lewis Hamilton for the lead toward the end of the race, he lost control and spun off, hitting the McLaren driver in the process and damaging Hamilton’s car beyond repair.

That is the incident that put Alonso onto the podium; if Hulkenberg doesn’t spin and take out Hamilton, and goes on to win, or Hamilton isn’t clobbered and goes on to win, there is the distinct possibility that Alonso wouldn’t have finished higher than fourth or fifth and would have lost the championship by a wider margin.

As the race wound down, Massa let Alonso past to move into second and, with Vettel running seventh, within a point of the championship. But then Michael Schumacher, running his last race for Mercedes before retiring forever, did not fight when Vettel passed him for sixth (worth two more points) and that was the three-point margin at the checkers.

Sebastian Vettel has now won three consecutive world championships and Red Bull-Renault their third manufacturer’s championship. Everybody is back for 2013: team principal Christian Horner, designer Adrien Newey, No. 2 Mark Webber and Webber’s trackside engineer Gavin Ward, who’s from Toronto (had to throw that in).

Is a fourth title a possibility? We’ll find out, starting next March.

Notebook jottings:

– SPEED TV’s Bob Varsha had a great line on Friday during the telecast of the second F1 practice session. He was kidding around with his studio sidekicks, Steve Matchett and David Hobbs and they were talking whether Sao Paulo was a good vacation spot. Said Varsha: "It’s one of the safest cities in the world – as long as you’re armed to the teeth."

– Speaking of Texas and the Circuit of the Americas, which we weren’t but what the hell, an article I wrote about the future being bleak for F1 races there drew a ton of reponses. Many took me to task for what they considered inaccuracies in my reporting of the cost of attending the Grand Prix – although others agreed that they’d been gouged.

In any event, perhaps I should have left that part out because it took away from the point of the column, which is that the economics of F1 do not make sense and the race at that facility is not sustainable. It is why it is highly doubtful that there will ever be a Grand Prix in New Jersey and, as I have written on a number of occasions, it is why the Grand Prix of Canada at Montreal is under threat when the current contract expires following the 2014 race.

The only place that made sense in recent years was the Indianapolis Motor Speedway It is a racing facility, the people who own it are in the business of putting on races, and it is paid for. All they have to do is open the doors and there can be a race. But even there, the economics of Formula One eventually hit a brick wall and the race went away.

The stark reality is that nobody will be able to afford F1 much longer.

– A report in the Daily Mail at the end of last week said the reason Lewis Hamilton decided to leave McLaren for Mercedes is because of something that happened during negotiations."I do know what has happened," an unnamed ‘senior figure’ told the paper. "Everyone makes mistakes and Ron made a mistake. Everything went pear-shaped and I don’t think it would be fair to say any more than that."

F1 is an amazingly political game. The media are used to settle all sorts of scores and to stick in all sorts of knives. This is one such instance.

Ron Dennis didn’t make any mistake. Lewis Hamilton did when he Tweeted out confidential data at the Belgian Grand Prix. He did it to see what the reaction would be. He found out he’d pushed the wrong button. That’s why he’ll be driving for Mercedes next year, and not McLaren.

But not before trying to make it look like it was someone else's fault.

– Michael Schumacher is done with Formula One. Or is he? He has all the money in the world. Will be buy a team? HRT is available.

– Finally, the safety car was dispatched on Lap 23 because of debris on the circuit. That should have taken about a second to clean up, right?

Well, it took them until Lap 30 to restart the race. That’s NASCAR time.

How come?

Well, they now allow lapped cars (of which there were about a dozen) to pass the pace car and go around the whole circuit in order to catch up with the cars on the lead lap. That can take forever, as Sunday’s race illustrated.

Why not just have them pull out of line and let the cars on the lead lap pass them and then fall into line behind them? Wouldn’t that be a lot faster?

Joann Villeneuve: When Ferrari called, we thought it was a joke

STAR EXCLUSIVE:

An interview with Joann Villeneuve, by Norris McDonald

+

Thirty years ago in 1982, on an awful May 8, Gilles Villeneuve was killed at the Belgian Grand Prix.

A nation mourned.

Never before (with the possible exception of Montreal Canadiens hockey star Howie Morenz), and certainly not since, has a Canadian athlete received the respect in death accorded Villeneuve. A Canadian Forces plane was dispatched to bring his body home and the service, in his hometown of Bethierville, Que., was close to a state funeral.

