Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Mayor Hinchcliffe's state of the IndyCar union address

The IZOD IndyCar Season starts Sunday in St. Petersburg, Fla., and Canadian race fans will be casting a critical eye on three things in particular: how drivers James Hinchcliffe of Oakville and Alex Tagliani of Montreal stack up against the competition and how Sportsnet’s coverage will compare to TSN’s.

Former IndyCar CEO Randy Bernard announced at last summer’s Honda Indy Toronto that he had initiated negotiations with Sportsnet because, going forward, TSN couldn’t guarantee that it would televise all of the Indy races live.

Sportsnet made that commitment and has cooked up some added value for its telecasts of Sunday’s race in Florida as well the Indianapolis 500 in May and the two Honda Indy Toronto races come July.

TSN didn’t produce pre-racing programming, preferring to go with whatever the U.S. network broadcaster provided. But for at least the three races mentioned above, and maybe more, depending, a four-man Sportsnet team headed by sportscaster Rob Faulds and featuring retired drivers Paul Tracy and Bill Adam, with Todd Lewis in the pits, will provide play-by-play plus analysis geared for Canadian racing fans.

During a chat we had recently, Hinchcliffe — who’s starting his third full-time season in IndyCar and his second as an Andretti Autosport driver — expressed how excited he was about Sportsnet taking over.

“Sportsnet has been incredibly proactive,” he said. “They’ve reached out to me about being involved as much as possible (Hinchcliffe is one of the most media savvy drivers in the series — if not the most media savvy guy (he’s known, for instance, as the “Mayor of Hinchtown,” his personal website) — and has extensive broadcast experience.

“They’re really keen to promote the Canadian drivers, Alex (Tagliani) and myself, and I’m very keen to promote the sport in Canada. I’m so excited and relieved to see the passion and excitement they’re putting into it because it reflects the way I feel about the sport. I mean, it’s a thousand times better than what we’ve had the last couple of years.”

Hinchcliffe, who also has a contract with Speed Channel in the United States to provide analysis on the Speed Center news program as well as to make periodic appearances on Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain, said the biggest role he could play for Sportsnet would be to “go out there and try to win races for Canada.”

Having said that, however, he wasn’t making any predictions.

“You obviously go into a season with the goal of winning races,” he said. “But there are so many things that have to go right on a Sunday for you to win a race and, as a driver, you control about 10 of a thousand things.

“I’m in my third year now but I’m still up against guys in their 13th year. So, for me, it’s still a learning thing. I need to get out there every lap I can, in every race, and figure out what those (race-winners) do to get that last half a per cent that moves (some drivers) from being a podium guy to a race-winning guy.”

Andretti Autosport, owned and operated by Michael Andretti, is the team that has defending series champion Ryan Hunter-Reay in its lineup. In addition to Hinchcliffe and RHR, the team also fields cars for son-of-the-owner Marco Andretti and Venezuelan E.J. Viso, which means there’s a lot of pressure to perform.

“I don’t get the sense that we’re walking around like we accomplished something,” Hinchcliffe — who drops into the team’s headquarters frequently when he’s home in Indianapolis — said.

“We know that everybody’s back to zero, that we can’t rest on any laurels and I think the team’s motivated to work even harder to try to do it all again. The work ethic happening at the shop now is over the top.

“The chemistry within the team is every good and I think we’re stronger now than a year ago.”

There has been discussion in recent months about the state of the IndyCar nation, with the owners hiring a Boston consulting firm to suggest ways to promote the series. Among the suggestions was one to compress the season into 18 or 20 weekends in the spring and summer and another was to showcase the drivers as daredevils.

“I think March is a good time to start and it really comes down to when the season ends and where it ends,” Hinchcliffe said. “I’d love to see the end of October-first of November for an end-of-season race. If we could extend it from where we finished last year (California, Sept. 15), I think it would be better. That would be ideal for me. The most successful racing series in North America (NASCAR) goes from February to November, so that should tell you something.”

And what about this daredevil business, James?

“That’s actually the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Hinchcliffe snapped back.

“What they’re trying to say is, ‘Let’s go back to the days of the gladiators; we don’t want you to know who they are, we just want you to watch them kill each other.

“The people I’ve met who knew nothing about Indy car racing, they then know they’ve got someone to cheer for and they start watching. They see one race, or they go to one race, and they say, ‘Wow, this is incredible.’ If you get people out to the track, they’re fans for life. It all starts with that initial emotional investment, of knowing someone enough to want to go watch.

“They need to have an emotional investment in the people who are out there. . . . We need fans who are cheering for somebody and the only way that’s going to happen is if the drivers have a higher profile, where we’re not a secret.

“And that’s the key.”

How NASCAR came to be more popular than IndyCar

With the IZOD IndyCar Series season about to begin in Florida, and the teeth-gnashing still going on about how NASCAR managed to get a leg up back in the late 1900s to not only overtake Indy car racing in popularity but to almost decimate it, I’m going to tell you how and why it happened.

First, the split in 1996 didn’t help but it was far from being the only reason.

You have to remember that the first season of Indy Racing League competition was made up of three races. That’s correct. There were only three races on the whole 1996 schedule — the Walt Disney World race in January, the Phoenix race in March and the Indianapolis 500 in May. Three races. You know why?

