Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Auto racing: Ace photographer Cassese dies

For years, I did a contract job with first, the Molson Indy Toronto, and later the Molson Indy Vancouver and then the Champ Car World Series races at Edmonton.

They called me the photo manager. In short, I kept the photographers assigned to cover the event in line. I got to know them all and I was very protective. I considered those wonderfully talented people to be my friends.

Among them was a guy for the Toronto Sun who was an ace. His name was Mike Cassese and he was a two-time National Newspaper Award winner. I have the sad news of reporting today that Mike died Thursday of a heart attack at the terribly young age of 53.

Mike didn't work for the Sun any more. He'd moved to Reuters and it was another Sun-photog-turned-Reuters shooter, Fred Thornhill, who paid him the ultimate tribute, calling him the best at what he did.

“He worked in the industry for more than 30 years, he was my best friend for 20 and I worked with him for 15,” said Thornhill, in a Toronto Sun story about Mike.

“He was the greatest guy anyone could call a friend. In his profession he was the best at the game for as long as I can remember. I respected him as a professional and loved him as a friend.

“I remember him as having a big heart and his heart gave out because he gave it all to us.”

My good friend Paul Madder, another ace photographer, sent me the photo above of Mike in action. It's at one of the last Molson Indy races - likely 2004 - and Mike is in the blue shirt at right, shooting the winner, Sebastien Bourdais, being greeted by his wife just after he got out of his car.

Said Paul about Mike: "Always in the right spot at the right time; what a great guy."

Visitation for Mike Cassese will be held Saturday from 6 to 9 p.m. and Sunday from 2-4 p.m. and 6 to 9 p.m. at the Jerrett Funderal Home, 1141 St. Clair Ave. West, near Dufferin. The funeral will be Monday at 10 a.m. at the St. Clare Catholic Church, 1118 St. Clair Ave. West, one block east of Dufferin.

Mike leaves two young sons.

Now, as promised, here is a roundup of recent auto racing news.

But first, a brief discussion of the difficulty in coming up with a Top Ten list.

As a true-blue Canadian, I have to include Canadian content. The government (and we all obey the government in Canada . . .) decreed years ago that one-third of anything had to be Canadian. (That’s why, when you tune into Golden Oldies radio stations in Canada, one-third of the time you will hear Canadian studio musicians singing and playing hits made famous by musicians who aren’t Canadian because it's the law. But I digress.)

In any event, that’s why at least seven of the Top Ten selections I make each year have to be Canadian. This year, it wasn’t hard because the renaming of Mosport and the cancellation of two major races were significant stories.

But my third Canadian choice, D.J. Kennington’s winning of the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series in swashbuckling fashion, was a tough one because another Canadian, Bruno Spengler, won a pretty important national racing series in Germany.

But Kennington lives here and races here and a Canadian institution sponsors the series he won that races on tracks coast-to-coast in this country, so that was the tie-breaker for me.

When I posted the list, I cheated a bit by citing four racing stories that I said came close to making the Top Ten (Juan Montoya’s dinging of the jet dryer at Daytona, for instance) but they weren’t the only stories I agonized over.

The world lost an automotive icon when Carroll Shelby passed away in 2012. His death made some of the other lists but this is not a Top Twenty, so some things have to hit the cutting room floor and that was one of them when it came to mine.

Another story discarded was F1 test driver Maria de Villota’s loss of her right eye in a straightline test crash at a small airport in England when she ran into the back of a truck. Some will argue it should have been included.

At the end of the day, you try for a list that has significance and staying power. And then you cross your fingers and hope you haven’t forgotten anything.

Okay, moving right along . . .

- It’s interesting that in a very short period of time following Randy Bernard’s exit as CEO of IndyCar and Mark Miles’ ascension to the top job in the company that controls the series that Firestone signed on through 2018 as the series’ tire supplier.

Bernard did some things really well and he handled other things really badly and the tire supplier situation was front-and-centre in the really badly column.

Shortly after he took over, his procrastination in this area resulted in Firestone announcing it was leaving. After the car owners went crazy, Bernard was able to talk Firestone into returning but at a 40 per cent increase in the cost of tires, which did not go over well with the owners at all.

Rather than learning a lesson, Bernard was still screwing around with the tires and had been talking to Continental Tire about becoming the supplier prior to being asked to resign.

