Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

All IndyCar races live on Sportsnet; you can look it up

There seems to be confusion and misinformation out there about Rogers Sportsnet's commitment to telecasting the entire IZOD IndyCar Series schedule in 2013.

I don't know why there would be, but there is.

IndyCar sought out a new Canadian partner because the previous broadcaster, TSN, would not commit to televising all the races live. Sportsnet and IndyCar signed a contract and one of the clauses contained therein was that the races would be live.

However, even before the season started, I was getting emails from people suggesting that everything was not as it seemed. And last week, a popular columnist for an Indianapolis newspaper reported that while four Sportsnet races would be live, the rest would be on tape delay.

So I am here to set the record straight, once and for all.

To wit, all remaining 18 races will air on Sportsnet channels live and in colour, as they happen — as was the case in St. Petersburg on Sunday when James Hinchcliffe of Oakville scored his first victory in the Big League. (Hey, what a race for Sportsnet to kick off its coverage, eh?)

The complete schedule can be found at the bottom of this column. You can print it out, clip it around the edges and attach it to the door of your refrigerator for quick, easy reference.

Several translations:

You will note that there are no specific Sportsnet channels listed for the two Detroit races on June 1 and 2. Those races won’t be on the sports channels but will be seen in the listed communities – Toronto among them – on CITY TV channels that Rogers owns.

And channels for the 17th and 18th races, a double-header in Houston in October, which are marked TBD, are just that: the races will be on — somewhere. Exactly which channel or channels will be decided at a later date.

So that’s the good news.

The not-so-good news is that to get all of the races, you will have to subscribe to a premium sports package. Nine races, for instance, starting with the next race at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama on April 7, will only be available on Sportsnet One, which is a premium channel. The rest should be pretty much available everywhere across the country.

So check out the schedule at the bottom of this column. And relax.

Now, on Sunday in St. Pete, Sportsnet launched its own pre-race, post-race and mid-race panel show starring sportscaster Rob Faulds, retired drivers Paul Tracy and Bill Adam, and Todd Lewis in the pits. Everybody did just fine. They weren’t on screen all the time (the U.S. feed, pictures and announcers, from NBC Sports Network covered the race). But when they were, they acquitted themselves well.

The focus of the show was pretty much all about Canadian drivers Hinchcliffe and Alex Tagliani and their support staffs (crew chiefs and the like), which was a good thing because the American producers and announcing team seemed – to me, anyway – to be more interested in how Simona de Silvestro was doing than anything the Canadians were up to, particularly Hinchcliffe while he was en route to scoring his first race win.

In fact, the young Canadian hot shoe was well into his last lap before the director tore himself away from Simona’s battle to hold onto third to show Hinchcliffe’s drive to the checkers.

I don’t know the particulars of the contract that Sportsnet has with NBC Sports Network, and maybe the U.S. announcing team of Leigh Diffey, Wally Dallenbach Jr., Townsend Bell and the rest has to be part of the package, but on those occasions when Faulds, Tracy, Adam and Lewis are on site (Indianapolis being the next stop for them), I can guarantee I would rather watch the action and have Faulds host, Adam do the play-by-play and Tracy do the colour than listen to the NBC folks I had to endure on Sunday.

Tracy, in particular, seemed to be on his best behaviour and that was a shame. He’s got all the stories and all the insight that he's stored up from nearly 20 years of driving Indy cars. He knows all the secrets and where the bodies are buried. I know: I’ve spent many enjoyable times listening to him rip this guy apart, or that guy.

Sportsnet owes it to everybody to turn him loose.

Remaining 2013 IZOD IndyCar Television Broadcast Schedule

Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama – Birmingham, Alabama

• Sunday, April 7, 1:30 p.m. ET/10:30 a.m. PT (Sportsnet ONE)

Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach – Long Beach, California

• Sunday, April 21, 4 p.m. ET/1 p.m. PT (Sportsnet East, Ontario, Pacific and ONE)

Sao Paulo Indy 300 – Sao Paulo, Brazil

• Sunday, May 5, 11 a.m. ET/8 a.m. PT (Sportsnet ONE)

Indianapolis 500 – Indianapolis, Indiana

• Sunday, May 26, 11 a.m. ET/8 a.m. PT (Sportsnet East, Ontario, West and Pacific)