Thousands attended and there was blanket television coverage on the national networks. All of Canada’s prominent politicians were there and the-then prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, escorted the widow, Joann Villeneuve, into the church before sitting with Joe Clark, the opposition leader, in a remarkable show of respect.

It remains a very emotional time for many.

Last weekend, through the kindness of Michael Taylor, CEO of MultiMedia Entertainment, I was able to visit with Madame Villeneuve for part of an afternoon prior to the 40th anniversary Canadian International AutoShow Charity Gala, where she was introduced.

Joann Villeneuve, Paul Tracy and Norris McDonald at last weekend's Canadian International AutoShow 40th anniversary charity gala

Joann, who also goes by Joanna, remained in Monaco — where the family moved after her husband was contracted to race for Ferrari — until 2004 when she relocated to Montreal and went into the real-estate business. She and her oldest daughter, Melanie, now own and operate a Quebec construction company.

Here is an edited version of our conversation.

Norris McDonald: There are lots of stories about your husband — the wild driving through city streets, the antics in his helicopter, selling the house without telling you. I’d like to know what’s true and what isn’t.

For instance, the late Prof. Sid Watkins liked to tell the story of being in a car with Gilles in Sao Paulo, which he called a frightening experience, and turning to say something to you in the back seat and you were on the floor.

Joann Villeneuve: No, that’s not true. Gilles never scared me in the car. There were reasons for this. I met him when I was 16 and I grew up with him. I actually thought everybody drove like him. To me, that was normal driving.

People like to tell the story about us going from Monaco to Balogna (470 kilometres, 4 hours, 25 minutes) in two-and-a-half hours and me being scared the entire drive. The story is real, but I wasn’t afraid. In fact, I slept the whole way. I don’t know why, but I never thought it was dangerous when I was with him.

He drove like that with the kids in the car, too. It never occurred to me to tell him to slow down.

NM: What about the helicopter? Jody Scheckter says Gilles would fly normally until he saw people looking up and then he’d start to show off. True?

JV: I have to admit that he did scare me once in the helicopter.

In the south of France, you have these huge wind storms that can last for three, four days and during one of those storms he decided it would be a good idea to fly into the mountains and test the auto pilot.

So we were flying up and down and sideways and every which way and he wanted to make sure this thing would actually work. I couldn’t tell him to just pull over and let me out, so I had to sit there and endure the wind storm.

He was thrilled. He said, “I got you to be scared once.”

NM: And what about selling the house (Villeneuve was racing snowmobiles at the time and had yet to start racing cars)?

JV: That one is true. He walked in one day — we were living in a mobile home — and told me we were moving. I said why?

“I sold the house,” he said. Why did you sell the house? “Because I had to buy a race car.”

We’d been married for three years. He was an impulsive person in everything he did. He didn’t think about the ramifications. He’d make a decision and he’d go through with it and see what happened after. He lived in the present.

We spent a few months with his parents and a few with my parents and then we got a small apartment in Berthierville. We moved a lot. But then we got the camper and we moved around the States and Canada a lot with that.

That was a very happy time. I loved the camper. I loved living in it. There were the two of us and the two kids (son Jacques and Melanie) and the German shepherd.

NM: But then you, as a family, got lucky. Really lucky. Gilles won the Atlantic race at Trois Rivieres in 1976, James Hunt went back to Europe raving about his talent, he makes one start for McLaren at the 1977 British Grand Prix and then he signs to race with Ferrari. This is rags-to-riches stuff.

JV: I think that when you live it, it’s different because you work so hard to get there and then once you are there it doesn’t seem that special; it just seems like a lot of hard work, dedication and determination has been rewarded.

But it was a big change for us, a nice change. You could relax about having enough money for groceries. The house was nicer.

But he was who he was. He never changed. Even when we were living in Monaco, in the garage he would rebuild the engine of the Bronco. We changed as a family, though, in that when you live in a place like Monaco, and you don’t have to worry about the next paycheque, life becomes easier. Your worries are different. Your outlook on tomorrow is much happier.

NM: We all know the stories, but from your perspective, how did it happen? How did Gilles get to Ferrari?

