Here are some leftover thoughts from last weekend’s Indianapolis 500:
I nearly fell over in a dead faint
when the TV ratings came out and they revealed that the Indianapolis
500 had the fewest people watching it since it started being broadcast
live in the U.S. in 1986. (Thanks to the late Johnny Esaw of CTV,
Canadians and some people in the U.S. along the Canada-U.S. border got
to watch the 500 live for 10 years before the rest of America got it.)
But a 3.7 is shocking. Absolutely shocking.
What is going on? It’s the Indy 500, for God's sake.
The 3.7 is down
from 4.1 in 2012 and 4.3 in 2011. According to sportsmediawatch.com,
2013 marked the fifth year in a row that the 500 has been below 4.5.
So listen to what Speedway spokesman Doug Boles said:
“We’ll
continue to get the message out that races at the Speedway here over
the last three years have gotten more and more exciting.”
Oh?
I’d suggest that kind of “messaging” ain’t workin'.
If I was the Speedway, I’d be thinking of a change in its approach, wouldn’t you?
Where
these guys are missing the boat is that they think exciting racing is
going to attract viewers. If that was so, don’t you think more people
would have tuned in last Sunday to a race that was simply terrific,
which followed an equally great race in 2012 and 2011, as Mr. Boles
said?
But they didn't. So something's missing.
What IndyCar
and the Indianapolis Speedway need is conflict, drama, gossip and
intrigue - or a combination of all of the above. NASCAR has tradin’
paint and drivers throwing helmets; the F1 race in Monaco wasn’t over
more than about a minute last Sunday before winning team Mercedes and
tire supplier Pirelli were being accused of cheating.
At Indy, everybody was talking about what a really great guy Tony Kanaan is and how happy they were for him.
Gag me.
The drivers in IndyCar these days are all clean-behind-the-ears, corporate goody-two-shoes.
They are BORING.
They had four women in the race. Quick: name them.
Couldn't do it, could you?
But
you know who Danica Patrick is, don’t you? Why? No, not because she’s a
good race driver but because she took her clothes off for the camera.
Never nude, she was in Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Edition and
sprawled across the hood of a car in Maxim and everybody knew it.
People looked at her and saw a bikini. And the girl can drive, too.
When
Tony Kanaan got down on his hands and knees last Sunday to kiss the
yard of bricks after his big win, some other driver should have gone up
behind him and kicked him in the butt and accused him of dirty driving.
He should have pointed his finger at Kanaan and told him, live on ABC
television, that if he ever did that again he’d clock him in that big
nose of his.
So instead of headlines on Monday morning saying,
“Harvick sorry he's switching teams," or “Kyle Busch stomps off in a
huff again," you’d have seen, “Indy 500 winner threatened with bodily
harm.”
And instead of the usual TV shot seen on every channel of
yet another “big one” in a NASCAR race, you’d have seen Kanaan trying to
defend himself by swinging the Borg-Warner Trophy at somebody.
One more thing about TV ratings.
TSN sent out the Canadian figures on Tuesday and it’s interesting that
the race in the No. 1 spot was the Grand Prix of Monaco on TSN, with
252,000 viewers. The NASCAR Coke 600 on TSN was second with 210,000 and
the Indy 500 on Sportsnet was third with 153,000.
Which seems
about right – except that I know a lot of my friends who watched the 500
on ABC, which had side-by-side service during commercials while
Sportsnet went to full-screen commercials. Maybe it didn't make a big difference, but it made a difference.
Everything – as usual – was perfect
about the race. The pre-race went off without a hitch and I was
particularly impressed with Jim (Gomer Pyle) Nabors, who’s been singing Back Home in Indiana
since 1973. More than one person came up to me in the media centre and
said they thought he’d died. They were wrong, or else the Speedway came
up with a hell of a Jim Nabors impersonator.
And the race itself was thrilling, with the cars literally floating on the Speedway, they were going so fast.
But
something wasn’t right about the start. Not once did they line up in
the traditional 11 rows of three. They’re supposed to be in that
formation by the time they get to Turn Three near the end of the second
parade lap. They do this so they can parade down the front and back
stretches in a salute to the fans during the pace lap. Also known as the
“wave-off lap,” it’s when both audience and performers can acknowledge
each other’s presence.
But they didn’t line up till the
backstretch of the pace lap and were ragged and out of sinc going
through Turn Four. By that time, though, they’d thrown the green and all
bets were off as all 33 cars charged toward Turn One.
Maybe it’s not a big thing to some people but that’s the way it’s supposed to be and I’m a traditionalist.
Before I go, a quick change
of pace. The people trying to build that speedway down in Fort Erie are
running out of patience, the Fort Erie Times is reporting.
Calling
the Ontario Municipal Board’s approvals process inefficient (you can
say that again), the speedway’s executive director more or less said
that if something positive doesn’t happen in the fairly immediate
future, the project will be cancelled.
A cable that operates a TV camera snapped apart early in Sunday
night's Coca-Cola 600 and resulted in the third major motorsports event
of the day being stopped while it was removed.
About a dozen fans were injured and race cars damaged.
The
cars were able to be repaired; seven fans were treated and released at a
Charlotte Motor Speedway medical centre while three others were taken
to local hospitals for observation.
Fox Sports apologized for the problem and issued the following statement:
"The
camera system consists of three ropes - a drive rope which moves the
camera back and forth, and two guide ropes on either side. The drive
rope failed near the Turn 1 connection and fell to the track. The camera
itself did not come down because guide ropes acted as designed. A full
investigation is planned, and use of the camera is suspended
indefinitely.
For details of the NASCAR race, which was being won by Kevin Harvick at 500 miles, please click here.
Nico Rosberg led from start to finish to win the Grand Prix of Monaco (for details, click here).
I am writing this in Indianapolis and didn't see much of the race
because the Fox Sports Network channel in the Indianapolis area showed
the pre-race program and then switched to a fishing show.
So I
asked my wife at home if she'd seen it and she said she had and that it
was boring. "It's time they went the other way around to make that race
interesting again," she said.
Of course, there's controversy - and when isn't there in F1? Seems Mercedes maybe (maybe .
. .) conducted a private tire test for Pirelli. So? How else are they
going to fix the tire degredation problem. I'm sure we'll find out more
about this in the days ahead - or not.
Next race: Canada in two weeks.
Oh, Romain Grosjean caused another crash, apparently. How long can that guy stick at Lotus?
Finally, what follows is my wrapup and then my live blog from Indianapolis Sunday.
Tony Kanaan finally got some luck - few people have had more bad luck than him at Indy - and won the 97th Indianapolis 500.
Oh,
before we pick up what I wrote earlier Sunday, I have to say something.
A number of people have written or left comments about how wrong I was
suggesting in a column I wrote for Toronto Star Wheels Saturday that
Carlos Munoz wasn't good enough to be in the 500.
I didn't say
Munoz shouldn't be in the Indy 500. I didn't think Katherine Legge
should have been in it (seven laps down at the checkers) or Pippa Mann
(the less said about her the better) but what I did say was that it
would have been a good idea if they'd asked him to drop back for the
start because his inexperience could have created a problem.
I
still feel that way. And it has nothing to do with Munoz. Any rookie who
had never driven on an oval track until two weeks ago (as was the case
with him) and was in the front row of the most important auto race in
the world at one of the most demanding and dangerous tracks would also
have been better off starting at the back.
Munoz pulled it off and good for him. But I won't change my mind when it comes to safety at race tracks.
Norris McDonald wraps up this year's Indy 500
In
one of the most popular victories in years, Tony Kanaan won the 97th
renewal of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing under yellow today after
defending champion Dario Franchitti crashed when the race was restarted
with just a few laps to go.
Rookie Carlos Munoz finished second, with Ryan Hunter-Reay third, Marco Andretti fourth and Justin Wilson a surprising fifth.
The
remaining drivers in the top ten: Helio Castroneves, who was shooting
for his fourth Indy 500, was sixth, A.J. Allmendinger was seventh, Simon
Pagenaud was eighth, Charlie Kimball ninth and pole-sitter Ed Carpenter
tenth.
The two Canadians in the 33-car field were far from successful.
Alex
Tagliani of Montreal hung around the top ten all day but faded at the
end to finish 24th after brushing the wall and damaging his right-rear
wheel.
James Hinchcliffe of Oakville had a dreadful day. His car
never handled and got worse every time he pitted and his team tried to
correct the problem. There have been suggestions that a tire placed on
the car during a late-race pit stop might have been losing air
(translation: going flat).
He finished 21st.
The big loser
was Hunter-Reay. He led many laps in the race - there were 13 different
leaders and 68 change, both records - and was in the lead when the field
got the green flag with only a few laps remaining.