Chevrolet Indy Dual in Detroit – Race 1 – Detroit, Michigan

• Saturday, June 1, 3:30 p.m. ET/12:30 p.m. PT (CITY stations in Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver)

Chevrolet Indy Dual in Detroit – Race 2 – Detroit, Michigan

• Sunday, June 2, 3:30 p.m. ET/12:30 p.m. PT (CITY stations in Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver)

Firestone 550 – Fort Worth, Texas

• Saturday, June 8, 8:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. PT (Sportsnet East, Ontario, West and Pacific)

Milwaukee IndyFest – West Allis, Wisconsin

• Saturday, June 15, 4 p.m. ET/1 p.m. PT (Sportsnet ONE)

Iowa Corn Indy 250 – Newton, Iowa

• Sunday, June 23, 2:30 p.m. ET/11:30 a.m. PT (Sportsnet ONE)

Pocono INDYCAR 400 – Long Pond, Pennsylvania

• Sunday, July 7, Noon p.m. ET/9 a.m. PT (Sportsnet ONE)

Honda Indy Toronto – Race 1 – Toronto, Ontario

• Saturday, July 13, 3 p.m. ET/Noon PT (Sportsnet East, Ontario, West and Pacific)

Honda Indy Toronto – Race 2 – Toronto, Ontario

• Sunday, July 14, 3 p.m. ET/Noon PT (Sportsnet East, Ontario, West and Pacific)

Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio – Lexington, Ohio

• Sunday, Aug. 4, 3 p.m. ET/Noon PT (Sportsnet ONE)

GoPro Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma – Sonoma, California

• Sunday, Aug. 25, 4 p.m. ET/1 p.m. PT (Sportsnet ONE)

Grand Prix of Baltimore – Baltimore, Maryland

• Sunday, Sept. 1, 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT (Sportsnet ONE)

Shell & Pennzoil Grand Prix of Houston – Race 1 – Houston, Texas

• Saturday, Oct. 5, 3 p.m. ET/Noon PT (TBD)

Shell & Pennzoil Grand Prix of Houston – Race 2 – Houston, Texas

• Sunday, Oct. 6, 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. PT (TBD)

MAVTV 500 – Fontana, California

• Saturday, Oct. 19, 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT (Sportsnet ONE)

IndyCar: Consultants did what they're supposed to do

The reaction to a weekend news story about a report from a consulting group concerning what the owners of two well-known auto racing properties should do with them illustrates perfectly why the consultants were hired in the first place.

It also illustrates a misunderstanding of what consultants are supposed to do.

Let’s go back to the start.

Last Friday, AP motorsport writer Jenna Fryer reported that Boston Consulting Group had been retained by Hulman & Co., owners of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the IndyCar series, to conduct studies and make recommendations about the future of those businesses.

The most important recommendation, according to the 115-page report that Fryer obtained, is for the parent company to continue owning the speedway and the race series.

And then, according to the story, there were these other suggestions:

– A series of 15 races in 19 weeks should be held in major American cities (in a nod to Ben Affleck, Toronto was included) followed by a three-race playoff and a grand finale on the road course at the Indianapolis Speedway;

– The series’ "daredevil" drivers should be promoted.

– There should be just one television partner in the U.S. instead of the current two.

– Ticket prices should be increased for the Indianapolis 500 and lowered for the Brickyard 400 and the Moto GP race.

There were other suggestions (you can pack a lot into 115 pages) but you get the drift.

In short, Boston Consulting is suggesting a radical shift in order to not only rescue the two businesses but to grow them.

Two things happened after Fryer put the story out on the AP wire.

First, the Speedway issued a statement. Mark Miles, CEO of Hulman and Co., said the report was an early version of one of many prepared by the consultants. He said no decisions had been made and discussions were continuing.

Second, fans of the series panned the report and its suggestions. Many wanted to know how come Hulman and Co. had hired a firm that obviously knew next to nothing about racing.

Let’s start with why companies – and governments – hire consultants in the first place. It’s usually because fresh thinking is needed. Something isn’t working and nobody in management can come up with the answer so a person or group is invited in to make suggestions to trigger discussions in hopes of finding a solution.

In the case of IndyCar, you have a racing series that isn’t on anybody’s radar. Yes, it’s on my radar and yours (if you’re reading this blog) but there are about 300 million people in the United States and Canada and it’s a good bet that most of them have no knowledge of IndyCar because if they did, more people might go to the races and/or watch them on television.