Because Tony George, who started the rival league, fully expected that CART would sign on and there would be one great big series. But CART didn’t, and the war was on.

But, as I said, the split was only one of a number of factors and here are the others.

1. Traditionally, Indy car racers came from small ovals in primarily rural areas of the United States. The legendary names — Foyt, Andretti, Rutherford, Johncock, Sachs, Bryan and so-on — all came from those tracks where they were heroes on Saturday night. The fans followed them to the big league.

Starting in or around the mid-1980s, road racers who were largely unknown - Teo Fabi, Guido Dacco, Fulvio Bullabio, Marco Grecco, Dominic Dobson and so-on - started to drive Indy cars and the series lost its connection with its roots.

2. Indy car racing, like Formula One, was always seen as a cut above the stock cars.

In the 1980s, NASCAR went uptown. It moved its season-ending awards banquet from Charlotte, N.C., to New York City. The headquarters was the ultra-snooty Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. They made the drivers and crew chiefs dress up in tuxedos; before they were allowed into the banquet hall, NASCAR had someone at the door checking to make sure everybody had clean fingernails.

I’m not making that up.

NASCAR took its cars and its drivers to Park Avenue and the advertising executives over on Madison Avenue took notice. It was pure genius.

3. Finally, in 1990, a midget and sprint car oval track champion named Jeff Gordon expected to move up to Indy cars. Rebuffed, he “went south” and started to race stock cars. He took his fans with him.

Since then, dozens of other “open-wheel” drivers like Gordon, including Tony Stewart, Kasey Kahne, Kenny Schraeder, Ryan Newman and others have gone on to race in NASCAR instead of Indy cars and their fans have gone with them, too.

The people who own the IndyCar series recently commissioned studies on how to “grow” their series. I’ll tell them how — and it won’t cost them a cent.

1. Start hiring drivers who have a following. Why is Tristan Vautier in an Indy car and Kyle Larson not. Explain that to me.

2. in company with (1), above, start trying to reconnect with Indy car racing’s roots. When was the last time a driver went to a small speedway on a Saturday night to shake hands, pose for pictures and sign autographs? That’s right — nobody can remember. That might be a big part of the problem. So start doing that.

3. Finally, forget flying the starting field for the Indy 500 into New York for a few hours in May so they can pose for a photo in Times Square. Book that banquet hall at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in November (it's available; NASCAR's gone to Vegas now) and have a season-ending week of appearances on TV shows and parties culminating with a banquet to end all banquets.

Have the champion drop the puck to start a Rangers game, be introduced at a Nets game and toss the coin when either the Giants or Jets play.

Hey — maybe Madison Avenue will take notice.

NOTES: The second race of the young Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship Powered by Mazda series will take place at St. Pete’s at the weekend. Leading the standings is 18-year-old Scott Hargrove of Vancouver, B.C. Garret Grist, 18, of Grimsby had a second-place finish in the first two races and Jesse Lazare, who’s only 15, had a fourth in the second race. . . .

Once upon a time, you couldn’t get a seat for a NASCAR Sprint Cup race. As was shown at Bristol last weekend, those days are gone. So tracks are offering incentives. If you buy a seat for the November race at Homestead-Miami Speedway, for example, and refer someone who also buys a ticket, you can qualify to receive goodies. For more information, go to homesteadmiamispeedway.com/referafan . . .

With the Sprint Cup on the West Coast for a race at California Speedway on Sunday, Tony Stewart has decided to run with the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series at the Stockton (Calif.) Dirt Track on Friday night. Would Ryan Hunter-Reay or Marco Andretti do something like that? Nope — but it would sure help the IndyCar series, don't you think? . . . .

Ontario Sprint car racer Ryan Litt of London will start his 2013 season with the U.S.-based Must See Racing Sprint Car Series at Pensacola, Fla., and Mobile, Ala. this coming weekend. Litt’s determined to win the traditional Little 500 sprint car race at Anderson Speedway, just north of Indianapolis, the night before the Big 500 at the IMSpeedway. He’s come close before but thinks this could be his year. . . .

Pfaff Automotive Partners has named Chris Green as lead driver for the Pfaff Castrol Motorsports team in this year’s Porsche GT3 Challenge Cup Canada. Green entered four Gold Cup-class races in 2012 and won all four, so Pfaff has signed a good shoe. . . .

Was the Denny Hamlin-NASCAR spat real?

I inherited my cynicism from my mother.

Years and years ago, in the early 1950s, we were sitting in the dentist’s office and because there were no comic books, I was looking at Photoplay, which was a "movie magazine" of the times. There was a picture of Elizabeth Taylor on the cover, taken of her in a nightclub, and in front of her, on the table, slightly out of focus, was a package of Salem cigarettes.

So I said to my mother that I had never seen Elizabeth Taylor smoke in the movies and here was a package of cigarettes in a picture of her. And my mother looked at me and said, decades before I heard anybody talk about product placement:

"They pay her to let them put those cigarettes there."

I was astonished.

Really, I thought?

But the more I thought about it, the more what my mother had said made sense and I learned a valuable lesson from it, one that has stood me in good stead throughout my newspaper career: don’t believe everything you hear or see because there are people out there cooking up all sorts of gimmicks and stunts to draw attention to their products or businesses or causes and the interest generated may not accurately reflect reality because of this manipulation.