But Kanaan,
who had been second on the restart, went low on Hunter-Reay going into
turn one and Munoz, in third place, followed him into second. And then,
before anybody else could do anything, Dario Franchitti crashed and the
yellow was out and that was all she wrote.
(There is not a
green-white-checkers finish in Indy car racing, so the iconic race got
the checkers with the pace car leading Kanaan across the finish line.)
Hinchclifffe
had qualified ninth in the 33-car field but was visually unhappy after
Carb Day Friday when he was only 14th fastest while running with a full
fuel load and his race-day setup.
Right from the get-go today,
Hinchcliffe was uncompetitive and his handling appeared to get worse as
the race progresssed. When he got out of the car after the checkers, he
was obviously angry and suggested there was more wrong with the car than
a lousy setup.
Kanaan was a single fellow for years but married
his long-time sweetheart, Lauren, over the winter. Observers suggested
that married life suited Tony and that he could be challenging for the
series championship going forward.
It was a hugely entertaining
race. With that many leaders and lead changes, it couldn't help but be.
And the huge crowd showed its appreciation with many of them staying in
their seats and clapping and cheering the participants after the fact.
Of
course, a huge crowd, an iconic race and an exciting finish featuring a
very popular driver serves to show the challenges facing a series like
IndyCar, which undoubtedly attracted a huge TV audience today but is
largely invisible the rest of the year.
The only race that really
matters, year in and year out, is the Indianapolis 500. It makes or
breaks a season for a team. Yes, the overall championship can be
important but if given a choice of one or the other, most drivers would
say a win at Indy would be more important than any championship.
In
fact, Canadian hero Jacques Villeneuve, who won the F1 world
championship, recently told Britain's Autosport magazine that he
considered his 1995 Indy 500 win more important than his world
championship.
The 97th Indy 500 is now in the history books. The
circus will now move on to Detroit next weekend for the first
double-header weekend of the season. That's when they run a race on
Saturday and then turn around and run another one on Sunday.
The
Toronto Honda Indy will also feature a double-header. How the cars and
stars of IndyCar handle Detroit will pretty much illustrate what to
expect when IndyCar gets to Toronto in July.
Kanaan said afterward that he got a little bit lucky.
"It's
(the victory) for the fans," he said. "It's for my dad who's not here.
I'm looking at the stands and it was unbelievable. I'm speechless. This
is it, man, I made it. Finally, they're going to show my ugly face on
this trophy."
EARLIER
Tony Kanaan won the
Indy 500 today with rookie Carlos Munoz second and Ryan Hunter-Reay
third. Marco Andretti finished fourth and Justin Wilson was fifth. James
Hinchcliffe was running at the finish but was far out of contention.
The
race finished under yellow - no green=white=checkers finishes in Indy
car racing - after a restart led to yet another crash in the waning laps of the classic race.
EARLIER
Yellow
with seven laps to go after Graham Rahal spins and hits thewall coming
out of two. Hinch had just gone to the pits again. Hunter-Reay, Kanaan
and Munoz are one, two, three.
Can they clean up the mess to get a green flag finish? More than 200,000 are standing at Indy.
EARLIER:
Ten to go: Kanaan, Huner-Reay and Andretti. Close as paper on a wall.
Hinchcliffe leads laps as he was last to come into the pits for fuel, tires.
EARLIER
Sebastien Bourdais hits the wall while pitting. Final pit stops happening.
EARLIER
Tagliani brushes wall. He is done.
EARLIER
With
40 laps to go, Hunter-Reay is leading, Marco Andretti is second and
Allmendinger is third. Munoz and Kanaan round out the top five.
Officially, 13 different leaders and 50 lead changes are new records with more to come.
EARLIER
Allmendinger
has recovered his lap (all other drivers had to pit for fuel and tires,
giving him a leg up) and he leads the Indy 500. Hunter-Reay is second,
Viso is thid, Andretti is fourth and Kanaan is fifth.
Tagliani is 13th and Hinchcliffe is so far back they'll have to send out a search party. His car is undriveable. He came sooo
close to hitting the wall between turns one and two that there must
have been room for maybe an eyelash. He then nearly lost total control
but held it together.
Allmendinger has pitted.
EARLIER
It
is now official. Twelves racers, a record, have now completed 38 lead
changes in this Indy 500, also a record. There is still a quarter of the
race to go.
EARLIER
There have been 3 lead
changes in the race to date. At least a dozen drivers have led the race
but the Canadian drivers, Tagliani and Hinchcliffe, are not among them.
The 12 drivers to lead, incidentally, is a record for the Indy 500.
EARLIER
After
120 laps, there are still 23 cars on the lead lap. Hunter-Reay, Munoz
and Viso are the top three. Hinchcliffe is having a miserable time and
is back in 17th.
EARLIER
Graham Rahal and
James Jakes have each been fined $10,000 for violating blend-line rules
(not entering or exiting the pits properly). Jakes also got a
drive-through penalty for a pit safety rule infraction.
Meantime,
Allmendinger dropped out of the lead when he pitted for tires and fuel.
While in the pits, his belts became undone and had to be refastened by a
crew member. Hè's a lap down.
EARLIER
They
are at the halfway mark of the 97th Indy 500. It is an official race,
in case it rains (which it probably won't as the sky is pretty bright,
although still overcast).
The order: Allmendinger, Kanaan, Hunter-Reay, Viso and Andretti. Tagliani is ninth and Hinch is 12th.
EARLIER
Indy
is a strange place and race. As mentioned, most of the seats were
filled when the race started. Now, nearly at the halfway mark, many of
the seats are empty as people get up to walk around and party in the
infield.
Pit stops starting. Green ones too.
Jamie Little,
who usually does pit stops in NASCAR, just reported that someone had
taken on a load of Sunoco fuel. Sorry, they burn ethanol in IndyCar.
EARLIER
Hinchcliffe`s
handling is going away big time and he`s out of the top ten. Power is
still in the lead, Kanaan is second with Hunter-Reay third, Allmendinger
is up to fourth and Marco Andretti is fifth. Tagliani is ninth and
Hinch is 14th.
EARLIER
Will Power, Helio
Castroneves and A.J. Allmendinger - all Penske drivers - are turning
heads running first, sixth and ninth. Hinch is out of the top ten, in
11th. Tagliani is tenth.
EARLIER
The
low-buck effort of 1996 Indy 500 winner Buddy Lazier is over. His car
has been pushed to the garage. Ed Carpenter, the hometown boy, still
leads.
EARLIER
Carpenter is back in the
lead. Hinchclifffe`s car is obviously working better and he is
challenging for the top five. Having said that, Viso just passed him and
he`s back in eighth place.
Lining up for the restart, Hinchcliffe
got a great jump during the pit stop and is now running seventh.
Hunter-Reay is now in the lead, with Andretti second and Carpenter
third. Tagliani is running tenth.
EARLIER
Takuma
Sato, a favourite to win, has just spun coming out of turn 2.
Hinchcliffe is up into the top ten. Tagliani is ninth. The yellow is out
and the leaders are in for pit stops.
EARLIER
The
top dozen cars are still together on the restart. Andretti is in front,
followed by Carpenter, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Helio Castroneves and Tony
Kanaan. Tagliani is 10th and Hinch is 13th.
EARLIER
The
yellow is out after Sebastien Saavedra spun and hit the wall in turn
four. He told his crew someone should be penalized but it appeared that
the Colombian driver tried to pass on the inside at a spot where cars
drop down into the groove to go through a corner and he could have been
the architect of his own misfortune.
Saavedra, of course, replaced
Katherine Legge at Dragon Racing at the beginning of the season,
leaving Legge without a drive. There was much bitterness. Legge felt
aggrieved and sued. It was settled but details have never been made
public.
Saavedra has crashed in previous races, putting smiles on the faces of Legge fans.
His crash, of course, means she`s still in the race and he`s not. More grist for the Twitter mill.
EARLIER
Pit stops are shuffling the order. Kanaan was fist in, then Andretti and the rest.
EARLIER
Kanaan
and Andretti keep trading the lead. The top 20 cars are running
literally nose to tail. It is a very competitive race so far.
The place is packed. There are some empty seats down near the track near the start/finish line but most other seats are full.
EARLIER
Tony Kanaan had the lead for a lap but Andretti passed him back at the beginning of Lap 15.
The order: Andretti, Kanaan, Carpenter, Viso, Munoz. Tagliani is eight; Hinchcliffe 12th.
EARLIER
Marco Andretti is now in the lead. Hinchcliffe nearly hit the wall coming out of turn four. Oh, so close.
EARLIER
Pole
sitter Ed Carpenter led the field into the first turn. All through
safely. Three laps later, J.R. Hildebrand lost control exiting turn two
and hit the wall.