The board of directors of Hulman & Co. is made up primarily of either racing people (the descendents of Tony Hulman and Elmer George) or people who know about racing and are fans. They’ve been trying for years to make this series work. They haven’t been successful.

So they reached out to Boston Consulting and asked them to, a) answer some specific questions (I would guess that among them was whether or not Hulman & Co. should even continue to own the speedway and the race series) and, b) make some suggestions that might help turn IndyCar from being auto racing’s biggest secret to auto racing’s latest success story.

Now, if I’m Boston Consulting (and with all due respect), the last people I’m going to ask for their opinion are fans of this racing series. And this includes columnists and pontificators like me. IndyCar has already got us; they want to go after people they don't have.

Fryer, in an analysis written several days after she first broke the story, seems to mock the consultants for including seven cities that don’t have IndyCar races at present and for suggesting that three races currently on the schedule be dropped.

Remember, it is not the consultants’ job to come back with a report that says everything’s rosy. They obviously pushed the envelop by suggesting cities where, in their opinion, IndyCar races should be held. And one of the three races they want dropped – Fryer called it "stalwart Milwaukee" – is such a challenge to promote that last year, one of the series’ drivers, Graham Rahal, bused fans up from Indianapolis to fill seats because interest in the Wisconsin city was less than overwhelming.

Why keep putting on races in places where people could care less? I suggest Milwaukee is right up there. And while 20,000 people might show up to watch IndyCar in rural Alabama and in the middle of an Iowa cornfield, the corporate sponsors that IndyCar desperately needs are not interested, but might be if those races were held – instead – in major cities, right downtown.

The job of a consultant is to suggest alternatives to the status quo, to challenge conventional thinking.

I’d suggest that Boston Consulting, from what’s been reported to date, has done a pretty good job.

Of course, I wonder how Fryer came to get the copy of the report that she did – if, in fact, it’s an early draft, as the CEO of Hulman & Co. insists it is.

As a news editor and political reporter most of my working career, I’ve been on the receiving end of any number of confidential documents slipped to me in brown manila packages. And, in my experience, the people doing the leaking fall into three categories: political (or business) enemies looking to cause mischief; disgruntled people (frequently employees of the subject company); and/or deliberately by government or business looking for reaction – the proverbial trial balloon.

It’s hard to say which this is, but it’s certainly got the natives restless – another sign that, yes, Boston Consulting has done what it was hired to do: stir the pot.

- NORRIS McDONALD

'Daytona' replaces 'Indy' on public's radar

In a column in the Toronto Star last Saturday, in which she made fun of the Oscars and the Hollywood movie stars up for the awards, Heather Mallick wrote this sentence:

"What you are watching is the Daytona 500 of status anxiety."

I work in the same office, so asked her why she had selected "Daytona 500" over, say, the "Indianapolis 500."

Was it because Daytona was on the same day this year as the Academy Awards?

No.

And her explanation shocked me.

"I was searching for imagery and ‘Daytona 500' was the first thing that popped into my head," she said. "Nothing more."

I told her that most people who are not fans of auto racing would have been prone to say "Indianapolis 500," or "Indy 500."

Prepare to be shocked even more.

"I never would have thought of Indianapolis," she said. "I only thought of the Daytona 500."

So, there you have it.

The Daytona 500 is now ingrained in the public consciousness much like the Indy 500 used to be.

When the Heather Mallicks of the world think of "Daytona" before "Indianapolis," the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and its marquee event are in more trouble than anybody ever realized.

I interpret this as yet another nail in the coffin of a once-iconic car race and a once-iconic form of racing.

Most of the drivers in IndyCar, or many of them anyway, were so jealous of Danica Patrick’s popularity and the fact that she was constantly being promoted that they bitched and complained about it behind her back. As a result, IndyCar went to great lengths to keep the boys happy by de-emphasizing her celebrity.

NASCAR drivers had no such qualms. They welcomed her with open arms. Millionaires already, they saw her as a way for all of them to become billionaires.

"Her presence will help our sport grow," said Jimmie Johnson, even before he won last Sunday’s Daytona 500.

And how right he was.

FOX television released the ratings story Tuesday of Sunday’s classic and it was all anybody'd hoped for: the rating was up 24 per cent over 2012 and the number of viewers increased 22 per cent. Overall, it was the biggest audience since 2008. An estimated 31 million watched at least some of the race and it was the best-ever year-to-year rise.

