Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

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?

Tag third, Hinch 14th for Detroit Grand Prix

For the first time this IZOD IndyCar Series season, James Hinchcliffe of Oakville did not make it into final Fast Six qualifying for a road or street course race and, as a result, will start Sunday’s Detroit Grand Prix in 14^th place.

But Montreal’s Alex Tagliani had his best qualifying attempt of the 2012 season when he finished third in Saturday time trials behind pole winner Scott Dixon and second-fastest Will Power.

Dixon, of course, drives for powerhouse Target Chip Ganassi Racing while Power leads the Team Penske contingent. Tagliani drives for the lesser-funded Bryan Herta Motorsport and is finally coming into his own with Honda power after having started the season stuck with the under-perfoming Lotus engine.

Andretti Autosport driver Hinchcliffe, who will enter the race tied with Helio Castroneves for second in the standings behind Power, was disappointed with his performance. He brushed the wall in the final corner on his second lap of the first round of qualifying and the car didn’t work as well afterward.

"I did the exact same thing at St. Peterburg and the car was okay there but this damaged the left rear. It was an easy fix, and the guys were able to fix it, so we would have been ready to go back out in the next round.

"With 60 seconds to go, our first lap was still in the top six but we just got bumped at the end. We should have been there (in the Fast Six) with Ryan (Hunter-Reay, his teammate, who qualified sixth).

Indy 500 winner Dario Franchitti will go off 15^th, one position behind Hinchcliffe.

The lone woman in the field, Simona De Silvestro, who is the last remaining Lotus driver in the series, will start 22^nd in the 25-car field.

The series has lost a car since Indianapolis. Dragon Racing, which employs Katherine Legge and Sebastien Bourdais, went to court to get out of its Lotus contract and got Chevrolet engines for Indy.

But following the race, Chevrolet said it could only supply the team with engines for one car through the end of the season so the drivers are alternating, with Legge concentrating on the ovals and Bourdais the street and road courses.

Bourdais qualified 10^th on Saturday.

Other racing:

– For the second Indy Lights race in a row, David Ostella of Maple crashed out of the contest early. He finished 13^th and last at Belle Isle Saturday after qualifying eighth.

– Mark Martin won the pole for Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Dover, Del. It was his third pole of the season and the fifth he’s won at Dover. Jimmie Johnson will start beside him on the front row, with Ryan Newman third, Clint Bowyer fourth and Matt Kenseth fifth.

Kurt Busch once again got into it with a reporter after the race. After watching Busch exchange words with another driver on pit road after the race, and after he (Busch) brought up the subject of probation, a writer asked him if he was racing as hard as he could, considering he was on probation, and Busch replied:

"(Probation) refrains me from not beating the shit out of you right now, because you ask me stupid questions."

Kurt Busch is a professional entertainer and sportsman who should know by now that there are no stupid questions. He obviously can’t stand the heat so it’s time for him to get out of the kitchen.

– Joey Logano won the Nationwide Series race at Dover, with Ryan Truex Jr. second and Brian Scott third. Sam Hornish and Danica Patrick had another run-in, this time with Hornish putting her into the wall.

Logano is dominating the Nationwide Series this season but is in danger of losing his ride in the Sprint Cup because of poor results.

– Rain curtailed qualifying at Circuit ICAR for the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series race on Sunday so owner points determined the lineup with Scott Steckly starting on pole, with D.J. Kennington right beside him. J.R. Fitzpatrick, who won the season opener at Mosport on May 24 (18^th, really) weekend will go off third.

– Joao Barboss and Darren Law won the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series race at Belle Isle, finishing first in Daytona Prototype. Jordan Taylor and Paul Edwards were first in GT, driving a Chevrolet Camaro.

Jeff Segal and Emil Assentato, driving the AIM Autosport of Woodbridge Ferrari 458 (below), finished fourth in GT but continue to lead the standings in that class.

PHOTO BY JOHN jlarsen@photograffics.com]

Farewell Dick Berggren, ace pit reporter

Dick Berggren, who will retire Sunday as a pit road reporter for NASCAR on FOX  at the completion of the FedEx 400, is a journalist in the true sense of the word.

And what’s my definition of a journalist? Someone who is interchangeable among the media.

Yes, that means most of the "journalists" you encounter during your daily lives – the radio and TV reporters, the anchors, sports editors on newspapers, editors-in-chief of major magazines – aren’t, even if they like to call themselves that.

Like the late Pierre Berton, who wrote newspaper columns, books of Canadian history and magazine profiles, conducted interviews on radio and was host of any number of television programs – and he did much of that simultaneously – Berggren, who turned 70 last weekend, has a lengthy list of accomplishments in his curriculum vitae.

Besides being a writer and photographer (and a former college professor, by the way), he was the editor of Stock Car Racing magazine and the late, lamented, Open Wheel magazine before taking his talents and knowledge to television.

And do you know what sets him apart from most of the other reporters covering auto racing (and most other sports, come to think of it)? Like the original ABC pit road reporter and colour commentator, Chris Economaki, he actually asks questions of the people he’s interviewing.

I don’t believe I’ve ever heard Berggren start a question with the worst four words in the English language:

"Talk to me about . . ."

So where did Berggren (known for years as "Dr." Dick Berggren because of a PhD in psychology he earned at Tufts University in Boston) come by his knowledge of virtually every kind of car racing going?

Because he’s a fan, primarily, who inhales everything he reads or hears about the sport. Second, unlike most "journalists" covering racing, he’s been Out There: for more than 20 years, he raced stock cars, sprint cars and (regular readers of this column know what’s coming next . . .) supermodifieds.

In fact, Berggren was one of a number of owners and drivers – future NASCAR stars Geoff Bodine and Tim Richmond among them – who were caught out in the late 1970s (he was building one) when Oswego Speedway in northern New York banned rear-engine supers, a decision (along with one made by the U.S. Auto Club to ban rear-engine sprints and midgets) that had a profoundly negative effect on the progression of short-track oval racers to Indianapolis.

But I digress.