So he walks the plank and – bingo! – a long term contract is signed with Firestone. Think there’s a connection? Of course there is.

– The first big racing event of the 2013 season is not the Rolex 24 at Daytona but the Chili Bowl midget tournament indoors at the huge Expo Center in Tulsa, Okla., Jan. 8-12.

Many of the big names from all the big racing series (NASCAR, NHRA, etc.) attend and more than 250 entries are whittled down over four nights to where the final 24 go at it in the A Main on the Saturday night.

Tony Stewart will be there, as will Glenn Styres, owner of the Ohsweken Speedway on the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford. In fact, Styres in the only Canadian I can find in the entry list.

He’ll try to battle his way into the fast 24 during qualifying and heats on Friday night, the 11th. Go Glenn!

The event is "owned" by the Swindell family, though. Sammy Swindell won the Chili Bowl in 2009 and his son Kevin has won it every year since. They’re both entered again.

– At that same time, Speed TV will start to broadcast live from Daytona Beach. First up will be Sprint Cup testing Jan. 10-12 and the channel plans 21 hours of coverage of the test divided between television, the Speed.com website, Twitter and Facebook.

This test will be the first time the new generation of Sprint Cup cars will be on track together and there are suggestions the sessions will be critical in determining whether one manufacturer or another has a bit of an edge.

The no-name Car of Tomorrow is gone, replaced by cars that actually look – a bit, anyway – like the cars we actually find in showrooms manufactured by Ford, GM and Toyota.

The test will kick off Speedweeks in the Daytona area, where most of the attention is centred on the big track but where there’s all sorts of other action at places like Volusia County (sprint cars) and New Smyrna (late models, modifieds) speedways.

Speed TV’s plans for the Rolex 24 include going live on Speed from 3 p.m. till 11 p.m. on Sat., Jan. 26; live streaming video on Speed.com from 11 p.m. till 9 a.m., and then from 9 a.m. till 4 p.m. back on Speed TV.

Bob Varsha will host the coverage. Play-by-play will be provided by ex-driver Brian Till.

– Richard Buck, who was a mechanic with Roger Penske’s IndyCar operation for 11 years and was crew chief on five of the Captain’s Indy 500 winning entries, has been promoted by NASCAR to managing director, Competition Grand-Am and manager director, Touring Series NASCAR under which the Canadian Tire Series is organized.

Brad Moran, who’s been director of the NASCAR Canada series, is now director of Touring Series, NASCAR, and will report to Buck.

- Who says the Ontario government’s bone-headed decision to kill horse racing in this province (I mean, can anybody explain that?) by eliminating slots at race tracks has claimed its first stock-car racing victim.

According to Mike Davies, writing in the Peterborough Examiner, there will not be a summer Friday night stock-car racing series at Kawartha Downs and Speedway in nearby Fraserville as there has been for the last 14 or 15 years.

The owners say they'll rent out the track for special events (the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series finale will be held there Sept. 21, 2013) but there won’t be regular racing.

- Hey, want a job in motorsport? Go to speedsportjobs.com, a new service website launched just before Christmas by a Canadian company.

In a release, H3R Human Resources Services of Toronto says it hopes to bring the global motorsports community together in one place where employers can find the talent they need.

First up are three positions being advertised by AIM Autosport of Woodbridge, which is expanding to two Ferraris for the 2013 Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series.

– Sad news from Niagara. Stan Friesen, a legend in the Canadian short-oval, dirt-track racing industry, died at his home in St. Catharines last Sunday of cancer at age 79.

Originally a driver of big-block modifieds, Friesen owned speedways and promoted races for most of the last 40 years, starting with the purchase of Merrittville Speedway outside Thorold in 1970. He eventually sold Merrittville to concentrate on owning and promoting the track in Ransomville, N.Y.

The business was a family affair and he was helped by his wife Diane; sons Jamie, Joel and Alex, daughters-in-law Yvonne and Trish and grandchildren Stewart (now a dirt Modified star in his own right), Heather, James-Michael, Russell and Curtis.

Jamie and Joel Friesen (Alex died in 1996) plan to continue owning and promoting Ransomville Speedway.

- Norris McDonald

Top Ten motorsports stories of 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

So here are the Top Ten.