Guess who’s responsible?

When Dale Earnhardt was killed at Daytona in 2001, there were three reactions.

First, everybody was very shocked and very sad. Second, it did wonders for NASCAR because TV ratings and attendance at races had both been declining and they bounced right back up as the result of his death. (So, in that way, it was good for business.) Third, NASCAR heard loud and clear from sponsors that they didn’t want to be part of a sport in which people were killed and to do something about it. (So, in that way, it was bad for business.)

As a result of (3), NASCAR very quietly started to design a "safe" racing stock car and five years later, in 2006, the Car of Tomorrow was introduced to the media.

I suggest today that NASCAR, perhaps even in company with the IndyCar Series, is very quietly starting the research and development of something to replace the catch fencing that currently keeps out-of-control racing cars from flying into grandstands and killing substantial numbers of people.

NASCAR, and all of auto racing, dodged a huge bullet last Saturday at Daytona when 28 spectators were injured, two critically, when pieces of a car and at least one wheel went through the fence.

That nobody was killed is a miracle.

Although everybody – NASCAR people, Daytona Speedway people – have kept a stiff upper lip about the whole business in public, you can bet that behind the scenes they've been sweating bullets.

President Mike Helton appeared on television about a half-hour after the crash and he was a very shaken-up senior executive of NASCAR.

I suggest within three years that a fail-safe barrier will be developed and available for installation at speedways. Whether the tracks will want to spend the money to put it up will be another question, but it will be ready.

Meantime, everybody had better keep their fingers crossed that nothing calamitous happens before that barrier is patented.

Sportsnet announced yesterday that it would televise the IZOD IndyCar Series races this year, would start the season at St. Petersburg on March 24, that Rob Faulds would anchor the broadcasts with Todd Lewis in the pits and Bill Adam and Paul Tracy doing colour for pre-race, in-race and post-race coverage of the Indy 500 and the Honda Indy Toronto and . . .

But we knew all that, didn’t we . . . ?

Danica Patrick wins Daytona pole fair and square

The jokes, and the conspiracy theories, were in full flight Sunday even before Danica Patrick went out and won the pole for next weekend’s Daytona 500.

"Will Danica sit on the pole?" "Pole position for Danica?"

Ha, ha.

Maybe they're jealous that this woman racing driver makes history just about any time she accomplishes something. This time she became the first woman to win a pole in Sprint Cup competition, the highest class in NASCAR. She previously became the first woman to lead a lap in the Indy 500, became the first female Indy car winner when she finished first in an IRL race in Japan, recorded the highest finish for a woman in the Indy 500 when she finished third in 2009, and on and on.

It shouldn't come as any surprise that the NASCAR Sprint Cup rookie set the fastest lap for what’s being called the Great American Race.

I mean, she’s been there before.

If it hadn’t been for a mid-first-turn bobble on her first of four laps, she would have won the pole for the Indianapolis 500 the first year she tried, back in 2005. She went on to win three poles in total in Indy cars.

Last year, her first full-time season in a NASCAR class, she won the pole for the Nationwide Series race at Daytona.

This year, she was among the fastest in practice for the 500 and Sunday, when the chips were down, she set fast time and her two teammates, Ryan Newman and Stewart-Haas Racing co-owner Tony Stewart, were fourth and fifth fastest - all in cars prepared for the team by Hendrick Motorsports.

So what's there to be surprised about?

But she’d barely taken the checkered flag before the Twitterverse was crying fix.

Why? She’s got the credentials.

If there was anything funny going on, I guarantee the Busch brothers, and Jimmie Johnson, and Kevin Harvick, and every other Sprint Cup driver in Daytona would have been crying foul.

This is not just another NASCAR race. This is the Daytona 500, the biggest race in NASCAR, and there isn’t another one till next year and no professional race car driver worth his salt is going to allow something as important as the pole position or the race result to be manipulated.

If one of the tech inspectors suspected something was fishy, and tipped off a reporter with the credentials of, say, an Ed Hinton, who went out and did some digging and subsequently reported that Patrick’s pole was suspect, NASCAR’s reputation could be seriously jeopardized.

I know competitors in NASCAR have sometimes cheated, but I seriously doubt that NASCAR itself has ever been complicit.