He and Hinchcliffe were running together when
Hildebrand lost control. Hinch and J.R. were rookies the same year and
Hinch beat Hildebrand for rookie of the year.
On the restart, Carpenter held the lead over Andretti and Viso. Alex Tagliani was running 8th and Hinchcliffe 11th.
EARLIER
Mari Hulman George just gave the command to start engines. The 97th Indy 500 is moments away.
EARLIER
Driver
introductions are taking place. Hinchcliffe just got a great cheer.
It`s too chilly for good racing, though. It will be tough to warm up the
ties. The drivers will have to be very careful doing it.
EARLIER
Race
Day at the Indy 500 is finally here and it`s overcast. Although there
probably won`t be rain till late in the day, the dark clouds could have
an effect on race strategy.
When the sun is shining back home in
Indiana, most racers will settle in for the long haul, maintaining
position and getting themselves ready for a late-race charge to the
checkers. When it`s threatening like it is today, it will be a
free-for-all, with the drivers forgetting about the marathon and trying
to win the sprint to be in front at the 101st lap, which would make it
an official race.
A.J. Allmendinger,
a favourite in the old Champ Car Indy car series and a NASCAR driver of
note (although when he flunked a drug test last summer there was
concern for his future), is making his first Indy 500 start driving for
Roger Penske. He is one of four rookies in the field but anybody who
thinks he`s a rookie is nuts. The other three - Conor Daly (son of ex-F1
and CART star Derek Daly), Tristan Vautier and Carlos Munoz - have
talent but lack experience.
Other `fours`at this year`s 500: four
women are in the race - Pippa Mann, Catherine Legge, Ana Beatriz and
Simona de Silvestro will be out to equal or beat the the third-place
finish of Danica Patrick.
And Helio Castroneves and Dario Franchitti will be trying to win their fourth 500, tying Rick Mears, A.J. Foyt and Al Unser Sr.
When
James Hinchcliffe and Alex Tagliani came to Toronto
earlier this week to talk about Sunday’s Indianapolis 500 as well as July’s
Honda Indy Toronto double-header, I asked them a very specific question:
How
did they feel about several of the drivers in this year’s race —
who really shouldn’t be out there? Specifically, regular Indy Lights
driver Carlos Munoz, former Indy Lights driver Pippa Mann and last-place starter Katherine Legge.
As
you would expect of the two Canadians (both of whom are bona-fide Indy car
stars, by the way), they were most gracious with their non-answers because
that’s the way it is in big-league auto racing in 2013, where seldom (if
ever) is heard a discouraging word.
What
I’d hoped they would say goes something like this:
“They
should ask Munoz, who qualified second, to drop to the back of the field for
the start. He doesn’t have enough experience at the Speedway to be in front of about 30 other
veteran drivers who will all be charging to get into Turn One first.
“And
let Mann and Legge run some laps and then find an excuse to black flag them because they
just aren't good enough to be out there. This is, after all, the Indianapolis 500, the
fastest race in the world featuring the 33 best drivers in the world.
“Or
it’s supposed to be.”
Fat
chance of hearing that, of course. But once upon a time? You bet.
Do
you think, for one second, that Jimmy Bryan,
Don Branson, Bobby Unser, Johnny Rutherford or A.J. Foyt in his prime would
have allowed people who couldn’t carry their lunch to actually go out and
try to race against them?
In
somebody’s dreams.
The
great Eddie Sachs, a sprint car driver of note who was said to be braver than
Dick Tracy, got into Gasoline Alley early in his career and went from garage to
garage, trying to talk his way into a car. When the powers of the AAA heard
about that (yes, the American Automobile Association ran racing in those days),
they called security and had Sachs thrown out.
In
the words of the wonderful American auto racing author John Sawyer, this is how
great Eddie Sachs was (and yet, as illustrated, he got no respect because the
AAA didn’t think he was good enough to even be inside the gates!):
“Swoosh!” wrote
Sawyer about Sachs.
“There goes ‘Fast Eddie.’ Correction: there went
‘Fast Eddie.’ Past tense. He’s gone.
“You know what? That starboard hoof must have been
nuclear-powered. Ultrabionic. Nitro injected. Laser laced. The heaviest of all
feet, it kept pedal against metal until the steel screamed for mercy.”
You
think anybody’s going to write words like that about Katherine Legge? Or Pippa Mann? Or
Carlos Munoz?
I
get emotional thinking about those days.
A
Mississauga gentleman, Dan Doyle, sent me some
clippings he’d saved since 1965, the year Billy Foster, a supermodified
driver from Victoria,
B.C., qualified for Big Indy.
There
was a fuss made over Foster that year. Everybody, including
all the wire
services — AP, CP, UPI — and even Canada’s Weekend
Magazine, thought he was the first Canadian to qualify for the 500.
(He wasn’t, as it turned out, but why let the facts get in the way of a
good story?)
Among
the clippings is a beautiful colour picture of the B.C. racer being strapped
into his Bryant Heating and Cooling Special by two crew members (in those days,
all the cars at Indy were called “Specials” because they were
usually built especially for the 500 and then taken to race elsewhere
afterward).
The
story that went with the photo was written by the late Don Hunt, and
there’s a picture of him sitting with Foster, who’s smoking a
cigarette, in the infield grandstand near the start/finish line.
That
Foster — a 27-year-old who came from a racing family in Victoria — was cocksure, let there be
no doubt. He qualified on the outside of the second row for that ‘65 race
and he turned the fastest speed of all the cars running an Offenhauser engine.
Interviewed on the PA system after his run, Billy said:
“I’m
a slow qualifier. Just wait till race day!”
As
it turned out, he was eliminated after 90 laps (of 200) with a broken water
line.
His
best friend, Mario Andretti, qualified two places to the left on the inside of
the second row and went on to finish third in the race, which earned him
rookie-of-the-year honours.
Among
the clippings is a page from the long-gone, Toronto-area weekly Wheelspin News, advertising the “Toronto 500,
110 Offy Midget Auto Race” at the CNE Grandstand oval on Wed., June 9,
1965 – a little over a week after that Indy 500.
“Top
Indianapolis Drivers,” the ad tumpeted.
“International
Championship Race.”
Foster
didn’t race midget cars, so didn’t come to Toronto. But Andretti did,
only to suffer the
indignity of not qualifying through the heats for the feature. As most of
Little Italy had shown up to see this budding cultural icon in action, the
promoters added him to the rear of the field — 19th and last —
where he finished.
Clippings
from the following year, 1966, show how quickly you can go — or could go,
in those days — from hero to zero. Foster was fingered for triggering a
massive first-lap pileup that eliminated eleven of the 33 cars that started.
Although
he was later exonerated, the damage was done and there are people to this day
who will tell you that Foster (who was to die early in 1967 in a NASCAR
qualifying crash at Riverside,
Calif.) was the culprit.
Among
the drivers whose race lasted about 100 yards that year — the only injury
was suffered by Foyt, who gashed a finger while climbing over a fence on the
main straight to get out of the way — were guys at the back of the pack but they were household-name stars of the times like perennial midget car champion Bobby
Grim, sprint car star Larry Dickson (he was half, with fellow Indy car driver
Gary Bettenhausen, of the “Larry and Gary Show” along the USAC
sprint car championship trail) and Ronnie Duman, who’d survived the crash
at Indy in 1964 that killed Dave MacDonald and — you knew his name would
come up again — Eddie Sachs.
Duman
— who, incidentally, won that 1965 midget race at the CNE that Andretti
nearly didn’t get to start — must have wondered if someone was
trying to send him a message. Of his eight cracks at the 500, he failed to
qualify twice (it happened a lot in those days, because the competition was so
fierce) and crashed three other times. In 1968, his last at Indy, he finished
sixth and a week later was killed at Milwaukee.
The
500-Mile International Sweepstakes, held since 1911 at the place they call the
Brickyard, once had big risks, hard luck, heartbreak and consequences.
Not like today, when a big cheque and less than 50 laps around the Speedway, as happened last Sunday, can get you into the Greatest Spectacle In Racing.
Indy car drivers James Hinchcliffe and Alex Tagliani flew into Toronto on Monday, a day after final qualifying at Indianapolis (James 9th; Tag 11th), to talk about next weekend’s Indy 500 and to beat the drums for the Honda Indy Toronto scheduled July 12-14 at Exhibition Place.
That they are both optimistic about doing well in the 97th Greatest Spectacle In Racing, let there be no doubt. That they are both apprehensive about this year's Honda Indy, ditto.
The reason? This July’s Indy will be unlike any other in the 27-year-history of the event that started life in 1986 as the Molson Indy. There will not be one feature race through the streets of the CNE that weekend, but two complete rounds of the 19-race championship.
This has never been done before, despite what some of the IZOD IndyCar Series’ drum beaters would have you believe.