No. 1

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

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

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

No. 2

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

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

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

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

No. 3

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

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

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

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

The Grand Prix is not affected.

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

No. 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No. 5

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

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

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

In short, it was a banner year.

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

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

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

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

You may now speculate about what all this means.

No. 6

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

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

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

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

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

No. 7

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

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

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

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

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

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

No. 8

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

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

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

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

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

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

No. 9

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

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

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

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

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

No. 10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exactly what he was doing.

- Norris McDonald

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

STAR EXCLUSIVE:

An interview with Joann Villeneuve, by Norris McDonald

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

A nation mourned.

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

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

It remains a very emotional time for many.

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

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

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

Here is an edited version of our conversation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NM: Are you still a fan?

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

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

NM: Would you do it all again?

JV: Oh, yeah.

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

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

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

AP story reveals Tony George's Indy plans

The major, breaking news story below puts the attempt by Tony George to purchase the IndyCar series from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway into context.

Despite the rumours about what George was up to, he appears to have been the messenger: he was (and probably remains) front man for a group whose members remain confidential.

Here is the story as released by the Associated Press wire service agency:

AP - Tony George was not trying to regain control of IndyCar for himself in his recent attempt to purchase the series, but rather bring in a new management team to replace the current board of directors, according to a copy of his proposal obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

George's five-page proposal was made Oct. 5 to the Hulman & Co. board of directors. In it, the group ICS Acquisition called for a management team to take over IndyCar's operations and separate the series from Indianapolis Motor Speedway. A sanctioning agreement would be created with IMS to run the Indianapolis 500, the series' signature event.

George (left, with stepson/Indy car driver Ed Carpenter) would only have been a board member in the proposal that expired Oct. 15, and offered $5 million cash and proof of $25 million in reserves for stabilization of the series, according to the document, which was obtained from a person familiar with the situation on condition of anonymity because the details have not been publicly disclosed.

The offer was not considered and George resigned from the board on Oct. 19 citing a conflict of interest in holding a seat while trying to reacquire the series he founded in 1996.

IndyCar is owned by the Hulman-George family, and its portfolio is managed by the Hulman & Co. board of directors. That board has repeated several times in the last month that the series is not for sale.

IndyCar itself is managed by the 11-member Indianapolis Motor Speedway board of directors, which voted in an emergency session Sunday night to have CEO Randy Bernard step down. Owner Roger Penske said the move showed the board "continues to show poor judgment," and fans have been outspoken through social media in their outrage of the firing.

Fans were just as opposed to George regaining control of the series, which was apparently never his intent.

It was believed he had rallied other team owners to pool their resources in a bid to buy the series and oust Bernard so that George could get his old job back. He was stripped of his power in 2009 by his mother and three sisters for spending millions of dollars of family money on the series and never turning a profit.

ICS Acquisition listed a management team of Zak Brown, founder and CEO motorsports marketing agency Just Marketing; Mike O'Driscoll, chairman of Jaguar Heritage and a non-executive director of the Williams F1 team; Terry Angstadt, former president of IndyCar's commercial division; and Claire Roberts, the CEO of ArbiterSports, an NCAA-owned sports technology company.

George's plan called for Brown to be the CEO and commissioner of IndyCar and O'Driscoll to be the president and chief operating officer. O'Driscoll would have also run the day-to-day operations of the series.

'Double-header' race weekends did in Randy Bernard

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

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

And what was that, you ask?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of course not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that, friends, will never change.

On NASCAR, pit crews and the Petit Le Mans

The Delta Wing finished sixth at Road Atlanta

News and musings following a big weekend of auto racing:

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

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

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

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

For complete details, click here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay, enough of that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Want to take a guess what that all means?

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

Condominiums.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nuts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Great stuff !

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

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

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

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

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

NASCAR: Twelve drivers, five words each; Schumi retires

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

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

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

Here are two examples:

Blue Deuce: Best driver not named Johnson

Junior: It’s not going to happen

Click here for the rest

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

Click here for details

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tony George reportedly seeking to take over IndyCar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Toronto to get two Indy car races in 2013

Here are some Good Monday Morning thoughts on some hot auto racing topics – in the following order:

1. Toronto to get two races next July instead of just one.

2. Half-empty Dover Raceway another reason why the Chase needs road races.

3. Ontario Formula Ford Championship finale as exciting as anything in racing.

4. Final farewell for a champion journalist.

1. IndyCar 2013 schedule

The IZOD IndyCar Series announced its 2013 schedule on the Speed TV show Wind Tunnel Sunday night and the big news for fans of the Honda Indy Toronto is that there will be two races in 2013 instead of one.

