Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Questions still surround proposed Fort Erie speedway

Another hurdle has been cleared by the developers of the proposed Canadian Motor Speedway in Fort Erie.

On Monday, the Ontario Municipal Board rejected all appeals against the planned speedway, which will include a one-mile paved oval track with seating for 65,000 spectators plus a road course.

Good luck to them. There are still some hoops to jump through - completion of environmental reports, that sort of thing - but the green light seems to be getting closer.

I first wrote about this project in 2009 and interviewed Jay Mason, a Niagara Falls entrepreneur who was involved at the time who suggested that if everything went the way everybody hoped it would, there could be racing at the track as early as 2011.

Well, it shows how the wheels can grind slowly when it comes to projects of this size.

There remains some cynicism about the viability of the track. What might have made sense in 2009  might not make as much today.

For instance, one-day pleasure trips by Americans to Canada are down 70 per cent because of the passport requirement, which has hit the casino businesses in Windsor and Niagara Falls particularly hard.

Americans will buy passports if they want to go to Europe. Whether an American family of four will spend more than $300 on passports in order to attend a car race in the Niagara region of Canada is suddenly a big question.

All of the stories about this place, of course, mention NASCAR. The developers are careful not to, but it's no secret that if you're going to build a big oval speedway that NASCAR has to figure into your plans somewhere along the line.

But anybody who knows anything about auto racing knows that you do not snap your fingers and expect an answer from NASCAR. It is not a case of "if you build it, they will come," when NASCAR is involved.

And, in fact, NASCAR has made it clear previously it is not all that interested in the Fort Erie track, suggesting that races at Watkins Glen and Michigan International Speedway are of higher priority.

Of course, the International Speedway Corp., which owns NASCAR, also owns Watkins Glen and Michigan, thus explaining its reluctance to go into business against itself.

Plus, NASCAR is likely in the days ahead to announce a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race for Canadian Tire Motorsport Park for 2013 and to suggest that perhaps a Nationwide Series stock car race will be possible for 2014.

If that happens, the new Fort Erie speedway would have trouble attracting any of NASCAR's major series.

The promoters of the IZOD IndyCar Series race in downtown Toronto recently re-upped for three more years, so the earliest an Indy car race could be contracted for the Fort Erie track would be 2016. Even then it would be unlikely because the Toronto race attracts government money and a race at a privately owned circuit probably would not.

Return on investment, then, becomes a problem without major races at the facility. Whether motorcycle races or sports car racing would attract big enough crowds to turn a profit and pay off investors is of concern.

At the end of the day, though, Canada needs a big oval speedway. Despite the obstacles, here's hoping it gets built.

Talking about Canadian Tire Motorsport Park - or Old Mosport, as I call it on occasion - the Castrol control/scoring tower – which started life in 1962 as the Esso tower at Mosport Park – was demolished Monday after 50 years of service.

The tower was removed in order to lengthen the pit lane for an anticipated NASCAR race in 2013. It was about to become redundant in any event because a new corporate and media centre, plus offices, is under construction across the track on driver’s left at turn ten.

Other than the name change, the Castrol tower stayed just about the same for all of those 50 years. On the ground floor, there was a medical room where members of the Ontario Race Physicians organization could do their work; a large area where press conferences were held; a small reception area where competition reports and statistics were prepared – and where lunch was served – and a unisex washroom. Upstairs were executive offices, a working press room where the track announcers occupied a corner, and men’s and women’s washrooms.

At one time or another, each and every one of the greats, and not-so-greats, in the world of motorsport passed through that building. Now, only the ghosts remain.

I could write a book about that place - but here are just a couple of quick reminiscences off the top of my head.

In 1977, A.J. Foyt came up from Indianapolis to promote an Indy car race at Mosport – the Molson Diamond Indy – and went on and on about how wonderful the track was. There was a big, somewhat gruff, reporter there from a newspaper in Dayton, Ohio, who was taking delight in egging Foyt on.

"Tex," he’d say, "just exactly what is it about this place that makes you so keen to race here?"

And Foyt would give the guy a steely eye and then say something like, "I like racin’ on real road courses and there ain’t nowhere better’n this place."

And the reporter would follow up. "Tex," he’d say, "you seem to like just about everything at this place. Is there anything you don’t like?"

And Foyt would grit his teeth and give the guy an even steelier eye and say, "Nope, I can’t say there’s anything wrong with this place at all."

And then the reporter dropped the clunker: "Tex,' he said, "how much are they payin’ you to say all this?"

And Foyt snapped at the guy: "None of your business. And if you ask me another stupid question like that, we’re goin’ outside."

Later that same year, Ian Ashley lost control of his Hesketh at the end of the Andretti straight and wrapped himself and the car around a television tower.

About an hour later, I was in the late Harvey Hudes’s office (he owned the circuit, in partnership with Bernie Kamin) when three very upset people – two women and a man, all in their 20s or early 30s – walked in and asked to use the phone.

The man placed an overseas call to England and got Ashley’s mother on the line.

"It’s Tony," he said (I think this was Anthony Horsley, known as Bubbles, who was a great friend of Lord Hesketh) and I’ve got bad news. Ian’s had an accident. They’ve flown him to hospital."

Of course, Ashley recovered and, in fact, raced in the first Molson Indy Toronto at the CNE in 1986. But I was struck by Horsley’s calmness once he got on the phone – he’d been as upset as the two women when he first walked into Hudes’s office – and by the reaction of Ashley’s mother when she was told about the accident.

I was close enough to the phone to hear her response. "Oh, dear," she said.

So very British.

I could go on. But it’s gone.

And great things are right ahead for Old Mosport, I think.

'Double-header' race weekends did in Randy Bernard

The significant racing news that Sebastien Vettel won his fourth straight Grand Prix of 2012 in India Sunday (details here) and that Jimmie Johnson is back where he belongs atop the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series standings (details here) was overshadowed late in the day by word that Randy Bernard had been dismissed as CEO of the IZOD IndyCar Series.

The statement by the board of directors of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway announcing that he would step down immediately was all warm and fuzzy but the fact of the matter is that the long knives had been out for Bernard almost from the time he took the job and a controversial move in recent weeks is finally what did him in.

And what was that, you ask?

I maintain it was the very sudden and last-minute decision to schedule three "double-header" racing weekends in Toronto, Detroit and Houston in order to come up with the 19 races he’d publicly promised for the 2013 season.

Bernard had talked during much of 2012 about increasing the number of races from 15 to 19 next year and there was speculation about new races in places like Providence, Rhode Island, and the Mugello circuit in Italy, as well as the return of road courses like Road America and even Watkins Glen.

But when the 2013 schedule was issued, Providence wasn’t on it, nor were the other venues, and, instead, two races on the same weekend were included in three markets - two of them (Detroit and Toronto) not very far apart in distance (390 km) or time (six weeks).

Now, were the teams consulted? All of a sudden, their costs for a race weekend were doubled.

Were the title sponsors? Suddenly, the property to which they’d attached their name had been devalued.