Berggren was inducted into the U.S. National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in 2002 - he's also a proud member of other halls - and says that among the projects he’s got planned for his post-NASCAR career (as well as visiting as many short tracks as he can) is the building of an auto racing museum at New Hampshire Motor Speedway to celebrate the accomplishments of the racing community in the U.S. northeast.

Talking about accomplishments, I think his personal biggest and best was the founding in 1980 of the magazine Open Wheel. As I write this, I’m holding in my hands Vol. 1, No. 1 that is, as the cover says, "a collector’s first edition."

The cover photo was taken by Mike Arthur at Ascot Raceway in Gardena, Calif., and shows Ronnie Shuman in full flight in a sprint car on the dirt (which means sideways). Inside are features on Steve Kinser, Sammy Swindell, Gary Bettenhausen, Roger Penske’s racing operation and lots and lots of some of the greatest racing photographs you’ll find anywhere.

Berggren, in his job during the Seventies as editor of Stock Car Racing, had increased – over time – the number of articles and features on open wheel racing appearing in that publication. At some point, the people in charge of Lopez Publications, which published Stock Car and other titles, gave him the co-ahead and Open Wheel was born, first as a quarterly and then monthly.

I don’t have a complete collection, but I have lots and lots. And all of them, in one way or another, trigger a memory.

– Vol. 1, No. 3, published in early 1981, has a striking cover photo of the late Stan Fox at the wheel of his Pabst Blue Ribbon beer-sponsored midget. Several months later, at Indianapolis Raceway Park for the Night Before the 500 midget races, I got to meet Fox. I’d consumed a little too much of his sponsor’s product, though, and in my enthusiasm I made an offer to buy the car. He was very polite about it, but told me to get lost.

– The May 1994 issue has a photo of Mares Stellfox on the cover. She ran with the ARDC midget club. When I announced at Oswego Speedway in the Nineties, I was sometimes a wise guy. One night I was interviewing her and I said, "So tell me Mares, what’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?" And she got me good. "Norris, " she said, "I might be a girl to you but when I put on my helmet, I’m one of the boys."

– In the May 1986 magazine, Berggren himself wrote an incredible story about an incredible racer named Jan Opperman who’d twice suffered grievous head injuries and was confined to his parents’ home, requiring constant care. Opperman was one of the most interesting people you’d want to meet - a pot smoker who was a serious Christian. Before his second accident, I saw him at a sprint car race at the New York State Fairgrounds. It was delayed by rain. To fill in the time, Opperman borrowed the infield announcer’s microphone and delivered a sermon.

– The November 1988 Open Wheel contains a pleasant surprise. There, on Page 16, is an article about Canadian supermodified racer Gary Morton by – wait for it – me. Over the years, I was fortunate to have three articles published in Open Wheel (one on Warren Coniam and another about one of the great women of our time, Proud Mary Copeland of Indianapolis, Ind., who is now Mary Walsh of Knoxville, Tenn., who held up the start of a midget race at IRP one night by – well, use your imagination).

But enough about me. The really great writers who appeared in Open Wheel were John Sawyer (his stuff brings tears to my eyes every time I read it; in what other publication could you read Sawyer writing about Langhorne Speedway, or Don Branson, or Eddie Sachs? Bruce Ellis, Andy Fuscoe, Terry Reed (he wrote a great piece about the widow of Jerry Hoyt, who was killed at Oklahoma City about two weeks after they were married, after only knowing each other for about a month; she still visited his grave every day – years later) and Al Stilley, who wrote so lovingly and well about Indy cars.

And yes, Open Wheel’s racing photography was breathtaking: how about Jim Hurtubise powering out of four at Terre Haute in 1976 (photo by Steve Ellis) , or Steve Chassey at Springfield in 1986 (photo by Don Figler). You could frame those pictures and hang them on the wall in your living room because they were art.

Sure, there were the really bad times, too, and Berggren handled those stories with dignity and grace. His farewell to supermodified king Jimmy Shampine, an innovator like no other who was killed in, of all things, a modified race, still brings a lump to my throat.

I could go on and on – but it’s time to stop, just as Open Wheel itself was stopped shortly after the turn of the century when the publication changed corporate hands and the new owners killed it off.

So when Dick Berggren walks away from Dover International Speedway on Sunday afternoon, after completing his last assignment for NASCAR on FOX, I hope there’s something else on his mind besides that auto racing museum in New Hampshire.

Yes, I know he’s got Speedway Illustrated magazine going, and probably a book or two to write (an autobiography would be nice) but unless there’s a non-compete clause floating around in a contract he signed somewhere, I think he should give serious thought to reviving that much-missed magazine.

How does Open Wheel 2012 sound, Dr. Dick?

Time for an IndyCar green-white-checkers finish

It’s time for the IZOD IndyCar Series to go to a green-white-checkers finish.

The reason people were booing at the conclusion of the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday was not (I don’t think) because Dario Franchitti won it for the third time but because, for the third consecutive year, the race ended under the yellow.

This used to be the way it was in NASCAR but they wised up after the fans became restless and demanded change. The result is very exciting: a flat-out dash for the cash over two laps, winner taking all. The fans like it and that’s what it’s about.

The purists will argue against it, of course, but the IndyCar brass should not listen to them. This is show business and it’s 2012 and it’s time for a change.

The fans want to see racing right to the end, so give it to them.

And now, the rest of the news:

This weekend, starting with the Detroit Grand Prix, the Indy cars will begin four consecutive weekends of racing. Following a weekend off, they'll then reconvene in Toronto for the Honda Indy July 6-8. The Detroit race, incidentally, will be televised by ABC and TSN2 at 3:30 p.m. Sunday.

Said Oakville’s James Hinchcliffe, who qualified second at Indy, finished sixth and who will be racing at Detroit's Belle Isle Park for the first time:

"The first four races (of the season) went very well for us. The Go Daddy car has been very competitive on road and street courses. Coming off the '500,' where we had the pace as a team but not the (race) results we wanted, we are very anxious to get back on track and get the Andretti Autosport cars back up front. This is my first time racing at Belle Isle so I'm looking forward to learning a new track. Being a hometown race for Team Chevy, it will be very important race for us and we'll all work hard to get a Bow Tie back in victory lane."