And instead of TSN, Rogers Sportsnet will be broadcasting IndyCar races in Canada from 2013 on - although that announcement has not officially been made.

IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard had suggested in recent months that he wanted to increase the number of races in the series to at least 19 in 2013 and in order to reach that total he wanted to see double-headers – two races, instead of just one – promoted at some venues.

It turns out that Toronto is one of three locations selected for these double-headers – Detroit and Houston being the others. For details, click here.

Now, it’s not unusual for the Indy cars to race twice on the same card. Throughout the sport’s history, and most recently at Texas Motor Speedway, there have been "twin" races promoted with one race run to its conclusion and then a second one flagged off an hour or so later.

But what will happen in Toronto next July 13 and 14 (and at Detroit and Houston) is that the IndyCar series will be the headliner on Saturday afternoon and then again on Sunday.

Whether this will goose the gate, which is the prime reason for the move in Toronto, which has not exactly been setting the world on fire attendance-wise the last few years, is debatable.

Ever since its beginning in 1986 as the Molson Indy, the Indy cars have been the headline event on Sunday afternoon of what has been a three-day weekend of racing featuring touring cars, stock cars and other formula-car series in support of the big show.

For many years, it was almost a tradition that Canada’s premier stock car racing series, first known as CASCAR and now as the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series, would be the feature event on the Saturday.

But this year, the Honda Indy felt it could do without the Canadian Tire Series, as well as the Canadian Touring Car Series, and it went with an almost complete open wheel program made up of "Road to Indy" championships like the Indy Lights and Star Mazda series.

This did not produce the boffo result the promoters expected either, and so to solve the Saturday dilemma in Toronto the Green-Savoree company that owns the Toronto race is banking on the Indy cars attracting as many people on Saturday as they have been on Sunday the last couple of years and increase the overall weekend attendance total as a result.

A lot will depend on how the Honda Indy Toronto weekend is promoted and priced.

If it was up to me (which it’s not, of course), I would charge premium prices for the seats immediately behind the pits as well as for the suites. Everybody else (kids under 12 would be free) would get in for next to nothing – ten bucks, say – in order to do one thing and one thing only: pack the place.

For that pittance of an admission, I’d also give everybody a hot dog, or a slice of pizza, and a drink. I’d have a big act rock or country concert on stage at noon each day, with the IndyCar race to start immediately after the concert.

I’d bank on a Rogers Centre-size crowd of at least 55,000 each day and at the end I’d be able to say the weekend was a huge success and that Indy car racing as a spectacle in Toronto was back.

I would suggest at this point that it would not be all that hard to sell sponsorship and advertising for the 2014 races and to start making serious money again.

We’ll see, though. All I can say at this point is that it’s going to be interesting.

The Honda Indy issued a release at 10 p.m. Sunday night. Here is what it said:

"The Honda Indy Toronto will feature an important addition in 2013: a doubleheader weekend of IZOD IndyCar Series races. The addition of back-to-back races in Toronto is a first in the history of the event, which will run July 12-14 at Exhibition Place.

"Since we acquired the race in 2008, our mandate has been to create entertainment and excitement for fans, customers, sponsors, tourism and the local community," said Charlie Johnstone, Vice President and General Manager of Green Savoree Toronto.

"A doubleheader allows us to go further, faster in the delivery of our mission and offers numerous benefits. We’re extremely excited to make it happen."

"The Honda Indy Toronto brings a shot of adrenaline to the city every summer," said David Whitaker, President and CEO of Tourism Toronto.

"With the event expanded to two marquee races Saturday and Sunday, visitors have even more reason to plan a weekend stay, while Toronto also benefits from the expanded broadcast and international exposure."

"The Honda Indy Toronto is in the final stages of confirming its support series schedule for race weekend. Fans can expect the full race lineup, along with ticket renewals and sales for 2013 to be announced in the coming weeks."