Were the promoters? I suppose, but I ask you: how do you take a once-a-year headline attraction and turn it into two of them on the same weekend? How can you convince people that two Indy 500s are better than one?

And that’s the point here. Would you run the Indy 500 one day and then run it all over again the next? Or the following weekend? Would Formula One do that in Montreal? Hey, come Saturday for Grand Prix I and Sunday for Grand Prix II. Would NASCAR do this?

Of course not.

Supporters of Bernard, who mostly liked the fact that he wasn’t Tony George, thought this was just swell. Indy car racing used to do this all the time in the old days, they all said.

Well, Indy car racing didn’t do this all the time in the old days. Yes, there used to be "twin" Indy car races back in the day, but instead of a 250-mile race on a Sunday, they’d run two 125-miles races so there would be two complete starts and two complete races instead of just one. They’ve done that sort of thing recently at Texas Motor Speedway.

But "twin-125s" as they were called were (and are) a far cry from what is being proposed here, which is a full race on Saturday and then a full race again Sunday, which is – frankly – nuts.

(An aside: how do you promote two Honda Indy races in Toronto? You run one on Saturday the traditional way – clockwise through the streets of the CNE. On Sunday, you run the second-race counter-clockwise. In other words, on Saturday, the right-hand turn at the Princes’ Gates is Turn One; on Sunday, it would be a left-hand Turn Ten. That, ladies and gentleman, is the only way you can sell this thing. But I digress . . .)

When Bernard first came on the scene, he freely admitted that he had never seen an IndyCar race – or a car race of any kind, for that matter. He was attractive to the series owners, apparently, because he had taken rodeo bull riding from stock shows and rodeos to Las Vegas and the millions of dollars that went along with that.

His inexperience showed, and many members of the Old Guard (not just a few; most of them) were feeling let down almost immediately, as a result.

His time as CEO of IndyCar was not a dead loss, though: getting the new car accepted, built and on the track was, I believe, the highlight of his tenure.

But the negatives far outweighed the positives. As I’ve written often about them before, I’m not going to repeat them, except to say the ill-advised double-headers were just the latest in a long line of less-than-stellar decisions.

I shake my head when I read the comments of people who claim to be fans of the series, about how they will never watch another race, and so-on, because Randy Bernard got fired. I mean, does it really matter who runs the series as long as the racing is good?

I wonder how some of these people would have felt back in the so-called glory days of CART (or are they old enough to remember)? The people who ran that series didn't exactly enjoy job security, either.

The guys in charge – John Franco, William Stokkan, Johnny Capels, John Caponigro, Andrew Craig, Chris Pook, Bobby Rahal and Dale Coyne (the latter two took turns running the series when the owners fired all the other guys) – lasted an average of about 2.5 years in the top job, which is about the length of time Bernard was around, so he fits right in.

And since none of these critics knows anything about running a racing team, starting with the enormous costs, the fact that they would side with a guy who also knows (or knew) next to nothing about that too probably explains a lot about the weeping and wailing going on.

The kicker, for me, is the constant bleating about the long-term TV deal that stupid nasty old Tony George signed with Versus (now the NBC Sports Network – and how come that rebranding didn’t work the miracles it was supposed to?)

Here are the facts: IndyCar signed with Versus because nobody else wanted to televise Indy car racing. Nobody. Some people think TV networks should be lining up to televise the series but the stark reality is that it is a niche within a niche; except for NASCAR Sprint Cup, auto racing in North America is not a draw and that includes Formula One. Unless a sport, like baseball and NFL football, regularly attracts millions of viewers, TV networks aren’t interested and that’s why, with the exception of the Indianapolis 500, Indy car racing can't get no respect.

But Indy car fans should not feel too badly. The NHL is on Versus and that’s because nobody watches hockey either.

I don’t think Tony George will be put in charge of IndyCar again – at least in the short term. The board will likely hire a Bernard clone – someone great with the fans but who has a better understanding of the sport and the owners.

But that isn’t to say that George won’t eventually be the boss again. At some point, the Indianapolis Speedway will grow tired of subsidizing the IndyCcar series to the tune of $10-million-plus a year and he’ll probably come up with enough cash to buy it.

As my great friend Brian Stewart, of Firestone Indy Lights fame, says: it's all about the money. Nothing else matters.

And that, friends, will never change.

On NASCAR, pit crews and the Petit Le Mans

The Delta Wing finished sixth at Road Atlanta

News and musings following a big weekend of auto racing:

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

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

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

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

For complete details, click here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay, enough of that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Want to take a guess what that all means?

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

Condominiums.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nuts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Great stuff !

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

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

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

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

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

On weekend results, concussions and Tony George

When it comes to speed, nobody (and nothing) will be able to beat Felix Baumgartner’s amazing performance Sunday when he became the first human being to break the sound barrier without the aid of an aircraft. For details, click here.

Back here on Earth, however, there were these racing developments:

– Sebestian Vettel has his groove back – he won the Grand Prix of Korea Sunday (click here for details) - and the F1 championship is up for grabs with four races to go. Vettel’s Red Bull-Renault teammate, Mark Webber, was second in Korea with Fernando Alonso third in a Ferrari.

– Clint Bowyer won the NASCAR Sprint Cup Chase for the Championship race at Charlotte Motor Speedway Saturday night (click here for details), mainly by avoiding running out of gas. It was a classic "fuel economy run," with Denny Hamlin finishing second and Jimmie Johnson third.

– Antoine L’Estage of St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., and co-driver Nathalie Richard of Halifax won the Pacific Forest Rally at the weekend. The victory, plus their previous three wins and one second-place finish, saw them clinch their fifth Canadian Rally Championship.

Hardy Schmidtke of Cochrane, Alta., and John Hall of Edmonton were second in the rally, while Max Riddle and Aaron Neumann, both of Vancouver, finished third. Challengers for the championship, Leo Urlichich of Toronto and Carl Williams of Wales, crashed out early.

– Drag racer Eric Latino of Whitby, the subject of a cover page article in Toronto Star Wheels on Labour Day weekend, won the Pro Mod title at the annual Shakedown Nationals in Englishtown, N.J. The Shakedown Nationals is the Indy 500 of Outlaw drag racing for door cars. Well done, Eric.

And then there were these other racing developments:

– Speed TV seems on the way out.

– It’s only a matter of time before Tony George takes over Indy car racing – again.

– The can of worms that’s been opened by Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s concussion.

Speed TV first.

This story came out of the blue last Friday afternoon when a strange item was posted on speedtv.com saying, in so many words, that Speed Channel had lost the TV rights to F1 racing in the United States.

But it didn’t say who, or what, had them for 2013 and beyond and there has been much speculation – since confirmed – that it’s NBC, which would put some of the races on the main network and the rest on its NBC Sports Network channel, formerly Versus, which also has the IZOD IndyCar Series races and, let us not forget, the NHL in the U.S.

Now, there are several aspects of this story worth discussing.

First, Canadian F1 fans don't watch the races on Speed now, so it really doesn’t matter where and with whom Bernie Ecclestone chooses to do business with south of the border. TSN has owned the Canadian rights for years and if TSN doesn’t want to continue then I’m sure Rogers Sportsnet will step in, as it did recently by announcing it would be showing the IndyCar Series races from now on.