Did You Know: Hinchcliffe, who is tied for second in the standings, is the only driver to have finished every lap of every race in the first five IZOD IndyCar Series events. He is also the only driver to have qualified inside the Firestone Fast Six in each of the first four road and street circuit events this season.

Speaking of other Did You Know stuff from the Indy 500, the IndyCar media service sent these tidbits along this week: Dario Franchitti joined Helio Castroneves as three-time Indianapolis 500 winners in the fewest number of starts (nine). Louis Meyer won for the third time in his ninth start, but it was his 10th Indianapolis 500 because he drove as a relief driver in his rookie year. … Jean Alesi was the third driver in Indianapolis 500 history to start and finish 33rd in the race. Both Dempsey Wilson (1960) and Ronnie Duman (1966) started and finished 33rd. Duman was caught up in that huge crash on the main straight in ’66 that eliminated nearly a dozen cars. … The 500 on Sunday represented the eighth time that Castroneves completed the full 500-mile distance. He joined Ted Horn and A.J. Foyt as the only drivers to have completed the full 500 miles eight times without the aid of a relief driver. The use of relief drivers was a common practice at the Indianapolis 500 before World War II.

The winner of the first Indy 500, Ray Harroun (who was relieved for 35 laps mid-race by Cyrus Patschke) received $10,000 cash, which was a fortune in 1911. Dario Franchitti won $2.47 million last Sunday, which is good but not great in 2012.

Speaking of people named Hinchcliffe, James's father Jeremy did a great pre-500 interview on the CBC last Sunday morning. Care to listen? Go to www.cbc.ca/freshair and click on the Sun., May 27, show (on the main web page). 

A big weekend is coming up at Toronto Motorsport Park. The Canadian Motorcycle Drag Racing Association will present the Eastern Nationals. Should be fun. And the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series stock cars will be at Circuit ICAR (Mirabel Airport), north of Montreal.

Drag racer Ike Maier of Vaughan will be driving not one but two top fuel dragsters this season. He'll see action this coming weekend in the NHRA Full Throttle Toyota Supernationals at Englishtown, N.J., driving the Nitro Express dragster of John LaPorte Racing. That car was previously piloted by Antron Brown. At other NHRA meets this season, including the U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis on Labour Day weekend, Maier will be strapping into the cockpit of the Paton Racing top fueler, a ride he's handled in previous seasons. "I have certainly got my hands full this year," said Maier, which is a bit of an understatement if you ask me.

Meantime, last weekend in Calgary, constantly changing weather conditions didn’t slow down reigning Canadian Rally Champions Antoine L’Estage of St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., and co-driver Nathalie Richard of Halifax who notched their second victory in the 2012 Canadian title championship with a resounding win at the Rocky Mountain Rally.
 
L’Estage and Richard wheeled their Yokohama-sponsored Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X through rain, snow, mud and dry conditions over the two-day event to post a decisive 1 minute 39-second victory, their third consecutive sweep of the event and the fifth time L’Estage has won that particular rally.

Teammates and championship rivals Patrick Richard of Squamish, B.C. and Alan Ockwell of Toronto finished second in their Subaru Rally Team Canada entry. Crazy Leo Urlichich of Toronto and his British co-driver Carl Williamson impressed with a solid third place, also in a Subaru.

L’Estage/Richard top the Canadian Rally Championship standings after two wins in the first two events of 2012. The pair won the snowy Rally Perce Neige in February to give them a commanding lead in the series with 44 points to the 31 tallied by Urlichich/Williamson. 

Thanks to old friend Doug Mepham for that report.

Super Sunday: Kahne, Franchitti and Webber win

All of Super Sunday's races were won by previous winners of the featured events.

When Kasey Kahne won the NASCAR nightcap, the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, it marked the third time he'd won the Memorial Day weekend classic.

At Indy in the afternoon, Dario Franchitti won what used to be called the 500 Mile International Sweepstakes for the third time while overseas - morning here, afternoon there - Mark Webber won the Grand Prix of Monaco for the second time.

All three races were interesting, with some more exciting that others. In that regard, Indianapolis topped the bill for surprises and tension, Monaco was a close second and Charlotte was - well - not exactly a nail-biter. 

At Charlotte:

Kahne, who joined Hendrick Motorsports this season, won his first race for the corporation when he cruised home to record his 13th career win in Sprint Cup competition.

Denny Hamlin finished second and Kyle Busch arrived home third. 

Kahne drove about a thousand miles in competition at Charlotte Motor Speedway this weekend, starting with a World of Outlaws sprint car race at the Dirt Track at Charlotte Friday night and continuing through the 300-mile Nationwide Series race Saturday.

A star, Kahne's last victory was at Phoenix in November 2011. He will win lots more races before he's through.

Greg Biffle arrived home fourth, Brad Keselowski was fifth, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was sixth, Jeff Gordon was seventh, Kevin Harvick was eighth, Carl Edwards finished ninth and Matt Kenseth was tenth. Complete results.

Notebook Jottings:

- It was kinda boring. Sorry, have to say it. After the dogfight that was Formula One in Monaco, and the edge-of-your-seat spectacle that was Indy, the Coke 600 was somewhat of a letdown.

Yes, they had 31 lead changes among 11 drivers, but they only had four cautions. About the only time the crowd came alive was near the end of the race when Dale Jr. took the lead for about a second. 

You could hear the cheers over the engines.

- If it was borintg to watch, if must have been boring to drive it. At one point during the last 100 miles, Keselowski's spotter began singing to him. To keep him awake, perhaps?

- It's not often you see a Chad Knaus-managed team screw up but it did during Jimmy Johnson's final pit stop. The signal, reportedly, for Johnson to go is when the jackman drops the car; the problem was that the gas man wasn't finished and had to run after the car to haul the gas can hose out.

The botchup might have cost Johnson a higher finish (he was 11th). But the TV camera caught Knaus looking either dejected or ready to fire everybody. Whichever, he wasn't happy and he doesn't fool around. Somebody on that team might be looking for a new job Monday. 

