Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Racing firsts: Stewart, Pagenaud and Davey Hamilton

A popular victory in NASCAR, as well as controversy, and a NASCAR-type "big one" crash in the second IndyCar Series race at Detroit, were highlights of this weekend’s auto racing.

It was also a weekend of "firsts."

At Dover, Del., Tony Stewart won his first race of the 2013 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season after Jimmie Johnson was penalized for jumping a restart with 19 laps to go when leader Juan Pablo Montoya didn’t go with him.

It always takes two to tango or, in the case of car racing, two drivers in sinc on a side-by-side restart when the green flag is thrown. When the green comes out, both guys are supposed to go. Johnson, on the inside, went and Montoya didn’t and NASCAR ruled the 48 was in the wrong and assessed Johnson a drive-through penalty.

Johnson had the option of relinquising the lead to Montoya but refused and that’s why he was penalized. He eventually finished 17th. Montoya, meantime, was three laps short of his first oval-track victory when he was passed by Stewart. Jeff Gordon finished third, with Kyle Busch fourth and Brad Keselowski fifth.

Incidentally, Keselowski’s car flunked post-race inspection – the front end was too low – and he will be assessed some type of penalty in the week ahead. (Click here for full story and results.)

Stewart has been having a miserable year, as has his whole Stewart-Haas Racing team. Danica Patrick was 24^th Sunday (after starting 39^th) and Ryan Newman, who went off fifth, crashed out after exchanging paint with David Gilliland.

Said Stewart: “Man, it’s been such a tough year. We’ve let them (fans) down for a long time. Hopefully, we’ll start building that momentum.”

Keep an eye on Stewart now. He has a habit of slumbering, like a bear. When he wakes up, everybody else would be wise to watch out. Sunday afternoon at Dover, he emerged from hibernation.

At Detroit, Simon Paginaud won the first IZOD IndyCar Series race of his career by surviving some serious carnage that saw poor A.J. Allmendinger crash out for the second time in two days at almost the same place.

In the first double-header in Indy car history (there have previously been two races held on the same day, called "twins," in which full-race distances were cut in half in order to have two green flags and two checkers), the drivers pretty much behaved themselves on Saturday during the first race (won by Mike Conway) but checked their manners and good judgment at the door on Sunday and all bets were off.

James Jakes followed Pagenaud to the checkers, with Conway finishing third for his second podium in two days. (Click here for full story and results.)

As well as being the first victory for Pagenaud, it was the 100th for Honda when competing against other manufacturers in IndyCar. Pagenaud was also the sixth different winner in seven races and the third first-time winner.

Said Pagenaud in Victory Lane: "It’s unbelievable. I don’t know how we did it. It’s a great feeling. One I hope of more to come."

Ten cars were either eliminated through crashes or sufficiently damaged that although classified as running at the end of the 70-lap contest they were just turning laps for points.

For the second straight day (and race), Alex Tagliani of Montreal failed to finish because of a crash. He and Justin Wilson were eliminated on Lap 27 when Sebastien Bourdais tapped Will Power going into a corner and caused him to go into a slow, lazy spin and everybody piled up behind them. Many of the drivers got going again but couldn’t be considered threats for victory by any stretch of the imagination.

One of those was poor James Hinchcliffe of Oakville. Winner of two of the four opening races of the season, his performance has been less than stellar since. Of course, as is the case with jockeys and horses, if the car ain’t working, there’s not a whole lot the driver can do to get it to run faster.

For instance, Hinchcliffe was behind Power when the Penske driver started his slide and so he backed off. As Power’s spin continued, "Hinch" ducked to the inside and floored it, expecting to shoot past on the right, only to have the Aussie’s mount start to straighten out and POW!

Hinchcliffe made it to the pits but by the time repairs were made and he rejoined, he was out of contention and finished the race 13 laps behind the winner in 19^th place, four worse than where he finished on Saturday.

As well as being the first victory for Simon Pagenaud, it was also the first for Schmidt-Hamilton Motorsports, a team in which supermodified and Indy racer (and friend) Davey Hamilton has a direct involvement.

Paralyzed ex-racer Sam Schmidt and Hamilton both personify the "never give up" philosophy of automobile racing pioneer Louis Chevrolet.