I know, fans have talked for years about so-and-so getting "the call" from NASCAR but when you sit right down and think about it, how in the world would something like that work? You would need to have 42 other drivers in on the fix and that, ladies and gentlemen, would be impossible.

If NASCAR was ever found to be rigging results, it would be ruined. So, there’s no way.

I’m sure that Brian France, et al, are delighted that Danica Patrick did what they’d hoped she’d do because it is very good for business.

But other than crossing their fingers when she went out for her run, I don’t think they had any further involvement.

Danica Patrick’s lap of 45.817 seconds is the fastest pole time since Kenny Schraeder’s back in 1990. Jeff Gordon was closest to her, lapping with a time of 45.850 seconds, 0.033 seconds slower.

The next 38 cars to go out were within a second of her time. In total, 45 cars participated in time trials and Brian Keselowski, brother of defending Sprint Cup champion Brad Keselowski, was 45^th and last with a time of 48.946 seconds – 2.973 seconds behind Patrick.

As per the rules at Daytona, the pole winner and the second-fastest time trialer (Gordon) are now locked into the big race. Everybody else has to race in one of two qualifying sprints next Thursday afternoon and their finishing position will determine their starting position in the 500.

With only 45 cars in total vying for 43 starting positions, there will not be a lot of drama in either of those Budweiser Duels at Daytona. There is no danger of any of the Sprint Cup regulars missing the big race.

Once upon a time, of course, those qualifying races meant something because as many as 60 cars would try to make the field at Daytona, which meant that upwards of 30 cars – sometimes more – would take the green flag in each of those two races. The pressure would really be on all of the drivers to race their way into the feature.

Not any longer, it seems.

What was with that puny crowd for the Sprint Unlimited race at Daytona Saturday night. Were there 5,000 people in the stands? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smaller crowd for a NASCAR race starring most of the big names.

Best line of the weekend, courtesy of Jeff Gordon: "I was the fastest guy out there."

Jealous, or what? Kevin Harvick, after winning the Sprint Unlimited: "Maybe this will knock Ricky (Stenhouse, Jr.) and Danica off the front page."

I wouldn’t bet on it, Kevin.

Rob Faulds to anchor Sportsnet IndyCar races

In recent entries, I’ve talked about the broadcast team that Sportsnet is putting together to announce certain races during the 2013 IZOD IndyCar Series season.

As most of you know, Sportsnet has taken over telecasting of Indy car races from TSN and plans to do much more than pick up the U.S. broadcast feed.

Yes, the camera work will still be provided by either ABC or the NBC Sports Network but the people in the booth providing the audio for at least three of the races will be under contract to Sportsnet.

I previously revealed that Todd Lewis will be reporting from the pits and that Paul Tracy and Bill Adam would be in the booth. I said Adam would do the play-by-play and Tracy would do the colour but I found out at the weekend that I was an announcer short.

A source I will call "Deep Turbo I" told me I was right about Adam but wrong about his role. Adam, a sports car champion who is an inductee of the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame, will do colour alongside Tracy.

The host and play-by-play announcer will be Rob Faulds, a Sportsnet anchor with strong play-by-play credentials.

Faulds, Adam, Tracy and Lewis will entertain and inform during pre-race and post-race shows on Sportsnet at the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg March 24, the Indianapolis 500 on May 26 and the Honda Indy Toronto races on July 13 and 14.

"Deep Turbo I" told me that Faulds did play-by-play on Toronto Blue Jays telecasts in the early 2000s and has done Ottawa Senators and Montreal Canadiens NHL games.

And why is it necessary to have someone other than Tracy do colour?

Because, said Deep Turbo II (I had more than one source on all this), Adam has experience on live television and Tracy does not.

"Everybody knows Paul is a ‘talker,’ and will probably be great," Deep Turbo II said. "But he’s never done colour on TV and they (Sportsnet producers) didn’t want to take the chance that he might freeze up.

"It’s happened before where somebody came in with great credentials and then had no idea what to say when the red light went on."

"Deep Turbo I," meanwhile, said although the schedule calls for three races, there could be one or two more – "depending on economics and viewer reaction."

It’s great that Sportsnet is doing this. We have two Canadians racing in IndyCar – James Hinchcliffe and Alex Tagliani – and a little extra effort to reflect this is appreciated.

