Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Detroit Grand Prix targets Canadian customers

But first . . .

Ten days ago, NASCAR caught Team Penske cheating and came down “hard” on the drivers and crew chiefs.

Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano were docked 25 points and their team managers, car chiefs, crew chiefs and engineers were all suspended for six races and the crew chiefs were each fined $100,000.

Yes, Penske has appealed but in the end, the drivers will still keep racing and the team will continue to operate.

Contrast that with what happened to a guy in the World of Outlaws Late Model Series.

After he won a big race in Illinois, series officials seized a tire from his car and sent it away for testing. They determined that a tire-softening agent had been used, which is against the rules.

So the series stripped the guy of his victory, made him give back the $20,000 he won, fined him an additional $3,000, docked him 1,000 points, put him on probation and suspended him and his team from competing for three months.

Now, that’s coming down hard on somebody for cheating.

Back to our headline.

The Detroit Grand Prix, which will be held on Belle Isle in the Detroit River May 31-June 2 - they have a double-header scheduled, as does Toronto's Honda Indy - is going all out to attract Canadian fans.

For $55 (or $105 for two days - both races) you get a reserved seat in a special Canadian Grandstand at the start/finish line and round-trip transportation from Windsor.

The City of Windsor is also going to sponsor the Media Centre, which is a smart move because if journalists are impressed by anything at these types of events, be it golf or baseball or horse racing, it's usually the food and drink that's provided. That, in turn, generally translates into positive copy.

Interested in going? Go to this website (click here) for more info.

Meantime, the Honda Indy Toronto is gearing up for its three-day extravaganza July 12-14 and Charlie Johnstone, vice-president and general manager of the event, says he hopes to have all sorts of special announcements posted to their website by the end of the week.

Go to www.hondaindytoronto.com for all the news.

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Did Jimmie Johnson Inform NASCAR of Issue with Penske Cars?

Auto racing: Vettel in F1, Sato in Indy, Kenseth in NASCAR

Takuma Sato won the first IndyCar race of his career Sunday in Long Beach as James Hinchcliffe's early season struggles continued. For the second race in a row, the Oakville native didn't finish - this time as the result of a crash.

Meanwhile, Matt Kenseth won the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Kansas Speedway. He held off a fast-charging Kasey Kahne to win by 0.151 seconds. Jimmie Johnson was third, Martin Truex Jr. finished fourth and Clint Bowyer was fifth.

It was a typical NASCAR race, with spins and crashes and all sorts of high-speed excitement. One interesting note: the pole winner won the race for the third straight time. The last time this happened was in 1985. For full story and  results, click here.

Sebastien Vettel easily won the Grand Prix of Bahrain over Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean. It was an all-Renault powered podium. Lots of good racing back in the pack. For my take, please click here.

AT LONG BEACH

Sato's victory (see picture) was the first for the Japanese racer, who had a crack at Formula One, since the Macau Grand Prix in 2001. For his team, A.J. Foyt Racing, it was the first win since 2002 (Airton Dare at Kansas Speedway) and the first road course triumph since Silverstone in 1978 when God's own A.J. himself was driving.

(An aside: There are those who believe that if Eddie Cheever, who was driving for Foyt in 1995, had won that year's CART race at Nazareth, there never would have been an Indy Racing League. The reason? Foyt was a serious influence on the thinking of Tony George. Foyt had raced in CART going back to 1979 and couldn't win, so pushed George to form the breakway series. But, the thinking goes, if his team actually won a CART race, he'd have been more inclined to hang in. As luck would have it, Cheever ran out of fuel a lap short at Nazareth and the IRL started racing the next January.)

Sato had no trouble holding off second-place Graham Rahal, with Justin Wilson third and pole-sitter Dario Franchitti fourth. JR Hildebrand was promoted to fifth after Oriol Servia, who finished there, was assessed a penalty that moved him back a spot. For full story and results, click here.

Sato was delighted to win, and as Canada's Hinchcliffe had done at St. Pete with the Maple Leaf flag, the Japanese driver unfolded a Japanese flag and waved it in celebration. By winning, he became the first Japanese driver to record a victory in Indy cars.

Like Toronto, Long Beach is really too tight for the high speed Indy cars and many of the drivers were forced into the pits to have nose cones replaced on their cars after they broke them running into other cars.

And Servia wasn't the only driver penalized. Rookie Tristan Vautier was penalized twice, once for running into the back of Scott Dixon and again after he hit Will Power's car.

NOTEBOOK JOTTINGS

- You could look at the accident that eliminated Hinchcliffe three ways.

1. It was his fault for not slowing down and letting everybody else go through Turn One before him on a restart on Lap 36.

2. It was Tony Kanaan's fault for cutting down to the corner from the outside lane and chopping across the front of Hinchcliffe's car, making a collision unavoidable for the Oakville driver.

3. It was IndyCar's fault for giving the restart a green flag. Kanaan clearly was passing cars before the green was waved and the yellow should have been shown. As it was, Kanaan had a full head of steam that took him up into the lead pack and to make the corner he had to turn in sharply and that resulted in E.J. Viso and Hinchcliffe crashing, with Hinch getting the worst of it.

You know, everybody talks about how wonderful the officiating has been in that series ever since Brian Barnhart was relieved of his duties.

Oh?

You want me to start?

How about the penalty on Scott Dixon last year after which it was discovered the officials were watching the wrong video replay?

I could go on, starting with the green-that-should-have-been-a-yellow yesterday and one other glaring example of incompetence in the same race.

The Indy cars - never mind the sanctioning body. be it CART, IRL or Champ Car - haven't had a decent starter/flagger since Nick Fornoro retired. Nick was a midget racer who could feel the rhythm of a race and flag it accordingly. With an ace flagger like Roger Slack available (okay, his day job is running Eldora Speedway but somebody should ask if he's interested),  I can't understand why the top open-wheel racing series on the continent continues to employ officials whose qualifications are questionable. 

And then there was, as I called it two paragraphs back, that other glaring example of incompetence Sunday. With two laps remaining, Tony Kanaan misses his braking point and crashes into the tires at Turn One (the end of Shoreline Dr.). The decision is made that the race will continue and there will only be a local yellow waved.

So the leader of the race, Sato, who's starting the last lap, has to pick his way through there, as does the second place car, Rahal, and Wilson, and the rest.  The race continues at speed and then, when Sato has two corners to go before the checkers - two  corners - they decide to make it a full-course caution.

Huh? They decide on a full-course caution after the entire field drives through the crash scene and the race is two corners from beiing over? Is that a joke, or what?

Bring back Brian Barhart.

- Okay, how come the Grand Prix of Long Beach, which started in 1975 as a Formula 5000 race, became a Formula One race seven or eight years and has featured Indy cars ever since, continues to draw an enormous crowd (there wasn't a seat empty in any of the many grandstands) and yet the Indy car race in Toronto, which started in 1986, officially draws flies now in comparison.

Does it have something to do with the title sponsor? The Toyota dealers of southern Californa have been behind this event forever and continue to promote the living daylights out of it.

Just wondering. 

- The TV coverage of the race was abysmal.

First, I do not need some person getting a ride in the two seater and screaming over the air that the experience is just like getting a rocket ride to the moon. I could care less.

Next, like a great flagger (see above), a TV director has to feel the rhythm of a race and to be aware of what's happening. Sato peels out of the formation of front-runners, which starts a charge of cars toward the pits, and TV doesn't realize it's happening till he's stopped. Then they show Ryan Hunter-Reay's car being serviced, clearly unaware that Hinchcliffe, who pitted moments later than RHR, has beaten him out.

The kicker is when the camera is on Alex Tagliani and Charlie Kimball, side-by-side and rubbing tires and clearly heading for trouble, and suddenly the camera is switched to a stationary Franchitti getting fuel. Whoopie! Then we are returned to Alex and Charlie, who by this time have crashed, which we missed seeing because the guy/girl making decisions on what we see doesn't know what he/she is doing. 

I hate yelling at my television.

- Remeber Kimi Raikkonen crashing at Monaco a few years back and being so angry that he refused to take his helmet off as he walked all the way back to his yacht in the harbour?

That was Hinchcliffe yesterday. The Oakville driver was so pissed off that he walked back to the pits and got on his motor scooter and blasted off toward his motorhome and his helmet remained on his head and he even, like Kimi, kept the visor closed.

Usually a happy guy and ready to be everybody's friend, Hinch was obviously in no mood for company.

The next race is in Brazil in two weeks. Let's hope he has better luck there.

Other weekend races of note:

- The new Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Tex., played host Sunday to an early season Moto GP motorcycle race and a 20-year-old Spaniard, Marc Marquez, became the youngest winner in Moto GP history. Dani Pedrosa finished second with Jorge Lorenzo third. The motorycle circus will be back in North America in August for races at Laguna Seca in California and at Indianapolis. Next year, I suggest Montreal's Circuit Gilles Villeneuve will also be on the Moto GP schedule, either following Indianapolis or replacing it on the calendar.