- I saw something in this race I haven't seen for years. At one point, Earhardt drove right between Tony Stewart and Brad Keselowski to put a pass on both of them. The last time I remember seeing that was at the CNE Speedway in the Fifties when Norm Brioux, driving the yellow Puddicomb Motors car, would frequently split cars to make passes.

It was a long day. The Monaco GP came on TSN at 7:55 a.m., the Coke 600 finished after 10 p.m. See ya later.

Earlier:

Auto racing is a game of inches at speeds none of us pedestrians can ever really understand.

James Hinchcliffe of Oakville came within nine inches of winning the pole for the Indianapolis 500 - that's what 10 miles of time trials at 220-plus miles an hour turned into when the slide rulers came out to aid calculations - and it was a mistake of inches mid-way through Sunday's spectacle that cost him a shot at victory.

The 96th Indianapolis 500 was won, in the end and for the third time, by Dario Franchitti of Scotland and Nashville, with his Target Chip Ganassi teammate Scott Dixon of New Zealand and Indianapolis second and Tony Kanaan of Brazil and Fort Lauderdale third.

Hinchcliffe was sixth, behind Oriole Servia of Spain who was fourth and Ryan Briscoe of Australia,  who was fifth after pipping "Hinch" for the pole last weekend.

Justin Wilson of England was seventh, Charlie Kimball of England eighth, Townsend Bell of Santa Monica ninth and Helio Castroneves of Brazil and Fort Lauderdale, tenth.

The second Canadian in the 500, Alex Tagliani of Montreal, finished 12th. Complete results.

For the third year in a row, a crash on the final lap meant the classic finished under a yellow flag.

Two years ago, Franchitti's car was running on fumes and he was in danger of running out of fuel on the final lap when Mike Conway hit a slowing Ryan Hunter-Reay and was catapulted into the safety catch fence. The yellow saved Franchitti's race and victory.

Last year, J.R. Hildebrand ran wide on the final corner while trying to pass a slower car and crashed into the wall, handing the victory to Dan Wheldon.

This year, Takuma Sato tried to pass Franchitti going into the first turn and crashed, with the ensuing yellow freezing the field with the Scot in the lead.

Sato said afterward that Franchitti crowded him down onto the white line and his front left tire caught the "ledge" that has been the undoing of drivers going too low into that turn for years. (Yes, that's "ledge" with an "l".)

TV replays, however, showed that Franchitti gave the Japanese driver a "lane" in which to attempt his pass and he just couldn't pull it off.

In Hinchcliffe's case it was just a small loss of concentration that kaiboshed his race. He'd been running top five, or near it, for most of the race and appeared ready to make a charge for the front in the closing laps.

But when the 2011 IZOD IndyCar Series rookie of the year went into the pits for tires and fuel with less than 50 laps to go, he missed his marks - paint on the asphalt of his pit stall where the team wants him to stop the car exactly.

If he does it correctly, they can attach the fuel hose for a fillup and replace four wheels in less than nine seconds. Take more time than that and your race can be compromised.

"Hinch" went past the marks a half-dozen inches and the crew had to pause to pull and push him back into position - something that added three or four seconds to his stop and saw him rejoin the race outside of the top ten.

It was a credit to his talent as a racing driver that he was able to battle back to sixth from 12th; if his pit stop had been flawless and he'd returned to battle nearer the front, he might have been in a better position to try for the win.

Said Hinchcliffe - who led the race three times for five laps and who was the star of a very humourous Go Daddy (his sponsor) TV commercial  before the race:

"You know, I'm getting sick of this number six. Every time we finish sixth, we've had more than that on the table and for one reason or another we haven't put it together.

"On that last stop, I overshot the (pit) box by a mile and really put us back there and I feel terrible for it. I think we had the pace for third or fourth place."

There were a number of other crashes but none of the drivers was injured.

The most scary involved Conway, who wound up sliding along the fence with his car on its side and the open cockpit facing the fence. It was a collision with a fence post that Killed Dan Wheldon at Las Vegas but Conway wasn't hurt.

However, the accident was eerily similar to the one he had at Indy two years ago in which he suffered some pretty serious injuries.

The drive by Franchitti was vintage Dario, in that at the first pit stop he was hit from the rear by E.J. Viso and was turned into the wall, damaging his front nose cone and wing. The Ganassi crew managed to get him turned around, fueled up, tires changed and a new nose attached without losing a lap.

When the lights turned back to green, he was 28th; by the time he went to the pits the next time, he was up to third - a magnificent run by a magnificent Indy car driver.

Notebook Jottings:

- Because of illl health, Jim Nabors recorded Back Home in Indiana in Hawaii and they showed him singing the song with palm trees in the background. Much as he's been loved over the years, it's time to pass the torch and let someone else sing.

- Nobody - nobody - seemed ready for any of the restarts. The green would wave and all of a sudden there was a traffic jam. Hinchcliffe complained that guys were hanging back and anticipating the green, thus giving themselves a God-almighty run to catch up and pass the leaders. Maybe, but I'm not so sure. It looked like some guys were on it and other guys were napping.

- I know Dan Wheldon was killed last year and that he was the defending champion. I'm glad they awarded his widow the replica of the Borg-Warner Trophy and I know how guys like Franchitti, Dixon and Kanaan were feeling because they were his buddies. I could even go along, I suppose, with the handing out of sunglasses of the type he wore to everybody who entered the gates on Sunday. But when they drove his car out on the track for a commemorative lap, it was too much. Auto racing is a dangerous sport and it's supposed to be. It's not baseball. I hope they will now stop.

- The TV people seem to think that us dunces have to be entertained every single second we're tuned in and obviously can't just enjoy auto racing for what it is: cars in a car race. And in their zeal to keep our little minds alert and occupied, they keep putting their noses into corners they should leave alone.

Case in point: Pit reporter Jamie Little tries to talk to Michael Andretti, who has five cars in the race. It's a disaster, of course, because he can't talk to her and listen to his drivers at the same time.

I would love to see one of those pit reporters be ambushed by another reporter while they're in the middle of a live report and see what their reaction would be.

- The IndyCar safety team (and the officials who direct them) are still appalling for a major league operation. Case in point: Josef Newgarden stalls on the backstretch and pulled onto the grass. No debris, no contact, just a car stopped off the track. The safety crew goes to retrieve the car. This takes six laps.

