Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

A rare glimpse into the life of Richard Petty

Richard Petty, known affectionately as the King, appeared with members of his family on a SPEED Channel television special Monday night.

It was a fascinating hour.

For those of you who missed it, here are some excerpts as supplied by SPEED:

On continuing to live in his hometown of Randleman, N.C., where the interview was conducted:

Petty was born and raised in Randleman and more than 70 years later still calls it home because it’s a place where he can be a “regular guy.”

“This is home,” Petty said. “A lot of people (in racing) move to another community and they aren’t the same people because the people around them won’t let them be the same people. Here, if I go to town or church or school functions, it’s ‘Hi Richard, how are you doing?’ It’s no big deal. You’re just one of the gang, and that’s the satisfying part of being at home.”

On courting his wife, Lynda:

Petty married Lynda in 1958 when she was 17 and still in high school. He was 21 and his career had just begun. The couple eloped in South Carolina and kept it a secret, waiting until he could afford a ring.

“I brought her home, dumped her out in the middle of town, she went into her house and I went home,” Petty recalled. “I took me three or four months to get a diamond for her, and by the time we got the money, I bought a diamond and told everybody we were married.”

On dividing family duties and raising children as a couple with Petty away from home:

With two victories to his credit when Kyle was born, Petty says he and Lynda clearly defined their individual responsibilities within the family.

“We sort of sat down and said, ‘This is how it’s going to be,’” he related. “’I’m going to go out and I’m going to be gone but I’m going to make the living. You bring the kid. Make sure he’s fed. You do your part and you pay the bills. I’ll bring the money in and throw it on the table. You take care of everything.’ That’s the way it worked. She had her responsibilities and I had mine.”

On being tough and racing when injured:

Petty frequently drove hurt. When paycheques are earned on the track, lengthy recoveries aren’t an option. The King says he raced countless times with broken bones and probably competed with a concussion every other weekend.

“He was in the hospital because he had a bleeding ulcer and they came in one night and said, ‘Mr. Petty, we’re probably going to let you go home in the morning,’” his daughter Sharon recalled. “So he thought, ‘The morning?’ So he put his clothes on, went down the fire escape, got home, beat on the door. Mama didn’t heard it because their bedroom was on the end of the house, so he goes to her bedroom, started beating on the window, scares her to death, checks the window, and there was Daddy. She’d just left him at the hospital. He just is not a good patient.”

“No matter how bad you hurt, your mind is what tells you, you hurt,” Petty explained. “So, what you tried to do was control your mind so that you didn’t hurt. For some reason I was fortunate to have a threshold that pain doesn’t bother me like it does some people.”

On tragedies the Petty family endured:

The Petty family’s life wasn’t all one big Victory Lane celebration. Lee Petty, Richard’s father, nearly lost his life on the track, and the family suffered the tragic loss of Richard’s 19-year-old grandson, Adam, in a race car. The Petty triumphs always have been tempered by tragedy.

“Our life isn’t a lot different than a lot of other people’s lives,” Petty pointed out. “We’re just in a different arena. We’re in racing where people pay attention and they think you’re on a pedestal. You’re not. You’re just a regular guy doing a different job. My job was racing. Kyle’s job was racing. Adam’s job was racing. And once something like that happens, then we look around and say, ‘Why me?’ But it’s happening all around the world and to other people, too. There’s more attention thrown to us than what our neighbors would be. They’re going through the same situation, just with a smaller crowd of people.

“We had looked at Adam as being the next Petty taking it to the fourth generation,” Richard Petty continued. “Whatever it took, we was going to give him what we thought was the best so he could go forward, and the good Lord didn’t see it fit like that. He said, ‘This is the end of that dynasty.’ ”

On his longevity in the sport:

“I’ve been here 60 years at the race track,” Petty said. “I went to the very first race and I’ve been to 99-per-cent of them since then. It’s my home. It’s my life. I think when people see me and talk to me, they realize how much I really loved what I did and I love what I do now.

“There’s very few people who can say that … I’m just going to sort of hang onto what’s going on and enjoy the rest of my life.”

“He’s been there to all those races from the first to the last one that was run, and he still remembers so much of that,” son Kyle Petty said. “It’s so deeply embedded in his hopes and dreams and his psyche that Richard Petty without racing wouldn’t be Richard Petty.

“He would just wander around up there in that house … Racing is his connection to life and he has to go have it every Sunday to get that influx of excitement and that influx of people in the sport, the smell of gasoline and rubber, and being around people who love the same thing he does. That’s where he gets his life force or his energy from.”