JV: What happened was that James Hunt went back to (McLaren boss) Teddy (Mayer) and said, “You have to pick this kid up.” Gilles went to England for the British Grand Prix on his own — we still had to count our pennies and I couldn’t afford to go.

He was supposed to do three races with McLaren, but they didn’t hold up their end of the bargain — there are always loopholes, you know — and Enzo (Ferrari) got wind that they weren’t keeping Gilles, so Enzo called Gilles and asked if he was available. He had seen Gilles on TV — he never went to the race tracks — and he said he really wanted this guy.

When we got the call, we thought it was a joke. Even in your wildest dreams, you never think that Ferrari is going to call. You say, “Oh, yeah — sure.”

I just gave the phone to Gilles and he started talking and after awhile, he realized it was probably the real thing. Even at that, when they asked him if he would go over to Italy to discuss a contract, it was still a matter of we were iffy that it was for real. But then they said, “We’ll send you the plane tickets,” and this and that and whatnot. It was then that we knew it was for real.

NM: You mentioned James Hunt. He was always on the prowl. Nowadays there are some who say he suffered from sex addiction. Did he ever make a pass at you?

JV: (laughs) If he did, I didn’t notice!

NM: You met Mr. Ferrari. What was he like? He seemed to be this gruff, demanding guy, pulling the strings of his puppets.

JV: He was that, but he was also a very nice guy. But very, very demanding. (Mauro) Forghieri (Ferrari designer and sometimes-team manager) would call after a race and say “We came first and second,” and Ferrari would say, “And the spare? How did the spare car do?”

But he had a wonderful sense of humour. He was a very special man, very particular, very impressive.

NM: When Gilles started racing in F1, did you go to the races or stay home with the children?

JV: I went, but I didn’t just sit there. I was involved in the timing — I was actually working at the race track. It becomes your world. But in those days, in the beginning, there were none of the amenities everyone enjoys today.

If it was cold, or raining, you would try to find some place warm. I would try to find a tire they just took off one of the cars. It would still be warm and I could sit on it and have a sandwich.

That was the first year. After that, they started to bring along a cook who would make the most fantastic pasta and slowly it started to get more organized, more comfortable. And they had to do that because the mechanics would arrive at six in the morning and work until midnight and they hadn’t eaten all day. So that was a good thing.

In all, I missed maybe five or six F1 races. We hadn’t found a babysitter, or something like that. I liked being part of the team because I got to listen in to the engineers and the mechanics and I thought that was fun and you got to know the sport, how the cars work. You get involved in it so you’re not bored for 12 hours out of your day.

Gilles was obviously the kind of guy who would fly in, land, go to the hotel, go to the race track, go to the hotel, go to the race track, back to the airport. That was his idea of visiting a country. We weren’t tourists because it was his job and the kids were at home and we had to leave quickly.

One year, I flew in and out of America — the Long Beach, Brazil and Argentina races were all within a month — and I flew back and forth to Europe. I flew on the Concorde and wasn’t that a beautiful plane?

NM: Let’s switch for awhile to Jacques Villeneuve, your son, who is the only Canadian racing driver to win the world championship. Were you there? Did you go to his races? Were you nervous, considering what happened to your husband?

JV: Oh, yes. I was nervous. But it was difficult for me to say to him that you can’t do that when his father had done it. It’s like a smoker saying to a kid you can’t smoke. It didn’t make sense to me and I just thought that whatever the destiny of someone is, they will eventually do it so just be there and help.

No, I was not there when he won the championship; in fact, I went to very few of his (F1) races. When he was in Formula 3, I drove him around everywhere because in Europe you have to be 18 to drive on the road and he wasn’t, so I had to take him. He could race but he couldn’t drive on the highway.

I went around Italy with him for two years but after that I think he needed the separation because it was hard for him to be Gilles’s son and, when I was there, there was added pressure — not from me but from the people.

I am very proud of what he accomplished. When he drove in CART and won the Indy 500 while driving for Barry Green’s team, it was a very well-run operation. And he won the championship at Williams.

The end of his Formula One career was a bit . . . difficult. It was not all of his own doing. When it’s your own doing, you adjust. When it isn’t your own doing. . . . He stayed loyal to people for quite awhile that maybe he should not have stayed loyal to.