- Klaus Graf and Lucas Luhr won the American Le Mans Series race at Long Beach. Jonathan Bennett and Colin Braun won in Prototype Challenge, Scott Sharp and Guy Cosmos were first in the P2 class, Bill Auberlen and Maxime Martin won the GT class and Henrique Cisneros and Sean Edwards were tops in GT Challenge.

Canadians: Kuno Wittmer of Hudson, Que., was 15th overall and eighth in GT and Kyle Marcelli of Barrie was 25th and sixth in Prototype Challenge.

Speaking of P2, and Canadians, Wheels special correspondent Sylvia Proudfoot reports that Leigh Pettipas of Halifax was the engineer for the winning car of Sharp and Cosmo. Pettipas also engineered the Extreme Speed Motorsports Ferrari F458 Italia that won the GT class at the 2012 Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta..

For race details and complete results, click here.

- At Road Atlanta, Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas won their one-millionth (I'm kidding!) Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series race, driving a BMW-Riley Daytona Prototype. John Edwards and Robin Lidell won the GT class in a Chevrolet Camaro. Joe Miller and Andrew Carbonell were first in the new GX class, driving a Mazda 6 Skyactiv Diesel. For details, click here.

Canadians in the Rolex race: Michael Valiante of Vancouver was seventh overall and seventh in a Ford-Riley DP; AIM Autosport of Woodbridge with assistance from Remo Ferri and Brian Wingett finished 17th overall and sixth in class with Max Papis and Jeff Segal aboard; the AIM Autosport Team FXDD with Ferrari car was 19th and eighth, Emil Assentato and Anthony Lazzaro driving. 

Canadians in the Supporting Continental Tire race: Scott Maxwell of Toronto, driving and Aston Martin Vantage for Markham's Multimatic Motorsports, finished fourth overall and fourth in class in  Grand Sport; Multimatic's sister Aston Martin racers were fifth (and fifth) with Tonis Kasemets and Michael Marsal driving and 11th and 11th with David Empringham and JohnFarano, both of Toronto, behind the wheel; Kenny Wilden of Oakville was ninth overall and ninth in the GS class; Ashley McCalmont of Ancaster finished 14th and 14th in GS; Taylor Hacquard of Vancouver was 30th overall and 14th in the Street Tuner class; Paul Dalla Lana of Toronto was 52nd overall and 22nd in GS.

- Canadians in the Indy Lights race at Long Beach: Matthew Di Leo of Innisfil was fifth. Quebe driver Mikael Grenier crashed.

- NORRIS McDONALD

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Sato 1st Japanese driver to win an IndyCar race

On Paul Tracy, Stirling Moss and Justin Bieber

Canada's Paul Tracy was inducted into the Long Beach Motorsports Walk of Fame Thursday morning and the honour affected him more than perhaps even he'd anticipated.

He won the Long Beach Indy Lights race in 1990 driving for Brian Stewart, made his first Indy car start in Long Beach in 1991 for Dale Coyne and earned his first Indy car victory on the temporary street circuit in 1993 for Team Penske.

He also won the Long Beach Indy car races in 2000, 2003 and 2004.

Toronto Star Wheels' special correspondent Sylvia Proudfoot is in Long Beach and filed notes and quotes after the ceremony.

"You can’t have a great race without having a great city to host it," an emotional Tracy said during the ceremony.

"I want to thank Long Beach for everything that they do putting on this race. It's one of the marquee races in the world in terms of motorsports. If you've won a race here, you put your name on a list of some of the greatest drivers that have ever walked the face of the earth, guys like Parnelli [Jones, who attended the ceremony], Bryan Redman, Danny Sullivan, Michael Andretti – the list goes on and on.

"I drove in last night and I got to the hotel like I would every year for almost 25 years of my life. I went for a walk and the sun was setting to the west and I was walking across the bridge over to the marina. I took a look down the front straightaway and I said to myself, 'Man, where did all the time go?' I was looking at the sun setting and I was thinking the sun has set on my career now. But I feel as young as ever!

"I've got to thank all the teams I drove for and all the great competitors that spurred me on. Winning here at Long Beach has been one of the highlights of my career, so I'm very very honoured to be in this group and I really cherish it."Tracy, whose four Long Beach victories tie him for second with Mario Andretti (Al Unser Jr. has won the most: six), was joined by Adrian Fernandez in being inducted into the Walk of Fame during the eighth annual ceremony.

Previous inductees include Jimmy Vasser, Scott Pruett, Galles Racing, Chip Ganassi Racing Teams, Sullivan, Michael Andretti, Bobby Rahal, Mario Andretti, Unser Jr. Phil Hill, Dan Gurney, Brian Redman, Newman Haas Racing, Chris Pook, Parnelli Jones and Gary Gabelich.

After the ceremony, Tracy told Proudfoot that, "I'm thrilled to be selected to be part of this list of great drivers. They're legends. I never thought in my wildest dreams when I started racing, when I started my Indy car career here in 1991, that I would ever be mentioned with those guys' names, so it's a tremendous honour.

"Toronto, as my hometown (where he's won two races), was always my favourite race, but this race here was one that I've always excelled at. I've had a lot of success here, been incredibly lucky here. To win races, you've got to be good and you've got to be lucky. For whatever reason, I was always pretty lucky here and things kinda went the way that I wanted them to go.

"I won here in Indy Lights and four times in an Indy car, so Long Beach has been a great city to me."

Tracy's CART victory at Long Beach in 2003 was one of seven he scored during the season on his way to the series championship. He is tied with Sebastien Bourdais and Dario Franchitti for seventh on the all-time victory list with 31.

Proudfoot also caught up with Oakville IndyCar star James Hinchcliffe, in town for Sunday's Grand Prix of Long Beach, and reviewed his season to date: a victory in St. Petersburg and no points at the second race at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama.

"It just highlights the sport," he said. "It really is the highest of highs and the lowest of lows and in the first two races we experienced pretty much all of that.

"It's hopefully going to be pretty straightforward from here on out. This (Long Beach) is a track that's historically treated me pretty well. We've had some good results here and the team's been strong here in the past. It's certainly promising coming into it, but these races are so unpredictable. You never know."

 

The other day, somebody asked Stirling Moss — Sir Stirling, to you — whether a woman could ever win a Formula One race and he said he didn’t think so.

There was outrage around the world.

How dare that man say such a thing!

Give me a break.

Can’t somebody say something these days, or do something, without there being outrage because whatever was said or done didn’t fit people’s preconceived notion of the answer or the deed?

Do people in the world walk around in a perpetual state of almost-outrage, just waiting for someone to say or do something so they can react? Get the juices flowing, as it were?

Moss stated an opinion. Maybe he’s right, maybe he’s wrong but doesn’t he have the right to answer a question without half the world jumping all over him?

Poor Justin Bieber, who’s a kid from Stratford, writes something in a book and the world is outraged. Or so the media say.

Justin Trudeau and Stephen Harper get up in the morning and they both say something and half of Canada is outraged about what one said and the other half is similarly outraged about what the other said.

I think the word outrage is now the world’s most overused word.

I’m outraged that so many people are outraged.

I don’t want to live in a world where nobody can have an opinion, which is what is happening here.

Relax.

 

Mathew Di Leo of IInnisfil will join another Canadian, Mikael Grenier of Stoneham, Que., in the Indy Lights race at Long Beach this weekend. In fact, the two Canadians will  make up 20 per cent of the field as only 10 cars are entered.

This is an appalling state of affairs. Indy Lights is supposed to be the final proving/training ground on the Road to Indy ladder system that IndyCar likes to crow about and there are no cars.

The Atlantic Series was in a mess like this back in 2005 when it was on the undercard at Champ Car races. About a dozen cars would show up for each race and only four drivers entered every race (26 in total scored points).

Kevin Kalkhoven, one of the owners of the Champ Car World Series, was appalled at what he saw and over the winter took control of the series. He put the arm on all of the owners in Champ Car as well as around the shoulders of many of his well-heeled friends and insisted they all get involved.

The entry list for Atlantics in 2006 went up to an astonishing 29 cars and 44 drivers in total scored points.

This is what IndyCar has got to do. Right now, in the Lights championship, IRL owner Sam Schmidt has three entries and Andretti Autosport has two. Where are entries from Chip Ganassi Racing, Team Penske, KV Racing (Kevin Kalkhoven did it once; he should do it again), Rahal-Letterman and on-and-on?

All the teams in the NHL have top minor-league affiliates, as do the teams in Major League Baseball. So should the teams in big-league, open-wheel auto racing.