TSN used to make an effort, in Indy car as well as F1, but has been content in recent years to show the races and not do anything else.

NASCAR is still on TSN, of course, as is F1. But I wouldn’t be surprised if, at some point, Sportsnet took a crack at those series, too.

A quick comment on the commenting attached to my entry of yesterday.

Someone thinks I was being critical of Michael Waltrip going after Tim Hortons for a sponsorship. If that was the impression I left, I’m sorry, because I didn’t mean that.

I think it’s wonderful when a great Canadian corporation like Timmy’s gets involved in car racing.

Some people who own franchises have sponsored racers in the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series for stock cars and others have supported drag racers. But those would be classified as "regional" sponsorships, as distinct from a full-on national, corporate sponsorship.

In fact, I think the last time there was one of those was in 1987 when Ludwig Heimrath Jr. of Toronto drove in CART for Dick Simon Racing.

So if Michael Waltrip can sell Hortons on the merits of a Sprint Cup sponsorship for the Daytona 500, I say go for it.

Another commenter suggested I was behind the times in reporting that A.J. Allmendinger had nothing lined up in NASCAR for 2013 and that he would be driving some races again for Phoenix Racing.

That might yet happen, but as of today there is no deal.

NASCAR cheaters outed, Adam to lead Sportsnet Indy team

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

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

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

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

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

No details, but the engine was illegal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or so I've been told . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul Tracy coming to Sportsnet; Kyle Busch to Expo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is that stupid, or what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I just thought I’d pass that on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Danica Patrick Show - all the time

If there was ever any doubt that Danica Patrick would dominate the runup to this year's Daytona 500, well -- guess again.

 

In final testing at the weekend before next Saturday's Busch Clash -- er, Sprint Unlimited at Daytona pre-pole-qualifying race -- Patrick was third

fastest in the morning session but not in the top three in the afternoon and yet the headlines on all the stories I've seen said things like, "Patrick quick at Daytona," and "Danica showing early speed."

 

Get used to it, all you Danica haters out there. All eyes will be on her as she embarks on her first Sprint Cup season in NASCAR. And come Daytona 500 time, the broadcast team will remind you again and again how she's doing, whether she's first or last.

 

And it's all about marketing, remember. NASCAR knows it has you and all the other auto racing fans out there. They are going after the casual auto racing fan and even the non-auto racing fan and while the name Trevor Bayne doesn't resonate much anywhere, the name Danica Patrick does and that's why everybody involved in the promotion of NASCAR is told to focus on her.

 

Having said that, the fact that she was third fastest in any session is not bad. She won't win this season, probably, but she'll certainly be competitive.

 

The "new" Cup cars will be on display in that Unlimited race for the first time, by the way. These are the new generation "Car of Tomorrow" cars that actually look a little bit like the cars you find in GM. Ford and Toyota showrooms.

 

NASCAR's first era was dominated by Detroit iron and where the slogan "Win on Sunday, sell on Monday," meant something. Then the sport's biggest star, Dale Earnhardt, was killed in a crash at Daytona and NASCAR opted for a generic car that was super safe to avoid further catasrophies. Because the fans couldn't tell the cars apart, the marketing of the drivers kept NASCAR on top but didn't do a lot for the manufacturers.

 

Now the pendulum is starting to swing back. 

 

Kevin Swindell, son of sprint car champion Sammy Swindell, is a very talented racing driver but he hasn't had the success in other racing series that he's had at the annual Chili Bowl, held indoors each January in Tulsa, Okla.

 

Swindell has won sprint car races, midget races and stock car races. But he hasn't been able to string anything together.

 

The Chili Bowl, though, is a different kettle of fish. Saturday night, Kevin won his fourth consecutive Chili Bowl and his dad finished second. Brad Sweet was third.

 

Like most successful short-track racers, Kevin Swindell is aiming for a career in NASCAR. If he can transfer that obvious talent to the bigger, heavier stockers, he'll have a great career ahead of him.

 

It's a shame that Kevin Swindell hasn't even thought about Indy cars. And that the generation before him - his father, Steve Kinser, Jac Haudenschild, those guys - was totally ignored. You know, if Jeff Gordon, sprint car driver, hadn't been snubbed by CART and had spent his wonderful career in Indy cars, that series wouldn't be in the mess it is today.