NM: Legendary motorsport journalist Nigel Roebuck wrote recently that Gilles would most likely have gone from Ferrari to McLaren in 1983. Is he correct?

JV: Because of what happened (when teammate Didier Pironi disobeyed team orders and passed him for the win at the San Marino Grand Prix, the race that preceded Belgium), that was it for him, as far as he was concerned. Gilles was a very straightforward and honest guy; a shaking of hands was a contract to him. So when what happened happened, it was just this huge disappointment and in his mind, I think it was, “I’ve got to get out of this,” for no other reason than he was such an honest person and what happened was crushing.

NM: Roebuck has suggested McLaren had made overtures to Gilles before the San Marino race. He entertained some of us at the Canadian Grand Prix in June with a story about contract details and money being shown to Gilles on a pit board as he drove past in his Ferrari.

JV: I’m not sure about that specifically, but it rings a bell. There was something but it’s very vague in my mind. But there was something like that. We also had a family friend who travelled with us often during that period, who got on well with the people at McLaren. I know they were sending Gilles information through him so that Ferrari wouldn’t find out what was happening.

NM: When Gilles died, there are suggestions that you didn’t get much support from Ferrari.

JV: No, I got a lot of support. I don’t think they would have done as much for anyone else. It shocked a lot of people at Ferrari and I know it hurt Mr. Ferrari deeply.

But Enzo being Enzo, he had a very peculiar way of doing things. It wasn’t like, “Come over every weekend,” but I heard from him regularly for a long time afterward. He wanted to make sure things were being taken care of, being looked after. And I got Christmas cards for years.

Earlier this year, to mark the 30th anniversary, I was invited to the Fiorano Circuit (near Maranello), as was Jacques, who drove his father’s car that day, and all of Gilles’ mechanics came back to prepare the car. One of the gentlemen, who is 84 now, got in the car to rev the engine to warm it up. You could see the emotion in their faces and in their eyes. All those who are still living were there. You realized that Gilles was a very special person to them.

NM: Are you still a fan?

JV: To this day, I love the sport. I watch every race. I get up early in the morning to watch F1 live. I think Alonso deserves the championship this season because he’s raced consistently; Vettel has just been so lucky. Alonso has been making the car fast while Vettel has a fast car and that’s the difference.

I watch NASCAR, I watch the IndyCar Series. I watch all kinds of racing. My youngest daughter said to me once, “Mom, your perfect day is Formula One in the morning, NASCAR in the afternoon and IndyCar in the evening. You are worse than any guy.”

NM: Would you do it all again?

JV: Oh, yeah.

In every case, there are always good parts, bad parts. But I have no regrets. Gilles loved racing cars. He loved it so much.

From the beginning, he would race whatever was available. He didn’t have anybody questioning him about what he was doing. When you’re 16 and madly in love, and you just follow along, you don’t realize what you’re getting yourself into.

You didn’t marry a race driver. You ended up being married to one.

F1 racing won't last long at new Austin track

By all accounts, the U.S. Grand Prix at the brand new Circuit of the Americas in Texas on Sunday was a yee-haw, rip-roarin’ success.

The circuit looked terrific and challenging (although I was kinda irritated by the red, white and blue colours bordering the black macadam) and the race itself was one of the best of the season.

It’s too bad that next-to-nobody in North America saw it.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but not by much.

This spectacle that Bernie Ecclestone and the other fist-pumpers for F1 claim is better than the Olympic Games was attended in person by 117,000 people on race day, according to the organizers.

SPEED Channel, which carried the contest in the U.S., put out a release saying more than 500,000 people tuned in but it couldn't have been a lot more or else they would have said so. Although I haven’t seen exact figures, between 100,000 to 120,000 people in Canada usually watch F1 on TSN, so we’ll go with that figure even though the total is probably lower because not everybody was aware of the race being available live on CTV2.

So except for Mexico, that puts the total for North America at approximately - give or take a thousand here and there - 740,000.

That is nothing to get excited about.

Of course, millions around the world watched the race, which is good, but 740,000 in North America puts that race well below the total who watched the final NASCAR race of the season as well as the millions who were watching NFL football on Sunday, which is not good.

Far from good, in fact.

Although I am a fanatic for most forms of motorsport, as are – presumably – the people reading this blog, we are very much a minority in the two countries that count here, the United States and Canada.