The people who run IndyCar, Mark Miles and the rest, have got to put it to those team owners in IndyCar, as Kalkhoven did in Champ Car, and tell them to get with the program.

Otherwise, quit pretending the series is something it isn’t and shut it down.

 

Will the Grand Prix of Bahrain this weekend be the tire strategy race we’ve come to expect from Formula One this season?

And, in qualifying, will anybody go out in Q3? Or stand pat where they are after Q2 and save their tires? Or perhaps slap on a set of softs (or intermediates, or whatever) and run a lap or two to make it legal and then sit out the session in the garage.

Smart strategy but F1, as usual, is forgetting the fans, who are being cheated.

Why can’t F1 roll back the clock to the last century and let the teams have qualifying tires? That way, nobody has to worry about saving tires and they can strategize all they want in the race but qualifying would be what it’s supposed to be: a balls-to-the-wall, one-lap, banzai run for pole position and all the marbles that go with it.

 

All eyes will be on two drivers in the NASCAR races this weekend at Kansas Speedway. (An aside: the last time I was at Kansas Speedway, the tornado sirens kept going off. It was 4 o'clock in the afternoon and it was pitch black. That is a scary deal, let me tell you.)

Kyle Busch will be in his Camping World Truck Series truck as well as his Sprint Cup car. He has a habit of winning both races whenever he enters two of them on the same weekend.

Also, he’s on a tear. After finishing 23rd at Phoenix early in the season, he’s been fourth, second, first, fifth and first since — up to and including last weekend’s stop at Texas.

Busch didn’t make the Chase last season. It looks like he’s not taking any chances this year.

And, of course, the other driver people will be watching is defending Sprint Cup champion Brad Keselowski.

Yes, Joey Logano and his Penske Racing team were also nailed by NASCAR this week for illegal activity surrounding the suspension on their race car but the heat will be on the Keselowski side of the Penske garage because of his outburst following the Texas race when he suggested NASCAR was out to “get” them.

Both Penske teams have appealed the suspensions, fines, etc., that were levied but NASCAR is the law and the law will eventually win.

I hope Keselowski hasn’t done himself too much damage. His holier-than-thou statements last weekend were a little much and NASCAR fans can be fickle.

In short: a hero can become a villain just like that.

- NORRIS McDONALD

Racing rdp: More on Esaw, Johnson and RHR win

This entry might not be as comprehensive as usual for a Monday Morning Racing Roundup but I spent much of Sunday researching and writing the entry directly below, which is about the death at 87 of Canadian broadcasting pioneer Johnny Esaw, and so I didn’t get to watch a lot of racing.

However, I’m not sure I missed all that much. The NASCAR and IndyCar Series races were both won from the pole – Jimmy Johnson in Sprint Cup and Ryan Hunter-Reay in open wheel. Yes, I’m sure there was a lot of action between the start and the finish of both those races but the fact that the two guys in front at the beginning were still there at the end indicates, to me, anyway, that there was really never any doubt about who was going to win.

And the fact that Canada’s great new hope in IndyCar, James Hinchcliffe of Oakville, spent the entire race strapped in his car while marooned on the far side of the Barber Motorsports Park circuit also meant I wasn’t all that disappointed to have to miss most of the race.

I’ll return to the racing in a moment. First, though, I have to say some more about Esaw.

Although he was primarily involved, and interested, in the traditional stick and ball sports, Esaw was a great friend of racing generally, and Canadian racing in particular.

What’s intriguing is that he wasn’t all that interested in the sport. But, as he told me when I interviewed him at length just about a year ago now for a feature in Toronto Star Wheels, he recognized that there was an audience for motor racing and that he and his station and network would benefit if he treated it with the respect it deserved.

It’s a pity that more of Canada’s broadcasters and newspaper editors haven’t felt the same way.

As I reported in the story below, Esaw and CFTO/CTV produced the first racing broadcast from what was Mosport International Raceway (or Mosport Park, if you want) in the early 1960s, shortly after the station and network went on the air.

For years, Esaw made the Canadian Formula Atlantic championship a part of CTV’s Wide World of Sports program on Saturdays. Much of the program came from ABC’s Wide World of Sports but Esaw had the races inserted into the lineup, with the late Craig Hill as host and analyst.

And, of course, as is also detailed below, starting in 1977 he had the Indianapolis 500 live on CTV for nine years before the ABC coverage went live in the United States. It was a broadcasting coupe.

Esaw told me he didn’t know much about racing but that he had to bone up in a hurry in order to negotiate deals for races. He said Tony Hulman, the late owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, was one of the nicest people he’d ever met and that Bernie Ecclestone was the toughest negotiator he’d encountered in any sport. He also said Stirling Moss was absolutely fascinating.

With his passing, another of the giants is gone. There really aren’t many, if any, left.

NASCAR

The highlight of the weekend, for me and my wife, was Megan McCormick’s song about Joey Logano that she performed with Kyle Petty on NASCAR Raceday Sunday morning on the Speed Channel (click here).

By the end, we were singing along:

Joey, Joey, Joey, Joey

I love you . . .

And our favourite line was:

Joey, pick me up

In your dad’s big truck. . .

The song was part of the all-week, never-ending, WWE-type buildup to Sunday’s race in Martsinville in which the villainous Joey Logano was, apparently, going to "get his" for deliberately wrecking, and hurting, Denny Hamlin in the race two weeks ago in California.

All we heard for most of the two weeks in between races was how there would be "payback."

Well, Logano was involved in a wreck at Martinsville, but so were a whole bunch of other drivers, which is what NASCAR is pretty much all about these days, but it wasn’t deliberate and so I guess we’ll have to wait another day for "payback" to happen, if it ever does.

Hamlin, of course, wasn’t racing Sunday – he’s too badly hurt to get into a car, although he was at the speedway Sunday – so any "payback" by him will have to wait but the word was out that one of his allies, or Tony Stewart, would do the deed and so that’s what all the pre-race excitement was about.

Mark Martin did a great job filling in for Hamlin and drove the FedEx No. 11 to a tenth place finish. (Click here for race report and full results.)

Johnson dominated, of course. He led most of the race and was never lower than fourth. Clint Bowyer finished second and Jeff Gordon was third (the last big "payback" story involved those two – remember the brawl after the race in Phoenix last fall? – but they were both on their best behaviour Sunday). Kasey Kahne was fourth, with Kyle Busch fifth – a heartbeat ahead of Brad Keselowski. Jamie McMurray was seventh, Marcos Ambrose was eighth and Greg Biffle ninth.

Driver of the race was Danica Patrick, who qualified 32^nd but lost an engine and had to start 43^rd. She was 11^th until the final corner when she was bunted aside by Brian Vickers, who also moved Kevin Harvick out of the way.

She wound up 12^th but that was a huge achievement, considering she has been struggling since her pole and eighth-place finish at Daytona and because Martinsville is not a place for the faint at heart. It is a physical wringing-out to go 500 laps on the half-mile short track and it’s a tradin’ paint place to boot. She more than held her own and even passed her boss, Tony Stewart, en route to the checkers.

Cool move of the race came when Kurt Busch crashed in Corner One and every liquid under the hood caught fire. Busch had the presence of mind to pull the on-board fire extinguisher to put out the flames before bailing out.

See AP Photo Gallery from Martinsville by clicking here.

INDYCAR

No songs to quote from to start this report but I’m sure James Hinchcliffe, with all his talent and imagination, could write one.

The winner of the first race of the season at St. Petersburg two weeks ago was hit from behind on the opening lap of the race by Oriol Servia, who – in turn – had been hit by Graham Rahal and required a tow back to the pits.

But a wheel came off his car and the IndyCar safety team had to park him in an access road, where he sat for all but the last 18 laps of the 90-lap event.

The team had told him to wait for a yellow and they would get him back to the pits – but there were no further yellows. So "the Mayor (of Hinchtown)" sat there in his car and did what all of us in our living rooms did: watch the race.

Hunter-Reay went pole to checkers. He was chased for the last 20 laps by Scott Dixon, who finished second at Barber for the fourth consecutive year. Helio Castroneves was third with Charlie Kimball fourth and Will Power fifth. Click here for full story and results.

Andretti Autosport, Hinchcliffe’s employer, told him to stay belted in his car for two reasons. First, points are awarded for every position from first to 26^th (and last), so even if he was laps down before they could get him back in the race, he could benefit from points earned. Second, with no testing allowed, the team could benefit from having the car run laps in competition in anticipation of the next race, at Long Beach, in two weeks.

Said Hinchcliffe later: "From what I have been told, we all piled into Turn 8; I was behind Tony [Kanaan], [Graham] Rahal hit [Oriol] Servia who got in the back of me. I got in the back of Tony a little bit, but it was pretty square, and it didn’t do any damage to the front. I knew I had gotten hit, but everything was fine at first, but I guess, under caution, things started to work itself loose. As I started to warm the tires up, the wheel actually broke, that was what it was."