A short-track oval racer and champion, Hamilton first went to Indianapolis looking for a ride in the early 1990s when CART was in all its glory and road racers were the drivers of choice. Although he never did make a start at Indianapolis under CART sanction, it wasn’t for lack of trying and Hamilton went on to become one of the early Indy Racing League stars.

In fact, by 2001, he was the only one of the original IRL drivers (a group that included Scott Goodyear and Tony Stewart) to have raced in all of the league’s races and in which he finished second in points twice.

Schmidt didn’t start a professional racing career until later in life – he was 31 when he was rookie-of-the-year in the USAR Hooters Pro Cup Series. Five years later, after three Indy 500 starts, Schmidt rode a car backwards into the wall at Walt Disney World Speedway near Orlando, leaving him a quadraplegic. In 2000, he formed his own racing team and Hamilton became his driver.

Hamilton’s own world nearly came to an end in 2001 during a race at Texas Motor Speedway. Another car below an engine and Hamilton lost control in the oil. The ensuing crash into the wall tore and broke his feet and ankles so badly that doctors prepared to amputate. 

But a friend who was with him, John Nicotra, begged them to reconsider - they did - and Hamilton subsequently underwent more than 20 operations, many performed by Dr. Terry Trammel of Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, to restore them to where, today, you wouldn’t know he’d been so badly injured.

Forced to retire from driving at the time, Hamilton promoted races, race series and managed racers and joined the Indianapolis Speedway Radio Network as a colour commentator. (In fact, he was on the air with play-by-play announcer Mike King in Detroit on Sunday when his driver and team won the second race.)

However, you can’t keep a good racer down and Hamilton not only returned to Indy cars to race in the 500 again – he made the field five more times, in fact – but continues to drive supermodifieds at Oswego Speedway in northern New York state, cars that are entered for him by – would you believe? – his old pal, Johnny Nicotra.

Hamilton’s ambition, perserverance and courage have not gone unnoticed and are largely responsible for his ongoing relationship with sponsor Hewlett-Packard. HP’s support is Davey’s contribution to Schmidt-Hamilton Motorsports.

Now, you could produce a "made-for-TV" movie out of a story like that, couldn't you? It’s just the sort of thing that IndyCar has to jump on if it wants to regain its proper share of the North American auto racing audience.

The question is: will it?

Now, on Saturday, I said I’d make a suggestion in this column today about how IndyCar could seriously start to improve its marketing and public relations. But this entry is too long already, so I will spell it out in the next one – if I can keep myself from being sidetracked.

But the Sam Schmidt-Davey Hamilton saga is too good a story to wait for another day, which is why it got priority this time around.

PARTING SHOTS: I hate to be negative - those two races in Detroit were really good stuff - but somebody has got to get hold of the people at IndyCar and shake them. Hard. Why in the world would they hold qualifying for the second Detroit race before they even held the first race? They held qualifying on Friday afternoon for the first race Saturday. Fine. But then, on Saturday morning, hours before they held the first race, they conducted qualifying for the second race, which wasn't going to be held till Sunday. What is with those people? Let’s hope that by the time they get to Toronto for the next double-header, they’ll have fixed that. . . . The crowd for the Sunday race in Detroit looked significantly bigger than the crowd that turned out on Saturday. . . . Will Power looked like he was going to punch Sebastien Bourdais’ lights out – or try to – for triggering that pileup on Lap 27. One or two members of the safety crew held him back. All he could do was toss – toss! underhand, even – his gloves at Bourdais. They should have let Power alone. Did anybody try to stop Tony Stewart from throwing his helmet last year? Not a chance. . . . Jorge Lorenzo won the Moto GP race in Italy. . . . Bobby Santos won the USAC Silver Crown race at Gateway Raceway outside St. Louis. Closed for several years, Gateway previously held CART and NASCAR races. . . . Finally, at Spielberg, Austria, another round of the German Touring Car Series championship was held (DTM) and Canadian Bruno Spengler leads the championship for BMW. Robert Wickens, of Guelph and Toronto, started seventh in the race and finished 12th. I must say I find his post-race comments curiously amusing: ""Unfortunately, my race did not go according to plan. I still cannot understand how I fell back from seventh to twelfth place. I was even in sixth position on my first stint. I didn't get stuck in traffic at all, nor did I make any mistakes. The car didn't feel in any way different to yesterday either. We need to analyse exactly what happened before the next race."