In the end, as long as somebody televises F1 races in Canada, I don’t really care who it is.

However, I do enjoy Speed for its Speed News coverage of racing that runs through the weekend, culminating with the 7 p.m. Sunday night show Speed Center. TSN and Sportsnet pretty much pay lip service to auto racing on their sports news shows (as do the all-sports U.S. networks) so Speed Center on Sunday night is a wonderful hour for those of us racing junkies who need a solid fix at the end of the weekend.

Although I don’t want watch it regularly, the Sunday night program Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain is usually a worthwhile hour of racing information and, more important, gossip. And I enjoy – usually, and if I have time – the Sunday morning pre-NASCAR race program, Race Day.

But the rest of it – Pinks All Out, Gearz, Pass Time, Dumbest Stuff on Wheels, and so-on – is boring and a waste of time and a money-losing proposition and is likely why parent company Fox Sports will soon turn the channel into an all-sports network to compete against ESPN and NBC Sports Channel.

– Now, the Tony George and IndyCar story.

It’s interesting how this story has developed. There have been hints, for months, that something was up. But what?

Then, the respected publication Sports Business Journal came out with a story a couple of weeks ago saying George and a group of people including Roger Penske and Chip Ganassi had made an offer to purchase the series from the people who own the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

As this is all about politics (isn’t everything?), certain reporters with vested interests got all sorts of people to deny it. The president of the Speedway said the series wasn’t for sale and even George himself said the story was inaccurate.

However, you will note that Tony George did not say the story was wrong. You will note that the president of the Speedway did not deny that somebody was trying to buy the race series.

Now it turns out that Penske knows all about this but says he isn’t involved. Ganassi says he has an open mind about a takeover but hasn’t done anything about it.

At the end of the day, if George has the money needed to buy the series, he will get it.

Open-wheel racing in the United States was once sanctioned by the AAA. After the Le Mans tragedy in 1955, when more than 80 people were killed when a car went into the crowd, the AAA withdrew from racing and the Indianapolis Speedway owner, Tony Hulman, was instrumental in the formation of the U.S. Auto Club (USAC) to sanction Indy-type car racing.

Although Hulman had influence within the USAC, he wasn’t involved in its operation. And although he promoted the Indy 500 and helped to promote other Indy car races, he did not run Indy car racing.

Neither did the people who took over the running of the Speedway after his death in 1977.

Tony George changed that in the mid-1990s when he started the Indy Racing League after a falling-out with the people who ran CART. In the ensuing war, that lasted until 2008, George – as president and CEO of the Speedway as well as the family business, Hulman and Co. - spent millions of dollars propping up the IRL (just as his counterpart, Kevin Kalhoven, did over at the Champ Car World Series after CART went bankrupt).

But while Kalkhoven was spending his own money, Tony George was spending some that was his and a lot that wasn't. This got him into trouble with his relatives.

George’s sisters and mother forced him out in 2010 and hired Randy Bernard to not only operate the renamed IndyCar Series but to get the budget under control. This he has done but it's still costing the Indianapolis Speedway and Hulman and Co. serious money to own and operate a racing series that is not its core business and it is only a matter of time before the money being offered to buy it is too much to refuse.

It doesn’t matter who’s in or who’s out. Tony George is the key and he wants to own Indy car racing again and who’s going to stop him?

– Finally, the Earnhardt concussion.

I can remember, years ago, looking at photographs of sprint car drivers whose eyes were totally bloodshot after flipping upside down and the captions would talk about how tough those guys were after having their "bells rung."

Awareness of head injuries and ongoing medical research now shows how dangerous this "bell ringing" is.

After knowing he’d been concussed following a testing accident at Kansas Speedway in August, and after being bashed around during the Big One at the conclusion of the NASCAR race at Talladega last weekend, Dale Earnhardt Jr. went to see a doctor and was told to stop driving for at least two races.

Now we have a firestorm of opinion, ranging from people wondering if Earnhardt would have ‘fessed up if he’d been nearer the top of the Chase standings to other race drivers suggesting that they’d felt themselves concussed but didn’t do anything about it.

Race drivers, for all their bravado and machismo, are among the most insecure people on the planet. They will – to a man and woman – walk through fire, if necessary, to keep their rides.

Why? Because they fear that the person who replaces them might do a better job and they will find themselves unemployed.

How many times does a team have a driver on standby, ready to take over if the driver who starts the race has to get out of the car because of illness or injury? And how many times has that second driver actually gotten into a race? Correct. Exactly none.

Denny Hamlin had a knee operation in 2010 and three weeks later won a race at Texas in excruciating pain because he wouldn’t take any pain killers for fear of flunking a drug test. Casey Mears was on standby in case Hamlin needed relief. He was still on standby when Hamlin drove into Victory Lane.

Last night on Speed Center, ex-crew chief Jeff Hammond said Darrell Waltrip had suffered a concussion in a crash in 1982 and "doesn’t remember the next two races." Jeff Gordon, who was on Wind Tunnel, said he’s pretty sure he’d suffered concussions. Lee Roy Yarbrough, a famous 1960s-era stock car star, died in recent years while suffering from a form of dementia brought on by numerous concussions.

The NHL, the NFL and other pro sports leagues have a protocol for dealing with athletes who’ve been knocked silly while on the ice or the field. It will be interesting to see what NASCAR does, now that this particular horse is out of the barn.

Will it continue to treat all the drivers as "independent contractors," and suggest they see their family doctor if they have a headache?

Or will it take responsibility for the athletes and have a head injury test conducted immediately after a driver has been in a crash?

Or, as I suggested the other day, will the insurance companies force the drivers and racing organizations (NASCAR in particular) to take action or else face increased premiums?

This discussion is not going to go away. How NASCAR handles it is going to be just about as important as who wins the Chase for the Championship.

Fellows optimistic about NASCAR

Several days have passed since the two big races of the weekend were held (Sebastien Vettel and Matt Kenseth were the winners in F1 and NASCAR, respectively) so today’s entry will be more of a collection of random thoughts than race reports with comment.

First, Canadian Tire Motorsport Park and its NASCAR future.

Ron Fellows told me during the weekend that the cancellation of the 2013 NASCAR Nationwide Series race at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve was unfortunate for two reasons: as a driver, he likely won’t get to race at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve again but, more important, that when it's combined with the cancellation of the 2013 Edmonton Indy, it’s not particularly good news for Canadian motorsport in general.

Fellows said he didn’t expect the cancellation of the Montreal race would lead directly to the Nationwide Series event being moved to his facility, although he didn’t deny that the possibility had crossed his mind.

But if anything, he hinted that if there is to be a NASCAR touring series race at Old Mosport in 2013 it will likely be a round of the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.

And he admitted to being surprised, and encouraged, by comments published on the NASCAR.com Internet site by Steve O'Donnell, NASCAR's senior vice president for racing operations, who said the league is hoping to fill the Montreal gap with another national-series race in Canada next year, most likely a Camping World Truck Series event.