Danica Patrick wins Daytona pole fair and square

The jokes, and the conspiracy theories, were in full flight Sunday even before Danica Patrick went out and won the pole for next weekend’s Daytona 500.

"Will Danica sit on the pole?" "Pole position for Danica?"

Ha, ha.

Maybe they're jealous that this woman racing driver makes history just about any time she accomplishes something. This time she became the first woman to win a pole in Sprint Cup competition, the highest class in NASCAR. She previously became the first woman to lead a lap in the Indy 500, became the first female Indy car winner when she finished first in an IRL race in Japan, recorded the highest finish for a woman in the Indy 500 when she finished third in 2009, and on and on.

It shouldn't come as any surprise that the NASCAR Sprint Cup rookie set the fastest lap for what’s being called the Great American Race.

I mean, she’s been there before.

If it hadn’t been for a mid-first-turn bobble on her first of four laps, she would have won the pole for the Indianapolis 500 the first year she tried, back in 2005. She went on to win three poles in total in Indy cars.

Last year, her first full-time season in a NASCAR class, she won the pole for the Nationwide Series race at Daytona.

This year, she was among the fastest in practice for the 500 and Sunday, when the chips were down, she set fast time and her two teammates, Ryan Newman and Stewart-Haas Racing co-owner Tony Stewart, were fourth and fifth fastest - all in cars prepared for the team by Hendrick Motorsports.

So what's there to be surprised about?

But she’d barely taken the checkered flag before the Twitterverse was crying fix.

Why? She’s got the credentials.

If there was anything funny going on, I guarantee the Busch brothers, and Jimmie Johnson, and Kevin Harvick, and every other Sprint Cup driver in Daytona would have been crying foul.

This is not just another NASCAR race. This is the Daytona 500, the biggest race in NASCAR, and there isn’t another one till next year and no professional race car driver worth his salt is going to allow something as important as the pole position or the race result to be manipulated.

If one of the tech inspectors suspected something was fishy, and tipped off a reporter with the credentials of, say, an Ed Hinton, who went out and did some digging and subsequently reported that Patrick’s pole was suspect, NASCAR’s reputation could be seriously jeopardized.

I know competitors in NASCAR have sometimes cheated, but I seriously doubt that NASCAR itself has ever been complicit.

I know, fans have talked for years about so-and-so getting "the call" from NASCAR but when you sit right down and think about it, how in the world would something like that work? You would need to have 42 other drivers in on the fix and that, ladies and gentlemen, would be impossible.

If NASCAR was ever found to be rigging results, it would be ruined. So, there’s no way.

I’m sure that Brian France, et al, are delighted that Danica Patrick did what they’d hoped she’d do because it is very good for business.

But other than crossing their fingers when she went out for her run, I don’t think they had any further involvement.

Danica Patrick’s lap of 45.817 seconds is the fastest pole time since Kenny Schraeder’s back in 1990. Jeff Gordon was closest to her, lapping with a time of 45.850 seconds, 0.033 seconds slower.

The next 38 cars to go out were within a second of her time. In total, 45 cars participated in time trials and Brian Keselowski, brother of defending Sprint Cup champion Brad Keselowski, was 45^th and last with a time of 48.946 seconds – 2.973 seconds behind Patrick.

As per the rules at Daytona, the pole winner and the second-fastest time trialer (Gordon) are now locked into the big race. Everybody else has to race in one of two qualifying sprints next Thursday afternoon and their finishing position will determine their starting position in the 500.

With only 45 cars in total vying for 43 starting positions, there will not be a lot of drama in either of those Budweiser Duels at Daytona. There is no danger of any of the Sprint Cup regulars missing the big race.

Once upon a time, of course, those qualifying races meant something because as many as 60 cars would try to make the field at Daytona, which meant that upwards of 30 cars – sometimes more – would take the green flag in each of those two races. The pressure would really be on all of the drivers to race their way into the feature.

Not any longer, it seems.

What was with that puny crowd for the Sprint Unlimited race at Daytona Saturday night. Were there 5,000 people in the stands? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smaller crowd for a NASCAR race starring most of the big names.

Best line of the weekend, courtesy of Jeff Gordon: "I was the fastest guy out there."

Jealous, or what? Kevin Harvick, after winning the Sprint Unlimited: "Maybe this will knock Ricky (Stenhouse, Jr.) and Danica off the front page."