SIX LAPS???

I want to take them all to my favourite short track in the world, the Oswego Speedway in northern New York, and let them watch the safety crew there in action. Those men know how to do it. I know: I rode with them for nearly 15 years.

- The 34 lead changes among 10 drivers beat the previous record of 29, recorded in 1960 when Jim Rathmann, who won, duked it out with Roger Ward and they traded the lead back and forth literally the entire second half of the race.

- The race took just less than three hours to run, with an average speed of 167.734 mph. Marco Andretti - who crashed later while dicing with Oriol Servia - set the fastest race lap of a tad over 220 mph.

- Thanks to TSN, we saw all the races on Super Sunday. But somebody was seriously asleep at the switch when there was a restart with about 16 laps to go at Indy and a commercial ran long and WE MISSED SEEING IT.

All of a sudden Tony Kanaan is leading, and HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?

Earlier:

Mark Webber became the first winner of auto racing's Super Sunday this morning when he captured the Grand Prix of Monaco for Red Bull-Renault.

In so doing, he became the sixth winner of an F1 Grand Prix in six races so far in 2012 - a record.

One false move and the order would have been changed for the first four finishers at Monaco, who flashed across the finish line within 1.3 seconds of each other.

Nose to tail after Webber came Nico Rosberg for Mercedes, Fernando Alonso in his Ferrari and Webber's teammate, Sebastien Vettel. A hiccup further back came McLaren-Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton, followed two seconds later by Ferrari driver Felipe Massa.

Positions seven through 10 - Paul di Resta and Nico Hulkenberg in Force India-Ferraris, Kimi Raikkonen in a Lotus-Renault and Bruno Senna in a Williams-Renault - were back a bit.

It was a thrilling Monaco from start to finish because the circuit is so narrow and the confines so tight that anything could happen at any time to change the outcome of the classic.

It was Webber's second Monaco victory, his first coming in 2010. Vettel won it last year and now Webber's done it again, giving Red Bull a hat trick in the principality.

Alonso now leads the world championship of drivers, while Red Bull is again leading the constructors championship.

On to Montreal now for the Canadian GP in two weeks.

For a full report of the Grand Prix of Monaco,  click here

Notebook Jottings:

- While the Indianapolis 500 (next up on this Triple Crown race day) might be the biggest race in the world, the Grand Prix of Monaco is the most prestigious. The money, the glamour, the setting and the presence of the royal family combine to make this particular race  the most important.

- Funniest line: as Kimi Raikkonen peels out of the pits, just missing a Force India tire changer, retired driver and now colour commentator David Coulthard says: "You couldn't pay me all the money in the world to do that job."

- Some guys race fair, some guys race hard: Jenson Button, leaving the pits, was hard-pressed to beat Heikki Kovalainen on the run up the hill to Casino Square. It was nip and tuck but as Button exited the blend line, he let Kovalainen go.  Shortly thereafter, Vettel left the pits and it was nip and tuck up the hill in a race with Hamilton. Vettel suddenly cut across in front of Hamilton to block him as they approached the square. Vettel must have cut it so close at the end of the blend line to have been able to chop Lewis. I wanted to see a replay but no luck. 

- Second funniest line: Lewis Hamilton radio transmission to his team - "They keep dropping things from the pit wall and hitting me in the head." Huh?

- They had a wonderful helicopter shot from high above and I wished they'd used it more often. I remember ABC's Wide World of Sports doing Monaco in the early Sixties when Phil Hill was trying to catch Bruce McLaren and they used a helicopter (or blimp) shot almost constantly. Very dramatic and very, very exciting.

- There was a monster crowd. People everywhere - except in one apartment/condo building. The balconies are always empty there (unlike everywhere else). You see it, a pink building on the right, as the cars pass through the hairpin. There is never anybody on those balconies. Toward the end of the race, one guy wearing a white shirt came out and stood for awhile on one balcony, then disappeared. I wonder what it's like to be rich - and bored.

- Jean-Eric Vergne, who drives for Scuderia Toro Rosso-Ferrari, was in the points and heading for what might have been the best finish of his rookie season.

It was raining slightly toward the end of the race and the television commentators were musing about the possibility of changing tires. Suddenly, Verge went to the pits for intermediates.

The move backfired because the half-rain tires didn't do anything to improve his lap times and he eventually finished 12th, a lap down.

The commentators talked about a bad decision by the team. A cynic might suggest they'd made the change at the request of Red Bull, who were covering all their bases in the closing laps and needed hard data to help in their decision-making.

Hey, when it comes to F1, they leave no stone unturned. Years ago, I interviewed a "go-fer" for BAR. His job on race day? Regardless of the weather, he had to leave the circuit and drive exactly one mile west (where rain usually  comes from) and sit there from start to finish. If it started to rain, he radioed in the information and kept the team informed as to its intensity.

Yes, BAR had radar in the pits but still had a man on the ground to confirm/dispute what was on the screen. As I said, no stone unturned.

So I wouldn't be surprised if Red Bull asked Toro Rosso to try out the intermediates to see how they performed - just in case. The loser? Jean-Eric Vergne.

Norris blogs on Monaco, Indy and the Coke 600

Just a quick thought to start off:

Everybody in IndyCar talked about the need to get away from "pack racing" after the accident last October at Las Vegas that killed Dan Wheldon. As a result, the series has refused to return to Vegas and, with the exception of Texas Motor Speedway, won't race on 1.5-mile tracks or tracks that are highly banked for that reason.

Indianapolis is the first oval the series has run on since that accident and there are new cars. Don't be surprised to see pack racing on Sunday. I don't think you can get away from it, regardless of where you go or what you do.

Meantime, Joey Saldana won the first race of the weekend Friday night at the Dirt Track at Charlotte, the World of Outlaws Showdown.  He started fourth in the 30-lap sprint car feature and was pretty much in control once he got the lead.

Sprint Cup drivers Tony Stewart and Kasey Kahne started the feature and, although both showed flashes of brilliance, weren't really factors. 