Which brings me to last weekend.

After the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Phoenix, Danny Hamlin got out of his car and, in answer to a question about the new generation six car, said: "I don’t want to be the pessimist, but it did not race as good as our generation five cars. This is more like what the generation five was at the beginning."

Tuesday, NASCAR announced it was fining Hamlin $25,000 for comments detrimental to stock car racing. Hamlin reacted by saying he wasn’t going to pay the fine and that the powers-that-be could suspend him if they wanted to.

To my knowledge, neither party has said anything more since.

But others have. Boy, have they ever.

Usually after a car race (any car race, by the way, be it F1 or IndyCar or NASCAR), there is a lull in publicity. After the Sunday night TV shows are watched and the overnight blogs and Monday morning race reports are read, nobody (except the most rapid of fans) really cares all that much about car racing until interest naturally starts to build for the next race, which could be three or four days later. That’s the way it is with NFL football and PGA golf, too. Sports restricted to weekends pretty much endure the same pattern.

Except this time, there was no lull. There was no letup. Google "Denny Hamlin" and "NASCAR" and "fine" and count up the number of stories and columns written about this "controversy" that had its start last Sunday night and continued through to the race in Las Vegas this weekend (and that’s not considering the number of sports radio call-in shows and TV programs that tackled the "issue"). You will need a calculator to add them all up.

Now, if Denny Hamlin had said something – anything – about NASCAR or stock car racing or the new race cars that could be considered controversial or damaging, then I might understand NASCAR getting upset.

But there was nothing; absolutely nothing.

So was there something else going on here?

Something like: I heard what Denny Hamlin said and I saw NASCAR’s reaction to it and then I thought of my mother and that picture of Elizabeth Taylor with the cigarettes.

Sixty years later, they’re not only still at it, they've perfected it.

I watched Wind Tunnel on Speed Channel last night because it featured two of my favourite motorsport personalities, Robin Miller and James Hinchcliffe, and I saw – for the most part – a replay of the Speed Center news program.

For the first 15 minutes, I had to endure a repeat of all of the NASCAR stuff that had been on for an hour previously, including yet another interview with Sam Hornish Jr.

Sam might be a nice guy, but let’s be honest: he puts you to sleep.

Then, after the break, Miller "interviewed" Hinchcliffe by reading questions off a teleprompter. James kept looking down at his notes for the answers.

What a waste of two wonderful talents.

Somebody has got it in for that program and is sabotaging it by making it as boring as possible. What used to be an hour of off-the-wall fun and outrageous opinions has been cut back to 30 minutes of scripted predictability.

Such a shame.

Matt Kenseth and Joe Gibbs Racing showed Sunday why they should be taken seriously for the 2013 Sprint Cup Championship when they won the Kobalt Tools 400 at Las Vegas Speedway.

Kasey Kahne finished second and defending Cup champion Brad Keselowski was third, just ahead of Kyle Busch. Carl Edwards finished fifth.

In only his third race for the team, Kenseth opted to take no tires when he went to the pits for fuel on Lap 225. It was this decision that eventually gave Kenseth the win. Full race report here.

In the Nationwide Series Saturday, Sam Hornish Jr. won. Kyle Busch was second, with Brian Vickers third, Trevor Bayne fourth and Elliott Saddler fifth.

Thank goodness the long winter is over. Formula One starts its season in Australia Friday, the American Le Mans Series has the 12 Hours of Sebring scheduled for Saturday and the IZOD IndyCar Series kicks off 2013 with the St. Petersburg Grand Prix in Florida a week from Sunday. Check George’s TV Listings for Race Fans at wheels.ca for times and channels.

Tony Stewart isn’t exactly setting the world on fire this Sprint Cup season. Maybe he needs a dose of sprint car racing to get him going.

Two years ago, he hadn’t won a Cup race by the time he showed up in July at the Six Nations Ohsweken Speedway to run with the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series. He won that race on the little dirt track near Brantford and it turned his NASCAR season around.

Who knows? Maybe it will happen again. It was announced last week that Stewart will return to Ohsweken this July to see if he can score a hat trick (he won the race last July, too).

As the Ohsweken release put it, "Smoke" will compete against Ohsweken’s Corr/Pal Merchandising Sprint Car teams in the "Norther Summer Nationals"  on Monday, July 29. The next night, July 30, Stewart and the Outlaws will race in the "Six Nations Showdown."

Get your tickets early. You couldn’t move in that place last summer, so many people were there.

Ryan Villopoto won his second Monster Energy Supercross of 2013 Saturday night at Daytona Speedway in Florida. Villopoto, James Stewart, Chad Reed and all those guys will be at the Rogers Centre in Toronto a week from Saturday. They always put on a great show.

I like a good story, too, but I can’t get excited about A.J. Allmendinger driving two races for Roger Penske.. . . . David Ostella of Maple, who’s been in the Indy Lights Series the last couple of seasons, is going sports car racing and will be competing in the Prototype Challenge class in this weekend’s 12 Hours of Sebring. Kyle Marcelli of Barrie will be an opponent. . . . Remo Ruscitti of Vancouver has signed with Compass360 Racing (C360R) of Toronto to drive the team's No. 72 Honda Civic Si in the 2013 Pirelli World Challenge Touring Car championship. . . . I was all for this electric car formula car racing series until they said the drivers would switch cars during the "race." That’s not competition, that’s a demonstration. That’s like the movement a couple of years ago to make the point of tennis the length of the rally, rather than scoring points. Or youth soccer where nobody keeps score. What is this, anyway?