- NORRIS McDONALD

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Pagenaud wins crash-filled Detroit Grand Prix

@DaveyHamilton Returns to @OswegoSpeedway Victory Lane

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.

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. . .

Keselowski best thing for NASCAR in years

There are any number of "leads" a guy like me could write to start a story about Brad Keselowski, who won NASCAR’s Sprint Cup Series championship for the first time on Sunday.

How about, "While five-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson likes to dine out on pasta fasul and fine wine, newly-crowned title-holder Brad Keselowski is happiest when tucking into a burger and fries."

Or,

"Jimmie Johnson’s net worth is estimated to be in the neighbourhood of $40 million while Brad Keselowski’s is a paltry $15 mill. But the newly crowned 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion is starting to close fast."

My favourite, however, and the way I will officially start this story goes like this:

"In 1998 when he was 14, Brad Keselowski started racing quarter-midgets. Two years later he switched to stock cars and, after a dozen more, won the 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship."

I’ll leave off the quotation marks now, because I’m right into it.

Keselowski, who also gave legendary racing team owner Roger Penske his first NASCAR Cup championship when he finished 15^th in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida Sunday, is the best thing to happen to NASCAR in years.

Johnson was a worthy champion but he really does enjoy the sophistication of Europe, his penthouse condominium in Manhattan, white shirts and ties and the good life in general.

And then there’s the Busch brothers. Kurt has won a championship and Kyle has been coming close and they are both insufferable, frankly. They try hard to be Jus’ Folks and fail miserably because they are arrogant and snooty under it all.

But Keselowski is down-to-earth and blue collar. He comes from a racing family. He worked for the family racing business when he first started out, came up the hard way and had to scratch and claw his way to the top.

After he won the title – it’s only his third season of Cup competition – and did the burnouts and sprayed the champagne, he talked about how lucky and fortunate he is to be in the position he’s in.

"I really feel the best is yet to come," he told a post-race media conference, referring to his car owner, Penske, and his crew chief, Paul Wolfe. "I think with the people on this team, we can do anything."

When I first met Keselowski during an appearance at the Canadian Motorsports Expo two years ago, he struck me as an extremely confident, disciplined and determined young man. He wasn’t arrogant; he was focussed. He knew exactly what he wanted and he knew very well how to go about getting it.

Which included, as it turned out, playing some mind games.

When A.J. Allmendinger was suspended for drug use earlier this year, several drivers – and Johnson was among them – worried aloud about the possibility of triggering a positive drug test by taking over-the-counter cold and flu medications.

Keselowski scoffed at them and suggested anybody who took anything for a cold was stupid, saying nobody ever really knows what’s in that stuff.

His message: take that, you losers.

During that media conference Sunday, he talked about being inspired by a video he saw featuring Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis. Said Keselowski:

"I saw this really cool video that Ray Lewis did and he said, 'Throughout my whole life I've been told that I'm not big enough, I'm not fast enough, I'm not strong enough and I don't have what it takes.' I've used that as a chip on my shoulder that's carried me through my whole career.

"It took 'til this year for me to realize, they're right. I'm not big enough, fast enough, strong enough. No person is. Only a team can do that. And these guys up here (members of the Penske team), they make me big enough, fast enough, strong enough to do anything we want to do and it's because of these guys. I can't be here without them. I really can't."

Keselowski had to finish 15^th or better in Sunday’s race to win his first title. He cut it close, finishing exactly that. Johnson, meantime, gave it the old college try – in fact, at one point, the points margin was down to three points in Keselowski’s favour – but a muffed pit stop in which a wheel nut wasn’t tightened correctly put Johnson back behind the eight-ball and then an engine failure in the closing stages sealed the deal.

Ironically, the race was won by Jeff Gordon, with Clint Bowyer second – and we all remember how the last Sprint Cup race ended for those two a week ago in Phoenix, don't we?

And Bowyer’s second-place finish vaulted him past Johnson in the standings. The official order of finish in the Chase for the Championship behind Keselowski was Bowyer second and Johnson third.

Quite a turnaround.

Penske said later that he planned to take the Sprint Cup trophy to Detroit and to present it to the executive committee of Dodge, which is leaving the sport for the immediate future. Team Penske will be with Ford in the years ahead, but the Sprint Cup is a nice going-away present for the Chryser/Fiat company.