No wonder I didn’t see any evidence of American corporate involvement at the Austin circuit. If it wasn’t for Pirelli – which is an F1 supplier, for heaven’s sake – there wouldn’t have been any sign whatsoever of interest on behalf of Big Business.

And the only other advertising signs I saw were for two traditional offshore F1 sponsors, LG Corp., which is a South Korean congolmerate, and UBS, which is a Swiss global financial services company.

Where was Budweiser? I mean, that’s how you know if something in the U.S. is truly major league, isn’t it? If there’s a Budweiser sign somewhere?

But there was no Bud.

So with minimal interest from corporate America, and way fewer than a million people actually watching, I don’t think F1 is going to last very long at the Circuit of the Americas.

They pulled it off this time by really socking it to those 117,000 people who showed up.

How d’ya like these prices (as sent to me by a friend who knows his way around this sport):

Three-day seating went for $6,500 per year for a seat licence in a five-year contract and then $9,500 for the seat. A 24-person suite cost $175,000 plus extra for food and drinks. On-site motorhome parking cost $15,000 and you had to sign a three-year contract. $500 was the going rate for the cheapest grandstand seat on the far side of the circuit. It cost $12 for a beer and $15 for a burger.

A tee-shirt with a COTA logo set you back $32 and a white shirt with logo cost $69.

Now, most sports stadiums and attractions draw really well the first time out and then tail off.

Remember when the IRL first went to the brand new Texas Motor Speedway? Well, 180,000 showed up for that first race but the second time the Indy cars went there, 100,000 of those first-nighters stayed home.

The first time the F1 series raced at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2000, more than 200,000 fans showed up. When F1 stopped racing at Indy in 2007, the crowd was down to 100,000 – still an enormous number but exactly half of what it once was.

Austin did well last weekend. And might do okay next year and even the year after that.

But without U.S. corporate support in the form of a title sponsor, way higher TV numbers and less gouging of the paying public, who will simply refuse to attend, F1 racing in America is once-again going to be a short-term proposition.

- NORRIS McDONALD

Related articles

'Double-header' race weekends did in Randy Bernard

Toronto to get two Indy car races in 2013

Racing into History - The Circuit of the Americas

NASCAR will use sports cars to fight IndyCar, F1

You: Formula One: Hamilton Wins USGP, but Circuit of the Americas Is the Real Star

Fans, drivers sing praises of the first U.S. Grand Prix

Formula One is back in the US, can it last?

Formula One returns to United States

U.S. F1 race on CTV2; much NASCAR ado about nothing

Preview of 2012 Formula One United States Grand Prix Circuit of The Americas

U.S. lawsuit aimed at Ecclestone is serious

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

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

– IndyCar has a new boss, or

– Danica Patrick is dumping her husband.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See a pattern there?

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

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

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

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

History is about to repeat itself, yet again.

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

These things happen.

What everybody wants to know is this:

Who broke them up?

Related articles

Tony George reportedly seeking to take over IndyCar

Toronto to get two Indy car races in 2013

NASCAR will use sports cars to fight IndyCar, F1

Formula One Valued at $10 Billion in Ecclestone Suit - Bloomberg

Celebrity Drive: Danica Patrick, NASCAR and IndyCar Driver

Danica Patrick Divorcing Husband

Keselowski best thing for NASCAR in years

There are any number of "leads" a guy like me could write to start a story about Brad Keselowski, who won NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series championship for the first time on Sunday.

How about, "While five-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson likes to dine out on pasta fasul and fine wine, newly-crowned title-holder Brad Keselowski is happiest when tucking into a burger and fries."

Or,

"Jimmie Johnson’s net worth is estimated to be in the neighbourhood of $40 million while Brad Keselowski’s is a paltry $15 mill. But the newly crowned 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion is starting to close fast."

My favourite, however, and the way I will officially start this story goes like this:

"In 1998 when he was 14, Brad Keselowski started racing quarter-midgets. Two years later he switched to stock cars and, after a dozen more, won the 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship."

I’ll leave off the quotation marks now, because I’m right into it.

Keselowski, who also gave legendary racing team owner Roger Penske his first NASCAR Cup championship when he finished 15^th in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida Sunday, is the best thing to happen to NASCAR in years.