A.J. Allmendinger was doing really well in his return to open wheel racing but he stalled during a pit stop and eventually wound up 19^th. Penske Racing will still run him at Long Beach in order to give him more seat time before Indianapolis.

Dario Franchitti’s miserable season continued. A broken header led to more serious problems and the four-time champion wound up 25^th, one place ahead of Hinchcliffe.

Alex Tagliani of Montreal started 15th and finished 11th. He also was hit from behind and suffered structural damage but soldiered on for a good finish.

Three more things before I take my leave.

1. The last time an Indy car driver won a race and finished last in the next was in 1956 and the unlucky guy was hard-luck racer Lloyd Ruby. Hinch is in good company as Ruby was a helluva shoe.

2. Ryan Briscoe, dropped by Team Penske this year in as strange a move as its embracing of Allmendinger is, will race for Target Chip Ganassi Racing in the Indianapolis 500.

3. I just about fell off my chair when I heard one of the announcers say that a driver – I think it was Justin Wilson – had been seen before the race giving instructions to a volunteer pit-crew member on how to change a tire.

Yes, I really heard that.

- NORRIS MCDONALD

nmcdonald@thestar.ca

Related articles

On the NASCAR feud, TV numbers and Sportsnet

Johnny Esaw, 87: Canadian broadcasting legend

Is Denny Hamlin for real? Tags 2nd, Hinch 15th in Indy practice

Logano says eyes on Martinsville, not Stewart

Stewart-Logano feud moves to Martinsville

Hamlin-Logano exchange 'unproductive' text

Hinch 20th in IndyCar; Is Denny Hamlin for real?

UPDATED SATURDAY AFTERNOON:

Ryan Hunter-Reay won the pole Saturday for Sunday's Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama IndyCar series race with a blistering lap of 1 minute and 07:0871 seconds around the Barber Motorsports Park road course just outside Birmingham, Alabama.

Scott Dixon threw down the gauntler early in qualifying by smashing the track record by more than three seconds. But by the time the dust had settled, Dixon was fourth fastest behind RHR, Will Power and rookie Tristan Vautier.

It wasn't the best of days for the two Canadians racing in the series. Alex Tagliani of Montreal will go off 15th on Sunday afternoon and St. Petersburg race winner James Hinchcliffe of Oakville will start 20th.

Hinchcliffe was slowest of the four Andretti Autsport drivers, with Hunter-Reay on pole, Marco Andretti seventh and pay driver E.J. Viso 16th.

Said Hinchcliffe later: "We've been struggling a little bit this weekend compared to the test (before the season started when he set second fastest time). We didn't have the quickest car, but had enough for Q2 . . .  got held up by another car and ended up getting knocked out.

"It's frustrating, but we've got an extra set of reds (Firestone red alternate tires) than those guys now in the race and maybe degradation will come into it tomorrow. We'll keep fighting and hopefully get the Go Daddy car up in a good position by the end of the day."

The competition in the IndyCar series is ferocious this season. Defending champion Hunter Reay's 1:07:0871 (that's an average of 123:422 miles an hour, by the way) was only a smidgen of a second faster than the 26th - and last - qualifyer, Ed Carpenter, who went around in 1:08:6362.

Other notables: A.J. Allmendinger qualified 10th in his return to IndyCar. Translation: bloody good. Simona de Silvestro, who was fastest in the last practice session before qualifying - one commentator suggested everybody drop the "Swiss Miss" monicker and make it "Swiss Missile" - dropped to 14th when the chips were down. Dario Franchitti continued turning in a less-than-stellar performance this year by qualifying 17th.  And five-time Champ Car titleist Sebastien Bourdais will go off 23rd out of 26.

Finally, a bunch of people email me today to say they can't find where the race is on TV Sunday. Wheels has a service especially for folks like these and it's called Wheels Presents George's TV Listings for Race Fans and you can find it by clicking here.

Bookmark it, and you will never have to email me again.

Earlier,

I can’t figure out whether Denny Hamlin is still mad at Joey Logano or just mouthing off in hopes of stimulating interest in Sunday's Sprint Cup race at Martinsville, Va.

Or if he even listens to what’s coming out of his own mouth.

Speed Channel sent out the text of a question-and-answer session it conducted with Hamlin the other day and I read it and I ended up very confused.

For instance:

“I ultimately spun him out at Bristol. I did not intend to spin him out.  It was a mistake. I said it was mistake.  Said I was sorry on the radio when it happened.  That was in retaliation to being chopped off twice and it frustrated me and I intended on bumping him, and then I did and it spun him out.”

See what I mean? He says he didn’t intend to spin Logan out, that it was mistake, he said he was sorry. So far, so good. Then he said it was retaliation. Excuse me? It’s either on purpose or not on purpose and Denny just managed to put both into the same sentence.

I’m sorry Denny Hamilin got hurt when he and Logano collided at Auto Club Speedway in California two weeks ago and they both crashed.

But it wasn’t Logano’s fault that Hamlin was injured; it was the Auto Club Speedway’s fault for not having either a SAFER barrier or foam blocks in place at the spot where Hamlin ran square into a cement wall.

That crash was no different than crashes that happen all the time in NASCAR. If there’d been foam or a SAFER barrier where Hamlin hit, chances are he walks away.

By continuing to talk about it in a way that suggests none of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for Logano, Hamlin is setting up the young Penske driver for payback. More than one driver in the last week has talked about Martinsville as being a great place to “get back” at people because the track is small and the speeds aren’t that great.

Which says to me that these guys (and the one woman) have all been lulled into a false sense of security that is going to end in tears one of these days.

Small track, big track – it doesn’t matter. If you’re going more than 100 miles an hour, as they do at Martinsville, you can be killed in a crash. There could be an equipment failure, or the angle of the collision with the wall could be just so, or (as I saw happen once, back in the 1980s) a car going quickly could hammer a stationary car unexpectedly and kill the person in it.

Yes, NASCAR Sprint Cup cars are just like bumper cars, most of the time. That’s why the drivers feel safe in them and talk in a cavalier manner about payback.

Sooner or later, the odds are going to catch up and somebody who starts a race isn’t going to be alive when it ends.

It’s bad enough when it happens to somebody like Dan Wheldon, or Dale Earnhardt – when it’s just “one of them racin’ deals.”

But when people talk in a manner that could be interpreted, by some, as a threat, and there’s a fatality, does NASCAR want to even think about going there?

This is not the WWE, where everything is staged. This is real life and real racing and NASCAR would be wise to step in and shut all this down before things really get out of hand.

In qualifying at Martinsville, Jimmy Johnson will start on the pole for Sunday's race, turning a lap in 19.244 seconds for an average speed of 98.400 miles an hour. All of the 43 drivers who attempted to qualify (Joe Nemechek was last) were less than a second behind the pole sitter. Wow. Marcos Ambrose, Brian Vickers, Joe Logano and Kasy Kahne were the others in the top five. . .

At Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama, Helio Castroneves was fastest in IndyCar practice for Sunday's race, with Canadian Alex Tagliani second and Tristan Vautier third. James Hinchcliffe of Oakville, who won the season opener in St. Petersburg, Fla., two weeks ago, was 15th fastest. A.J. Allmendinger, returning to the open cockpit wars after spending time in NASCAR - he's driving for Roger Penske this weekend - was eighth fastest. All 26 cars were within three seconds of each other. . . .

It's a Grand Am sports car weekend at Barber too. The two AIM Autosport of Woodbridge Ferrari entries will go off seventh and eighth in the GT class in the Saturday race. Jon Fogerty won the pole in a Daytona Prototype Corvette.

Related articles

Denny Hamlin gets emotional about crash, future

Martinsville the place to handle differences

Hamlin to miss 6 weeks with back fracture

Stewart-Logano feud moves to Martinsville

Penske: Joey Logano, Denny Hamlin have exchanged texts

Vettel to Ferrari in '14? Hinch gets legislative approval

Racing’s taking a weekend off (for the most part: did you know you can buy lapping time at Toronto Motorsports Park this weekend? If you have an itch, here’s the link) so I’m joining in.

But before I put my feet up and watch some old racing movies (yeah, I know, I never really get far away from it, so some black-and-white clunkers like To Please A Lady, The Crowd Roars and The Big Wheel are on the menu), here are a few things to tide everybody over.

– James Hinchcliffe of Oakville is well on his way to becoming a household name in the country, up there with Paul Tracy and Jacques and Gilles Villeneuve. After he won the Honda Indy at St. Petersburg last Sunday, he was on all the Canadian radio and TV newscasts that night and the front pages of Canadian newspapers from coast-to-coast on Monday morning.