I wouldn’t bet on it, Kevin.

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?

Big F1 deal for BlackBerry; Villeneuve, Tracy at Mosport?

Iconic Canadian company BlackBerry, nee RIM, announced a big deal Monday with the Mercedes Formula One team that will see the BlackBerry name plastered prominently on the Silver Arrow race cars and on the uniforms of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg (pictured).

Details to follow. But first . . .

When Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, nee Mosport, announced last fall that it had landed a race in the NASCAR Camping World Series for this year’s Labour Day Weekend, I wrote that although I was pleased as punch that the event would happen, I was suspicious of the level of talent the circuit would be able to attract and promote.

Would Kyle Busch be there come September, I wondered? Joe Nemechek? Todd Bodine? James Buescher, who won the truck series championship in 2012?

Today, I still have no idea who’s coming to race and who’s not coming. But I do have a couple of names to drop.

A little bird told me yesterday that two of Canada’s biggest racing names are looking for sponsorship that could – repeat, could – see them in trucks at Mosport next Sept. 1, the Sunday of Labour Day weekend.

Name them, I said. And – as Popeye used to say – you could blow me down.

How about Jacques Villeneuve and Paul Tracy?

The little bird said, in addition to Villeneuve and Tracy, that Old Mosport co-owner Ron Fellows is hoping to be in a truck, as are two of the young chargers currently racing in the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series for stock cars, J.R. Fitzpatrick and Andrew Ranger, both of whom have had success in the Camping World Series, particularly Fitzpatrick.

My Spidey Sense tells me Max Papis might also be hovering around in the background.

I’m not as suspicious about that entry list any longer. If JV, PT and RF are in trucks with their pedals to the metal, we won’t need those other guys.

How would you like to be Lewis Hamilton?

You cut the McLaren apron strings and embark on a marvelous new adventure with Mercedes F1 and all you hear from just about everybody is that this was the stupidest thing imaginable and what was he thinking and he’s traded class for cash and, etc. etc.

The latest salvo was fired at the weekend by British sports car champion Allan McNish.

Writing for the British Internet site Express.co.uk, journalist Nick Stamford quoted the 43-year-old McNish as saying this:

"I don’t see Lewis winning races in 2013 – and there has to be doubts that the car will be good enough in 2014. And it is easy for a lean couple of years to develop into something longer. Just look what happened to Jacques Villeneuve after he joined BAR, having won the title in 1997. He never won another race. Lewis has got a tough task ahead of him at Mercedes. It is a gamble."

For his part, Hamilton prattled on and on at Monday’s 2013 Mercedes launch about how happy he is and I swear his words reminded me of Ebenezer Scrooge’s on Christmas morning:

"I'm happier. Just happier, I can't really explain it. Happier that I've got a new challenge, happy that I've got a new start, happy that I've got a fresh chapter in my life, happy that I've got this massive challenge, happy that I've got this excitement because I don't know if the car will be good or bad. I'm excited because I know that I can contribute and with a lot of hard work and perseverance I think we can get there."

I’d say Lewis is happy and excited, wouldn’t you?

And then there was that news involving Mercedes and BlackBerry. In a release Monday, Mercedes said:

"As the new Silver Arrow, the Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 W04, completes its first laps this morning at the Jerez circuit in Spain, the team is delighted to announce a significant new partnership agreement with BlackBerry (NASDAQ: RIMM, TSX: RIM).

"As the official mobile computing partner for the Mercedes Formula One Team, BlackBerry will collaborate with the team on technical and marketing opportunities.

"The new BlackBerry 10 platform will deliver tools and services for Mercedes,  and fan engagement will be improved through the joint development of apps. BlackBerry 10 smartphones will also be used by the team . . . throughout the Formula One season.

"The new partnership sees the iconic BlackBerry branding featured prominently on the chassis and headrest of the F1 W04 Silver Arrow, the race suits of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, and on the team's racewear kit."

In the same release, Blackberry’s marketing chief Frank Boulben said:

"Formula One is all about precision engineering, design and innovation – three values that mirror the approach that's gone into creating BlackBerry 10. It is a natural fit."

Good luck to Blackberry and good luck to Mercedes in this new partnership.

And, lastly, Bob Pockrass, writing in The Sporting News, reports that car owner Tony Stewart not only has faith and trust in Danica Patrick, who will drive with him in his Sprint Cup team this year that also includes Ryan Newman, but says people who criticize her really don’t know what they’re talking about.