IndyCar: Consultants did what they're supposed to do

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

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

Let’s go back to the start.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- NORRIS McDONALD

SPEED fading; Subway driver wins Subway race

The weekend’s racing was kind of so-so, with the possible exception of the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series event at the Circuit of the Americas on Saturday (won by Jon Fogerty and Alex Gurney, incidentally), but there were a couple of off-track stories that merit attention, with one in particular being of utmost importance because it affects us all.

That one in particular is that the Speed Channel will soon be gone, replaced by yet another general sports network.

The rebranding of SPEED by the parent Fox Sports will likely happen this summer, Charlotte Observer radio and TV columnist Mark Washburn reported at the weekend. The relaunched channel will be called Fox Sports 1 and will probably feature baseball, football, soccer and amateur sport in addition to some auto racing and other motor sports.

Gone will be such Emmy Award-winning programs as Pinks, Pinks All Out, Pass Time, Are You Faster Than a Redneck and Truck U. (Isn’t the name of that last show just hilarious? Just the sort of thing to attract sophisticated viewers and avertisers. . . .)

I say good riddance to them all. And although I’m not happy to be losing an all-motorsport station to yet another general sports channel (of which we have more than enough already, thank you), I’m not sad to see most of the SPEED lineup consigned to the waste basket.

I consider SPEED a lost opportunity. What could have been a great channel – like the Golf Channel is great, and the NFL Channel is great – was always pretty mediocre at best.

They did some things really well. Adam Alexander’s Speed Center newscast on Sunday night at 7 p.m. is must-viewing. And Dave Despain’s Wind Tunnel, also on Sunday night, is another "must-view" show. And where else will you get live coverage of sports-car racing and (most of the time) of 24-hour races like Daytona and Le Mans? And yes, even NASCAR Today with Kyle Petty and Kenny Wallace could be entertaining on a Sunday morning.

But the rest of it? See ya.

Where were all the old USAC sprint car films? Don’t tell me they couldn’t make a deal with Dick Wallen? And films of the old Indianapolis 500s and the Indy cars at Milwaukee and Riverside and Trenton? And the USAC dirt cars at Springfield and Du Quoin? And sports car racing from Daytona and Sebring back in the day? There must be a vault of motorcycle racing videos somewhere that would have made for great viewing.

There are all sorts of Formula One films around. Why weren’t they shown on SPEED? If you’re going to be a Speed Channel, isn’t that the sort of stuff you want to have on the air all the time? If I can watch historic Daytona 500s and CART races from the 1990s on ESPN Classic Canada, why couldn’t I see them on the Speed Channel?

As I said, a wasted opportunity.

I just hope the Fox people see the value in Speed Center and Wind Tunnel and some of the other above-average programs like live race coverage and make them a large part of Fox Sports 1.

But I can get along quite nicely without Truck U and anything with the name Pinks in it.

The second off-track story of the weekend dealt with a leaked report concerning the future of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the IndyCar series. It is a complex subject and requires a full blog, so I will post my thoughts on it – and the reaction to it – Monday night.

Before moving on, however, I must ask out loud: what is going on with Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain? Usually an hour of interviews and call-ins, Wind Tunnel is back on the air after its usual winter hiatus but is now only 30 minutes long and that’s not nearly enough time.

Let’s hope once everything gets going – the American Le Mans Series season and Formula One will start in two weeks and IndyCar will follow a week later – that Wind Tunnel will revert to its usual hour.

If not, I fear for the future of that popular program.

Despain will be in Daytona for Bike Week next Sunday and will be represented on the show by Oakville's James Hinchcliffe and Robin Miller. It will be Hinchcliffe’s first gig since he signed a deal to contribute to both Wind Tunnel and Speed Center, which was announced this past week.

Okay, so Carl Edwards won the Subway Fresh Fit 500 at Phoenix Sunday, with Jimmie Johnson second and Denny Hamlin third. Click here for full race story.

But I’m confused.

There is a yellow line around the bottom of Phoenix International Raceway. NASCAR says you can’t go below the yellow line and improve your position. But Denny Hamlin dropped below the yellow line and took a short cut up the backstretch on the last lap to improve his position by shooting all the way up to second place. Johnson fought him off but he very nearly stole second in the race.

Now, the line on the track in Phoenix is a single line, rather than a double line of the kind you find at places like – say – Daytona. So maybe – maybe – NASCAR thinks it’s okay to go below the line.

But if that’s the case, why have a line there at all? If it serves no purpose, what is it doing there?

At one track it’s against the rules to pass below the yellow line and at another it’s okay?

As I said, I’m confused.

Now, I am not a conspiracy theorist (ED NOTE: ho, ho, ho), but Carl Edwards, who has not won a race in 70 tries, finally wins one on Sunday. It is the Subway Fresh Fit 500. Carl Edwards is sponsored by Subway. I guess it’s just a coincidence.

Here’s another coincidence. Two of the three Stewart-Haas Racing team cars went out after crashing because their right front tires blew out. Ryan Newman was the first to hit the wall in turn four and Danica Patrick followed a few laps later. Newman was credited with 40th place; Patrick started 40th but was running 26th when she crashed and officially finished 39th.