That’s not all. He was even honoured by the government of Ontario. Oakville MPP Kevin Flynn stood up in the legislature this week and read a note of congratulations into the public record that was well received by all members. Well done, James, and well done, Mr. Flynn.

Click here for the link to the YouTube video of Mr. Flynn honouring IndyCar’s new star.

– It’s official. Sebastian Vettel really is in the doghouse. The Formula One controversy that happened last Sunday has now been reported in the popular press by the AP (link here), so it must be important.

It continues to boggle my mind that people are surprised that Vettel did what he did. He’s the world champion. He won the last three titles. He is not going to lose the second race of the season. Maybe he'd be only too happy to lose the second last race of the season, after he’d clinched his fourth title, but not the second race starting out.

Other things boggle my mind. This outpouring of scorn on Twitter and Facebook and from high-profile people in the sport like Jackie Stewart (who should know better) tell me – what? – that people approve of team orders?

I thought auto racing was just that: racing. But apparently not. Sebastian Vettel is in the doghouse because he disobeyed an order not to race.

I give up.

A guy wrote me a note this week that said people would be outraged if the four Andretti Autosport drivers were running first, second, third and fourth with 10 laps to go in the Indianapolis 500 and Michael Andretti got on the radio and said: "Hold position."

Can you believe that James Hinchcliffe, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Marco Andretti and E.J. Viso would say, "Sure, boss. Whatever you say."

In somebody’s dreams.

And yet that’s what happened in that Grand Prix last weekend and people are outraged that one of the two guys involved didn’t snap to attention and salute.

I’ll tell you what’s going to happen as a result of Red Bull team principal Christian Horner being so stupid as to tell Sebastian Vettel to lose.

Sebastian Vettel will be driving for Ferrari next season. That’s what.

Yes, he’s apologized. Do you think he’s happy about that? Do you think for one second that he is going to kiss butt in the Red Bull garage for the rest of the year? I guarantee he will now be more determined than ever to win a fourth championship and then he will say sayonara.

Ferrari has two aging drivers. The best one, a two-time world champion, is (like the other) 31, which is not old for a racing driver but getting up there for a Formula One racing driver. If Ferrari play their cards right, they can get a three-time (maybe four-time) champion still very much in his prime at age 25 and bring up one of their many young development drivers to fill the No. 2 seat and be set for years.

I know, people will say this won’t happen because contracts are in place. But contracts in Formula One mean very little, if anything, and if Ferrari wants Sebastian Vettel, they’ll get him, particularly after what happened last weekend.

– James Hinchcliffe won that IndyCar race last Sunday. The next day, Robert Wickens of Guelph and Toronto, embarking on his second year with Mercedes in the DTM (German Touring Car Championship), set fastest time in pre-season testing. He slipped to fourth fastest the following day but there are suggestions that Hinch’s victory might have inspired him.

– Speaking of the DTM, several years ago, Norbert Haug, who used to be in charge of racing at Mercedes, told a group of Canadian reporters at the Canadian Grand Prix that it was not beyond the realm of possibility that his company and other German marques might somebody be racing in North America.

He said this in the context of a question about NASCAR but mused that participation in some type of road-racing series might happen.

So this week, the DTM and the new U.S. sports car series United SportsCar Racing signed a letter of agreement that may see the DTM sanctioning a racing series in North America by 2015 or ‘16.

It may or may not happen. We’ll have to wait and see.

However, when Haug was talking at that meeting a few years ago, I got it in my mind that he was talking about a DTM race or races in North America, not necessarily a series. I think it would be swell, for instance, to bring Wickens, Bruno Spengler, Gary Paffett and all those guys over for a race or two, perhaps on a card with F1 or a Moto GP race at Montreal, Austin and/or New Jersey.

I’m not sure about yet another domestic high-end sports car series in which the team owner is primarily a rich guy because, as a fellow I know said a day or two ago, there aren’t all that many more rich guys around who are not already into racing. We already have a Ferrari series, a Porsche series, a Lamborghini series. Who’s going to line up to buy into a BMW-Mercedes-Audi series?

– Mark Martin will sub for the injured Denny Hamlin in next week’s NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Martinsville, they say. Hamlin’s broken back will take awhile to heal.

Meantime, the Lynch Joey Logano movement (there sure is a lot of hate out there, isn’t there? The Hate Sebastian Vettel movement and the Hate Joey Logano movement are closing in on – and might even pass – the Hate Danica Patrick movement before long) is not losing any steam and not even Roger Penske and Joe Gibbs, who both said Logano never tried to hurt Hamlin, seem to be having any influence so far as calming things down are concerned.

Hamlin didn’t help matters by suggesting that a texting exchange he had with Logano "didn’t go very well."

Hamlin is the toughest NASCAR driver alive. I won’t be surprised if he shows up at Martinsville and says he wants to start the race for the points and then hand off to Martin. And then, when he takes the green, he won’t stop. He’s done that before.

But being tough means more than just being physically tough. Instead of fanning the flames and playing the poor me card, all Hamlin had to say about that texting exchange was that everybody had decided to move on.

The time for payback can come later.

On the NASCAR feud, TV numbers and Sportsnet

Two things are bothing me about the Denny Hamlin-Joey Logano controversy.

1. The Auto Club Speedway in California is getting off easy. If Hamlin isn't hurt when he crashes into an unprotected wall (as in, no SAFER barrier), then all that happens is two guys who don't like each other have a spat. This sort of thing happens all the time between drivers at every single NASCAR race.

But because Hamlin was injured, the ensuing uproar suggests that Logano should be charged with attempted murder.

If the SAFER barrier had been in place, Hamlin might have escaped injury. Danica Patrick did at Daytona a year ago when she went into the SAFER-protected backstretch wall head-on and at full-tilt.

She walked away. Hamlin didn't.

When is that place in California going to learn? Greg Moore died in 1999 because a temporary concrete barrier was left at a 45-degree angle to the racing surface exiting turn two. When Moore lost control of his CART Indy car and went into the infield, he crashed head-first into that wall.

Suggestion: any exposed concrete at any oval speedway on the NASCAR circuit should be covered by a SAFER barrier or, at the very least, foam blocks of the kind found at small speedways. Those things save a ton of limbs.

2. Okay, since when did Denny Hamlin become everybody's favourite driver? He's an okay guy, but he's sure not above creating controversy. In short, he's no angel. Even shorter, he's no Jamie McMurray who - if he played hockey in the NHL - would win the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy year in and year out.

Hamlin's had his share of scrapes over the years. He's crashed guys and been crashed. In fact, he started this latest business by spinning out Logano at Bristol two weeks ago. He did the deed and then had the snappy putdown for the television cameras after Logano confronted him:

"He says he's coming for me but he means he's coming after me because I just don't see that much of him."

Ha. Ha.

Ask Austin Dillon what he thinks of Hamlin as the result of a run-in they had last year at Texas Motor Speedway. Ask Clint Bowyer and/or Kevin Harvick (who actually came to blows with him). There's not a lot of love lost there.

And what was with Tony Stewart? He goes after Logano because he's angry about a block? Tony Stewart has never been blocked before? He, himself, has never blocked anybody else (see Talladega, 2012, for graphic illustration)? Never pulled off a slide job in a sprint car race?

Of course he has, and has, and has.

So what's going on with Tony Stewart? His reaction was way over the top, which means he's pissed about something else.

And what could that be?

One thing about NASCAR, though. People love it. TV ratings from the weekend illustrate once again who's - and what's - No. 1 when it comes to car racing.

NASCAR Sprint Cup: Auto Club 400 - 350,000 viewers (TSN Sunday)

NASCAR Nationwide: Royal Purpose 300 - 167 viewers (TSN Saturday)

F1 Grand Prix of Malaysia - 94,000 viewers (TSN Sunday)

IndyCar Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg - 90,000 viewers (Sportsnet Sunday)

F1 Grand Prix of Malaysia (replay) - 59,000 viewers (TSN2 Sunday)

You know, I never question figures like these. If someone puts them out, they must be true. This is a long way around to saying I am really, really impressed with the 94,000 viewers for the Malaysian Grand Prix, which was on television in the middle of the night everywhere in Canada: 5:30 a.m. in Newfoundland, 5 a.m. in Halifax, 4 a.m. in Montreal and Toronto, and so-on till you get to Vancouver where it was only 1 a.m.

To set the alarm to get out of bed to watch a car race shows real commitment, don't you think? Or do PVR recordings count?

Speaking of television, I did a mini review of the Sportsnet presentation in my previous column and I wrote that the IndyCar race panel of Rob Faulds, Paul Tracy and Bill Adam with Todd Lewis in the pits had done okay.

I even suggested that, going forward, instead of broadcasting the audio from the NBC Sports Network team that Sportsnet utilize the talents of our Canadian commentators, particularly Tracy.