2. NASCAR needs a road race

The Chase for the Championship of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series is a terrific idea. Playoffs in any sport are always more exciting than the regular season.

Or they’re supposed to be, that is.

You’d never know it by the attendance at the third race of the 10-race Chase Sunday at Dover Downs Speedway, which was half empty if not more.

Entire sections of grandstand were covered off; the rest of the place had every second seat empty.

I used to think it was the economy. Now I’m not so sure. I’m starting to think that after more than 50 years of watching stock cars go around in circles – endlessly, it seems – even hard-core fans of the sport are tired of it all.

Which brings me back to my soap-box position that NASCAR needs more road races during the regular season (Road America, Montreal, Road Atlanta) and at least one during the 10-race Chase (how about Canadian Tire Motorsport Park?)

NASCAR stock car racing on road courses is way more exciting than it is on most oval speedways (there are exceptions, of course: Daytona, Talladega) because most NASCAR drivers are more versatile than they used to be and are able to race hard and with finesse while turning right as well as left and shifting gears.

But it probably is not going to happen in the short term, which is a pity. We're all going to have to live through seven more oval races before they crown the 2012 national champion.

Brad Keselowski won his second Chase race at Dover yesterday by managing his fuel better than his opponents. Click here for full story and results.

3. Ontario Formula Fords

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: some of the most exciting racing week in and week out in these parts is the Ontario Formula Ford Challenge and this weekend was no exception.

The championship was in the balance this weekend at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, where the Formula Ford title battle was part of the Celebration of Motorsport weekend of races that traditionally ends racing for the season at the legendary road course north of Bowmanville.

Two drivers were fighting for the championship – Michael Adams of Courtice and Caitlin Johnston of Orangeville. Johnston won Saturday’s first race of the weekend after the engine in Adams’s car gave out. He’d been running a strong second to her before being forced off track.

They went into Sunday’s race tied in points. I was unable to attend, so my good friend and ace racing reporter J. Wally Nesbitt of Inside Track magazine emailed me this report Sunday night.

"Adams got a ride in Bill Clubine's No. 64 for Sunday’s race.

"Jesse Lazare qualified on the pole, with Adams second, Sergio Pasian third and Johnston fourth.

"Johnston got the lead by the end of Lap 1, swapped it back and forth with Lazare on each of the next three laps, then took the lead from Lap 5 on.

"On the final lap, Johnston had built up a small advantage but had to slow for a spinning backmarker between Turns 4 and 5A, which allowed the pack to catch up.

"Lazare got past, leaving Johnston in control of second, with Adams third.

"Entering Turn 10, Adams made a bonzai move on the inside and forced Johnston into the tire wall. She was classified a DNF.

"The finishing order was Lazare, Jack Kitchell Jr., Pasian and Adams.

"Johnston lodged a protest but it was not upheld. She has 24 hours to file an appeal (with video proof).

"This process did not affect the race result but the championship remains in doubt."

Thank you, Wally, for that report.

I know both those drivers, I like both those drivers and I cheer for both those drivers.

This is a shame.

4. So long to Chris Economaki

Although he died at age 91 last Friday, it was over for me when his column disappeared from Page 4 of National Speed Sport News in January 2010, several months before the newspaper he owned and wrote in for more than 50 years ceased publication.

Although I thought about him after that, and talked about him with friends, I never again read an original word he wrote so his passing, for me, was somewhat muted.

Economaki was the editor and publisher of  Speed Sport, as it was known, for most of its history. It was a weekly publication that covered everything from local dirt tracks to Formula One. It was the Bible of the sport of auto racing.

Economaki – the press theatre at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is named after him – wrote what was termed the most important column in auto racing. It was the Good Stuff.

And in 1960, after ABC started televising NASCAR racing and messing it up, Bill France insisted that the network use Economaki to improve its product.

Over time, as well as doing NASCAR races, Economaki was the colour commentator and pit reporter for USAC champ car racing, Indy car racing and Formula One.

He knew everybody in the sport and knew just about everything about racing. Two things:

He said on several occasions later in his life that racing was getting too safe."You have to be able to sell the danger or people will stop watching," he said.

If he’d still been in the saddle, I wonder how he would have reacted to IndyCar’s decision to stop the race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway after Dan Wheldon was killed.