It was a typical NASCAR Sprint Cup race: nothing to get excited about until the end and then the green-white-checkers finish was interesting. But Edwards had the field covered and was pulling away at the checkers.

Kyle Busch, who has not had a good start to his Sprint Cup season, won the Nationwide Series race Saturday at Phoenix, followed home by Brad Keselowski and Justin Allgaier.

Later Saturday, the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West series took to the big mile speedway and Greg Pursley won. I wouldn’t normally report the results of this particular series but the second-place finisher, who happens to be Pursley’s teammate, was Cameron Hayley, 16, of Calgary. That kid's got a future, I'd say.

The NASCAR Mexican stock car series also raced as part of the Phoenix weekend. It likely gave that series a much-needed publicity boost at home as well as in the United States.

Dean McNulty, who writes for another Toronto paper, is reporting that NASCAR will give the Canadian Tire stock car series similar exposure by including it on the program at Watkins Glen in August when the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series stock cars travel there for the traditional mid-summer race weekend.

As mentioned earlier, Fogarty and Gurney won the Grand Am Rolex race at the Circuit of the Americas outside Austin, Tex., with Ryan Dalziel and Alex Popow second and Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas third. All were racing in Daytona Prototypes.

In the GT class, Toronto’s Paul Dalla Lana and American Bill Auberlen, driving a BMW M3, fought back from two laps down (Dalla Lana spun on the opening lap) to win. Dalla Lana and Auberlen earlier won the Continental Tire support race.

They are the only team to ever win both the Continental and Rolex races on the same weekend and it was the second time they’d done it, the first time coming at Homestead-Miami in 2011.

Auberlen actually drove the team car across the finish line in second place but the first-place-finishing car was penalized a lap plus 90 seconds for avoidable contact.

The "contact" was one of a number of instances in this race in which the sports-car drivers raced more like NASCAR drivers, with lots of rubbin’ and bangin’ going on out there.

Other Canadians – Rolex: Sylvain Tremblay of Montreal, second in the GX class. AIM Autosport of Woodbridge (Emil Assentato and Anthony Lozzaro aboard) was fifth in the GT class and a sister car, R. Ferri/AIM Autosport Racing With Ferrari, finished tenth in GT with Max Papis and Jeff Segal driving. Kyle Marcelli of Barrie finished ninth in GT.

In the Continental Tire race: Ken Wilden of Oakville was seventh overall in GS. Fraser Wellon of Mississauga was 12^th in GS. Ashley McCalmont of Ancaster was 15^th in GS. Scott Maxwell of Toronto, driving for Multimatic Motorsports of Markham, finished 18^th in GS. Another Multimatic driver, David Empringham of Toronto, was 42^nd overall but 22^nd in class. Taylor Hacguard of Vancouver was 29^th overall but 9^th in ST. The Toronto-based Compass360 Racing team had four cars in the ST class and they finished sixth, 19^th, 20^th and 26^th in class.

Lewis Hamilton was fastest for Mercedes as F1 testing continued in Barcelona. Felipe Massa was second in a Ferrari, although about a half-second behind Hamilton. Although some suspect sandbagging, I suggest the real reason the pre-season doesn’t mean much in F1 is because they are actually testing things and not racing. The season opens in Australia in two weeks and then we’ll see who’s got their act together. . . .

Ryan Villopoto won the Monster Energy Supercross in St. Louis at the weekend. James Stewart was second and Chad Reed third. Those guys will be at the Rogers Centre in Toronto in three weeks. Sat., March 23, to be exact.

Hinch on SPEED, women on wall at Daytona

The first debris caution on Lap 28 of last Sunday’s Daytona 500 was called because two women had crawled underneath the fence separating the motorhome park from the speedway between turns three and four and were sitting on top of the wall behind the SAFER barrier.

While most of the drivers made their first pit stops, speedway security went over and told them to get down and not to do that again.

Although some people questioned their sanity, I gave them some slack. In 1975, on the Friday night of the Indy 500 weekend, I walked right up to the fence between turns three and four of the mile-long dirt track at the Indiana State Fairgrounds and was enthralled as the USAC Champ Cars turned hot laps.

Those pilots would start to broadslide going into turn three (Larry ‘Boom Boom’ Cannon was the most spectacular) and the mud was just flying right at me. Those guys knew what they were doing and I was not the least bit nervous standing there as they slid straight toward me before nailing the throttle and hurtling themselves into turn four and out onto the main straight.

I was buzzed and was ready to stand there forever.

Except a state trooper saw me and told me to beat it or he’d arrest me. So I moved on, just as I’m sure those girls did last Sunday. But for a short time, they sure had the best seats in the house. I know; I was there – kinda – 38 years ago in Indianapolis.

From the moment James Hinchcliffe of Oakville started his long climb up motor racing’s ladder, from karts to Formula Atlantic to the A1 GP and Indy Lights and finally the IZOD IndyCar Series, he has been a marvelous self-promoter.

He has a wonderful sense of humour (mostly self-deprecating) and a sparkling personality and he knew right from the start that if he was going to make it to the top, he would have to be more than a good racing driver; he would have to exploit his own strengths.

