Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

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

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?

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is that stupid, or what?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I just thought I’d pass that on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Top Ten motorsports stories of 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

So here are the Top Ten.

No. 1

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

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

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

No. 2

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

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

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

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

No. 3

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

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

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

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

The Grand Prix is not affected.

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

No. 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No. 5

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

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

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

In short, it was a banner year.

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

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

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

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

You may now speculate about what all this means.

No. 6

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

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

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

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

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

No. 7

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

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

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

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

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

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

No. 8

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

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

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

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

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

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

No. 9

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

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

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

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

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

No. 10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exactly what he was doing.

- Norris McDonald

Roundup: NASCAR stock cars to join trucks at Old Mosport

Canadian Tire Motorsport Park has announced its major event schedule for 2013 and the really good news is that two of Canada’s finest racing series will be on the program next Labour Day weekend with the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.

The NASCAR Canadian Tire stock cars and the Canadian Touring Car Series sedans will be sharing the legendary road circuit north of Bowmanville, formerly known as Mosport, with the Camping World trucks, which make up one-third of NASCAR’s top travelling series, the Sprint Cup and Nationwide stock cars being the other two.

The NASCAR Canada stock cars will actually be racing at Old Mosport three times next year. The Canadian Tire Series will headline the annual, traditional, Victoria Day SpeedFest on the road course that will also feature the Trans-Am Series, the Canadian Touring Cars and the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Canada.

And in addition to Victoria Day in May and Labour Day in September, the stock cars will also race at the Old Mosport oval on June 22.

Other big events at Canadian Tire Mosport Park (heh, heh) next summer will be the American le Mans Series on July 18-21, making its last stop before unification with the Grand-American Road Racing Series the following year; the Canadian Historic Grand Prix on June 14-16 and the Canadian Superbike Doubleheader Weekend in August.

More information and tickets can be found at: www.canadiantiremotorsportpark.com.

Meantime, the Formula 1 Grand Prix du Canada has announced a special ticket package for next June that will allow a person to purchase a reserved seat in a different grandstand for each day of the three-day event.

Quantities are limited, so if you want in you’d better get cracking. Ticket combinations come in three packages - gold, silver and bronze and are on sale for $485, $449 and $267.50, respectively. More information at 514 350-0000 or 1-855-790-1245. Or go to www.circuitgillesvilleneuve.ca.

And tickets for the 2013 Honda Indy Toronto will go on sale next Monday, Dec. 10. And remember, the event will now feature two official, fully-sanctioned IZOD IndyCar Series races, one with a standing start on Saturday and a second with a rolling start on Sunday. Each event will be full length, with full points and full prize money.

The promoters are making changes to some of the grandstands. They plan to build three new “super-structure” grandstands – one at Turn 10 (consolidating three grandstands), a taller structure at Turn 11, and a Turn 3 Grandstand that will see the addition of 15 rows.

According to a release, the switch to larger grandstands will result in an important additional benefit: greater track-side access for General Admission ticketholders and fans who might wander around looking for multiple viewpoints. Tickets start at $35 for General Admission. For more information, go to www.hondaindy.com.

Here’s a change of pace: The Canadian Motortsport Hall of Fame has launched a new, redesigned, website — www.cmhf.ca

This easy-to-navigate website details the history of motorsport in Canada and features biographies, including photos, of more than 150 inductees.

Said general manager Sid Priddle: “Thanks to the development efforts of highly respected freelance journalist (and Wheels Insider) Gary Grant, CMHF is able to bring you this new look. Gary is also responsible for the creation of our Facebook page.”

As is the case with any new project, the website is a work in progress. However, the hall hopes to keep the site informative and current.

And the CMHF is looking forward to your feedback. Just click on “contact” and submit any comments or questions.

Meantime, Andretti Autosport introduced its drivers lineup for 2013 on Wednesday and it’s the same as 2012 with two minor twists. Series champion Ryan Hunter-Reay will carry the No. 1 on his car instead of his familiar 28 (although “28” is included in the livery) and Marco Andretti will drive car No. 25, instead of 26. They have their reasons. James Hinchcliffe of Oakville, meantime, will continue aboard the No. 27 Go Daddy car.