Yes, previously there were a few race weekends that featured "twin" events. That means, instead of one 250-lap race, they would throw the checkered flag after the first 125 laps and let everybody have a rest and maybe change the oil in the cars and then they’d roll them out again and have another 125-lap race.
But this is different. Totally different.
On Saturday of race weekend, the cars will line up in their qualifying order (time trials will be held on Fri., July 12, which will continue to be a no-admission Fan Day) and be flagged off for an 85-lap race around the 2.824-kilometre (1.755-mile) street circuit.
After the checkers, the winner will be interviewed on TV and the trophies presented to the first three finishers. Usually, at this point, the cars would be loaded onto transporters and driven off to the site of the next race.
But not this time.
The next day, Sun., July 14, they will do it all over again. A complete race program will be run off, with winners and losers and points awarded and the whole shebang.
Said Tagliani: "The two Toronto races are gonna be really, really hard. The crew guys, they work all weekend long, the car has to be repaired, be rebuilt, you have to look at the gearbox, the drive shaft. I mean that’s a lot of s--t to do.
"When you have, like 12 hours to do all that, that’s even worse. You don’t have a week to get it ready for the next race.
"It’s going to be very demanding for the drivers. James, he has blisters on his hands on Monday (after a ‘normal’ race). Now you wake up Sunday after a complete race Saturday, how you gonna feel about driving with blisters on Sunday?
"I’m preparing myself. I have a buddy that imports hyperbaric chambers and I’m
going to get in for an hour every night and replenish my body with oxygen. I want to try everything I can so that when I wake up Sunday morning, I’m going to feel like it is Saturday morning."
Hinchcliffe was a little more philosophical about the whole business. After all, Toronto is the second "two-race" weekend, with Detroit being the first. And the first of those two races in the Motor City is only six days after the Indy 500.
"Whether you want it or not, it’s coming," said the winner of two of the four IndyCar races to date. "It’s the situation we’re in.
"The first one (Detroit) comes right after the month of May, which is difficult because you can’t train correctly; you’re in the car every day (in Indianapolis in May).
"It’s going to be a huge, huge challenge but, ultimately, I’ll be totally okay with it if it’s a good show and the fans of Toronto enjoy it because that’s what we’re here for: the fans."
One individual pumped up about the two races is event president and general manager, Charlie Johnstone.
"We have practicing and qualifying on Friday; how dynamic is that?" he said. "And we have a full race on Saturday and a full race on Sunday. From an operations standpoint, it’s the same but now we have a bigger show.
"With the support races (Firestone Indy Lights, Star Mazda Series, etc.) and the Indy car races, the on-track action will be non-stop from 8 in the morning till 5:30 or 6 in the afternoon."
Johnstone said there will be a change in the approach to what previously was known as Free Friday.
"We still won’t be charging admission for Friday," he said, "but the aim of Free Friday was to raise money, as well as awareness, for the Children’s Wish Foundation. Previously, if you wanted to make a donation, it was voluntary; now, if you want to come in on Friday you will have to make a donation.
"There’s value in what we’re putting on the track, particularly now with the qualifying on Friday. Honda and the Honda Dealers of Ontario are going to match dollar for dollar what’s raised at the gate so it’s good all the way around."
Johnstone said ticket prices have been lowered this year but real value will come from the purchase of a two-day weekend pass or seat.
"For Saturday and Sunday, a General Admission ticket of $50 gets you in both days. We’ve moved around some grandstands so we’ve opened up some new General Admission viewing areas.
"And there’s all sorts of stuff going on, There’s a craft beer festival and a food festival, there’s music and all sorts of interactive displays going on and there’s going to be some pretty incredible car racing going on out on the track, too."
I asked Johnston if he thought the general public knows there are two complete races this year and not just the usual one?
"No, not yet," he said. "But all of our marketing and communications is only set to start after the Indianapolis 500. The motorsport fans know, the motorsport community knows but we have to reach out to the general public."
With help from Hinchcliffe and Tagliani, that "reaching out" got a kick start on Monday.
In warm sunshine and in front of a monster crowd, Louise-Phillipe Dumoulin of Trois-Rivieres, Que., won the Vortex Brake Pads 200 at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park on Sunday.
Jeff Lapcevich of Grimsby was second and Jason Hathaway of Dutton, Ont., was third in the opening race of the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series stock car racing season.
Defending champion D.J. Kennington of St. Thomas finished fourth and Robin Buck of Campbellville was fifth. The rest of the Top Ten: Kerry Micks of Mt. Albert, Ty Dillon of Charlotte, N.C. (a Camping World Truck Series regular doing reconnaisance for the truck race at CTMP on Labour Day weekend), Noel Dowler of Sherwood Park, Alta., Trevor Seibert of Williams Lake, B.C., and Brad Graham of Glencoe, Ont.
It was the first NASCAR Canada victory for Dumoulin, who also races sports cars (ALMS and Rolex Grand Am).
Two of the race favourites were eliminated early in the race. Pole-sitter J.R. Fitzpatrick of Cambridge dropped out with a broken drive shaft and two-time Canadian Tire champion Scott Steckly of Milverton crashed. He wasn't injured but his trip into the tire wall in Turn Three was spectacular.
Steckly said he might have hit some oil, he wasn't sure, but that "I lost the front" end and couldn't help hitting the tires.
"It's awful (the crash)," he said. "I feel badly for my crew, who worked so hard, and for all my sponsors, particularly Canadian Tire."
Dumoulin, a driving coach in his "off hours," said he was delighted to have won. He finished fifth a year ago in this race.
"The sponsors gave us a great program over the winter," he said, adding he likes racing at Old Mosport and has wonderful memories of competing at the Bowmanville-area circuit years ago when he raced in Formula 1600.
He said his plan was to save his car - prepared for him by Steckly, by the way - for the end of the race, to save his brakes and to keep calm.
Asked about the calibre of competition in the Canadian Tire series, Dumoulin said it was second to none, pointing out that "ex-F1 guys" (Max Papis) and "old IRL guys" (Alex Tagliani) have raced in the series and haven't dominated.
Lapcevich said he'd wanted to do well to honour the memory of his father, Joe Lapcevich, who died recently. "The support of family, friends and sponsors" was amazing, he said.
He said he'd tried to rattle Dumoulin in the last few laps but had wound up rattling himself instead. "I overshot Turn One," and by the time he regained controlf of his car, Dumoulin was too far in front to catch.
Hathaway, who has entered all 76 races since NASCAR purchased the old CASCAR series from founder Tony Novotny and rebranded it the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series, scored his best career finish. He was eighth here a year ago.
Oh, by the way, just to get all of the proper sponsor plugs in: the name of the race, the series and the locale, officially, is:
The Pinty’s presents the Vortex Brake Pads 200; the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series presented by Mobil 1; Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.
OTHER RACING
The Ultra 94 Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Canada by Michelin held its second race of the weekend. David Ostella of Maple, who raced in Indy Lights in recent years, took the checkered flag in Platinum Cup over Saturday’s race winner Spencer Pigot. For the second straight day, Tim Sanderson was the victor in Gold Cup.
Sunday's racing action also saw the Canadian Touring Car Championship complete their weekend doubleheader. Scott Nichol took the win in Super Touring over Benjamin Distaulo. Michel Sallenbach was first in the Touring Class and Karl Wittmer took the victory in B-Spec.
In Canadian Supercar, Frank Fusillo went to the top step of the podium in the S1 class over Guy Leclerc. Simon Dion-Viens was first in S2.
The final race of the weekend saw Florida native Doug Peterson win the SCCCA Trans-Am Series race over defending Series champion Tony Ave.
Jimmie Johnson won the NASCAR All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway Saturday night, or Sunday morning - I'm not sure which. It was the witching hour, in any event. Johnson, who won the non-points, gimmicky event for the fourth time, took home a cheque totalling more than $1 million.
Meantime, at Brands Hatch in England, Canadian driver Robbie Wickens finished a career-best third in the German Touring Car Series (DTM) race there. Wickens joined another Canadian, Quebec driver Bruno Spengler, on the podium. Spengler finished second behind winner Mike Rockenfeller. Wickens was in a Mercedes, Spengler in a BMW and Rockenfeller in an Audi. Watch the video here.
Said Wickens: "This is my first podium in the DTM and, what's more, it comes after starting from 13th on the grid at Brands Hatch where overtaking is notoriously difficult. I certainly wasn't counting on that before the race. My target was just to finish in the points.
"To make that happen, I knew I would have to get off to a good start and overtake the drivers on the prime tires. This strategy worked well. I was pleasantly surprised by my race pace and I was even able to go past drivers on options when I was on primes. The middle stint went perfectly for me. I had two excellent pit stops and was able to control my part of the race right through to the end.