So every opportunity he got, he made himself available to the media. Want a photo of a driver clowning around? I’m your boy, he’d say. Need a driver to comment on camera about how wonderful Cleveland/Edmonton/Milwaukee/Toronto is? I’m here, he’d say.

When he was driving in Champ Car Atlantics, he provided colour commentary on international broadcasts of the Champ Car World Series races. He became an expert at utilizing social media and created a web site around the mythical community of Hinchtown, appointing himself mayor.

When Danica Patrick wound down her IndyCar career and left for NASCAR, and sponsor GoDaddy went looking for a replacement, it didn’t take them long at all to zero in on Hinchcliffe. He’s about to start his second season in the IndyCar series, driving the GoDaddy car for Andretti Autosport.

Now comes news, which was officially announced Thursday, that James has been hired by the FOX Sports Media Group to appear on SPEED Channel’s Sunday night racing newscast Speed Center and on Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain that comes on later in the evening.

He’ll join Speed Center host Adam Alexander and NASCAR driver Sam Hornish in reporting and analyzing the weekend’s racing during the newscast and will also be available for comment during the Wind Tunnel program.

This is great for SPEED, great for IndyCar and great for James.

It's also a lesson for every other ambitious young race-car driver out there: you have to do more than drive the car.

Lots more

Two weeks from now, on the eve of the iconic 12 Hours of Sebring sports car classic, the American Le Mans Series and the Grand Am Rolex road racing club will hold a press conference to announce the name, branding and logo for the unified sports car series that will start in 2014.

I don’t know whether to get excited, or not. I know the merger (the sale, actually) is going to happen, because they told me so last Sept. 5. But I’m not sure it’s wise to be beating the drums for 2014 before the 2013 ALMS season has even started. (The Grand Am season will be two races old by the time of the announcement.)

They will have plenty of time to do all this name-changing and branding and logo-ing in the fall. Then they'll have the winter to really go to town to publicize it all.

It’s almost as if they’re devaluing this season’s racing on purpose in order to get people excited about next year.

I don’t get it.

The World of Outlaws sprint car series is out in Arizona these days and a release they sent out on Thursday caught my eye.

Next Saturday, March 9, at Tucson International Raceway, the special Grand Marshal for a meet there will be one of my all-time favourite race track announcers, William "Windy" McDonald.

Windy announced forever at the now-lost Manzanita Speedway in Phoenix and I can still hear his distinctive, high-pitched, emotion-filled voice when he would say, after the sprint car warmups:

"Ladies and gentlemen, it’s SHOWTIME!"

Manzanita, or ‘Manzy’ as it was called, was located in a section of southwestern Phoenix that was, to be polite, rough. The sprint cars didn’t have to run mufflers, it was said, because the sound of the engines covered up the gunfire. (THAT’S A JOKE!)

Whenever CART, and later the IRL, raced at Phoenix International, my pals and I would always fly out. We did this for three reasons: Indy cars, Mexican food and the sprint cars at Manzanita – and not necessarily in that order.

I couldn’t believe it four years ago when they said Manzanita had been sold and would be turned into an equipment depot for a crane company. The almost-sacred place where guys like Billy Boat, Ronnie Shuman, Tracy Hines and J.J. Yeley had gone wheel to wheel would be no more and never again would I be able to hear Windy McDonald say, as the field for the evening’s feature came through four and onto the front straight, all lined up and ready to go:

"AND HERE THEY ARE – THE SPRINT CARS, ON PARADE!"

Maybe I’ll fly down to Tucson next weekend and take in that Outlaws show. And maybe have a word with Windy McDonald.

Maybe.

Fresh from his IndyCar test with Penske Racing, A.J. Allmendinger will climb into a Sprint Cup stock car for the NASCAR race this weekend at Phoenix International Raceway.

The deal, while rumoured for months, just came together Tuesday.

Allmendinger will replace Regan Smith in the Phoenix Racing car. Smith finished seventh in last Sunday’s Daytona 500.

Okay, so that’s the news. Here’s my question:

Why is this race team replacing a driver who finished seventh in the Daytona 500 with a guy who lost his full-time ride last year because of his conduct and has only been in a stock car once since?

I have nothing against Allmendinger. He did his time. But while he’s a dynamite open-wheel race driver, he’s not that good in stock cars. And from what I know about Phoenix Racing, which could best be described as a low-buck team, it really doesn’t have the luxury of being Mr. Nice Guy when it comes to the rehabilitation of racing drivers. We’re not talking here about a team with the resources of, say, a Hendrick Motorsports.

In short, I don’t get it.

NASCAR and the sponsor Sprint announced this week that the Sprint All-Star exhibition race on the U.S. Memorial Day weekend would be more complicated than ever.

They didn’t phrase it that way, of course. They said changes they had planned would make the race more challenging for the drivers and entertaining for the fans.

Ho, ho, ho.

I say the words "total confusion" would be more like it.

This paragraph is is right out of the press release and, after reading it, I want anybody who understands what it all means to put their hand up so they can explain it to the rest of us. Here goes:

"The running order at the completion of the fourth segment (lap 80) will be repositioned based on the average finish for the first four segments directly behind the caution car prior to the opening of pit road for the mandatory four-tire pit stop. The order of the cars returning to the track will determine the starting order of the fifth segment."