Several other quick observations.

1. Danica Patrick finished high enough in the Nationwide Series race on Saturday to nail down tenth place in the season standings. This marked the first time a woman has finished top ten in any of NASCAR’s major divisions. It also kept her string of top ten series finishes alive, as she always fnished tenth or better in the standings in IndyCar.

2. In that Nationwide race, Joey Logana lined up Johanna Long for no apparent reason and drilled her nose-first into the wall. The season’s over but I hope he gets a $100,000 fine for that, which is the going rate.

3. Penske talked about the thrill of winning the Sprint Cup. It is another notch in his gold-handled cane. And it is a huge accomplishment. But in the end, we know where his heart lies and what he considers important. If there is an Indy car race and a NASCAR Sprint Cup race on the same day, we all know where he will be and it ain’t at the stock cars.

There was one other race this weekend, in which Lewis Hamilton beat Sebastien Vettel and Fernando Alonso to win the first U.S. Grand Prix at the new Circuit of the Americans near Austin, Tex.

There are now 13 points separating first-place Vettel and second-place Alonso and the season will go down to the wire at Brazil next weekend.

Questions still surround proposed Fort Erie speedway

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So very British.

I could go on. But it’s gone.

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

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.

On weekend results, concussions and Tony George

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then there were these other racing developments:

– Speed TV seems on the way out.

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

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

Speed TV first.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Now, the Tony George and IndyCar story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

– Finally, the Earnhardt concussion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Edmonton Indy gets the red flag

You have to winder if there was some kind of a race to first announce the cancellation of the Edmonton Indy, which was made official by IndyCar at 8:36 p.m. Eastern on Friday night but was on the Edmonton Sun’s website about an hour earlier (5:33 Mountain).

The Edmonton Journal had the news even earlier (4:01 p.m. Mountain) when it quoted from a City of Edmonton media release that the race on the runways of the City Centre Airport would not take place in 2013 because the event’s owner, Octane Motorsports of Montreal, had decided not to promote it – even though there is one year remaining on the three-year contract between them.

The city’s chief financial officer told the Journal that the event had run its course and there will be no attempt to find another promoter to pick up the slack.

Now, there is a bit of deja vu here, in that the Edmonton race was cancelled once before, in 2011, after the city and Octane couldn’t agree on who would pick up the $3 million tab to repave portions of the temporary circuit.

In the end, the city put up $2 million and a group of local businessmen paid the other $1 million to ensure the race would be on the schedule.

But, after all that, Octane couldn’t make a profit – or much of a profit – and Edmonton was tired of spending millions of dollars to guarantee that the race would take place.

Edmonton was an odd place for an Indy car race to be held in the first place.

Back in the glory days of CART, the Molson Indy Toronto was started in 1986 and the Molson Indy Vancouver joined in four years later.

But while Toronto has managed to keep going ever since (with the exception of 2008, when the Champ Car World Series and the Indy Racing League merged and there wasn’t room to squeeze T.O. into the calendar), Vancouver’s last race was held in 2004.

Although redevelopment of the Expo 86 property was frequently cited, the real reason auto racing was chased away was because Champ Car (which succeeded CART) was told by the city of Vancouver, the province and local corporations that money was being squirreled away for the 2010 Winter Olympics and the cupboard was bare.

So Edmonton inherited Vancouver’s race – but face it, friends: there was (and remains) no comparison between the two locales. One is a sophisticated, cosmopolitan city and the other isn’t.

However, Edmonton more than matched Vancouver’s enthusiasm for the sport of Indy car racing.

I was there for the first Edmonton Indy in 2005 and I couldn’t believe it when I walked out of the media centre to watch first practice on the first day of competition.

First, because of U.S. television sports commitments, the race – which was shoehorned into the "new" IndyCar schedule that year, remember – had to be held on Saturday instead of Sunday, which meant the race "weekend" started on Thursday instead of the usual Friday.

And Edmonton is in the central part of Alberta, which is way up north. Although it was the middle of July, it was cold and it was raining that Thursday morning.

So imagine my surprise when I walked around the pit suites grandstand and saw that every one of the 80,000 seats that had been erected for that first race was filled.