"Afterwards, I was in the middle of an interview when I was told to hurry along to the podium. So after a physically draining 98-lap race, I had to run the full length of the pit lane to the podium ceremony. But it was well worthwhile. It was a great feeling to taste champagne for the first time in my DTM career."
So you leave Canadian Tire Motorsports Park, and you go out for dinner and then you stop off with the Designated Driver and have a little party with friends and you arrive home to find out that there is a surprise driver on pole at Indianapolis and half of the race fans in Toronto are browned off at Sportsnet.
Let's begin with Indy qualifying.
Ed Carpenter, stepson of Indy Racing League founder Tony George and a racer who came up the old-fashioned way through midgets, sprint cars and the Silver Crown dirt champ cars, won the pole Saturday for next weekend's 97th Indianapolis 500.
Will Power and Ryan Hunter-Reay, who had pretty much set the pace leading up to today's Fast Nine final qualifying sprint, wound up sixth and seventh, respectively.
Canadians James Hinchcliffe of Oakville and Alex Tagliani of Montreal qualified ninth and 11th.
Rookie Carlos Munoz, an Indy Lights racer who brought the money for a crack at Indianapolis, will start second while his teammate, Marco Andretti will go off third. E.J. Viso is fourth (Munoz, Andretti, Viso, Hunter-Reay and Hinchcliffe all race for Andretti Motorsport, meaning all of the team's cars made it into final qualifying) and A.J. Allmendinger was fifth and fastest of the Team Penske cars.
Twenty-four cars qualified. Ten drivers will try Sunday for the remaining nine places.
By the way, the first 10 cars were powered by Chevrolet. Tagliani was the fastest Honda car in 11th.
As mentioned, Sportsnet - apparently - dropped the ball big-time. It took over televising the IZOD IndyCar Series this season from TSN. Although I missed the frustration, I heard from a bunch of my readers who were not happy that there was no coverage of the run for the pole late in the day.
Wrote one: "I have no idea if the final shootout for pole was even televised. And if so, why Sportsnet failed to show it, as promised. I channel surfed all the Rogers channels between 6 and 7 p.m. In fact they didn’t say anything at all, and not a peep on any of their ‘tickers.’ Not that it was further postponed due to rain, or who actually won. Nothing."
Wrote another: "Early coverage was on The Score. But nothing in the late afternoon or early evening. NBC also broke away for Preakness coverage and only showed final few of top 9. IndyCar switched to live streaming on top 9 but couldn't get their act together to in time to show Hinch. There is no excuse for no Canadian coverage. Twitter is lit up with angry viewers on both sides of the border about what happened today."
I, personally, have never been in favour of protectionism of any kind. Keeping ESPN and the NBC Sports Network and other U.S. all-sports channels out of Canada in order to protect TSN and Sportsnet results in nonsense like this.
I've said it time and again, they wouldn't dare do this to baseball fans, or hockey fans, or any kind of fans other than race fans.
Race fans battled back, of course, in the good old days of grey market satellite television where a post office box address in Niagara Falls, N.Y., got you direct access to complete coverage of things like Indy 500 time trials on American stations.
I'm afraid as long as racing sells itself to TV networks, we'll just have to continue putting up with the insults. But if they live-stream all of Indy - practice and qualifying from the first moment each day to the last, even for a fee - I, for one, would say sayonara to television.
EARLIER
J.R. Fitzpatrick today stormed to pole position for Sunday's NASCAR Canadian Tire Series' Pinty's presents the Vortex Brake Pads 200, the opening race of the 2013 season and the feature event of the annual Victoria Day Weekend Speedfest.
And with a time of one minute, 23.286 seconds, the Cambridge speedster set a new track record for stock cars at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, formerly Mosport, north of Bowmanville.
Louis-Phillippe Dumoulin of Trois-Rivieres, Que., will start second on Sunday and Scott Steckly of Milverton, a former series champion, will start third.
Nearly 30 cars from across the country will take the green flag in the race scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Sunday. The race will be telecast by CTV.
In other racing, Guy Leclerc won the opening race of the Supercar season, Scott Nicol was first in the opening race of the Canadian Touring Car Series season and Spencer Pigot won the first race of the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Canada series.
In SCCA Pro Racing Trans-Am, Simon Gregg won the pole and set a new track record with a time of 1:15.614. Defending Series champion Tony Ave was second.
EARLIER
Pole day qualifying is now under way at Indianapolis with Will Power of Team Penske in first place at the moment. His lap of 228.844 miles an hour just nipped defending series champion Ryan Hunter-Reay's 228.282 mph.
Others quick out of the box today - qualifying was held up by rain - were Indy Lights driver Carlos Munoz (third) and oval specialist Ed Carpenter (fifth). Canadians James Hinchcliffe of Oakville and Alex Tagliani of Montreal were both in the top ten.
Once upon a time, the fastest driver on the first day of time trials won the pole with the field filled up and bumping taking place on other qualifying days. Nowadays, there are eliminations and fasts nines and fast sixes and it's all very confusing. Sometime around 7 o'clock tonight, the pole winner will be decided and the world will know - unless the world will have moved on, it being 7 o'clock on Saturday night and all.
Two observations. The Indy 500 might continue to be the Greatest Spectacle in Racing but no longer can they say the 33 best racing drivers in the world are in the race. Why?
The fact that Munoz is third fastest means that just about anybody can drive these cars. Maybe not race them, but certainly drive them. That he is doing this as a rookie, in his first IZOD IndyCar Series race that also happens to be the Indy 500, the world's most famous race, is close to being ridiculous. Mario Andretti, or A.J. Foyt, or Ayrton Senna, this kid is not.
And Katherine Legge has now purchased herself a seat in another one of the cars entered by Sam Schmidt (those cars all go to the highest bidder). I have said all I will ever say about Katherine Legge, so let's leave it at this: I'm less than impressed.
EARLIER
Pole day qualifying at Indianapolis is on hold as there is rain in the area.
And the track at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park is quiet because everybody is eating lunch.
Except some of us.
When something happens somewhere, you'll read about it here.
Meantime, Donnie Schatz passed Greg Hodnett on the last lap at Pennsylvania's Williams Grove Speedway Friday night to win the World of Outlaws sprint car feature. The Outlaws, of course, will make a Canadian swing in July and race at Ohsweken Speedway near Brantford and Cornwall Speedway as well as at tracks in Quebec and Alberta. . . .Dale Darland won the USAC Sprint Car Series' Larry Rice Classic at Bloomington Speedway Friday night. Many of the USAC stars will be in action at O'Reilly Raceway Park outside Indianapolis tonight (Saturday) for a Champ Car Silver Crown event, weather permitting. It's also USAC Hall of Fame weekend and a bunch of oldies but goodies guys like Bobby Unser and Jack Hewitt will be enshrined. For those who's forgotten, or are too young to remember, the U.S. Auto Club used to be the big dog of sanctioning bodies and ran racing, including the Indy 500, with an iron fist. . . . At Brands Hatch in England, where the German Touring Car Series (DTM) is running this weekend, Robert Wickens of Guelph and Toronto qualified 14th for Sunday's feature event. Defending champion Bruno Spengler of Quebec will go off fifth. . . . At Old Mosport, the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series cars are on track. Lunch is over. Time to go.
EARLIER
It’s Pole Day at Indianapolis, and the Victoria Day Weekend Speedfest is in full swing at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (hey – 28 entries in the Trans-Am! Big Iron is back!).
So let’s get caught up before all hell breaks loose on Saturday.
– Talking about hell breaking loose, NASCAR Camping World Truck Series owner/driver Jennifer Joe Cobb (pictured) has accused her former Nationwide Series team manager Mike Harmon of stealing her nearly $300,000 transporter. Cobb is also involved in litigation with her former business partner, David Novak, over who really owns most of the equipment Cobb uses to race.
It is a tangled web.
– Meantime, Kyle Busch started the NASCAR All-Star Weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway off with a bang Friday night by winning the Camping World Truck Series’ North Carolina Education Lottery 200 (talk about a mouthful!).
Brendan Gaughan finished second and Max Gresham was third.
Three of the Camping World series regulars who visited CTMP recently for a one-truck test conducted by driver Nelson Piquet Jr. were in that race Friday night. Defending champion James Beushcher was sixth, Miguel Paludo – who led for a good stretch – finished seventh and Jeb Burton was 13th.
Burton, incidentally, is the son of retired NASCAR Cup star, and Daytona 500 winner, Ward Burton. Jeb started from pole Friday night – his third in five starts this season – but didn’t have the horses to stay there.
The Camping Wordl Truck series will be featured at Old Mosport on Labour Day weekend, with the Chevrolet Silverado 250 scheduled for Sun., Sept. 1.