Although I didn't say it at the time, I also want to applaud Sportsnet for making an effort. TSN used to, but gave up years ago and has been satisfied in recent years to simply re-route the feed from whichever host broadcaster it buys the programming from, be it Fox in the U.S. for NASCAR or the BBC for F1.

So although the statistics above show TSN on top with 350,000 viewers for the Sprint Cup brawl in California, it's really Fox that should get the credit.

Having said all that, I have a friend who disagrees with me on Sportsnet. Boy, does he disagree. His name is John Strothard, a.k.a. Johnny Lugnuts, and he is one of the few people who knows everything about all forms of motorsport. Get Johnny talking and he'll argue you into the ground on F1, Indy cars, NASCAR, sports cars, sprint cars on the high banks in the U.S. midwest - you name it and he knows it. A former TQ midget racer himself, he also takes wonderful photographs of racing cars in action.

I'm telling you all this about Mr. Strothard because, although we disagree on this subject, he has the credentials to make an argument. He writes:

"Sorry, but the Indy broadcast on Sportsnet left me steaming! Are we stuck with this format and these three morons for the entire season? Say it ain't so!

"The Sportsnet pre-race show was a complete waste of time and offered . . . um . . . nothing. Perhaps the first time fan might've gotten something out of it (and don't get me wrong, we need those folks), but most people know all about Hinch and Tags. How about a quick preview of the season? How about an explanation of the red and black tires? The new push-to-pass rules? Should I go on?

"The constant updates following commercial breaks during the race were  annoying. Thanks to the CRTC, I get enough CanCon jammed down my throat on local radio, I don't need it here, too.

"Rob Faulds is no more than a talking head and Bill Adam provided nothing. At least PT had some mildly interesting insight. Todd Lewis gave the whole thing a decidedly minor league feel.

"I'd be willing to overlook all of the above, but the post-race interviews were the last straw. Thanks to Sportsnet, I got to listen to The Mayor deliver his victory speech twice, while they thought it appropriate to cut off Simona, and skip Helio and Marco. Oh, but I did get to hear from 10th place finisher Tags.

"Insulting and unprofessional. Just give us the NBC/ABC/ESPN/whatever feed with their pre- and post-race shows, please."

Thanks for weighing in, Johnny.

Other views are welcome.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Several translations:

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

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

So that’s the good news.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sportsnet owes it to everybody to turn him loose.

Remaining 2013 IZOD IndyCar Television Broadcast Schedule

Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama – Birmingham, Alabama

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

Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach – Long Beach, California

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

Sao Paulo Indy 300 – Sao Paulo, Brazil

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

Indianapolis 500 – Indianapolis, Indiana

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

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

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

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

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

Firestone 550 – Fort Worth, Texas

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

Milwaukee IndyFest – West Allis, Wisconsin

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

Iowa Corn Indy 250 – Newton, Iowa

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

Pocono INDYCAR 400 – Long Pond, Pennsylvania

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

Honda Indy Toronto – Race 1 – Toronto, Ontario

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

Honda Indy Toronto – Race 2 – Toronto, Ontario

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

Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio – Lexington, Ohio

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

GoPro Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma – Sonoma, California

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

Grand Prix of Baltimore – Baltimore, Maryland

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

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

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

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

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

MAVTV 500 – Fontana, California

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

Bravo James! And is IndyCar better than F1 (they actually race)?

MONDAY MORNING RACING ROUNDUP:

1. Oakville's Hinchcliffe wins Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg

2. Fistfights now de rigueur at NASCAR Sprint Cup races

3. Was Christian Horner in his right mind to tell Vettel to back off?

INDYCAR

Here’s the difference between Sunday’s two major open-wheel races:

– The IndyCar season-opener at St. Petersburg, Fla., was a fight to the finish, with Canadian James Hinchcliffe of Oakville narrowly defeating veteran Helio Castroneves and Marco Andretti muscling his way into third place, and onto the podium, in the final laps.

HINCH'S PRE-SEASON STATE OF THE INDYCAR UNION ADDRESS

– The second Formula One race of the season in Malaysia was a parade to the finish, with team orders and a manipulative tire policy negatively affecting what’s supposed to be the top form of motor racing in the world.

Sebastian Vettel finished first in that GP with an angry Mark Webber second and an embarrassed Lewis Hamilton third. Vettel later said, "Sorry, didn’t understand what ‘hold position’ meant (only kidding; I made that up) but he did apologize to his teammate Webber for passing him when the team told him not to.

Hamilton was embarrassed because the Brit manager running a German team told the German driver to stay behind the Brit driver even though the German driver was clearly faster. That decision will come back to haunt the Brit manager.

But let’s take apart the Indy car race first. After all, the winner got out of his car and wrapped himself in the flag and how can you be any more Canadian than that?

Okay, I have to get the smart alec stuff out of the way first.

1. With his first victory in the IZOD IndyCar Series, Hinchcliffe has now won one more race for sponsor GoDaddy than Danica Patrick. (When she won her IRL race in 2008, Motorola was her car’s sponsor.)

2. Savoree-Green Promotions, which organizes and markets the St. Pete race, also promotes the Honda Indy Toronto which, this year, will be two races instead of one. This race weekend has not exactly been a roaring success the last few years so this victory by Hinchcliffe can’t help but give ticket sales a big boost.

Hinchcliffe was touted before the season began as someone who could win races this year. I must admit to having been on the fence: I’ve always liked James and admired him and I’ve been writing stories about him for eons but I frankly had doubts that he had the killer instinct required to make it to the top step of the podium.

I am delighted to say today that I was wrong about this guy. Hinch had the instinct to react – and to react hard – when leader Castroneves slipped up on Lap 85 (of 110) and went wide at the first corner, leaving the opening that he just shot through.

But he then had the confidence and iron will needed to methodically run off the laps - with Castroneves tucked right behind him - till the checkered flag finally flew and that, ladies and gentleman, is the sign of a champion: someone who can’t be rattled.

It’s been a hard climb for the Oakville racer, who went to the Bridgestone Racing School in 2003 to learn how to driver formula cars after starting out in karts. He was 16 then. Ten years later, after driving in Formula BMW, Star Mazda, the A1-GP Series, Formula Atlantic, Indy Lights and, finally, Indy cars, he’s in Victory Lane on the big stage.

What’s set him apart from so many other brilliantly talented young racers, though, is that right from the start, he set out to prove he was a master of marketing and public relations. As he has said himself many times, driving is only a small part of his job. Selling himself and the series he’s competing in are every bit as important.

As a result, when Danica Patrick’s replacement in the "GoDaddy car," Dan Wheldon, lost his life in 2011, Hinchcliffe got the call to take over and it was as much for his social media skills and his self-depracating humour as his ability to make a race car go fast.

He has not let his sponsor, nor his employer, Michael Andretti of Andretti Autosport, down. His first season saw him finish eighth in points, although he’d been higher in the first half of the season. He vowed to do better this year but wouldn’t make predictions. So then he went out and won the season opener.

He’ll do just fine this season, just as he did fine in that race Sunday.

He qualified fourth and was never worse than fourth in the race, spending most of his time in second or third places until the last 25 laps, when he was first.

Bravo, James! Good show. I suggest that this will just be the first of many victories and you might very well be on the road to your first IndyCar championship.

Keep that flag you had with you handy. You’re going to need it.

NOTEBOOK JOTTINGS

– One of the strangest sights anybody has ever seen in auto racing took place during a caution when J.R. Hildebrand rode his car up and over the side of Will Power’s car and ended up against the wall, ending his race. Hildebrand did the right thing by taking responsbility, explaining he’d been distracted and hadn’t seen the field slow in front of him.

But you have to wonder where his brain was during that race. It was bad enough he nearly took Power’s head off but on two occasions earlier in that race he’d passed drivers under yellow and was clearly not paying attention.

I hope the IndyCar people have a word with him. We all suffer from brain fade on occasion, but three times in one race? And he could have killed Power.

– Wheels correspondent Sylvia Proudfoot was in St. Petersburg doing a story on the large number of Canadians competing in the USF2000 series – eight – and was pressed into service for Toronto Star sports when Hinchcliffe won. Good to have you there, Sylvia!

She sent me some additional material concerning the tires Hinch rode to victory on:

"The key to success was the black primary Firestone Tires Hinchcliffe and his Andretti Autosport crew chose for the final race stint, contrary to the softer red alternate tires selected by many of the top contenders.

"Ironically, Hinchcliffe also tilted against the rest of the field by running on black tires in the final stint of the 2012 race at St. Petersburg when he started and finished fourth.

" ‘ It’s a completely different tire and what influenced this decision was just how we’d been using the red tires on the first stint, so it was a complete coincidence,’ he noted. ‘But last year worked out all right for us; this year worked out even better.’ "

– "Swiss Miss’ Simona de Silvestro had one of the best, if not the best, races of her IndyCar career, qualifying third and running third most of the race until the last laps when she fell to sixth.