That makes about as much sense as "Drivers and Danica, start your engines" did last Sunday.

I still can’t figure that one out either.

#################

Photo of Larry Cannon, courtesy the Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Photo of Windy McDonald, courtesy of the Arizona Republic

Photo of James Hinchcliffe and his lady, courtesy www.thebiglead.com

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

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

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

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

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

No.

And her explanation shocked me.

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

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

Prepare to be shocked even more.

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

So, there you have it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And how right he was.

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

Guess who’s responsible?

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

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

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

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

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

That nobody was killed is a miracle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Harvick wins Sprint Unlimited, Patrick fastest in NASCAR practice

Kevin Harvick won the Sprint Unlimited pole-winners-only exhibition race at Daytona Speedway Saturday night, with Greg Biffle second and Joey Logano third.

Brad Keselowski, the Sprint Cup champion in 2012 who wasn't in this race (and how dumb is that?), did a fine job commenting on this and that as a guest announcer and even had the obligatory hand motions down pat.

He has a future in the booth if he should ever stop racing.

The new "gen 6" cars looked pretty good out there, although they appear to be a handful as compared to the previous gen cars. They were all fish-tailing around at one time or another and there was even a mini Big One caused when Tony Stewart's mount got away on him.

Mark Martin, Jimmy Johnson, Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin were among the seven cars eliminated in the Lap 15 dustup.

The fun and games are now over, however, as Daytona 500 qualifying goes Sunday at 1 p.m. Danica Patrick turned the fastest lap of the 44 cars that took time Saturday and has to be a favourite for the pole. Her boss Stewart was plenty quick, too.

Earlier:

NASCAR fans who tune into the Sprint Unlimited race (nee the Budweiser Shootout, nee the Busch Clash) Saturday night might be surprised to find that the two top stock car drivers in the world won’t be racing in it.

Yes, the Clash (it will always be that to me) is an exhibition race reserved for pole winners from the previous season as well as for drivers who’ve won previous shootouts.

By that score, Brad Keselowski and Clint Bowyer, who finished one-two in the Sprint Cup championship in 2012, are ineligible. Although both had dazzling seasons last year, neither of them won a pole. So they can't race Saturday night.

Keselowski will be part of the broadcast team for the race. Darrell Waltrip and Larry McReynolds will anchor the show, which will be seen on CTV2 (in the Toronto area, that’s the old CKVR-Barrie station) at 8 p.m.

Now, even though Keselowski and Bowyer won’t be out there (NASCAR has been known to manipulate things on occasion in the past; you’d think there’d be some way to get those guys into that thing, wouldn’t you?), most of the rest of everybody’s Sprint Cup favourites will be racing, including Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Tony Stewart, Jimmy Johnson, Kyle Busch and the rest – except, of course, the champion and first runner-up.

Nuts.

The reason the race is on CTV2 is because although TSN holds the rights to NASCAR in Canada, there's no room to get the race on the air. Women’s curling is on the main network Saturday night and the NBA All-Star game is on the secondary channel.

TSN plans to telecast the entire Sprint Cup schedule in 2013 as well as all the Nationwide Series races, on either TSN, TSN2 or CTV2.

After the Saturday night Clash, all of the drivers in that race, plus Keselowski, Bowyer and the rest, will run time trials Sunday afternoon at 1 p.m. as qualifying begins for next weekend’s Daytona 500.

(See George's TV Listings for Race Fans for the channel that time trials will be on, plus times and channels for all the other pre-Daytona 500 NASCAR programming, including the two qualifying races next Thursday afternoon.)

A total of 45 drivers are entered in what broadcaster Ken Squier has dubbed the "Great American Race" and 43 will start the classic, meaning only two drivers will miss the show.

One of the 45 is Brad Keselowski’s brother Brian, who will be driving a start-and-park entry for Hamilton Means Racing, which usually campaigns a car in the Nationwide series.

Speaking of the Nationwide series, Nelson Piquet Jr. will fun full-time in it this season, after apprenticing in trucks last year.

And speaking of trucks, Canadian Tire Motorsport Park co-owner – and racing champion in his own right – Ron Fellows said at the Canadian International AutoShow on Thursday that he thinks chances are very good that he will have a ride for the Sprint Cup race at Watkins Glen in August and "be in a good car."

Fellows has won in every classification of racing he’s entered, with the exception of the Sprint Cup, and considers that to be "unfinished business."

And why did I start this item with the words, "speaking of trucks?" Because Canadian Tire Motorport Park will be the scene on Labour Day weekend of a NASCAR Camping World Series Truck Race.

Okay, so it doesn’t work. I’m moving on anyway.

Social note: Jacques Villeneuve is a new father – again. His wife has given birth to their latest child - a third son - and mother, father and baby are doing fine at the family home in Switzerland.

James Hylton, who's 78 and been driving in NASCAR'S top division since 1964 and made more than 600 starts, winning two races, has announced the 2013 season will be his last as a driver. I love guys with energy and endurance and Hylton tops the list.

And Kyle Marcelli of Barrie, who's considerably younger than Mr. Hylton, has signed to drive this season for BAR1 Motorsports in the LMPC class in the American Le Mans Series. The ALMS will be at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in July.