Sammy Swindell and Steve (King) Kinser made things interesting for awhile but suspension problems killed Swindell's race and a flat tire did in Kinser.

Saldana, a second-generation sprint car star (his dad, "Little Joe" Saldana, was a USAC sprint car racer in the Seventies who also drove in the Indy 500), won his third Outlaws feature of the season.

The Outlaws tour includes a stop at the Brantford-area Ohsweken Speedway at the end of July. Tony Stewart will be back to defend his race win of a year ago.

Meantime, across the street at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Aric Almirola won the pole for the Coca-Cola 600 that will be held Sunday evening. Marcos Ambrose will start beside him on the front row. Danica Patrick will start her third Sprint Cup race of the season from the 40th position.

It was blistering hot in Charlotte Friday and forecasts in central Indiana are calling for an extremely hot day Sunday for the Indianapolis 500.

Speedway officials are telling the expected 200,000-plus spectators to wear hats, drink lots of fluids and use a lot of sunscreen. I predict if it's that hot that many (if not most) of them will go home.

There have been Indy 500s held previously when the temperature was in the 90s (Fahrenheit, of course)  but that was years and years ago.  Entertainment options weren't as many or as varied as now, so people toughed it out. They'd paid their money and they wanted the show and if it was hot, so what?

Nowadays, creature comforts are paramount, so people won't hang around if it's stifling.

I feel sorry for the drivers; they can't go anywhere. They're strapped in their rockets from start to finish and they'll be wearing three-layer firesuits and underwear, gloves and balaclavas and I guarantee you it will be hot, hot, hot for them.

Let's hope the teams keep a close eye and pull their driver, or drivers, out of the race if anything seems amiss. In 1953, driver Carl Scarborough died after being overcome by the heat. 

The only Canadian to win the Indianapolis 500 - officially - was Jacques Villeneuve in 1995. I say "officially," because many people think Paul Tracy won in 2002 but the Indy Racing League ruled the yellow light had come on for a crash before Tracy completed passing Helio Castroneves.

James Hinchcliffe could win on Sunday. He's been fast all month, he qualified second (missing the pole by a blink) and he's got a good team behind him.

"Hinch" talked to the media earlier this week. Here is a partial transcript of that conversation:

MODERATOR: Talk about this Sunday's race. It's been a rain-free month of May. You've had plenty of opportunity to be on the course in the IZOD IndyCar Series car. What kind of race do you expect on Sunday?

HINCHCLIFFE: It's a race of unknowns. This is the first time anybody will run this car for a full race distance on an oval. With the heat we're expecting on Sunday, that throws a question mark into the mix. We just don't know how this car is going to race.

As much as we try to run around in packs in practice, when you have all 33 cars on track running flat out and racing properly, it's a very different game than what you see during practice. 

You're going to have to be flexible on your strategy, you're going to have to adjust the car at pit stops and inside the cockpit, stay ahead of the changing conditions. That's sort of the nature of this race just because of how long it is.

MODERATOR: The last Canadian to win the Indianapolis 500, the only one actually, was Jacques Villeneuve who ironically drove the No. 27 car to the win. What would it mean for you to bring home a win in Indianapolis?

HINCHCLIFFE: I mean, it's beyond words. That's a tough thing to describe. But obviously this is the biggest race of our calendar. This is the one that everybody wants to win.

MODERATOR: Let's open it up for questions for James Hinchcliffe.

Q. It strikes me that Chevy seems to have a fuel mileage advantage. This is obviously a fuel mileage race. Talk a little bit about that. Is that going to play into your favor? Does that affect the way the strategy is going to work on Sunday?

HINCHCLIFFE: It's tough to say because we haven't really seen what people's fuel mileage is yet at this track. Certainly there was proof that we had the upper hand in that area over the first few races on road and street courses. The way the engines operate, the power level we're at, there's a lot of different elements involved here at Indianapolis.

That's not going to be something we can really assess until the race starts.

 I think that goes into what I said early about having to be flexible. We're going to be learning a lot about what each car and each team has in their back pocket as the race unfolds.

Q. When you're sitting in the middle of the front row looking down that straightaway, do you have any idea what is going to be going through your mind or do you have time to think?

 HINCHCLIFFE: I'm going to be looking left and thinking, 'Damn, I wish I was there (on the pole).'

Q. You're on the front row of the grid for the biggest race of the season. From a mindset standpoint, do you feel any more pressure here or are you able to handle it as you would any other race on the calendar?

HINCHCLIFFE: I think honestly that's one of the big tricks of Indianapolis, is you really have to try to treat it like any other race. Because at the end of the day, this is not only the biggest race on our schedule, it's the biggest race in the world. As soon as you start thinking about that and appreciating that fact before you get in the race car, I think it really puts your head in a different place. That's not necessarily the place you want to be.

It's not the way I want to approach my race on Sunday. I want to get on with the job we've been doing as a team and try to continue that momentum.

A big element of it, yeah, is to try to push that as far out of your mind as possible.

Q. James, the qualifying procedure. Under the old method in the month of May, you would be sitting on pole today. Do you think there needs to be any tweaks to the qualifying procedure?

HINCHCLIFFE: Racing drivers love thinking that we go racing for us. We don't. I think the format we have now is incredibly exciting. If it had been the old format, pole would have been set at 2 in the afternoon and everybody would have sat around and nobody would have been able to challenge.

 As it was, we had a thrilling duel for the pole that came down to the closest margin in history. It would have been tragic to rob fans of that show. I come out on the lesser end of that, which is still second place.

 I quite like the shootout format, the fact we have multiple runs at it. I think it adds a new element of excitement to it. At the end of the day we're here to put on a show.

 Q. You, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Marco Andretti seem to follow in a team of drivers that have great chemistry together. What do you think is the key to y'all having the unity you have?

 HINCHCLIFFE: Well, honestly the first conversation I ever had with Michael and everybody at Andretti Autosport, their whole key to building a good race team is starting with good drivers that have good chemistry. It's something they've achieved in the past and something that they feel was maybe missing a little bit the last few seasons.