Said Stewart, who knows how hard it is to go from IndyCar racing to NASCAR, having done it himself:

"Most of the people that do the picking and analyzing aren't people that actually understand how to analyze a whole race from start to finish and aren't qualified to make that judgment.

"But from our side as a team owner and teammate, I've seen great strides. She's made huge gains in a short amount of time and that shows talent."

There are seasoned observers out there who are suggesting that it is not beyond the realm of possibility that Patrick could win a race, or races, this season.

On Jimmie Johnson, rallying and no-name F1 drivers

Jimmie Johnson is the latest Sprint Cup driver to sign up to race a round, or rounds, of the NASCAR Nationwide Series in 2013.

He'll be driving for Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s team at Phoenix on March 2.

What is supposed to be a major-league-level development series for the Sprint Cup series is turning, once again, into Sprint Cup lite.

The reason, of course, is that the sponsor situation is so tight now that one of the few ways a Nationwide team or car owner can attract the money needed to run those cars is to have a "name" driver in the seat.

And it’s not just the race itself that’s important to a sponsor. In return for signing a cheque for – at the absolute, bare bones, minimum – $500,000, a sponsor wants the driver to appear at his place of business, or at a cocktail reception, or at a barbecue for clients, as well as in the race car.

No longer are corporations or companies willing to take a chance on an up-and-comer. They want to introduce Jimmie Johnson, or Brad Keselowski, or Kyle Busch to their customers. Not Jimmy or Janet Maybesomeday.

Is it good for the sport? Of course not.

But there’s really nothing NASCAR can do about it. They tried to, a few years ago, when they ruled that a driver could only score points in one division. They made it so that Sprint Cup drivers couldn't score points in Nationwide, too. And that did help - for maybe a season. But now we're back to same old, same old.

Of course, if something happened to one of those guys while racing at a lower level, that then prevented them from fulfilling their racing and sponsorship obligations in the big league, then we might see an end to it.

But until that happens, and Sprint Cup team owners forbid it from happening in contracts they have with their star drivers – as has happened in other leagues, such as Formula One – you can fuggedaboutit.

Speaking of Formula One, the rollout of the new cars continues apace, as does the naming of racing drivers most of us have never heard of to rides in the World Championship of Drivers this year (Giedo van der Garde, COME ON DOWN!!!).

Thank goodness for Sebastien Vettel, Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton or my interest in what is supposed to be the top level of the sport featuring the best cars (they have those) and best drivers in the world (hmmmmm) might start to diminish.

But as long as those top four guys are around, plus Felipe Massa, Jenson Button and Mark Webber, I’ll be on the edge of my seat, as usual.

(My personal jury is still out on Romaine Grosjean. And is Sergio Perez really a McLaren driver? As in, is he good enough? We’ll find out, won’t we?)

Speaking of McLaren, it’s the marque’s 50^th anniversary and we’ll undoubtedly be hearing lots and lots about the team, and Bruce McLaren, over the next 10 or 11 months.

It’s hard to believe, but Bruce founded his own racing team 50 years ago. Then, at age 32 in 1970, he died when he crashed while testing one of his Can-Am Series cars at Goodwood in England.

I remember that day vividly. I was shaving to go to work and listening to Wally Crouter on CFRB – he had the top morning radio show in Toronto at the time – and he made the announcement of the accident and then ad-libbed a most magnificent tribute to McLaren.

In any event, a friend sent me this link the other day to the first of what I understand will be a three-video tribute to the history of the company. The other two videos will be released later this year. Click here for the video.

Here is big news. Antoine L’Estage and Nathalie Richard did NOT win the first event of the 2013 Canadian Rally Championship, the Perce-Neige Maniwaki Rally, in Quebec at the weekend. The perennial champions (I mean, they win everything, don’t they?) were forced out by mechanical gremlins. The rally was won by Patrick Richard of Squamish, B.C., with Rob Fagg of the U.K. co-driving.

Here’s some short-track news. Mike Lichty of Kitchener finished fifth Saturday night in the Gambler Classic for TQ midgets at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J. Along with the Rumble at Fort Waye and the Chili Bowl in Tulsa, the Gambler is one of the "don’t-miss" indoor racing events that are held each winter.

It’s too bad there isn’t something closer to southern Ontario. We were lucky that, for years, the TQs would hold an indoor event in Niagara Falls, N.Y., at the old Niagara Falls Convention Centre, which was eventually blown away to build a parking garage for the Seneca Casino. And promoters in London, Ont., tried for a couple of years at the arena there but weren’t successful.