Several of the TV commentators (and I’ll discuss the TV coverage in my next blog entry, otherwise this race report will turn into more of an epic than it’s already going to be) suggested it was because she was tired (she’s a girl, she’d be tired – get it?) but that’s nonsense.

Yes, she’s a woman, but she’s bigger than Hinchcliffe. Her tires just went away and she fought hard but couldn’t hold off – first – Marco Andretti, then her teammate Tony Kanaan and finally Scott Dixon. Also, she was probably out of her 10 push-to-pass blasts so couldn’t get any extra energy to hold those guys off.

– Dario Franchitti didn’t have a great 2012. Things don’t look promising for 2013, either.

Exiting the pits Sunday, he just floored it and his cold tries weren’t up to proper racing temperature and he went right into the wall.

Guys with their head in it don’t do things like that. Dario is on the cusp of 40, which is not old, but it is getting up there for an open-wheel racing driver.

– There were a lot of empty seats along the pits straight in St. Petersburg. But there were a whole lot of people against the fence and in grandstands at other parts of the circuit so the crowd was probably okay.

However (I’m just slipping this in here), it was probably nowhere near the 48,669 who packed themselves into the Rogers Centre in Toronto Saturday night for the Monster Energy Supercross race.

That's correct: 48,000-plus.

Ryan Villopoto, who’s leading the standings, won his seventh race of the season, and the 31^st of his career. He won the race in Toronto last year, too. David Millsaps was second in the 20-lap event and Ryan Dungey was third.

Lone Canadian, Cole Thompson of Brigden (near Sarnia), was sixth in the Eastern Regional Championship race. Thanks to Bill Petro for this info.

NASCAR

It is now obligatory to get into a fight after a NASCAR Sprint Cup race.

It’s the rule, apparently, because it happens all the time, it seems.

It started late last season when there was a brawl in Phoenix after Jeff Gordon lost his temper and waited for Clint Bowyer to come around and then he crashed him into the outside wall, ending his chances of winning the championship.

Hey rube!

NASCAR loved it. Despite 30 years of trying to attract white-collar spectators and Madison Ave. ad execs – and succeeding – NASCAR decided that its Saturday night blue-collar roots were more important for the future of the sport and more-or-less turned a blind eye.

Fast forward to last weekend in Bristol when Joey Logano and Denny Hamlin got into it in the paddock after the race there. NASCAR stayed out of it. Those two kept up the feud all week on Twitter and lo and behold, in the final laps of the race at California Speedway on Sunday, in a race won by Kyle Busch, with Dale Earnhardt Jr. second and Logano third, they tangled again and both crashed.

Now, Hamlin was hurt in the accident and taken to hospital. So Tony Stewart, under the pretext of being angry at Logano for blocking him on a restart late in the race (this is the same Tony S. who threw a block at Talladega last fall that wrecked pretty much the whole field),  decided to fight Hamlin’s battles for him and took a swng at Logano in pit lane.

Hey rube!

Stewart was interviewed on tape delay by Fox Sports, which was a good thing because it gave them time to bleep out most of the curse words, but his true feelings came to the fore later in an interview with SPEED.

Said Stewart:

"He’s (Logano) just a little rich kid who’s never had to work a day in his life. He’s not like us working guys who had to work our way up."

Stewart, a blue-collar racer to the core (he raced twice with the World of Outlaws sprint car series at the weekend), seems to have trouble with "rich people" – although he depends on millions of dollars of sponsorship money (given to him, presumably, by "rich people" like marketing executives) in order to race.

He was talking about Paul Menard on Sirius satellite radio last year and said if Mendard didn’t have his "rich father" writing cheques for him, he wouldn’t be in NASCAR because he isn’t good enough.

I think Tony’s old boss, Joe Gibbs, should take him aside and suggest he get himself back to anger management class – and fast.

So far as the Hamlin-Logano feud is concerned, NASCAR would be wise to have a word with those two before things get any more out of hand.

This smells like the Carl Edwards-Brad Keselowski conflict of a few years ago that NASCAR allowed to fester. Edwards finally had enough and sent Keselowski flying through the air at Atlanta Motor Speedway. It’s just the luck of the draw that the car didn’t go into the grandstands.

So that’s what can happen.

Yes, the next race is two weeks from now at a short track, Martinsville. But Talladega is just around the corner and it’s not smart to have guys mad at each other at a place like that.

Busch, meantime, thought it was a scream that Logano and Hamlin were paying so much attention to each other that they didn’t see him coming. He just flew past on the high side as their crash was starting and he won going away. Click here for race story, results.

It was his second victory of the weekend, having won the Nationwide race on Saturday.

FORMULA ONE

It almost feels anti-climactic to talk about F1 because, after Hinchcliffe’s victory at St. Petersburg, which was a race in which no one gave any quarter and they were foot-to-the-floor to the checkers (Scott Dixon nipped de Silvestro at the line by about a foot for fifth) and NASCAR was a race in which passions got the better of just about everybody, the Grand Prix of Malaysia was all about business.

Sebastian Vettel, the three-time world champion who’s on a quest for a fourth and wants total domination (he’s won both poles and has a win and a third), was the winner for Red Bull-Renault with his teammate Mark Webber second and Lewis Hamilton third for Mercedes.

Nico Rosberg finished fourth for Mercedes, Felipe Massa was fifth for Ferrari, Lotus-Renault teammates Romain Grosjean and last week’s season-opening winner in Australia, Kimi Raikkonen, were sixth and seventh, Nico Hulkenberg was eighth for Sauber-Ferrari, Sergio Perez ninth for McLaren-Mercedes and Jean-Eric Vergne tenth for Toro Rosso-Ferrari.

Valterri Bottas was first of the six rookies, finishing 11^th for Williams-Renault. The other five finished in a row behind him. Click here for full results

When I say business, as the race wound down, the two teams in front – Red Bull and Mercedes – decided it was best for all concerned if they declared the race over and maintained the running order as it was till the end.

At the time, Webber – who drove a strong, strong race for Red Bull – was in first, with Vettel second. Hamilton was in third, with Rosberg fourth.

Now, although Red Bull management, led by team principal Christian Horner and including designer Adrian Newey, decided to order their drivers to dial back their motors and conserve their tires, in the interests of finishing one-two, it was really a stupid decision with the drivers in the order they were running at the time.

Sebastian Vettel has won the last three world championships. What were they thinking? Did they really, really think the world champion of all drivers was going to be content to trundle around in second place and finish behind a guy he knows he can beat?

Would Michael Schumacher? Would Ayrton Senna? Of course not. So why in the world would anybody in their right mind think Sebastien Vettel would.

So he said, correctly, screw you (or words to that effect) and went after Webber and beat him.

Yes, he looked concerned post-race, as would anybody who realized at that moment that most of the free world hated him, but under it all he was happy because he is the world champion, he’s No. 1 and he’s the boss and nobody had better try to tell him otherwise.

And that's why he's world champion. You don't get to be world champion by being a wuss.

I don’t blame Webber for being annoyed and angry and full of bravado about what will happen in future, but he must be a pretty naive guy if he really thought, even for a second, that Vettel was going to lose the second race of the season without a fight and just sit back and let him win.

Webber will also let Vettel past the next time, if he’s told to. Why? Because Vettel is the world champion and Webber is not.

And I betcha Christian Horner is never again going to tell Sebastian Vettel to settle for seconds. If push ever comes to shove in that team, Vettel is the boss and intelligent people had better never forget that.

Over at Mercedes, meanwhile, Ross Brawn is on borrowed time as team principal and team leader. For the same reasons as Red Bull, he told his drivers to hold station late in the race because he felt it better to guarantee a solid third- and fourth-place finish rather than risk letting his drivers race and have them crash.

The only trouble is that when he issued the order, the fourth-place driver, Rosberg, was preparing to pass his teammate, Hamilton, for the podium position. As a result of the order, the world was treated – as it often is, by Formula One – to a spectacle of lap after lap of one car being clearly faster than the other but being forbidden, again and again, to pass.

Mercedes is a German team. Rosberg is a German driver. He is also a veteran German driver on that particular German team. He was told by a British boss, Brawn, to stay behind a British driver, who is new to the team, even though he could clearly pass him.

If Brawn had wanted a three-four finish without muss or fuss, and seeing the situation, he could simply have told Hamilton to let Rosberg pass him. But, it seems, he wanted Hamilton to finish on the podium, rather than Roserberg.

The two Austrians running Mercedes, Toto Wolff and Niki Lauda, got rid of Brit CEO Nick Frye this past week. As a result of what happened in Malaysa Sunday, how long do you think Ross Brawn is going to have his job?