– Carl Edwards won the pole at Charlotte for Saturday night’s All-Star Race. NASCAR relaxed all the rules for this session and qualifying consisted of three flying laps and a no-speed-limit-on-pit-lane stop for four tires. Total times for the laps and pit stop were added up to set the field.
Not wanting to appear terribly negative about this (ED NOTE: Ho, ho ho), the reason there is a speed limit in pit lanes in every major form of motorsport in the world is because drivers can sometimes lose control of race cars at speed and unprotected people – i.e. pit crew members changing tires on cars – can be hit and be hurt, as a result.
So although some marketing genius thought it would be a scream to put away the radar guns and let the boys "have at it" along pit road at 155 mph, it is just as easy to have a bad accident at an exhbition race like the All-Star as it is at a "regular" race and it is sincerely hoped that they don’t do anything stupid like this again because Edwards called his run "petrifying."
Dale Earnhardt Jr. was second-fastest but the tire stop was botched and he was penalized five seconds, dropping him to 15th. Kurt Busch, who qualified third, will go off second, as a result.
– Mensa membership candidate Kimi Raikkonen says the key to winning the Grand Prix of Monaco is to qualify well.
– Scott Dixon is scheduled to be the first driver to take time when qualifying for the 97th Indianapolis 500 gets under way on Saturday.
Actually, car No. 40 is supposed to go out first, but since no driver is currently in the car it’s expected that Dixon will be the first to take a crack at the pole.
Like many things in 2013, qualifying at Indianapolis is terribly complicated and gimmicky and I’m not going to waste my time trying to explain it. I much preferred the old way of doing it, which was the driver with the fastest time on the first day of qualifying won the pole. Straight up, simple and to the point and I’m like that about everything in life.
James Hinchcliffe of Oakville is scheduled to go off 14th Saturday and Alex Tagliani of Montreal, the other Canadian who’s a previous pole winner at Indy, is down in 37th position.
Hinchcliffe was fastest of 32 drivers who went out to practice on Tuesday and his teammates, E.J. Viso and Marco Andretti, were first and second fastest on what’s commonly called "Fast Friday."
Said Hinchcliffe: "I think the weird thing about Indy is we have 10 times more practice time than anywhere else, yet you always wish you had a little bit more to make it that little bit better.
"I think it's just a function of a bunch of drivers and a bunch of engineers who are perfectionists and are always striving to make it a little better. But I think we can be pretty pleased with how things have gone.
"Obviously, having team cars up there all but one day bodes well. Qualifying is definitely going to be tough. There's a lot of quick cars. Finding that right level of downforce that takes enough drag off but doesn't leave you sliding all over the place and scrubbing speed is going to be key, and it would have been nice to have a run or two more to really nail that down.
"As a team, I think we're confident and it's going be tough because, like I said, there's a lot of fast cars that are going to be going for that Fast Nine. Hopefully we can get there and get the GoDaddy car in a good position for the start of the race."
(About the importance of starting position versus the quality of the race car):
"It's Sunday that everybody cares about. Dario (Franchitti) proved last year that qualifying is not the be-and all-end – he qualified 17th (and won). He even got hit in pit lane and fell right to the back, but he had a good race car and got his way back up to the front. So it's definitely important to focus on the race car.
"What's so tricky about (IMS) is it's so sensitive to different weather conditions. So if you're working on your race car throughout the entire week and you actually see a variety of different conditions, that's good. Whatever comes around on Race Day, you'll at least have a little bit of an understanding of what the car and track might do."
– At Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, practice and qualifying will take place Saturday for the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series, the Trans Am, Formula 1600, the Porsche GT3 Challenge Cup Canada and the Canadian Touring Car Championship, as well as the Supercars.
There will be a few races but the headline events are scheduled for Sunday.
If you haven’t been out to the new and improved Old Mosport in awhile, why not drop by? You won’t believe the improvements that have been made.
- Everything old is new again.
Honda, which powered McLaren to 44 Grand Prix victories and several world championships between 1988 and 1992, announced
today it would partner again with the legendary British marque, starting
in 2015.
Of course, the previous run of success was due, in large
part, to the driver lineup McLaren boasted in the late 1980s: Ayrton
Senna and Alain Prost. In fact, in 1988, those two between them
won 15
of the 16 GP races that year. Whether Jenson Button (who called the
team's performance so far in 2013 "embarrassing," just the other day)
and Sergio Perez can ever deliver the same results is debatable and you
have to wonder whether a pilot shakeup might be in the cards as well.
Honda
has been in and out of the sport over the years, leaving the last time
after the 2008 season. For automakers, racing has always been about ROI
(return on investment) and whether or not participation makes economic
sense, even at the best of times. Five years ago there was an economic
meltdown and Honda, as well as Toyota, decided to fold cards and wait
for a better day.
In a release issued today, Honda said that
beginning next year, "new F1 regulations require the introduction of a
1.6 litre direct injection turbocharged V6 engine with energy recovery
systems. The opportunity to further develop these powertrain
technologies through the challenge of racing is central to Honda’s
decision to participate in F1.
"Throughout its history, Honda has
passionately pursued improvements in the efficiency of the internal
combustion engine and in more recent years, the development of
pioneering energy management technologies such as hybrid systems.
Participation in Formula 1 under these new regulations will encourage
even further technological progress in both these areas."
The
announcement means there will be no renewal of the contract McLaren has
had with engine supplier Mercedes that goes back to 1995. It has not
exactly been a fruitful partnership, with only one constructor's
championship to the team's credit (and there are certainly no driver's
or constructor's titles looming on the horizon this year).
Said
McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh, at a media conference in Tokyo:
"Honda has an unrivalled pedigree as a manufacturer of turbocharged
engines, making it the perfect engine partner for McLaren as we strive
to deliver future success in F1."
As mentioned, Honda has
participated in F1 several times over the years, starting in 1964 when
it designed and developed both the race car and the engine. That
experiment ended in 1968. Starting in 1983, it supplied engines to
Lotus, Williams and Tyrrell before settling in at McLaren in 1988,
dropping out of the sport again after 1991.
Jacques Villeneuve's
manager Craig Pollock talked Honda into returning to F1 in 2000 to
supply engines to BAR and Jordan and then in 2004 the Japanese
manufacturer bought the team. From then until 2008, it ran the team, as it had in the beginning back in the 1960s, as an "all Honda" operation.
- Twenty-nine drivers flashed around the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway Wednesday in a time somewhere between 40 and 41 seconds. That’s how close the competition is this year.
Dario
Franchitti was fastest at 40:1363 seconds while 29th-fastest was Pippa
Mann at 40:9476. Franchitti’s speed, incidentally, translates into
224.236 miles an hour while Mann went 219.793 mph.
Other notables:
Townsend Bell, an Indy-only racer, was second fastest at 40:2295
seconds. Helio Castroneves was third quickest at 40:2327. Alex Tagliani
of Montreal was fastest Canadian and eighth on the totem pole with a lap
of 40:4768. The other Canuck, James Hinchcliffe of Oakville, who was
fastest Tuesday, slipped to 13th at 40:6009. Simona de Silvestro was fastest woman at 40:9353, just pipping Pippa’s 9476.
Michel Jourdain Jr. was the slowest of the 32 who practiced, turning a lap of 41:2774 (218:037 mph).
- Speaking of the Indy 500,
check George’s TV Listings for Race Fans at wheels.ca for times of the
Sportsnet coverage of time trials this Saturday and Sunday as well as
for the race itself a week Sunday. And if you can’t get to a TV, and
have satellite radio, Sirius XM (Channel 211) will be carrying most of
the action as well, starting at 11 a.m. Saturday.
- The Grand Prix of Canada
is fast approaching. As anybody who goes knows, there is more to watch
on track at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve than the F1 cars. This week,
organizers announced that the Ferrari Challenge, Porsche GT3 Cup
Challenge Canada, the Canadian Touring Car Championship and the Formula
Tour 1600 will each run two races on Friday and Saturday, June 7 and 8.
The Grand Prix itself, of course, goes to the post on Sunday, June 9.
- Speaking of the Porsche GT3 Cup,
the Canadian Touring Cars and Formula 1600, they all will be in action
this coming weekend at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park as the annual
Victoria Day Weekend Speedfest takes to the track north of Bowmanville.
The
headline event will be the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series stockers and
D.J. Kennington, J.R. Fitzpatrick, Scott Steckly and the rest of the
trans-Canada chargers — oops, better not forget Andrew Ranger — will be
out to start their national series season off with a bang.
Touring
car drivers looking to get rolling early include Benjamin Distaulo, Bob
Attrell, Remy Audette, Nick Wittmer, Roger Ledoux, Damon Sharpe, Frank
Blanchet and Michel Sallenbach.