When they first called me, they really wanted to get to know me a little bit better and see if I would fit in well. You could have the best driving credentials in the world or you could be backed by the biggest sponsor on the planet. If you're not going to be able to work well with the people on the team, it really is all for nothing.

I've always said racing is not about engines, tires, race cars, it's about people, and the right group of people will be successful, period.

I think in Marco, Ryan and myself, you have three drivers who are young, hungry, very motivated to put in the effort, to work as hard as possible to get this team back up to championship contenders.

The personalities are close enough off track. We're all good friends. I think that allows us to work so much better together as a group. We push each other so hard. When you're in a situation like that, it's hard to not see success because all the right elements are there for it to happen.

I don't think there's one specific thing that you can point out that leads to that chemistry working the way it does. It really is the combination of all the people on the team, all the drivers working together, and like I said, all of us pushing together to improve week in and week out.

Q. I was wondering how you feel with regards to your car package this year compared to last year and how much more you feel there is to come from both yourself as a driver and also in terms of the car during the rest of the season.

 HINCHCLIFFE: Well, certainly, I mean, it's a strong package. The car, when we first got it, it actually didn't really suit me. It wasn't my favorite thing to drive. Between the work that Dallara has done, obviously a lot of work from the team, a tremendous amount of work from Chevrolet, as well, now I and everybody at Andretti Autosports has a competitive package. The car is much more suited me than it was when we first got out there.

Again, it's a huge testament to all the hard work of everybody back at the shop.

 We'll have to see sort of how this race unfolds. I mean, I didn't have a ton of experience in the old car. But certainly the situation that I'm in in general, just with the car and the team and everybody, is a big step forward from last year.

The experience plays into a part of that. Again, just the infrastructure at Andretti Autosport, the resources they have, it's a tremendous position to be in. I think there's definitely more confidence in the experience and the atmosphere that we've got. Hopefully this just translates to get results for the rest of the year.

Q. James, it seems almost the highlight of your year is the red gloves (that were worn by the late Canadian driver, Greg Moore). Can you talk about that a little bit. We know how it happened. Yourself personally, how do you feel about that, being able to do that? Any plans for them to be in your car for the race?

HINCHCLIFFE: It was a very emotional thing for me, because Greg's my hero. More than anything, to have been approached by somebody who knew him very well and was very good friends with him and his family to do that, it was beyond an honor. To have even been considered worthy of being able to take his gloves around for a couple laps at the Speedway was a very, very touching thing. I'm incredibly grateful I got to do that.

Yeah, it's just one of the coolest things I've had the chance to do. That will be a hard thing to top. It's certainly something I'll remember for a long time.

In terms of where the gloves go for now, I think they did their job in qualifying. He helped me get a good run and a starting spot. We'll leave it at that. We'll leave the record intact. He's had his qualifying runs now. He's in the race as far as I'm concerned. I think that's a good place to leave it.

Q. You mentioned this is your second time around at Indy, how you've learned from last year what to expect, how things work. What is race morning for you like at Indy and how do you go about preparing for a race like that? Do you ever get a moment to kind of stop and appreciate what it is you're doing?

HINCHCLIFFE: Well, you know, in terms of preparation on race morning, the team's very good that we have no commitments that aren't racing related on Sunday. There's no quick sponsor appearances, no meet-and-greets, things like that. They let you get to business.

 As I said before, it's a function of trying to treat it like any other race weekend. You go, you'll talk to the engineers, your teammates. Me being me, I try and keep it as light as possible. Still tell jokes, hang out with the family a little bit before the start of the race like I would anywhere else.

 Yeah, it's very easy to get lost in the moment. And I think one of the few moments that we get to sort of appreciate where we are and what we're doing is driver introductions when you walk up over the wall and see the stands completely full for the first time all month.

You're here all month, and you see them, and there's some people in them some days, Pole Day there's some people, but there's nothing like race day. Almost to the same extent, once we get strapped in the cars, do the warmup laps, three by three, which you don't do anywhere else, you really appreciate you're at Indy.

 You go on the whole track and you see these formerly gray, barren grandstands seething with life, color and movement. It's a very surreal experience. It gives this track a feeling that it's alive and you're right in the heart of it.

 You're by yourself at that point. All the press is done. There's nothing else you can do but get on and drive. You just take that moment and enjoy it.

Alex Tagliani and his oatmeal cookies

Any time I run into a race car driver – young, old, rookie, veteran, whatever – who complains to me about not being able to get sponsorship or to do something that will keep his or her name in front of the public, I feel like pulling my hair out.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way, I always say.

And then I point to Alex Tagliani.

Tag is the greatest self-promoter in big-league racing today and everybody (including the veterans who are finding themselves on the outside looking in) should take a lesson from him.

You want an interview? He calls you back and when you start to talk with him he gives you the straight goods, no fooling around. Some of these other prima donas should stop wondering why he gets his name in the paper or on the air more than they do. It’s very simple: he always makes himself available.

When the Grand Prix is on in Montreal, he rents a storefront right downtown and stocks it with Alex Tagliani sunglasses, baseball caps and tee-shirts. He’s not a Grand Prix driver, but who cares? There are race fans in Montreal and the money they have in their pockets is burning a hole and he’s making his merchandise available.

I asked him once about this and this is what he said: "Norris, if I don’t do it myself, nobody is going to do it for me."

Why am I writing this today? Because when he flew into town last Monday with Jean Alesi and Simon Pagenaud to talk about this weekend’s Indianapolis 500, he handed me a package: two oatmeal cookies wrapped in celophane.

"You trying to make me fat?" I asked

"Look at the wrapper," he replied, which I did.

The label said: 'Tag on the GO oatmeal cookies, a source of iron, vitamin A and vitamin D.' There is a picture of him in his driving suit and of him in an Indy car.

"When do these go on sale?" I asked.

"Next Monday," he said.

Once we got talking racing, he was mightily impressed with the 30,000-plus turnout for the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park last Sunday.

"How cool is that?" he exclaimed.

He then went on to say how big a shot in the arm that would be for the national stock car racing series.

"They can say to potential sponsors that they get 30,000 at Mosport (sic) and 30,000 at Trois-Rivieres and 50,000 at Montreal. Those are big numbers. They make people take notice."