Conor Daly, the son of ex-F1 and Indy car star Derek Daly who cut many of his racing teeth on the Ontario Formula Ford circuit driving for Brian Graham, will test for A.J. Foyt's IndyCar team at Sebring soon. Daly had designs on a career in Formula One but the IndyCar test would indicate he’s going to Plan B. He’s smart. You have to be the absolute best and have all the connections and the money needed to get into F1. That’s a triple whammy and very few young athletes have all three. It’s why I really hoped Guelph’s Robert Wickens would have taken a crack at IndyCar a year ago when his path to F1 was blocked. Believe it or not, it might be too late now.

Here’s not very good news. The Star Mazda Series is for sale and whether a buyer can be found in time for the 2013 season is questionable. In a letter to drivers and sponsors, Star Mazda owner Gary Rodrigues said the series would fold if it can’t be sold.

It seems that it doesn’t only cost a fortune to go racing these days, it costs as much or more to build a platform for racing.

Here are the nominees for the Mario Andretti Trophy as the SPEED performer of the year:

2010 SPEED Performer of the Year Sebastian Vettel (F1), Fernando Alonso (F1), Brad Keselowski (NASCAR), Jorge Lorenzo (MotoGP), Casey Stoner (MotoGP), Ryan Hunter-Reay (IndyCar), Antron Brown (NHRA), Kyle Larson (USAC), Sammy Swindell (WoO), Sebastien Loeb (World Rally), Andre Lotterer (WEC), Max Biaggi (World Superbike), Scott Pruett (Grand-Am), Donny Schatz (WoO), Josh Hayes (AMA Pro Superbike) and Ryan Villopoto (Supercross).

Andretti will present the trophy, a 100-pound sculpture created by bronze artist Elie Hazak, as part of a SPEED Center special on Jan. 27.

Any guesses who'll win?

Here's how to get 'Mosport' back into Canadian Tire park's name

Ever since Mosport International Raceway became Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, there has been controversy about the name change.

Many people — me included — wondered why they couldn’t have kept “Mosport” as part of the new name.

Today, I am pleased to announce that my good friend Gary Morton has come up with the solution.

“When they were trying to invent a name for the place back in 1960-61,” he said, “is it not true that the name they agreed upon - ‘Mosport’ - is, in fact, a contraction of the words ‘motor’ and ‘sport?’ ”

(You can see where he’s going with this, can’t you . . .)

“So, because ‘motor’ and ‘sport’ became Mosport back then,” continued Mr. Morton, “why not do it again and call Canadian Tire Motorsport Park,  ‘Canadian Tire Mosport Park?’ ”

I think he’s got a point.

In fact, I think it’s brilliant.

Comments, please.

James Hinchcliffe of Oakville has been voted most popular driver in the IZOD IndyCar Series.

The HRT-Cosworth F1 team is on its last legs and unless some sucker — er, “investor” — has millions of dollars just lying around that he/she wants to flush down the toilet, it’s unlikely to be on the grid come 2013.

Things are so bad that when eight members of the team went to its Madrid headquarters Tuesday to pick up their final paycheques, a fight broke out. No details have been issued about what prompted the fisticuffs but a good guess would be that there were no paycheques there to be picked up.

The team’s owner, Thesan Capital SL, said on Nov. 12 that it was for sale.

Spanish police said the fight ended when officers arrived and no one was arrested.

Meantime, Williams F1 announced today that former F3 and GP3 champion Valtteri Bottas of Finland will join veteran Pastor Maldonado for the 2013 season.

This means Bruno Senna is out of a ride but he is not without options. Although Romain Grosjean is still listed as the second driver at Lotus beside Kimi Raikkonen, he hasn’t been confirmed and his crash-filled 2012 season, which included a one-race ban for careless driving, could work against him.

There is also a seat open at Force India beside Paul Di Resta and that team could use the $14 million that Senna has in sponsorship. Other possibilities are Caterham and Marussia, who both have only one driver (Charles Pic, Timo Glock) under contract for next year.

The 2012 Rotax Max Challenge Grand Finals are taking place at the Kartodromo Internacional do Algarve in Portimao, Portugal, today through Friday and Canadians are looking good in at least four classes.

To follow all the action, and to keep track of Our Guys, go to ekartingnews.ca

Speaking of Mosport (we were up above, remember?) Reg Wesson, president of the Oakville Trafalgar Light Car Club for many years, died this week on Tuesday. Those of us who are older will remember that it was the Oakville club that ran the very first race meet at Mosport when it opened back in 1961.