Also on the card at Old Mosport will be the Trans-Am big iron thunder cars and the new Canadian Supercar Series.
- Speaking of touring cars
(not really, but I’m looking for a segway), the German Touring Car
Series (DTM) will be at Brands Hatch in England this weekend and
Canadian Robert Wickens is hoping for a better result than two weeks ago
at the opener in Germany when a mechanical problem forced him out after
he qualified better than he has in his DTM career — fourth on the grid.
Said
Wickens, in a release: “After not finishing at the start of the season,
I'm itching to get back in my STIHL Mercedes AMG C-Coupé at Brands
Hatch (Norris note: I bet he said that . . .) to prove that a top-notch
result would have been possible in Hockenheim. With P4 on the grid, I've
shown the kind of speed I can produce. The adrenaline rush of being in
the shoot-out for pole position in Q4 for the first time was enormous - I
could easily get used to that in the future. While a sketch map of
Brands Hatch may look quite simple, it's a real driver's circuit that
demands the utmost concentration over 98 laps. One single error and the
race is as good as lost."
Good luck, Robert.
- Everybody seems to be excited that Derrick Walker has been signed by IndyCar to be president, operations and competition.
So?
The
competition is already pretty good. So what is this going to do so far
as bums in the seats and eyeballs on race telecasts are concerned,
which to my mind are IndyCar’s two biggest challenges.
Once again,
we have a top dog at that organization listening to two or three Indy
car journalists who think moves like this are swell.
Marketing is where this organization needs help. And in public relations.
Not media relations, public relations.
- Finally, the Brantford-area Ohsweken Speedway's
18th annual Opening Night will take the green flag on Friday at 7:30pm,
and large fields are expected in all of the regular Friday night
divisions.
The opening event of Ohsweken's season will include the
Corr/Pak Merchandising Sprint Cars, Affordable Towing & Recovery
Thunder Stocks, HRW Automotive Mini Stocks, and Gale’s Auto Aftermarket
Bombers, with extra-distance features on tap for each.
It might not mean a whole lot at this stage of the game, but the fact that Oakville’s James Hinchcliffe set the fastest time during practice Tuesday for next weekend’s Indianapolis 500 time trials means Indy car racing’s hottest driver is settling nicely into a groove for a run at pole position.
Hinchcliffe, the 26-year-old super nova who’s won two of the four IZOD IndyCar Series races to date, put the hammer down at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and turned a speed of 224.210 miles an hour (40:1410 seconds around the 2.5-mile oval race track), albeit while driving teammate Marco Andretti’s car to exchange notes.
Andretti, meantime, drove Hinchcliffe’s GoDaddy-sponsored Green Machine to the third-fastest time of the day, going 223.570 mph. The Andretti Autosport teammates were split by second-fastest driver J.R. Hildebrand, who went 223.652 mph.
In all, 34 driver-car combinations turned time while preparing for Saturday’s time trials that will determine who will start first and so on back to 33 and last when the 97th 500-mile race goes to the post on Sunday, May 26th.
Said Hinchcliffe: "Marco (Andretti) is pretty angry with me now. Not only did I rock a big tow, which he is famous for, but I did it in his car, so "Marco Tow-dretti" is pretty upset with me now.
"It's good to be up there, but at the end of the day, those numbers don't mean a lot right now. It's about the work you do on the race car and making sure the No. 27 GoDaddy car is going to be good not only on one lap, but over 200 (laps)."
Asked why he’d traded cars with Andretti and if he learned anything, Hinchcliffe added: "I get to see how good I look in red and blue (the colours of Marco’s car). There are some things we wanted to see and suss out, and that's the way to do it.
"It's (trading cars) not uncommon. Guys have done it in the past – especially this team. I think TK (Tony Kanaan) drove every single car on the team at some point during the month (when he was an Andretti driver). It's standard procedure to feel a couple of things out."
Practice will continue through Friday and then qualifying time trials will be held Saturday, with bump day (in which faster cars "bump" slower cars out of the field) scheduled for Sunday.
I said in the beginning that fast times don’t mean a lot and that’s because both engine suppliers, Chevrolet and Honda, will be fitting qualifying motors into all (or most) cars toward the end of the week and a horsepower boost will be allowed for time trials.
Horsepower will be dialed back, however, for the race itself.
Social note: Dario Franchitti, who’s won the Indy 500 three times and is the defending champion, will turn 40 on Sunday.
When I heard of the arrest that was made in the mysterious disappearance of Tim Bosma – the Ancaster fellow who advertised his truck on Kijiji and went off for a test drive with two men last Monday night and then disappeared, apparently, from the face of the Earth – I thought of the six degrees of separation.
That’s the theory in which every body and every thing in the world can be connected one way or another in six steps or less.
The fellow under arrest is Dellen Millard, grandson of the founder of the Millard Air company, Carl Millard, and the son of the pilot Wayne Millard, who flew me to Indianapolis in 1969 so I could cover my first Indianapolis 500.
Maybe not six degrees, but a couple for sure.
Here’s the story.
I was at home on the afternoon of May 29th, a Thursday, which was the day before the 53rd annual 500-Mile International Sweepstakes, which was the official name for the race that was always held on May 30 in those days.
On my own time, I’d been at Indy two weeks previously for the first weekend of time trials – which had been rained out. There were no plans in place for me to return to cover the race for the Globe and Mail, where I was employed at the time.
Just before 3 p.m., the phone rang and it was the late Jim Vipond, the legendary sports editor of the Globe. "How would you like to go to Indianapolis tomorrow?" he asked.
I could barely contain myself.
Was he kidding? Of course I’d like to go to Indianapolis. I’d been listening to Sid Collins announce the race on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network since I was a kid. I’d seen my first 500 on closed-circuit TV at the Glendale Theatre on Avenue Rd., just north of Lawrence, in 1965. I’d gone to Indy for the first time in 1967 and sat in the grandstands just before Turn Two and loved – loved – every second. Was he crazy? Wild horses couldn't keep me away.
"Sure," I replied, somewhat nonchalantly. "You’ll want me to file, right?"
"Yes, take your typewriter," he said. "Write your story and phone it in. I’ll need it no later than an hour after the race finishes. We have an early deadline Friday because the Saturday paper is a giant."
My heart was beating so quickly I was in danger of hyperventilating, but I had to ask.
"So," I said again, somewhat casually, "do you want me drive down, or what?"
"No," he said. "By 7 tomorrow morning, be at the Millard Air hangar at Malton (now Pearson International Airport). Ask for Wayne Millard. He’s going to fly you down."
Wow, I thought. This is incredible. Not only am I going to cover the Indianapolis 500 for the Globe and Mail but they’re flying me to the race!
Now, I could write another couple of thousand words about the flight to Indy, and how Frank Orr of the Toronto Star was on the same plane, and how, except for the two of us and another couple of people, there was nobody else aboard the Millard Air DC-3 and how we flew right over downtown Indianapolis on our way to land at what was then Weir Cook Municipal Airport and how the taxi we were taking to the track was pulled over for speeding before we got off the airport property and . . . but I won’t.
What I will tell you, though, is that Mario Andretti won his one and only Indy 500 that day, which made for a great story, particularly when his car owner, Andy Granatelli, got so excited that he kissed him on the cheek in Victory Lane.
Now, I was feeling top of the world, Ma, at this point. It had been a great day, a great race, the driving had been spectacular, the drivers had all been the Gods I expected them to be, I had written and phoned in my story on time, I had a girl in Montreal I was going to see the next day and – well – everything was as perfect as perfect could be.
So I went back to Weir Cook Airport, only to discover that a whole bunch of people I didn’t know, or recognize, all of whom had a couple of tons of luggage, were waiting to get onto my plane.
It turned out that those folks, most of whom were friends of Toronto department store heir George Eaton, who was also a racing driver, had been in Indianapolis all month and had chartered the plane to take them home.
Wayne Millard knew Vipond and, in conversation, mentioned he was going to Indy to pick up this mob and that he had a couple of seats open and that’s how Frank Orr and I got a free ride to cover the world’s most famous car race.
Now, the flight to Indy had been terrific. Four or five passengers, max., on a plane that could carry up to 30. Lots of space to stretch out your arms and legs. The return flight, though, was an entirely different matter.
We were packed in like sardines. Those folks had 30 days’ worth of luggage with them, some of which wouldn't fit in the hold and was sitting in the aisle (no overhead bins on DC3s). I did a quick calculation and reckoned we were probably pretty close to the limit as far as weight was concerned and I got this really strange feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Maybe I should take a bus back to Toronto, I thought. Or a train. Are there trains between Indianapolis and T.O.? And then I thought of that sweetheart in Montreal and realized that if I was going to keep our date the next day, Saturday, I was going to have to suck it up and stay on that plane.