Tagliani used a start in the NASCAR Canada series at Edmonton a number of years ago to revive what was then a flagging career. In front of the Champ Car owners of the day, he went out and dominated the stock car race and people took notice. He was back in the big time shortly thereafter.

We talked about that last Monday, about how you must take advantage of the opportunities presented.  "It was a good platform for me to show people that I had a lot left in me," he said.

But when his Indy car career does come to an end, as it inevitably will, he’s already thinking of the future.

"Yes, I am very interested in the Canadian Tire series," he said. "I started a team once and I would be very interested in getting it going again, particularly now that they’re getting big crowds for the races."

First things first, however. There’s a race on Sunday called the Indianapolis 500 and he’s starting 11^th. As I said to him, last year when he had the pole, he was No. 1. This year, he’s 1-1.

"We can win it," he said. "No mistakes on the track, no mistakes in the pits. If we do that, we’ll win."

And wouldn’t it be something if he did – and pulled out a package of Tag on the GO oatmeal cookies to eat with that bottle of milk they'll hand him in Victory Lane?

I wouldn’t put it past him.

Speaking of Indy, 20-year-old David Ostella of Maple will be racing in the Indy Lights Freedom 100 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Friday afternoon. He qualified fifth for the race Thursday, his best starting position since he started racing in the series.

IndyCar has set a deadline of Friday for companies interested in developing a new aero package for the Dallara cars.

"We’ve had great interest from multiple companies," said IndyCar’s vice-president of technology, Will Phillips, in a story on the Autosport website.

People should be careful when they make statements like that. The phrase "multiple companies" means more than two and you can bet that if IndyCar only approves kits from Chevrolet and Honda, reporters are going to ask for the names of the firms that applied but weren’t invited to the party.

And there'd better be some, or yet another IndyCar executive's credibility will bite the dust.

On Jean Alesi, a fork, and rioting at the Canadian GP

The first time I got into a racing car to run a feature at "the home of the supermodifieds," Oswego Speedway in northern New York, they told me to take the green and to get off the track.

"You’re not fast enough yet," said pit stewart Jerry Rich back in 1982. "They’ll be up your ass in half-a-dozen laps. You’ll save everybody the trouble of black-flagging you if you just get out of the way early. So take the start and pit."

Which is what I hope IndyCar tells Jean Alesi before the start of the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday.

When Lotus driver Alesi came to Toronto on Monday, with Alex Tagliani and Simon Pagenaud, to beat the drum for the world’s most famous race (Sunday, TSN, 11 a.m.), he told me he had his fingers crossed that a request by his team for extra boost to help him stay competitive in the race against drivers being powered by either Chevrolet or Honda engines would be approved.

IndyCar announced Tuesday – a day later — that no, there would be no favours done for Lotus and all engines would run in the 500 with the same amount of turbocharged power.

The writing is on the wall for Alesi. Competition director Beaux Barfield said all entries would have to maintain a minimum speed once the first green flag is thrown and that the sanctioning body’s policy is that all cars must be running within 105 per cent of the leader’s speed.

Ryan Briscoe won the pole with a speed of 226.484 miles an hour; Alesi lumbered around at 210.094 mph.

To save the F1 legend – and 1995 Canadian Grand Prix winner – Alesi (and the other Lotus entrant, Simona de Silvestro, as well) the embarrassment of being black-flagged out of the Indianapolis 500, I hope Barfield borrows a page from Jerry Rich’s playbook and suggests an early and unobtrusive exit.

It’ll be better for everybody all ‘round.

Speaking of Alesi, I got a laugh out of him Monday by telling him the following story.

In 1997, the Globe and Mail sent me to Montreal to cover the Grand Prix and I was invited to have lunch with him in the Benetton hospitality area at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve

It was a highlight of my motorsport writing career. Over the years, I’ve been able to interview most of the top F1 drivers of the day but I’ve only been invited to share a meal with two – Alesi and Juan Pablo Montoya, when he drove for Williams.

In any event – and this is something quite out of character for me, but I did it anyway – as I got up to leave the Alesi lunch, I slipped the fork I’d used into my pocket and I brought it home with me to Toronto.

I have used that fork to eat every meal I’ve consumed in my house ever since. Every breakfast, every lunch and every dinner I have eaten at home since June, 1997, has been with that fork – and if you don’t believe me, you can ask my wife.

One time, my sister came from Nova Scotia to visit for Christmas. When she left, she took food to eat on the train. She asked if she could take a fork. I said sure.

That night I was setting the table and I couldn’t find my fork. I was a wreck for a week until she FedExed it back to me.

So I told Alesi on Monday about my fork fetish and when he finished laughing he thought for a moment and then asked if I used it to cut my food too.

I told him no, but that he was going to have to invite me to lunch again sometime so that I could steal a knife.

CVC Capital Partners, which owns 40 per cent of Formula One (Bernie or one of his many trusts still owns much of the rest of the total, estimated to be about $9 billion) has sold a stake in the sport for a little more than $1 billion.

My friend Pete asked if, as a result, Bernie would cut and run.

I replied that he would die with his boots on.

I mean, there is only one way Bernie will ever leave F1 and that’s in a pine box.

Look at that item above again. Look at the figures: $1 billion, $9 billion.

The Grand Prix of Monaco is this weekend and the Grand Prix of Canada is two weeks after that and the marshals and corner workers and other support staff members who will ensure the success of those races, and without whom those races could not be held, will still pay their own way to get to Monte Carlo and/or Montreal, as well as the outrageous hotel room charges and so-on, and they will do all that for a free ham sandwich at lunch on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

If you ask me, there is something seriously wrong there.

Jacques Villeneuve will drive in two NASCAR races again this year for Team Penske - the Nationwide Series events at Road America in Wisconsin and at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal.

Talking about Montreal, I am now officially worried that the ongoing student demonstrations there will interfere with the Grand Prix.

Hmmmm. F1 was villified for racing in Bahrain in the face of civil unrest there. What will be the world reaction when F1 goes to Montreal and there are hundreds arrested and the plume of black smoke hangs just as heavily over that city?

Yes, the situation is different. . .

Or is it?