"Certainly we want to be in Canada in some capacity, either Trucks or Nationwide next year," O'Donnell told NASCAR.com on Friday. "That's a hugely important market to us. We've got some work to do certainly to make that happen. But we've got no complaints certainly about the fan base that turns out for the event."

O'Donnell called a potential Truck Series event in Canada "fairly realistic" for next season, although he declined to name the potential venue. "We've got a good shot at that," he added. "Nationwide, a much longer shot. You may be looking at 2014 for that. But I feel fairly good about our ability to bring a Truck event up to Canada in 2013."

So, in short: nothing concrete to report about NASCAR and Canadian Tire Motorsport Park as yet but, as Fellows said: "It will be an interesting next couple of weeks."

I would add that it will be an interesting next couple of years.

Okay, moving right along.

Five Ontario drivers will be at the Indinapolis Motor Speedway this Wednesday and Thursday to participate in the annual Mazda Road to Indy Test.

The test is designed to provide drivers with seat time in USF2000, Star Mazda and Firestone Indy Lights cars on the road course at the Speedway in order to showcase their talents to potential teams for the 2013 season.

Michael Adams of Courtice, Dalton Kellett of Stouffville, Nathan Blok of Pembroke and Matthew DiLeo of Innisfil will be showing their stuff in USF2000 cars. David Ostella of Maple will be auditioning for another Indy Lights ride.

Good luck to all those drivers.

Short takes:

- Lewis Hamilton is now reportedly "rubbishing" his teammate at McLaren, Jenson Button. I can hardly wait for him to get to Mercedes and try pulling some of this stuff. He’s going to a German team that has a German driver. Does anybody really think he’s going to be No. 1 over there?

- Romain Grosjean is getting a bum rap, I think. Crashing is what you get at the start of just about every F1 race because it’s a race. Some guys get going like rockets, others are not so fast. Kimi Raikkonen hit the back of Fernando Alonso’s car and Alonso was out of the race. Didn’t hear much about that. Grosjean hits Webber, who was able to keep going, and all hell breaks loose. Romain is everybody’s favourite whipping boy at the moment. What if it had been a veteran F1 driver who ran into Webber? Would he have been so vocal? Would he have been so insulting?

- I didn’t hear anybody criticizing Tony Stewart after the Big One at Talladega. (Grosjean might fit in really well in NASCAR . . .) I didn’t hear anybody suggesting that Stewart be thrown out of the next race. They don’t hand out grid penalties in NASCAR, do they?

Stewart owned up to making a mistake. "I was trying to win the race," he said.

Isn’t that what racers are supposed to do?

- I think I should run a pool on how long Kurt Busch lasts with Furniture Row Racing. One race? Six? A quarter of the 2013 season? Sunday, he makes a fool of himself again and this time he blames his "competitive desire." There is no hope for that man.

- The NASCAR story on the autosport.com website starts like this:

"Matt Kenseth claimed his second NASCAR Sprint Cup win of the season by driving through the carnage of a last-lap pileup at Talladega."

How can you drive through something when you’re already ahead of it? See photo above. Kenseth is in the pink car. The one in front. Which is where he was when the wreck started.

NASCAR: Twelve drivers, five words each; Schumi retires

I work with a guy, Bob Bishop, who’s a great fan of NASCAR racing.

A family man, he still finds time to travel to at least a race a season and is particularly partial to Darlington Raceway and the Bojangles’ Southern 500.

Bob has his own blog and on the eve of the Good Sam Roadside Assistance 500 (what a mouthful, eh?) at Talladega Superspeedway, he’s come up with a unique little feature entitled "Twelve drivers, five words each," in which he lists the 12 Chase for the Championship competitors and makes an editorial comment in five words (unlike some writers he knows – me, for example – who just go on, and on, and on).

Here are two examples:

Blue Deuce: Best driver not named Johnson

Junior: It’s not going to happen

Click here for the rest

Michael Schumacher did today in Japan what he should have done before Lewis Hamilton announced that he's taking his seat at Mercedes in 2013 and announced his retirement at the end of the season.

Click here for details

Good luck to him from now until the finish. Let's hope he exits the sport with dignity and grace and goes on to lead a long and fulfilling life as an ambassador for motorsport and an advocate for better driver training and driver safety.

I made mention the other day of the passing of Chris Economaki, editor and publisher emeritus of National Speed Sport News. In the tribute, I wrote about his appearance at the first Canadian Motorsports Expo in 2007 at the Toronto Congress Centre (it’s since moved to the International Centre).

Economaki appeared on a media panel at the Expo and entertained the audience with his wit and wisdom. He was a remarkable man who was interchangeable among the media; equally at ease while writing his column, talking on the radio or reporting from the pits at NASCAR, Indy car and Formula One races.

Glenn Butt, who promoted the first Expo with his father, Ed (Inside Track Motorsport News magazine is now a partner), emailed me a photo of members of that elite panel that he took at the conclusion of that first presentation - and don’t we all look snazzy in our Motorsports Expo jackets?

From left, in the photo above are: Erik Tomas of Raceline Radio, yours truly, Chris Economaki, Greg MacPherson of Inside Track and Tim Miller of the Hamilton Spectator and Toronto Star Wheels.

Services for Economaki were held earlier this week in New Jersey and an old friend of his, Jim Bray of Brantford, the second Canadian to qualify and race in the Daytona 500, flew in to pay his respects.

Bray was surprised that there was nobody from NASCAR among the 100 or so mourners. "I had a chat with Roger (Penske) and Skip (Matczak, a noted short-track racer) says hello," reported Bray. "And Foyt (A.J.) was a pallbearer. But I didn’t see anybody from NASCAR; just short-track racers and Indy people were there."

The results of that final CASC-Ontario Region Formula 1600 race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park are now official and the 2012 series champion is Michael Adams of Courtice.

Caitlin Johnston of Orangeville, who was tied with Adams going into that final race last Sunday and who led most of the race until she was knocked out of second place and into a tire wall by Adams on the last corner of the last lap, was unable to successfully appeal the result.

Both drivers had wonderful seasons. It’s too bad it ended like it did but, as they say, that’s racing.

Meantime, I have to correct an error I made when I wrote about this series in my Monday entry. It is no longer called "Formula Ford," as Honda engines are also allowed, so the correct name is F1600.

(However, I suggest they go back to the drawing board on that name too, because although the Ford engines are 1600 cubic centimetres, the Honda engines are only 1500 CCs.)

Tony George reportedly seeking to take over IndyCar

One day after CEO Randy Bernard officially released the IZOD IndyCar Series' 2013 schedule on - of all places - the Speed TV cable show Wind Tunnel, the publication Sports Business Journal reported that Bernard is walking on very shaky ground because a group led by Tony George is trying to purchase the series.

The future of the series, and Bernard's tenure as president and CEO, rests - according to the Journal - with Mari Hulman George, who is majority owner of shares and chairman of Hulman & Co. and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway as well as being Tony George's mother.