Johnson was a worthy champion but he really does enjoy the sophistication of Europe, his penthouse condominium in Manhattan, white shirts and ties and the good life in general.

And then there’s the Busch brothers. Kurt has won a championship and Kyle has been coming close and they are both insufferable, frankly. They try hard to be Jus’ Folks and fail miserably because they are arrogant and snooty under it all.

But Keselowski is down-to-earth and blue collar. He comes from a racing family. He worked for the family racing business when he first started out, came up the hard way and had to scratch and claw his way to the top.

After he won the title – it’s only his third season of Cup competition – and did the burnouts and sprayed the champagne, he talked about how lucky and fortunate he is to be in the position he’s in.

"I really feel the best is yet to come," he told a post-race media conference, referring to his car owner, Penske, and his crew chief, Paul Wolfe. "I think with the people on this team, we can do anything."

When I first met Keselowski during an appearance at the Canadian Motorsports Expo two years ago, he struck me as an extremely confident, disciplined and determined young man. He wasn’t arrogant; he was focussed. He knew exactly what he wanted and he knew very well how to go about getting it.

Which included, as it turned out, playing some mind games.

When A.J. Allmendinger was suspended for drug use earlier this year, several drivers – and Johnson was among them – worried aloud about the possibility of triggering a positive drug test by taking over-the-counter cold and flu medications.

Keselowski scoffed at them and suggested anybody who took anything for a cold was stupid, saying nobody ever really knows what’s in that stuff.

His message: take that, you losers.

During that media conference Sunday, he talked about being inspired by a video he saw featuring Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis. Said Keselowski:

"I saw this really cool video that Ray Lewis did and he said, 'Throughout my whole life I've been told that I'm not big enough, I'm not fast enough, I'm not strong enough and I don't have what it takes.' I've used that as a chip on my shoulder that's carried me through my whole career.

"It took 'til this year for me to realize, they're right. I'm not big enough, fast enough, strong enough. No person is. Only a team can do that. And these guys up here (members of the Penske team), they make me big enough, fast enough, strong enough to do anything we want to do and it's because of these guys. I can't be here without them. I really can't."

Keselowski had to finish 15^th or better in Sunday’s race to win his first title. He cut it close, finishing exactly that. Johnson, meantime, gave it the old college try – in fact, at one point, the points margin was down to three points in Keselowski’s favour – but a muffed pit stop in which a wheel nut wasn’t tightened correctly put Johnson back behind the eight-ball and then an engine failure in the closing stages sealed the deal.

Ironically, the race was won by Jeff Gordon, with Clint Bowyer second – and we all remember how the last Sprint Cup race ended for those two a week ago in Phoenix, don't we?

And Bowyer’s second-place finish vaulted him past Johnson in the standings. The official order of finish in the Chase for the Championship behind Keselowski was Bowyer second and Johnson third.

Quite a turnaround.

Penske said later that he planned to take the Sprint Cup trophy to Detroit and to present it to the executive committee of Dodge, which is leaving the sport for the immediate future. Team Penske will be with Ford in the years ahead, but the Sprint Cup is a nice going-away present for the Chryser/Fiat company.

Several other quick observations.

1. Danica Patrick finished high enough in the Nationwide Series race on Saturday to nail down tenth place in the season standings. This marked the first time a woman has finished top ten in any of NASCAR’s major divisions. It also kept her string of top ten series finishes alive, as she always fnished tenth or better in the standings in IndyCar.

2. In that Nationwide race, Joey Logana lined up Johanna Long for no apparent reason and drilled her nose-first into the wall. The season’s over but I hope he gets a $100,000 fine for that, which is the going rate.

3. Penske talked about the thrill of winning the Sprint Cup. It is another notch in his gold-handled cane. And it is a huge accomplishment. But in the end, we know where his heart lies and what he considers important. If there is an Indy car race and a NASCAR Sprint Cup race on the same day, we all know where he will be and it ain’t at the stock cars.

There was one other race this weekend, in which Lewis Hamilton beat Sebastien Vettel and Fernando Alonso to win the first U.S. Grand Prix at the new Circuit of the Americans near Austin, Tex.

There are now 13 points separating first-place Vettel and second-place Alonso and the season will go down to the wire at Brazil next weekend.