 

Although the cheerleaders for the series continue to suggest that when the season opens in March in St. Petersburg, Fla., 24-26 cars will be on the grid, the feeling here in the media centre in Detroit is that 22 to 24 is more likely.

 

I say 20-22. We'll see who's right.

 

The speed sport is well represented at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this year.

 

Media days Monday and Tuesday precede the public show that opens next Saturday. Attendees will see a Red Bull F1 car at the Infiniti display, Dario Franchitti's Indy 500-winning car at Honda, a Ferrari at - well - Ferrari and on and on.

 

Don't forget to go to wheels.ca for everything you would ever want to know about the Detroit show - we have 14 people here Tweeting, blogging, Facebooking, etc.

Auto racing: John Judson, Salt Walther and me

A couple of years ago, I wrote a column for Toronto Star Wheels about evil sometimes being present at race meetings.

I wasn’t talking about meets where there’s a fatal accident. Auto racing is a dangerous sport and death can be part of the game.

But sometimes there’s something else going on. I choose to call that evil.

In that column, for instance, I discussed the Grand Prix of San Moreno at Imola, Italy, in 1994, when Rubens Barrichello was injured in practice on the Friday, Roland Ratzenberger was killed in qualifying Saturday, there was an accident at the start of the race on Sunday in which drivers and spectators could have been injured, or worse, and then Ayrton Senna (left) was killed in a crash shortly after the safety car pulled off and the race was re-started.

Even after all that, a wheel came off a car in the pits later on and narrowly missed beaning people, including one other driver.

There was really nothing else that could have gone wrong that weekend.

But there was definitely something sinister present. It was evil.

I was reminded of evil this weekend when I heard the news that David (Salt) Walther had died at age 65. (Click here for Robin Miller's tribute.)

Many will remember that Walther was terribly burned in an accident on the front straightaway at Indianapolis in 1973 (left). It was a horrible crash (my colleague, Gary Grant, had a link to the video – click here – in Monday’s Insider Report at wheels.ca) but it wasn’t the only accident that May.

In fact, May 1973 was an absolutely horrid month in racing. It was evil, and there is no other explanation for it.

Shortly after practice started at Indy, in which rain was almost a constant and several racers had ridden their cars into walls, three drivers – Bobby Allison (yes, him), Gordon Johncock and Dick Simon – flew to Talladega, Ala., to race in the NASCAR Winston 500. A massive crash in which 21 cars were eliminated (Allison’s among them) saw several drivers injured, including Wendell Scott, who never fully recovered and was never able to race in NASCAR again. 

Back at Indianapolis, popular driver Art Pollard was killed on the first day of qualifying. Pollard (left, who drove a turbine car for Andy Granatelli at Indy in 1968) was a star of the old Western Canada-northwestern United States CAMRA supermodified series, out of which came Indy drivers Jim Malloy, Eldon Rasmussen, the Sneva brothers (Tom and Jerry) and Cliff Hucul, among others. Pollard's death was a big loss.

Rain delayed the Indy 500's scheduled 11 a.m. Central Time start on Monday, May 28, and it was after 3 p.m. when the green flag finally flew. There was an immediate 11-car crash and Salt Walther’s mount very nearly went into the crowd. After touching wheels with another car, the No. 77 Dayton Steel Wheel Special climbed up the retaining wall and sprayed fuel on spectators, injuring 11 of them.

Eleven cars crash, 11 spectators are hurt; coincidence, or what?

The front end of Walther’s car was torn off and photographs of his upside down car with his lower legs and feet sticking out (left) were published on front pages all over the world.

Walther survived, albeit scarred for life. His addiction to morphine and the other pain killers that helped him to recover from his burns plagued him for the rest of his days.

The rains that came almost at the same time as the accident forced cancellation of the 500 until the following day but further inclement weather kept it from being restarted until the Wednesday.

In the race that finally got going, Swede Savage lost control coming out of Turn 4 and crashed in a ball of fire. Although alive when taken from the speedway by ambulance, Savage (left, below) was to eventually die. But in the commotion and fear that immediately followed the crash, a crew member for another team who was running toward the scene was struck and killed by a fire truck travelling the wrong way along pit road.

When the rains came yet again, the race was stopped on Lap 133. Only 11 cars were running (11 again?) and only two were on the lead lap. Gordon Johncock was declared the winner.