And then there was the fabulous story he told at the very first Canadian Motorsports Expo in 2007.

He set the scene by explaining that ABC’s Wide World of Sports had a rookie director in charge of the live telecast of a USAC dirt champ car race at the Illinois State Fairgrounds in Springfield.

The director had noticed that every morning, A.J. Foyt would go out for a walk around the mile-long dirt oval and wanted Economaki to interview Foyt about this particular habit.

As they prepared to go on the air that Saturday afternoon, the young director went up to Economaki and reminded him one last time to talk to Foyt about his morning walk.

So they went on the air and Economaki did as he was told. He caught up to A.J. Foyt standing beside his car before the start of the 100-mile race.

I’ll let Economaki take over the telling of this story.

"So I looked at Foyt and I put the microphone up to his mouth and I said: "A.J., we’ve noticed that every morning, you take a walk around this big dirt speedway here in Springfield. Are you studying the track? Trying to find the soft spots, the places were you can take your car that might give you an advantage during the race today?

"And A.J. Foyt looked at me and said on live television on the ABC network:

'Actually, Chris, if I don’t go for a long walk first thing in the morning, I just can’t have a good sh-t."

And that was just one story. As someone who had the pleasure of being around him on a number of occasions over the years, I know he had a million of them.

As he himself was wont to write in his Speed Sport column: RIP, Chris.

Here's why IndyCar should change its points system

Will Power reminds me of a guy in either the insurance or financial planning industries who can sell a client on a policy or product and then can’t get them to actually sign the contract.

You run across people like that in the automobile business too. They need the help of a "closer" in order to sell a car - and that describes Power to a "t."

He can dominate all season and then he just can’t seal the deal.

It happened again in Fontana, Calif., Saturday night at the California Speedway. He went into the race, leading the IZOD IndyCar Series championship by a relatively comfortable margin. All he had to do to wrap up the title, pretty much, was drive his Penske Racing car to the finish.

For the third year in a row, he blew it. On Lap 55, entering the first turn, he just plain lost control and crashed into the outside wall. Details of the mistake and how Ryan Hunter-Reay then went on to win the title are in this post:

RYAN HUNTER-REAY WINS INDYCAR TITLE IN NAIL-BITER

But back to Power. Two years ago during the season finale at Homestead Speedway, he just drifted up into the marbles and hammered the wall, handing the championship to Dario Franchitti. Last year, he was one of the 15 cars caught up in the huge crash at Las Vegas Motor Speedway that killed Dan Wheldon. And now this year.

Afterward, he called the situation "depressing."

The problem with Power is that he’s a great road and street-course racer but he’s not as good on ovals. He’s not alone in his distaste of them. Mike Conway, who stepped out of A.J. Foyt’s team car on Friday, saying he was gun-shy about continuing to race on ovals, is also an excellent road/street course racer.

It’s a shame that – the way things stand today – Conway might not be able to keep going in the series. And that Power appears snake-bitten when it comes to racing on tracks where all you have to do is turn left, thus losing a championship - again - for Penske Racing in the process.

But I have a suggestion that might solve this problem: why not have two drivers for one car?

IndyCar already has two championships – one for ovals and one for road courses – and then the overall championship.

So let’s take Penske Racing as an example. Power is a wonderful road/street racer, so he drives those races. Ed Carpenter, who won the race in California Saturday night, is an excellent oval racer but less than excellent when he has to turn right. So let's say Penske hires Carpenter to drive the oval races in place of Power. At the end of the season, Power is road course champion and Carpenter has the oval-track title and Team Penske is awarded the overall championship.

Since I just thought of it, I think that’s a terrific idea.

Employment opportunities would be increased – there all all sorts of very capable oval-track racers out there who would be able to drive, and drive well, in the big leagues – and no driver would have to embarrass himself/herself or scare himself/herself trying to do something they aren’t comfortable with or good at.

As auto racing is the ultimate team sport, why does there only have to be one driver for each car?

Although not as frequent recently, NASCAR has been doing this sort of thing for years. All sorts of stock car oval drivers were out to lunch when they had to race on the road courses in California and at Watkins Glen, so teams would hire "road course specialists" like Mississauga’s own Ron Fellows to step in and get the job done.