Because Tony George has surrounded himself with the heavyweights of the Indy car world - Chip Ganassi, Roger Penske and Michael Andretti are reportedly on board - it's a pretty safe bet that his proposal will at least receive serious consideration.

Tony George, you will recall, is the fellow who broke away from CART in the mid-1990s and triggered the Indy car civil war by creating the Indy Racing League.

When CART went bankrupt in 2003, George attempted to purchase the assets in order to kill it but an Indiana judge sided with race team owners Kevin Kalkhoven, Paul Gentilozzi and Gerald Forsythe, who then formed the Champ Car World Series.

In 2008, when Kalhoven discovered others in the Champ Car paddock were quietly talking to George, he made peace with the IRL owner and a merger was eventually negotiated.

But the war had cost both sides millions and when the dust had settled, all was not well with the George family - notably Tony George's three sisters, who were resentful that their brother, in his role as president and CEO, had spent serious family money to fight the war without consulting them.

In a palace coup shortly after the 2009 Indianapolis 500, Tony George was stripped of his title and responsbilities as chairman and CEO of Hulman & Co. and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

A new president and CEO of the Speedway was hired and Bernard was convinced by one of the George sisters in 2010 to leave the professional rodeo series he was running to take over the newly named IndyCar Series.

There have been some successes since but also plenty of mistakes and Indy car insiders have been aware for some time that Tony George was plotting a comeback.  

According to Sports Business Journal, a group led by George that includes Penske, Ganassi, Andretti and one or two other influential owners (including Kevin Kalkhoven) has made a presentation to the board of Hulman & Co. and the Indianapolis Speedway to purchase control of the race series and to run it.

If true, Randy Bernard will be out of a job.

Here's another thing that I suggest will come true. Never again will the following year's Indy car schedule be formally issued to the world on a cable TV program at 9 o'clock on a Sunday night.

If you're ever looking for a definition of bush league, ladies and gentlemen, that was it.

For complete details of the Sports Business Journal story, please click here.

What are all those losers still doing in the big leagues?

I have said for a number of years now that if I ever win big money in the lottery, I will take Otto Sitterly to Indianapolis.

Otto Sitterly? Last Sunday, he won the 56^th Budweiser International Classic 200 for supermodifieds at Oswego Speedway in New York. It was his second in a row and his third in four years.

He had stiff competition. Indy 500 veterans Davey Hamilton and Joe Gosek were in the field, as was NASCAR’s Johnny Benson Jr.

When we shook hands afterward, I asked him if he ever thought about a one-off shot at the 500. “Of course,” he said, “but I don’t have the money.”

What a terrible state of affairs: “I don’t have the money.”

What the hell should money have to do with it?

Once upon a time, Sitterly would have been off to Indianapolis in a heartbeat, simply because of his talent. Gordon Johncock, Johnny Rutherford, A.J. Foyt, the Unser brothers – they all made it to the big time because they could drive and race better than just about anybody else and not because they had the gift of the gab or a pipeline to a Swiss bank account.

I know, times have changed, etc. etc., and employers now look for the total package — race car smarts as well as boardroom savvy.

But the racing has suffered. You can be sure of that, because no longer do drivers have to win in order to feed their families; they’re all under contract and their money goes into the bank after every race whether the finish first or last.

And once they get to the bigs, it seems as if they have jobs for life regardless of how successful, or unsuccessful, they are.

So even if an Otto Sitterly could somehow get close to the top, it’s unlikely he could take the last step because of this tenure system that seems to exist in today’s racing.

Although I like him because I like old guys, being one myself, I have to ask: what is Mark Martin still doing in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series? And just so nobody thinks I’m biased, I will now turn to a young guy. What has Joey Logano done to rate being hired by Roger Penske to drive the No. 22 car next season? Joe Gibbs (and Home Depot) can’t wait to get rid of him and Penske rolls out the red carpet?

What are, in no particular order, Juan Pablo Montoya, Jamie McMurray, Dave Blaney, David Gilliland, David Ragan, Bobby Labonte, Regan Smith and about 10 others still doing occupying full-time rides in the top stock-car racing series in the United States?

Because they smile nicely?

I mean, it has to be that because they're certainly not proving anything in their racing cars.

The worst is Casey Mears. How does that man keep getting himself hired?

And it’s not just NASCAR. What is Oriol Servia still doing in IndyCar? And Rubens Barrichello. I mean, they have done nothing. No-thing. Yes, they are  “steady performers,” but they don’t win races and that is what auto racing should be all about: winning.

If you don’t win, you shouldn't get to continue playing.

I know a whole bunch of drivers — Ryan Coniam, Kyle Larson, Michael Adams — who are ready, willing and able to take their places.

They all have one thing in common: they are winners.

Starting with Otto Sitterly.

Norris Note: The photo of Otto Sitterly in this column was taken at Oswego Speedway by Lauren Long of the Syracuse Post-Standard.

Lewis Hamilton, Jimmie Johnson are class acts

WEEKEND HEADLINES:

1.  Hamilton had F1 field covered from the start

2. Johnson and Knaus in a class by themselves

3. A.J. Allmendinger done like dinner

It’s ironic that A.J. Allmendinger’s drug case was back in the public eye on a day when two of the finest examples of clean living, talent and determination won races in their respective disciplines: Jimmie Johnson in NASCAR stock cars and Lewis Hamilton in F1.

Johnson won his third race of the Sprint Cup season and his fourth Brickyard 400 when he won the race at Indianapolis Sunday.

And Hamilton won his second race of the F1 season and his third Grand Prix of Hungary.

Allmendinger, lastly, finally got what he deserved after his drug test came back positive: a public tongue-lashing.   

1. FORMULA ONE IN HUNGARY

From the moment he first drove out on the track in Hungary on Friday, Lewis Hamilton was faster in his McLaren-Mercedes than anybody else and he carried that through all weekend to win the Grand Prix on Sunday. Results and details here 

Kimi Raikkonen finished second and Roman Grosjean was third for Lotus-Renault. Defending world champion Sebastien Vettel was fourth for Red Bull-Renault while Fernando Alonso was fifth.

The race was largely uneventful, with analyst David Coulthard comparing it to a game orf chess, which he said he found "terribly exciting."

Thanks for the hype, David.

I’m in shock, however. I know that F1 shuts down in August so everybody can have a vacation – and that’s fine. It used to be three weeks. Now, however, it is up to five weeks.

The next race in F1 will not happen until Sept. 2, in Belgium. I expect severe withdrawal to set in around Aug. 18th.

What language do they speak in Hungary? Hungarian, right? So how come the podium ceremony was conducted all in English?

Wow! What a surprise! None other than opera tenor Placido Domingo appeared on the podium to interview the drivers!

I thought it was wonderful for the spectators (if they could understand what was being said – it was in English, again, remember?) and so much better than whisking the drivers off to some interview room where nobody actually at the event could hear them answer questions about their race.

However, Domingo was nervous, English is not his first language (Spanish is) and the questions were beyond superficial. So by all means continue doing that but have someone (Coulthard, perhaps?) doing the asking and if the race is in a country where English is not the first language then have a translator present.