To this day, I shake my head at the turnout – on a workday Thursday, in the rain.

The first year, the race was called the West Edmonton Mall Grand Prix. Then the Brick got involved. Then Rexall. Then Honda. But since 2011, there has not been a title sponsor.

And that’s been a problem for Octane, because the other race it promotes in Canada each year, the F1 Grand Prix of Canada, likewise has not been able to attract a title sponsor and that, ladies and gentlemen, makes things extremely tough.

IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard, in making the official announcement Friday night, said the cancellation won’t have an effect on his determination to have 19 races on the 2013 calendar and that he hopes to have two Canadian races again in 2014.

Now, good luck to Bernard on the 19 races. It’s the middle of September and he wants to release the calendar in early October and I’m not so sure it’s that easy to pluck race locations out of a hat, considering that until a few days ago Edmonton would have had at least one of the spots.

In fact, the Edmonton Sun’s Terry Jones is reporting that Edmonton was being targeted as one of the "double header" locations in 2013.

So far as 2014 is concerned, there will now be much speculation about the location of the second Canadian race after Toronto. Quebec City will get mentioned on occasion. Maybe they can find a location to build a temporary circuit again in Vancouver (which would be my choice). Or perhaps Calgary will take the place of Edmonton.

Whatever, in the end the cancellation might be viewed by some as another blow to IndyCar, which continues to have problems with attendance and low television ratings.

But if Bernard can come through in early October with that 19-race schedule he keeps talking about, it will go a long way to silence any of that criticism.

(The photo in this entry of the start of the 2009 Rexall Edmonton Indy was taken by Ryan Jackson of the Edmonton Journal)

Versatile Tagliani wins NASCAR pole in Montreal



You hear the question again and again: why can’t open wheel drivers make the transition to stock cars? Why can’t winners in Indy car racing, say, transition over to NASCAR and win?

The people who ask those question, of course, are primarily NASCAR reporters and fans who love sticking it to the Indy car drivers.

Although Dario Franchitti and Sam Hornish Jr. haven’t exactly set the world on fire in NASCAR, and the jury is still out on Danica Patrick, they conveniently forget that Tony Stewart did it (from Indy car champion to NASCAR champion is pretty good) and they are currently overlooking another guy who’s pretty good at it too.

His name is Alex Tagliani, who’s a top-level Indy car star who’s driving in stock cars as well as sports cars this weekend in Montreal as the Nationwide Series makes its annual visit to le Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve.

In fact, in today’s Nationwide race, he’ll start on the pole. Horish will start beside him, with old friends Jacques Villeneuve and Danica Patrick beside him on the second row.

(An aside here: I earlier wrote that for the first time that I can remember, there is not one regular Sprint Cup driver in today’s race. At the last moment, Kyle Busch flew in from Michigan and planned to start at the back of the field.)

In any event, "Tag" is on pole and he seems to do really well every time he climbs into a stock car. In fact, years ago he saved his Indy car career when he won a NASCAR Canadian Tire Series race in Edmonton and demonstrated in front of the Champ Car World Series owners that he still very much "had it."

This is not the first time that a hometown hero has won the pole in Montreal. Carpentier did it in 2007 and Villeneuve sat on it last year, but that didn’t mean Tag wasn’t overjoyed.

"I want to dedicate this pole to the fans who come and make this event so special," said Tagliani, while pointing to the grandstands. "I feel that there was still a tenth or two left in the car. I wanted to do a third flying lap with the tire pressures and temperatures at their best but my crew chief, Trent Owens, wanted me to save fuel so we have one more lap to go in our first stint in the race."

After the Nationwide race, Tagliani will have to change driving styles because he'll be driving in tonight's Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series race, also at Montreal.

All of these races - plus a tape of the Canadian Tire race which was held this morning (which was won by J.R. Fitzpatrick, after a thrilling duel with Andrew Ranger) - are on TV today. Please check George's TV listings For Race Fans  on this site for times and channels.

One last thing: unless she's winning the race, don't be surprised if Patrick delivers a little payback today to Villeneuve for the incident at Road America  several months ago where he got into the back of her car on the last lap and robbed her of a fifth-place finish.

These things happen in racing but it was his "not my fault, I don't care" response later that annoyed people, including his sponsor who went so far as to issue a statement critical of the one-time F1 world champion.