So Frank Orr and I are sitting beside each other and I have the window. I’m telling him I’m not so sure the old crate is going to make it off the ground. Frank, who’s wonderful company, starts telling jokes to take my mind – and his – off the fact that the plane might crash and we might die.
So we taxi out and, after what seems like an eternity, we start lumbering along the runway and I’m looking out the window and we don’t seem to be going very fast and there is this line of trees way off in the distance and they’re coming closer, and closer, and closer, and we’re still on the ground and we’re still not going very fast and then, ever so slowly, this bucket of bolts starts to bounce off the ground and those trees are getting really close by now and this plane is kinda shuddering but I still have my eyes open and, at what seemed to be the very last second, damned if we didn’t clear the tops of those trees by that much or else I wouldn’t be here today telling you all this.
But it was close. Too close for comfort, in fact.
I turned my head to smile at my friend, the Toronto Star’s auto racing writer and my very best friend in the world at that moment, to acknowledge that we indeed were still alive and well and everything was turning out to be all right, and it was then that I realized that Frank Orr and I were holding hands.
Conor Daly, a young America hot shoe who had to come to Canada to find out how a racing car really works, has been signed by A.J. Foyt Racing to contest the Indianapolis 500 in May.
The son of ex-Indy car star and F1 racer Derek Daly will join Takuma Sato in the team.
As is the case with most successful racing drivers these days, Daly, of Noblesville, Ind., just outside Indianapolis, started out in karts as a child and progressed to driving in occasional formula-car races in 2007, the year he turned 16.
In 2008, his first full season of car racing, he drove in the Skip Barber National Championship Series as well as the Ontario Formula Ford Challenge series.
And why come to Canada to race? His father had a ready answer when I talked to him about it once at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. He credited the Ontario FF series for much of his son’s development as a racing driver.
"We made the decision to come to Canada to run with Brian Graham Racing so that Conor could better understand the engineering of a racing car, something he couldn’t get in the United States at that time.
"He was running the Skip Barber (national) Series in the U.S. at the same time (as his time in Ontario) but he wasn’t allowed to change the car (to suit his style). His season up here gave him a much better understanding of the way a racing car works and how to change or adjust it to his advantage and he won races and was successful."
He’s been pretty successful since, too. He won the Star Mazda Championship in 2010 and has won races since in Indy Lights and the European GP3 Series. He’s raced twice this season in GP2 and tested for Foyt at Sebring earlier this year.
Antoine L’Estage of St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., the five-time North American Rally Champion and five-time Canadian Rally Champion with co-driver Nathalie Richard of Halifax, N.S., will be at the wheel of a World Rally Championship Mitsubishi Lancer for the remaining events of the Rally America series, starting the first weekend in May at the Oregon Trail Rally.
"This is big news!" L’Estage said in a release this week. "To take part in rallies at the wheel of a car that has been in the World Rally Championship is fantastic and I’m really looking forward to more great battles with (opponents) Ken Block and David Higgins," he said.
"Our hard work has come to fruition in the form of an agreement with MML Sports of the U.K., with whom we already tested the car last November in the Czech Republic. All of our sponsors play a big role in this as well and we are thrilled to have our partners on board."
L'Estage is unbeatable on this side of the Atlantic. Is the WRC team bringing that car over here to test the Canadian ace's ability for a possible ride in future? Stay tuned.
The U.S. Auto Club announced this week that eight "greats" would be inducted into the racing organization’s Hall of Fame: Earl Baltes (former owner and developer of the famed, Tony Stewart-owned, Eldora Speedway in Ohio), Henry Banks (midget racer-Indy 500 veteran-USAC competition director), legendary drivers Duane (Pancho) Carter Jr., Al Unser and Bobby Unser, car builder and chief mechanic A.J. Watson, USAC stock-car ace Don White, Indy car team owner and USAC supporter Bob Wilke, and drivers Tony Bettenhausen, Tom Bigelow, Jack Hewitt and Johnny Rutherford.
I have no personal knowledge of Baltes, other than what I’ve read, but I’ve been fortunate enough to have watched, met, interviewed and, in some cases, hung around with all of the others.
For instance, I spent an afternoon with Banks at Indy in 1969. The USAC competition director and his pal, chief steward Harlan Fengler, were giants at Indianapolis back then, when the "500" attracted the best from all the many and varied disciplines of racing – sprints, midgets, stock cars, sports cars, formula cars. They were glory days.
Banks scared me when he talked about his midget-racing days. Never mind roll cages; they didn’t even have roll bars when he raced and, as he put it, fatalties were common. He said it was a happy day when he left the cockpit to concentrate on race administration.
I loved watching Pancho Carter race sprint cars and dirt champ cars. One time at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, 22 champ cars took the green and all went into Turn One sideways, throwing huge rooster tails of dirt over the outside wall. There were plumes of dust and dirt everywhere and as they powered out of Two, one car straightened out before all the others and just shot itself down the backstretch, heading for Three. I can still hear my pal Al Listiak leaping to his feet and yelling at the top of his lungs: PANCHO!!!!
And that’s who it was, all right.
I had a long chat with him at the 1990 Molson Indy Toronto. He was driving for the Wilke family’s Leader Card Racing team and it had poured during the race. Because of his talent controlling race cars on dirt, he was passing cars left and right in the rain and I was going nuts thinking he was going to win. Dan Proudfoot of the Toronto Sun was standing beside me and was likewise impressed and excited. But water got into the electrics and the car stalled out and that was that but he told me afterward that if the car "had behaved," he was going to win.
I knew about Watson because of my fascination with the Indy cars of the 1950s (many of which were transformed into my beloved supermodifieds of the late 1960s and early '70s). At one time, most of the cars in the "500" came out of his California shop. His hair went white prematurely and you can still spot his flat-top brushcut a mile away.
The first Vancouver Molson Indy was in 1990 and I was driving along Robson St. one afternoon and I looked over at some people standing at a bus stop and there was A.J. Watson. So I offered him a lift and asked him what he was doing.
It turned out he’d started walking away from the B.C. Place stadium area (where the temporary race circuit had been built) to take a look at downtown Vancouver and he’d just kept walking and walking. By the time he figured it was time to go back, he was too tired to walk the return trip so he decided to hop on a bus.
I bumped into Abe Vigoda ("Fish" on Barney Miller) later that day, but that wasn’t nearly as exciting as being able to offer a ride to A.J. Watson.
In the summer of 1966, the USAC stock cars raced at Mosport and Canada’s own Billy Foster brought his Indy car for a demonstration run between the stock car heats. (Contrary to what you might have been told, Foster did not drive the track backwards. But I digress.)
Foster and Don White, a champion, put on an incredible show that afternoon, with White leading one time around and Foster the next. Foster eventually suffered a mechanical malfunction and dropped out; White finished but was beaten to the checkers by the little-known Sal Tovela (making for a wonderful bit of racing trivia).
Another bit of racing trivia that day was the professional debut of Tony Bettenhausen Jr., who went from the stock-car circuit to drive Indy cars and to own a team in the CART series.
I could go on about the Unsers, and Tom Bigelow (what a welcoming guy he was in 1977 at the Molson Diamond Indy at Mosport, once he found out that the reporter who barged into his garage after the race wanted to talk sprint cars instead of the Indy cars – he still has the most wins in USAC sprint car history) but I’ll close off this entry with a few paragraphs about the greatest character of them all, Jack Hewitt of Troy, Ohio.
Hewitt won 34 dirt champ car races in his career, seven midget wins and 46 in the sprint cars. He made it to Indy in 1998, where he finished 12th, and told me once in an interview that it was the greatest day of his life.
"I was gonna go race that night up in Ohio in the sprints," he said, "but you know, I was at Indy and I just didn’t want to leave. It got dark and they put the lights on and I just stayed and stayed and it was just the greatest feeling. They finally had to tell me to go home, they were gonna close up."
In 1998 at Eldora Speedway, he swept the USAC 4-Crown Nationals, an accomplishment I think should have been on front pages all over the continent. He won four races in one day, driving for four different teams in midgets, sprints, dirt champ cars and modifieds. Absolutely incredible.
Now, Jack has been known to get lippy, and if you want to see him in full meltdown mode, click here.
But what I value, more than anything else, is his sense of humour.
One night at the old Manzanita Speedway in Phoenix, Jack was being interviewed by track announcer Windy McDonald (no relation, although you sometimes wonder . . .) and they were talking about the Indy 500 Jack had been in.
"Jack," said McDonald, "what was really memorable about that race?"
And Jack said, "Well, with me in it, Lynn St. James wasn’t the only driver with a moustache."
People heard that, and their mouths dropped open in surprise and astonishment, and then they started to giggle and before long the entire grandstand was full of folks just killing themselves laughing.