There was no Victory Banquet in 1973. No victory laps for the winner. Three people were dead and the career of another was cut short by injuries.

Evil.

########

Now, I was at Indianapolis in 1973 but I was there as a spectator, not as a reporter. I’d recently left the Globe and Mail, where I’d covered every 500 from ’69 through ’72. I’d just started at the Star and Frank Orr was on the car racing beat, so if I wanted to be at the 500, I’d have to pay my own way and, well, Indy was Indy for me in those days and there was no way I could miss it.

My travelling companion was the late John Judson, a fantastic guy who was more than twice my age but we fit together like two peas in a pod. "Jud" was a WWII veteran who was involved in the restoration of a Lancaster bomber (he’d been a gunner on one) and earned his living as an oil-company dispatcher (leading to his classic response, when asked what he did: "I’m in oil."). He also learned how to ride a motorcycle at age 65 and that sort of thing is five-star in my books.

(If there’s a perfect death, Jud’s was close: he passed away in 1978 while at the bar of the Ashbridge’s Bay Yacht Club in Toronto. He’d just tucked into a large Canadian Club and ginger ale and – just like that – was gone.)

It had been a disappointing weekend that end of May in '73. When you went to Indy in those days, there was a full weekend of racing leading up to the classic, starting with the USAC sprint cars at the Indiana State Fairgrounds and then the Night Before the 500 midget races at Indianapolis Raceway Park.

Rain had washed out both events. In fact, it was raining so hard - and the temperature would be warm one minute and chilly the next - that some weather reports suggested a tornado was possible.

To pass the time, we did a lot of eating and drinking, not necessarily in that order. Jud enjoyed playing a game in which he would flirt with the female bartenders, just to see how far he could get, and I – being married at the time – would keep track of how he did so I could entertain him on the drive home. Trust me: when it’s raining in Indianapolis in the springtime, you sometimes have to grasp at straws.

In any event, on race day, we’d driven into the infield of the massive Indianapolis Motor Speedway through the tunnel midway between the third and fourth turns. As the day stretched out – it would rain for 10 minutes and then dry up for an hour, then rain for 10 minutes and so-on – and the race kept being delayed, we decided to move the car closer to the exit, just in case. This turned out to be a very wise move.

A little after 3 p.m., the command went out: Gentlemen, Start Your Engines! There was a hot dog stand right in the middle of the Turn 3 infield and Jud and I looked at each other and, silently saying "What the hell," managed to climb up on top of it.

The crowd is still huge at Indy each May but the Indy cars and the 500 were really the big dogs back then so every seat was filled in the stadium and there were thousands of people in the infield straining to see something – anything – and here John Judson and I were standing on top of a hot dog stand and we could see forever and we could see it perfectly.

As a result of this catbird seat we occupied, it quickly became very clear that the U.S. Auto Club officials in charge of the "Greatest Spectacle In Racing" should never have tried to start that race. Although the skies had looked dark when we were down on the ground, once we were head-and-shoulders above everyone else, it quickly became clear that the weather was about to let loose again and there was no way anybody was going to be able to go racing for any length of time.

And it was as if the drivers didn’t have their heads in it, either. I have never seen a worse set of parade laps nor a worse pace lap in all my years of going to car races before or since. The drivers were all over the place and out of line and although they seemed to get it together at the last second before pulling onto the main straight for the start, you could sense disaster coming.

And come it did.

As the field went through Turn 4, I felt the first sprinkles. "It’s starting, Jud," I said. And then I heard the voice of the late, legendary, Speedway announcer Tom Carnegie, say these words:

"And the green flag is out! . . . There’s a fire. . . And another fire. . ."

And it started to pour rain as he was saying those words and Jud and I, without speaking again, were off that hot dog stand and running for the car. We were in it and moving before anyone else could react.

We moved so quickly that we were the very first car through that tunnel and on out of the Indianapolis Speedway. We were dry and safe and soon home at our 38th Street Holiday Inn, where we sat drinking maragaritas and smoking long, unfiltered cigarettes and watching replays of the horror on the TV set in the hotel’s lounge.

And Salt Walther (left) was fighting for his life underneath a car that was caught up in an accident at the start of an Indianapolis 500 race that should never, ever have happened.

My wife sometimes asks me how, when I see things like this happen, I can continue to love this sport as a do.

I sometimes have a hard time answering.

- Norris McDonald