NOTEBOOK JOTTINGS

– The Chinese Grand Prix at Shanghai will be held in three weeks. In a month, F1 will be in Bahrain. Guess what’s going on in Bahrain these days? Rioting in the streets, that's what. Dozens were injured during a demonstration on March 15, with several police offers and demonstrators admitted to hospital.

The owners of F1, CVC Capital Partners (your Canadian pension plan probably has money invested, by the way), cares only about the money, otherwise the races would be cancelled, as they were in South Africa at the time of apartheid.

In the words of the late Conn Smythe, who resigned from the executive of Maple Leaf Gardens, which he built, in protest against a decision to allow Muhammad Ali to fight there after he refused the U.S. draft: "They’ve traded class for cash."

– Fernando Alonso ran into the back of Vettel on the opening lap and, instead of pitting to have the nose replaced on his Ferrari, stayed out. Of course, the wing that had been damaged came off and went under the car, sending it into the sandtrap and Alonso to his plane for an early flight home.

The BBC commentators, Ben Edwards and David Coulthard, suggested Ferrari were expecting Alonso to pit at the end of the first lap because pit reporter Gary Anderson had reported the team was up and waiting for him. Ferrari said later that the team told Alonso to stay out and that it wasn’t his fault.

Yeah, sure.

– Speaking of Ben Edwards, he was as confused as Lewis Hamilton was about McLaren. You’ll recall that at mid-race, Hamilton went into the pits and stopped at McLaren, which is something he’s done every other year he’s been in F1. Quite correctly, he was waved through to the Mercedes pit.

Well, as the cars were pulling into parc ferme after the race, Edwards said it was a wonderful moment for Hamilton, being on the podium, "in only his second drive for McLaren."

Give both those guys time. They’ll get it right.

Oh, the tire issue? I could go on and on about that, but I won’t. This is way too long as it is. I’ll take a crack at it soon, but suffice it to say now that the people running F1 these days are just being too cute trying to manipulate interest and excitement.

Here’s a novel idea? Why not leave well enough alone and let them race? It worked pretty well the last half of the last century. Why mess with success?

Power, Vettel, Hamlin on poles

Saturday afternoon:

Will Power won the pole for Sunday's opening race of the IZOD IndyCar Series season on the streets of St. Petersburg, Fla., with a lap of one minute, 1.2070 seconds, which translates into a speed of 105.870 miles an hour.

Takuma Sato finished second in qualifying, followed by Simona di Silvestro, James Hinchcliffe of Oakville and Helio Castroneves.

Tristan Vautier, the only rookie in the field, stunned observers by qualifying sixth, leaving such luminaries as defending champion Ryan Hunter-Reay (8th), Indy 500 champion Dario Franchitti (10th), Alex Tagliani of Montreal (17th) and five-time Champ Car champion Sebastien Bourdais (21st) in his dust.

Said Hinchcliffe: "It's behind us, which is good. I think we showed a lot of potential and we're obviously happy with starting inside the (Firestone) Fast Six but we're focusing on tomorrow's race."

Meantime, Canadian Scott Hargrove of Vancouver won the USF2000 race Saturday. The 18-year-old won the opening race of the series a week ago in Sebring.

Third place in Saturday's event went to Stefan Rzadzinski of Edmonton, while Jesse Lazare of Montreal was fourth.

Said Hargrove: “It may have looked easy but driving on the streets was not at all easy with the walls everywhere. It was a pretty big challenge. . . . It was really close in qualifying and we got through Turn One, and I couldn’t be happier with the result.”

Saturday Morning:

Red Bull-Renault's Sebastien Vettel won the pole for Sunday's Malaysian Grand Prix, ahead of Ferrari drivers Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso.

Last week's winner, Kimi Raikkonen of Lotus-Renault, qualified seventh but was penalized three grid positions for blocking.

The lineup: Vettel, Massa; Alonso, Hamilton; Webber; Rosberg; Button; Sutil; Perez; Raikkonen; Grosjean; Hulkenberg; Ricciardo; Gutierrez; di Resta; Maldonado; Vergne; Bottas; Bianchi; Pic; Chilton; Van der Garde.

In off-track controversy, Toronto Star Wheels' Stephanie Wallcraft has done a great interview with Canadian legend Paul Tracy over his being snubbed in St. Petersburg, Fla., where a monument to the late Dan Wheldon doesn't have his name down as a race winner. Click here for details.

Earlier, observers of the IZOD IndyCar Series have said for years that if Simona de Silvestro ever had a decent car to drive, she’d be at the front of the pack instead of the back.

Well, how right they were. De Silvestro – a.k.a. the Swiss Miss – is driving a KV Racing Chevrolet-powered Dallara this season and after two practice sessions Friday for the opening race of the season Sunday on a street course in St. Petersburg, Fla., she’s a solid third fastest out of 25 drivers who took time.

Championship favourite (isn’t he always?) Will Power sits atop the time sheets, with defending national champion Ryan Hunter-Reay second. Then comes De Silvestro, followed by Oriol Servia and Takuma Sato.

Sato, incidentally, was the fastest Honda driver. The four chauffers in front of him were all shoeing Chevies.

Canadian driver James Hinchcliffe of Oakville sits in eighth place and veteran Alex Tagliani of Montreal is 20^th. Slowest of all two-dozen-plus-one is Ana Beatriz in a Dale Coyne Racing entry.

Qualifying for Sunday’s race is scheduled for Saturday afternoon.

The field, from first to last, is separated by a smidgen more than two seconds. Power turned a lap of 1:01:4667 (105:457 mph); Beatriz brought up the rear with a time of 1:03:9670.

Target Chip Ganassi Racing drivers Dario Franchitti and Scott Dixon were both well down the list, in 17^th and 19^th places, respectively.

There was a report in the U.S. Friday that only four of the 2013 IndyCar races on Sportsnet would be live and the rest would be tape-delayed. Wrong. They will all be live, starting with the St. Pete race Sunday.

Meantime, at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., Denny Hamlin won the pole Friday evening for Sunday’s Sprint Cup race, with Greg Biffle second and Brad Keselowski third.

Biffle and Keselowski will go to the back of the pack for the start, however, because of engine changes.

Joey Logano, who had a beef with Hamlin last weekend at Bristol and vowed to hunt him down to even the score in this Sunday's race, qualified sixth but will move up to fourth.

Any bets on how long Logano will follow Hamlin around before turning him into the wall?

Sad News. Gord Hazlett, a long-time writer for the periodical Old Autos, died this week. He was 94. Visitation at the Heritage Funeral Centre, 50 Overlea Blvd., Toronto, will be held Sunday from 2 until 4 and then from 7 until 9. A funeral service will be held in the chapel there at noon on Monday, March 25. A reception will follow, with internment at Resthaven Memorial Gardens.

In Indianapolis, Tony George has been returned to his place on the board of directors of Hulman & Co. You’ll recall he resigned last year after news broke (or there was serious speculation) that he was seeking to put a group together to purchase the IndyCar Series from the Hulman firm. The appearance of a conflict of interest forced his hand. As it is apparent that the racing series is not for sale, and George no longer seems interested in purchasing it, he’s back in the saddle. 

This item will be overtaken during the night by qualifying in Malaysia, but Kimi Raikkonen, winner of last weekend’s opening race of the Formula One season in Australia, set fastest time in second practice in his Lotus-Renault Friday before the rains came to slow everybody down.

Sebastien Vettel was second fastest in his Red Bull-Renault but complained that his Pirelli tires were going away really quickly. Felipe Massa was in third for Ferrari with teammate Fernando Alonso fourth and Red Bull No. 2 Mark Webber fifth.

Here’s an interesting nugget, though.

You’ll recall that Raikkonen got a leg up on everybody else at Melbourne last Sunday by managing his tires better. He only had to stop twice while all others were in the pits three times?

Well, during Friday practice, Mercedes focused on long runs rather than speed, with Nico Rosberg eventually ending up seventh and Lewis Hamilton ninth.

But being the investigative reporter that I am, I suggest Mercedes is stealing a page from the Lotus playbook and practicing for a two-stop strategy on Sunday.

We’ll see.

Speaking of Mercedes, CEO Nick Frye resigned his position of Chief Executive Officer as of April 1 Friday, and pay manager Toto Wolfe, who bought 30 per cent of the team so he could get that job, will take over.

According to a statement from Mercedes, Wolfe will now run the team with Ross Brawn but I am willing to start a pool so we can gamble on how long that arrangement lasts.

Slowly but surely, Wolfe and Niki Lauda are taking over and Brawn’s days are obviously numbered, just as Frye’s were.

Frye will stay with the team as a consultant. This is code for, we don’t want to pay you millions of dollars in lump-sum severance so we are giving you your notice. You will draw a salary until the end of 2014 but you won’t have anything to do.

Now, get out of here. If we need you, we’ll call.

- Norris McDonald