And finally, Katherine Legge and Sebastien Saavedra are both pay drivers. It says something about the IZOD IndyCar Series that they are apparently more important to a car owner than Indy 500 pole winner Ryan Briscoe, who has more talent than both of them combined and yet because he expects to be paid, he can’t get hired.

- Norris McDonald

Rob Faulds to anchor Sportsnet IndyCar races

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is Michael Waltrip wooing Tim Hortons?

For years, any time you heard a NASCAR driver being interviewed, you’d hear the word "awsome" used so many times it was enough to make you dizzy.

Everything was "awesome." The car they were driving was "awesome," the team was "awesome," the track was "awesome" and the fans were "awesome."

By the end of the conversation, you were ready to scream.

I can report today that "awesome" is on the way out. Or, at least, I think it is.

I was at the Canadian Motorsports Expo at the weekend and didn’t hear special guests Michael Waltrip  or Kyle Busch use that word once. Maybe one or two "awesomes" might have snuck in, but I didn’t hear them.

What I did hear both of them say time and again, though, was how "excited" they were about – well, everything.

They were "excited" to be in Toronto, "excited" about their teams, "excited" about the season, "excited" about this and "excited" about that.

So, expect to hear the word "excited" used by NASCAR drivers about a million times this season.

Which doesn't exactly mean that they are excited. It just sounds good.

Greatest moment during Kyle Busch’s press conference Sunday: when a little girl, maybe 3, asked if she could give him a hug. She got her wish.

Most interesting thing about Michael Waltrip’s press conference Saturday: his frequent references to Tim Hortons (including taking a drink out of a large cup).

Hortons is expanding in the United States and Waltrip will be trying to make the field for the Daytona 500.

Is there a connection there? Is Michael making a pitch for sponsorship? Will we see a "Timmy’s" (Waltrip’s word) logo on his race car?

Formula One finished testing its news cars at Jerez last week and over the course of the four days just about everybody led a session.

I suspect McLaren has a rocket, but doesn’t want to show its hand.

Niki Lauda says Sebastien Vettel in the Red Bull has the edge but that Mercedes will be one of the top three teams once the season gets going. You would expect Niki to say that, of course, seeing as he owns 10 per cent of the Mercedes team and is head of the board of directors.

At the end of the day, however, Mercedes – with Nico Rosberg driving, by the way – was eighth fastest over the course of the week (when you do the math),  with Felipe Massa on top in his Ferrari.

Others in the Top Ten: Kimi Raikkonen, Lotus; Jules Bianchi, Force India; Romain Grosjean, Lotus; Vettel; Esteban Gutierrez, Sauber; Jean-Eric Vergne, Toro Rosso; Rosberg; Jenson Button, McLaren; Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes.

A bit of surprising news  is that Roger Penske announced plans to give A.J. Allmendinger a test in an Indy car at Sebring in a few weeks and there have since been suggestions that Allmendinger will get to start at least two races for Penske in 2013 – maybe more – plus maybe the Indianapolis 500.

Allmendinger, you will recall, flunked a NASCAR drug test last summer and was promptly fired by his Sprint Cup employer, Penske.

Allmendinger completed the Road to Recovery program and was cleared to return to the sport by NASCAR. Penske invited him to a race as his guest and soon after Allmendinger was driving the Phoenix Racing car that had been deserted by Kurt Busch.

Dinger did an okay job but wasn’t hired for 2013 and doesn’t have anything else lined up in NASCAR either. Then came the Penske announcement.

Now, we all know – or those of us who’s followed his career know – that Penske looks after people who put themselves out for him or any of his companies. He’s the classic American entrepreneur whose motto is "Effort equals results." If you've busted your butt, he’s forever on your side.

It turns out that Penske went further for Allmendinger than simply inviting him to a race and re-introducing him around the Sprint Cup paddock. In fact, he called up the owner of Phoenix Racing, James Finch, and suggested if he was looking for a shoe to replace Busch, Allmendinger would be a good choice.

As Allemdninger told Speed Channel’s Marshall Pruett this past week: "People don’t really know, but he talked to James Finch to help me get in that car at the end of last year. Nothing major, but (he) called him and endorsed me (and) said, ‘You know, why don’t you allow A.J. to get into the car?’ It’s little stuff like that people probably don’t see or don’t know about him that he does."

Well, as I’ve reminded people on several occasions in this blog, as well as in several columns over the years, when Penske fired Paul Tracy in 1997, he called Barry Green of Team Kool Green and told him he was going to do it. Now, that call might have been made a second after he pulled the trigger, rather than before, but the first person who knew Tracy was "at large" was Green.

Green’s deal with the cigaret company that made Kool was for a one-car team with Dario Franchitti driving. The tobacco firm’s president happened to be a Canadian, Bob Bexon. Green called Bexon and told him Tracy was available and Bexon doubled the team’s budget – just like that.

You can bet that Penske had connected the dots before he made that telephone call. Although he was fed up with Tracy for any number of reasons, he also wanted to throw him a lifeline, which he did when he called Barry Green.

Allmendinger is just another in a long line of employees, or ex-employees, who Penske has helped.

Having said that, you wonder what’s to become of Ryan Briscoe, who’s been a very good soldier for Penske in recent years. Driving the third Penske car, Briscoe finished sixth in the 2012 IndyCar series but his contract hasn’t been renewed.

Has Roger made another telephone call that we don’t know about?