But most of the drivers are multilingual anyway, so it really shouldn't be a problem.

Team orders at Lotus? I don’t think so. Raikkonen took second place coming out of the pits from his teammate, Grosjean, and ran him off the track while doing so.

Now, I like the Kimster. But he ticked off his team after the race by complaining that they had failed to remind him about using his KERS on the second start (the first start was aborted when Michael Schumacher stopped on the grid).

I immediately yelled at the TV: WHY DID THEY HAVE TO REMIND YOU? AREN’T YOU THE DRIVER???

I say this every year but I’ll say it again. The first crack in the Iron Curtain, which led to the eventual fall of totalitarian-rule communism in most of eastern Europe and western Asia, came in 1986 when Formula One, the most capitalistic of sports, first went to race in Communist Hungary.

The symbolism was somehow lost on the world’s press.

Michael Schumacher had a miserable day. He got to the grid and the lights flashed yellow instead of going to red so he shut off his car because his engine was running hot. Then he had a flat, and he got a pit road speeding penalty and – well, he retired.

As I have reported previously, in an interview with Canadian reporters at the time of the Canadian GP, Mercedes boss Norbert Haug did not seem keen on Schumacher continuing his F1 career with Mercedes beyond the end of this season.

I don’t think Michael wants to quit – again – until he is absolutely sure he is ready. And, most of the time, he's right up there. He's had a pole this year, and a podium.

That’s why I am even more convinced than ever that he will return to Ferrari to support Alonso and maybe capture a little more glory for himself. I know there’s talk about Raikkonen going there, but Alonso is No. 1 and I don’t think he will stand to have another No. 1 in the team, which would be the status and opportunity afforded Kimi.

Schumi would also be No. 1, but really No. 2, and everybody would know it.

In addition, why would Raikkonen want to leave Lotus just as it appears to be on the rise? Any race now, Kimi or Grosjean will win. It would be just plain foolish for him to go.

I love Coulthard’s commentary. He is so much more observant, and his personality so much more delightful, than Martin Brundle. Coulthard is probably the best "sidekick" since the days of James Hunt holding up Murray Walker, although on occasion he does go a little over the top (see chess analogy,  above).

But most of the time, he's spot-on and highly entertaining.

Example: he’s talking about the cars losing two kilos of weight every lap as the fuel burns off but he doesn’t put it exactly that way. "It’s like losing a bag of sugar every time you pass the start line," he said.

I think that sort of thing is classic.

Fernando Alonso turned 31 Sunday but he’s still leading the world championship standings and, in fact, driving like a 21-year-old. He got hung up behind Sergio Perez for half a lap before just slicing and dicing his way past the young fellow and putting him firmly in his place.

You could almost hear the two-time world champion say, as he blew by: "Outtamyway, junior!"

Immediately post-race, Hamilton greeted his old buddy Raikkonen with the following words:

"This is like old times, Kimi!"

And why would he say that?

Because every time Hamilton has won this Hungarian race – 2012, 2009, 2007 – the driver who finished second was none other than Kimi Raikkonen.

2. NASCAR AT INDY

Jimmie Johnson had absolutely no trouble winning the Brickyard 400 on Sunday and he and crew chief/team manager Chad Knaus served notice they are a force to be reckoned with so far as this year’s Sprint Cup championship is concerned.

Johnson won five straight titles before being dethroned in 2011 and nobody will be surprised, particularly after Sunday’s display of dominance, if he isn’t champion again this season.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished fourth (results and details here) and is now leading the championship standings, something he hasn’t done since 2004.

Junior said after the race that to be in first place is nice, but he wants to win more races. Being consistent is one thing, winning races is another, he said.

I couldn’t agree more. His latest losing streak is now up to five – and counting.

They promoted the Brickyard weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway as a racing extravaganza. The economy in the United States really has to be in the outhouse because the racing didn’t attract much more than flies.

Starting with the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series on Friday, which was attended by exactly no one (an exaggeration, but I suggest there were more people in the pits than there were on the grounds), through the Nationwide Series race Saturday, which drew a sparse crowd, to the Sprint Cup race on Sunday in which the grandstands were about a third full, I suggest if you took the spectators from all three races and added them up, you still wouldn’t fill all the seats in the place.

Sebastien Bourdais won the Grand Am race, by the way; Brad Keselowski won the Nationwide, giving Roger Penske his first stock car victory at Indy.

While the Speedway is perfect for IndyCar racing – 200 mph-plus speeds all the way around the 2.5-mile facility – the stock cars seem to lumber around there. They have to brake going into the turns and the corners are nearly flat, compared to high-banked stock car tracks, so you don’t see "pack" racing there like you do at other circuits like Daytona or Talladega.

As a result, you don’t get to see "big one" crashes like you do at those other speedways and NASCAR fans, as a result, might find the whole Indianapolis thing somewhat boring.

Brian France is on record as saying he wants more action when the next generation of NASCAR cars debuts in 2013. Whether the Indianapolis Motor Speedway will continue to be on the Sprint Cup schedule, as a result, remains to be seen.

If I hear one more NASCAR driver or announcer say that Indy blows them away because of the "history" and "tradition," I think I’ll scream.

The history is because the Speedway is more than 100 years old. The history is because of the Indianapolis 500, which is not a stock car race.

They turned their backs on the tradition when they started to drive their cars out of the garage area to the pits, just like they do at every other NASCAR track.

If they loved the tradition so much, they’d still be pushing the cars out, with the drivers walking beside them, like they did when they first went to Indy back in the Nineties.

So stop with the platitudes. It really gets tiring.

Tony Stewart is the great racing driver in the world. Well, at least the busiest.

Friday he practiced at Indy. Saturday he qualified for the Brickyard. Saturday night he won a sprint car race at Eldora Speedway in Ohio (which he owns, incidentally). Sunday he raced from 28^th position to tenth in the Brickyard (only Clint Bowyer passed as many cars). Monday (today) he will test at Michigan for the upcoming Sprint Cup race there. Monday night he’ll be at Ohsweken Speedway on the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford for a local sprint car race. Tuesday, he’ll be back in Michigan for tire testing and then Tuesday night he’ll return to Ohsweken to race in a World of Outlaws meet, a race he won a year ago.

Wednesday, I betcha he’ll be back at his shop in the Charlotte area, giving hell to his Sprint Cup engineers for not having a better-prepared car for him at Indianapolis.

3. If there was ever any doubt, Allmendinger is out of NASCAR

I said it not once but twice last week: A.J. Allmendinger made a humongous error by not standing up and taking his medicine in public after he failed the second half of his NASCAR-administered drug test.

His business advisers let him down, his corporate partners let him down and his friends let him down by not insisting that he call a news conference and answer each and every question as open and honestly as he could about what caused NASCAR to administer the test in the first place, exactly what he had been ingesting and what he planned to do about it.

It might not have done him any good in the end, but it would likely have saved him (and his reputation) the lambasting that he finally got from some of NASCAR’s heavy hitters on Sunday morning.