It sometimes worked in NASCAR, so why not in IndyCar?

Now, this is not an original idea of mine. I first brought it up with David Billes, who owned the Canadian Tire-sponsored CART team in the mid-1980s. I was talking to him in the post-Indianapolis 500 tech-inspection line in 1985 after Johnny Parsons Jr. had finished fifth in place of Jacques Villeneuve Sr., who had crashed twice while trying to qualify. 

Uncle Jacques was a wonderful road racer – in fact, he won a CART race at Road America in 1986 – but was not comfortable on the ovals. Once, in an effort to rev him up to turn left better, Billes took him to Oswego Speedway (ta-da . . .) in northern New York when the NASCAR modifieds were running there and paid Richie Evans, George Kent, Maynard Troyer (who provided the race car) and Jerry Grant to teach him how to circle-track race.

Villeneuve performed better after that session but still wasn’t a natural on ovals. So my question to Billes was, why make him do it if he’s not comfortable? Let him run the road courses and hire Warren Coniam to drive the ovals.

Billes said it was a good idea but wouldn’t work because the points went to the driver and not the team.

So change the way the points are awarded, I said then and I’ll say again.

Because the way things are going now, poor Will Power is never going to win a championship for Roger Penske.

Speaking about somebody who just might win a title for Roger this season, Brad Keselowski won the NASCAR Sprint Cup race Sunday at Chicagoland Speedway, with Jimmie Johnson second.

It was the opening event of the 10-race Chase for the Championship and if the first race is any indication, these two will soon distance themselves from the rest of the 12-car/driver pack although Kasey Kahne finished third and has been coming on strong in recent weeks.

Non-Chase drivers Kyle Busch and Ryan Newman were fourth and fifth. Full results here

Jeff Gordon was running well when his throttle wouldn’t close and he went crashing into the wall. And Denny Hamlin ran out of fuel on the last lap. Gordon was credited with 35^th finishing position and Hamlin was 16^th.

The Sprint Cup cars will now go on to New Hampshire Motor Speedway for a meet next weekend.

Canadian Bruno Spenger, driving for BMW, won the German Touring Car Series race Sunday at the Oschersleben circuit. Robert Wickens of Guelph and Toronto, driving for the Mercedes Junior Team, was seventh – an excellent result.

Finally, for this roundup, the Targa Newfoundland wound up at the weekend and here are the results:

St. John's native Scott Giannou and co-driver Ray Felice of Guelph won a third straight victory in the Classic Division while Paul Dyer, of Bauline, Nfld., and Justin Grant of Paradise, Nfld., won the Open Division in their Mitsubishi Lancer.

Second place in Classic went to the immaculate Ford Escort of the British team of Ben Gill and Dave Didcock. Third went to the Porsche of Bill Shanahan and Murray Smith of the U.S.

The battle for second in Open was finally settled in favor of Samuel Hubinette of Sweden and co-driver Jen Horsey of Toronto, who wheeled their tiny Fiat Abarth home ahead of the monster Mustang of Ray and Julie Halleran of Paradise, Nfld.

The Modern Division was controlled from the start by Andrew Comrie-Picard of Edmonton (via California) and expatriate Australian Brian O'Kane of Calgary, who steered their Mitsubishi Lancer to a decisive victory ahead of Targa rookies Bill Caswell and Horst Reinhardt of the U.S. in their BMW M3.

The battle for third place went down to the final day, when the MINI Cooper S of Doug Mepham of Belleville and co-driver John Solecki of Pickering moved ahead of the impressive rookie team of Daryl Leiski and co-driver Grant Lindsay of Prince George, B.C.

The Grand Touring competition see-sawed back-and-forth all week between three team-mates but was finally settled in favor of John Hume Sr. of Toronto, and Craig MacMullen of Centreville, N.S., in their BMW. They gained a comfortable lead on the final day over the MINI Cooper Countryman of Jon Riddell and Brian De Lange of Toronto.

Third was another BMW, driven by John Hume Jr, of Toronto, with navigator Mel Van Adrichem of Inkerman, Ont.

More results can be found at www.targanewfoundland.com/results/

The rally also raised substantial funds for a number of charitable causes, including the Autism Society of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Way to go, folks. Perhaps Wheels will enter an official Toronto Star entry one of these years . . .