My old pal Nate Salter held discussions for a TQ race with officials at the Direct Energy Centre at the CNE but I understand they didn’t want to share in the risk in case something like a snowstorm put the kibosh on a turnout, so Nate – correctly – decided he didn’t want to gamble his children’s inheritance and nothing came of it.

Oh, before I forget, Lou Cicconi Jr. won the Friday night pre-Gambler race at Atlantic City while Anthony Sesely won the Gambler feature Saturday night.

Drag racer Spencer Massey will return to Don Schumacher Racing for the 2013 NHRA Top Fuel season.

Massey is a top gun. I also was impressed when – during an interview I did with him several years ago as he prepared to haul his dragster from Castrol Raceway outside Edmonton to Toronto Motorsports Park outside Cayuga – he talked about how excited he was at the prospect of driving across Canada and seeing the country.

"I’ve heard about Canada all my life and I’m really excited about being able to see it and enjoy it," he said.

That’s boy’s No. 1 in my book.

Speaking of Toronto Motorsports Park (we weren’t – but you know how my brain works), they’ve got a lot of special road course and dragway gift certificate and special promotions on offer that they’re touting under the heading, "Make Their Heart Race This Valentine’s Day."

I suggest you check everything out at TMP’s website (click here), considering that Valentine’s Day is on Tuesday. . .

NASCAR cheaters outed, Adam to lead Sportsnet Indy team

Forever and ever, NASCAR has had a policy that, come what may, the order of finish in a race shall not be altered after the fact, regardless of the circumstances.

If you cheat to win a race, as some of the kings of the stock car sport, including Richard Petty, have done over the years, you will be fined and lose points and maybe even hanged (I just made that last bit up) but you will always be listed in the record books as the winner.

This is a paraphrase, but Big Bill France, who invented NASCAR back in the day, said this: “I don’t want the fans to leave a race thinking somebody is the winner and then read in the newspaper the next day that someone else won. ‘Disqualification’ is a word we will never use.’ "

As we all know, NASCAR owns the Grand Am sports car series. Next year, when the sale of the American Le Mans Series to Grand Am becomes final, NASCAR will control all of major-league professional sports car racing on the continent and NASCAR’s rules and philosophy will apply across the board.

I mention this today because of the news (and how come it took so long for this to be announced?) that the third-place-finishing car in last weekend’s Rolex 24 at Daytona, the No. 60 Daytona Prototype of Michael Shank Racing and driven by A.J. Allmendinger, Marcos Ambrose and Justin Wilson, was found — as the result of a post-race tech inspection — to have cheated.

No details, but the engine was illegal.

As a result, the team has been docked 30 points in the Rolex championship and has to give back the $35,000 it won for finishing third. As well, it was fined $15,000. The drivers were all fined 30 championship points, as was the engine manufacturer, Ford.

After all this, however, Michael Shank Racing was allowed to keep its third-place finish.

In my world, Michael Shank Racing would have been disqualified. Cheaters are disqualified in short-track racing, drag racing, F1 racing and IndyCar racing. Why should NASCAR-sanctioned events continue to be different?

I really didn’t know who to cheer for in Sunday’s Super Bowl. Neither of my teams, the Colts or the Giants, is in it so I didn’t care.

But on the USA Today website this week, I was reminded that San Francisco coach Jim Harbaugh, who was the Colts’ quarterback before Peyton, once owned a team in the Indy Racing League. In fact, he partnered with John Barnes back in 1998 to start Panther Racing, which had our very own Canadian, Scott Goodyear, as its original driver and has J.R. Hildebrand in the cockpit today.

Jim Harbaugh got interested in racing in the 1970s when he went to Indy 500 qualifying and saw Tom Sneva become the first racer to turn a lap of 200 mph at the Speedway. This interest intensified when he went to Indianapolis to play and the number for the No. 1 Panther car — No. 4 — was selected because it was Harbaugh’s number when he was on the field for the Colts.

So it's settled. I’ll be cheering for the 49ers on Sunday.

More news on the broadcast team for Sportsnet’s coverage of the IZOD IndyCar Series Honda Indy races in Toronto next July.

As I reported first in this week’s web-only Monday Morning Racing Roundup (it’s repeated in this weekend's Toronto Star Wheels section), Paul Tracy will be doing the colour. This was no scoop — Tracy announced it himself during an interview at the Rolex 24 at Daytona.