All week, his business manager kept putting out press releases suggesting that this whole thing was an honest mistake, inferring that it was a fluke, that although the two tests had been positive that they had both been just an eensy, weensy bit over the legal limit and Allmendinger and his people "would get to the bottom" of whatever it was that caused him to test positive.

And, of course, later in the week, A.J. himself got active on Twitter to thank people for their support and to suggest that he was as mystified as anyone else as to what had happened.

Sure.

Sunday morning on NASCAR Raceday on the Speed Channel, Darrell Waltrip, Kenny Wallace, Kyle Petty and Larry McReynolds had had enough – enough of the political correctness ("we’re all behind A.J. in his fight to reinstate himself" and yada, yada, yada) and enough of the ongoing suggestions that Allmendinger would go to a 28-day treatment program and slot right back into the No. 22 Sprint Cup car.

In short, led by Kyle Petty, they said he doesn’t have a hope in hell of ever getting a NASCAR Sprint Cup ride again and the only way he’d find himself back in even the Nationwide Series would be to show up with $4 or $6 million of sponsorship dollars and even then it would probably be chancy.

Waltrip started the piling on by saying the NASCAR substance abuse program is foolproof. And McRaynolds added that despite suggestions that Allmendinger’s reading was just a little over the limit, it’s like being pregnant: "You’re either pregnant or you’re not."

Petty, however, made the most biting comments.

"This is NASCAR and this is racing and this is competition and this is somebody else’s money. We’re spending corporate America’s dollars on this and he’s not going to come back. . . I’ll say it . . . I don’t mind saying it. . . I’m glad he’s on the ‘Road to Recovery’ (program) but he might as well be on a weight-loss program when it comes to coming back in NASCAR because I don’t see any way for him to come back to this sport."

So what is the lesson here for the next guy?

When George Washington’s father caught him cutting the bark off the cherry tree (or so the story goes . . .) the future first president of the United States ’fessed up; he didn’t take the Fifth Amendment, which is a life lesson that just about everybody has forgotten (including another U.S. president who had to resign when caught in a lie, or lies).

Allmendinger had his chance and he blew it – in more ways than one.

And this business about him sliding back into A.J. Foyt’s car over in the IndyCar series?

I can’t see all the other drivers in IndyCar being all that happy about that scenario, can you? And since one of the most powerful owners in IndyCar – if not the most powerful – also happens to be Allmendinger’s employer in NASCAR, I would suggest he’s going to have to pay many more dues before being welcomed back there too.

This has just been a big mess from start to finish.

Okay, why are most observers angry about this – including me?

Because this is the Sprint Cup. This is the top of the mountain. This is the Indy 500 and the world drivers’ championship and Pikes Peak and every great motor race in the world all rolled into one.

Every kid who ever sat behind the wheel of a racing car has prayed for an opportunity like the one handed on a silver platter to A.J. Allmendinger.

I mean, it’s not like he earned it. He was not exactly a winner in stock cars. But he was given the chance of a lifetime to become one and he pissed it away – literally.

When he was nailed for DUI several years ago, he did the right thing by accepting full responsibility. But if he’d been smart, he would have stopped everything he was doing right there – cold. No more booze and no more whatever.

I know it’s easier said than done for some people. But millions of those people have changed their habits and changed their behaviour, particularly when handed the key to the kingdom.

A.J. Allmendinger obviously didn’t and that’s why the vitriol is as loud and as shrill as it is.

Because he was stupid and he blew it.

Sam Hornish Jr. will get the ride in the 22 car for the remaining 17 races to show what at he can do. If he wins or has top fives or top tens, he might get the ride in 2013. But if he falters – and remember: he’s no rookie – then his 15 minutes will soon be up, so far as Roger Penske in NASCAR is concerned.

And why Sam the rest of the way? Because Penske trusts him. He knows Sam is clean, sober, polite, co-operative and media-trained to a fault.

And if not Sam for the rest of 2012, who?

Robbie Gordon? Casey Mears? Elliott Sadler? Ryan Briscoe (only kidding)?

If I’m Roger, the only guy I look at it the short term, besides Sam, is Trevor Bayne.

The rest of them are journeymen and Penske wants, and needs, a winner.

In one of my columns/blogs last week, I said I would make a suggestion in this Monday Morning Roundup about how to save Canada’s Formula One race.

But, as they say, there have been developments and this is long enough. I’ll save my suggestions for later in the week.

NASCAR suspends Kurt Busch

SCOTT DIXON WINS THE DETROIT GRAND PRIX. PHOTO BY GETTY IMAGES

BULLETIN:  NASCAR today suspended Kurt Busch until June 13 and has extended his probation until the end of the year after the driver threatened to assault a reporter following the Nationwide Series race at Dover last Saturday.

Busch will not be allowed to drive in any of the NASCAR-sanctioned races at Pocono Raceway in Pennsylvania next weekend.

According to NASCAR, Busch violated Section 12-1 (actions detrimental to stock car racing; violation of probation; verbal abuse to a media member) of the 2012 NASCAR Rule Book.

Busch had been placed on probation May 15 for his actions during the May 12 Sprint Cup Series event at Darlington Raceway. That probation was scheduled to end July 25.

Norris note: it should have been longer (see original post below).

Now, I have to get a few things off my chest before I start the Monday Morning Report:

Note to newspaper editors, radio program managers and everybody else who has control over content going into their publications or out on the air:

It is not the Montreal Grand Prix. It is the Grand Prix of Canada, or the Canadian Grand Prix, at Montreal.

You see, and hear, this everywhere. On the pages of my own newspaper, most recently this weekend in an article written by a professor at the University of Montreal, this race was incorrectly identified again.

Grands Prix are not awarded to cities. They are awarded to countries. That’s why we have the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, the Australian Grand Prix at Melbourne and the Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal.

We do not have the Magny Cours Grand Prix, the Monte Carlo Grand Prix or the Barcelona Grand Prix. It is wrong, wrong, wrong to continually refer to it as the Montreal Grand Prix.

Thank you.

Paul Tracy, Tommy Kendall, Adam Alexander and Dave Despain were discussing Kurt Busch on Wind Tunnel last night and, once again, everybody missed the point.

Never mind everything that’s happened previously. On Saturday, at Dover, on pit road in a media scrum, Kurt Busch threatened a man with bodily harm. He threatened to beat him up and said the only reason he didn’t was because he was on NASCAR probation.

That’s not funny.

NASCAR should throw him out of the sport for that. (I guarantee if any athlete in any other sport threatened to beat up a reporter, he or she would be suspended indefinitely.)

I don’t know where any of the four people mentioned at the beginning of this sequence get off constantly talking about personal confrontation as being "good for the sport."

Who says?

The most popular form of motor racing in the world is Formula One racing and when did you ever hear about a "feud" in F1? Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso, Jenson Button and the rest all have too much class for that.

I suppose if you are interested in appealing to people with an IQ of 50, then guys like Kurt Busch and his brother (who once threatened to kill Denny Hamlin, remember?) can be your role models.

But it’s 2012 and Madison Ave. is what fuels NASCAR now and the people who sit on the boards of directors of the corporations who finance big-league auto racing are not impressed when guys like Kurt Busch threaten to beat the shit out of somebody.

"And I’d do it if I wasn’t on probation."

Lovely.

Here are the results of Sunday’s races, and other news:

– The first of two red flags Sunday (we’ll get to the second, more serious, one later) came early in the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Dover, Del., when Tony Stewart tried to go slip underneath Landon Cassil’s car in turn two and lost control.

When the smoke cleared (pardon the pun), 13 cars had been involved in The Big One, the track was blocked and NASCAR was forced to throw the first red flag of 2012. It was out for about 20 minutes before the race was restarted on Lap 10 of the 400-lap Fedex 400.

Stewart was the only Chase for the Championship contender involved. The rest continued in the race that was won, in the end, by Jimmie Johnson, with Kevin Harvick second, Matt Kenseth third, Dale Earnhardt Jr. fourth and Clint Bowyer fifth.

Pole sitter Mark Martin wound up 14^th.

Lot of empty seats at Dover but look at any baseball stadium – except maybe where the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs or the Dodgers play – and they’re all half-empty so I don’t think it’s any particular reflection on the popularity of auto racing.

I used to think so, but not anymore. The economy is in the dumper in the U.S. - unemployment is above 8 per cent down there and climbing - and people can't afford to buy the tickets any more.

That's why, along with just about everything else, things are so much cheaper down there. For instance (and I know I'm getting ahead of myself here), a Sunday-only grandstand ticket for the Detroit Indy car race cost $65; in Toronto, a Sunday-only gold seat for the Honda Indy will set you back $125.

– The NASCAR Canadian Tire Series race at Circuit ICAR at Mirabel Airport north of Montreal was won in a green-white-checkered finish by Andrew Ranger of Roxton Pond, Que., followed by F.R. Fitzpatrick of Cambridge and Scott Steckly of Milverton.

It was Ranger’s 17^th career victory in the series and his 12^th road course victory.

L.P. Dumoulin of Trois-Rivieres was fourth and D.J. Kennington of St. Thomas finished fifth.

The stock car series will next race at the Speedway at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park on Sat., June 16.

– Robert Wickens of Guelph and Toronto, driving in the German Touring Car Series (DTM) for Mercedes, finished 13^th after qualifying 19^th in the race Sunday at Spielberg, Austria.

The race was won by Edoardo Mortara, driving for Audi.

Wickens and a second Canadian in the race, Bruno Spengler, now of France but formerly of Ste-Hippolite, Que., collided at one point and Spengler was eventually forced to retire.

– The Red Bull F1 team has been told to fill in the holes in the floor of its chassis before the Canadian GP next weekend. Red Bull’s Helmut Marko has been quoted as saying, however, that Red Bull planned to use a different floor design at Montreal anyway.

– The Nissan Delta Wing completed its first successful test at the Circuit de la Sarthe Sunday where the 24 Hours of Le Mans will be held in two weeks.

The car ran 54 laps of the eight-plus mile raceway without incident and had a best time of 3 minutes, 47.980 seconds, about three seconds off where it will have to be in order to safely compete in the marathon.

Invited by the organizers as a "Garage 56" entry to showcase new and/or innovative technologies, the DeltaWing features half the weight, half the horsepower and half the aerodynamic drag of a typical prototype and is expected to cut fuel and tire consumption significantly.

– On a sad note, Roy Salvadori, who won the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans and also drove in F1, died at his retirement home in Monte Carlo. He was 90.

– Okay, here we go.

James Hinchcliffe of Oakville is coming into the Toronto Star building today (Monday) to do a little public relations work in support of next month’s Honda Indy Toronto.

I sure hope he’ll have calmed down by the time he gets here because he was spitting mad after Sunday’s Detroit Grand Prix in which his glorious second-season record in the IZOD IndyCar Series came to a sudden halt against a tire wall because of the incompetence of the people who run that series.

Before I continue down this particular road, the race – when it eventually finished – was won by Scott Dixon, with Dario Franchitti second and Simon Pagenaud third. It featured a two-hour red flag and was shortend to 60 laps from the original 90.

Oh, and a great piece of driving by Indy 500 winner Franchitti who was fighting the 'flu and who fought his way almost to the front from 15th on the grid. It was the second one-two finish in a row for Target Chip Ganassi Racing, too.

Hicnchliffe, meantime, hadn’t been having the greatest of weekends anyway. His record of always qualifying for the Firestone Fast Six at road and street-course races came to an end Saturday when he brushed the wall of the circuit at Belle Park Island in the middle of the Detroit River and did some slight damage to his car.

As a result, he went off 14^th in the race.

At least he got to start when they threw the green flag, though. The other Canadian in the race, Alex Tagliani of Montreal, qualified a wonderful third but then an electrical glitch prevented his engine from firing up and he was still in the pits when everybody else went racing.

Tag eventually recovered and, to his great credit, fought his way up to finish tenth.

But back to Hinchcliffe.

So they’re all racing around and he’s hovering in the top twelve and all of a sudden his car doesn’t turn at a particular corner and wham! Into the tires he goes.

To say he was miffed would be an understatement. Not only did his record of having been the only driver in the series to have completed every lap of every race run to date come to an end, but he could have been hurt.

"I’ve neve seen anything quite like this," he told a TV interviewer shortly after he crashed, which brought out a red flag six laps later (he crashed on lap 39 and the field circulated behind the pace car for six laps while IndyCar officials tired to figure out what to do).

"We saw (the track) start to come up early (in the race), they had debris flags down in turn five and turn nine, these giant pieces of this tar that had been ripped up . . . I guess there was nothing they could do about it so they just let us keep running.

"It was like playing Russian Roulette and I just pulled the bullet. I came through turn six and a new chunk had been ripped up and it had a big piece of concrete attached to the bottom of it, it hooked under the front of the car and lifted the front end off the ground and that was it."

Now, how did this happen? Who was supposed to perform the due dilligence to ensure the track at Belle Isle would be able to handle 25 Indy cars running in a pack?

It’s not like this is the first time Indy cars have run on street courses. You look for certain things because of screw-ups that have happened before. I mean, it’s not the first time that tar/pavement has been sucked up like that. It happened at Toronto eons ago; it happened at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve a year or two ago.

Hinchcliffe was caught out on Lap 39 but during the red flag, other drivers talked about dodging bits and pieces that had been flying around all race. Some pointed to where their cars had been damaged and at least one – Tony Kanaan – complained about a piece of pavement bouncing off his helmet.

So, what would have happened if a piece had cut through a visor and the driver been killed or injured, as almost happened to poor Felipe Massa when he was hit by a spring. 

Maybe nobody wants to talk about this, but it borders on negligence. Somebody should be disciplined. It was an embarrassment and a disgrace.

The drivers all kept talking about wanting to restart the race "for the fans." Most of the TV audience was long gone (I think TSN2 was the only network in North America to stay with the program from start to finish) and more than half the fans on site had packed up and were in their cars, driving away from Belle Isle before the race even got going again.

But it should never have come to that. When is this series going to stop shooting itself in the foot?