But I’ve since learned that the play-by-play will be handled by Canadian Motorsports Hall of Fame inductee Bill Adam, who's a former champion sports car racer, and the pits will be covered by Todd Lewis, who has done a terrific job over the years on the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series telecasts.

Or so I've been told . . .

Tyler Walker, a one-time regular on the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series tour who won the 2011 King’s Royal race at Tony Stewart’s Eldora Speedway in Ohio, has been arrested after leading police on a high-speed chase through three states.

Police originally tried to stop the BMW that Walker was driving in Nevada and, after a pursuit through Arizona and into Utah, officers were forced to use a spike belt. He’s now facing serious jail time after police found marijuana, alcohol, methamphetamines and drug paraphernalia in the car.

Walker once drove in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series but was suspended after failing a drug test.

Oh, speaking of Tony Stewart (we weren't, but he owns the previously mentioned Eldora Speedway), he'll be in Rochester, N.Y., Saturday night, attending a Rochester Knighthawks lacrosse game at the Blue Cross Arena. For $250, you get to attend a pre-game meet and greet with Stewart, an 8X10 photo and a ticket to the game.

The Knighhawks are owned by Curt Styres, brother of Ohsweken Speedway owner Glenn Styres. Glenn promotes a World of Outlaws race every summer and Stewart has won the last two. If you're looking for a tie-in, that's it.

Ferrari and Force India introduced their 2013 cars today. They both look gorgeous — as do the McLaren and Lotus cars unveiled earlier. The proof is in the pudding, though, and despite the good looks, we’ll have to wait till they get out on the track to see whether any of them are anything other than just another pretty car. . .

Paul Tracy coming to Sportsnet; Kyle Busch to Expo

I’ll kick off this week’s Monday Morning Racing Roundup with a little good news about Sportsnet’s coverage of Indy car racing in the spring and summer.

Paul Tracy is going to do colour commentating on Sportsnet’s telecast of the Honda Indy Toronto and maybe other races in the IZOD IndyCar Series as well.

Tracy spilled the news himself during the telecast this weekend of the Rolex 24 at Daytona (more about that below) when he was being interviewed shortly after the race started on Saturday afternoon.

Asked by infield reporter Andrew Marriott if he would have a ride for next May’s Indianapolis 500, Tracy said he would not because he was moving on and would do colour work for Sportsnet. "I’m joining you guys," Tracy said, making specific reference to the race in Toronto.

Sportsnet took over the IndyCar series telecasts for 2013 after ex-series CEO Randy Bernard became disenchanted with TSN for not showing all the races live.

And like they do with Formula One telecasts, TSN just picked up the feed from whichever network had the IndyCar telecasts in the U.S. It gave up trying to "localize" coverage years ago and just went with whoever was in the booth.

With Tracy’s news, it looks like Sportsnet is planning to put some extra effort into covering Indy car racing and I think that’s terrific.

They couldn’t have picked a better talent than Tracy, either. He’s got a wickedly quick wit and an encyclopedia-like mind when it comes to strengths and weaknesses of all the drivers. And he knows the history of the sport.

Good stuff. Now we’ll await news of the play-by-play announcer (Brian Williams, perhaps?) and the pit reporter (I have an idea who that might be, too).

Here’s some other great news. You know how I (and others) reported recently that Michael Waltrip would be a guest of the Canadian Motorsports Expo on Sat., Feb. 9? Well, on Sun, Feb. 10, the one and only Kyle Busch will fly in to make an appearance that will include an autograph and question-and-answer session.

Busch is no stranger when it comes to racing in Canada, coming north several times over the years to compete at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal and at Delaware Speedway just outside of London.

The seventh annual Expo will be held at The International Centre, adjacent to Pearson International Airport, and will go from Friday night, Feb. 8^th, through the Sunday afternoon.

For complete details of Waltrip and Busch’s appearances, as well as just about everything else the Expo has to offer, go to the show’s website at CanadianMotorsportsExpo.com

Talking about NASCAR, I’ve been thinking of the big social news of the off-season and that’s the romance involving Danica Patrick and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

I wasn’t going to say anything about it but now I can’t resist.

While pondering the ramifications of this little liaison, I was reminded of a column that was written several years ago by Dave Argabright in National Speed Sport News. In it, Argabright wondered about what would have happened if Patrick had taken a swing at Ryan Briscoe after he put her out of the 2008 Indianapolis 500? If she hit him and he hit her back, Argabright argued, he’d be a bully. If he sat there and took it, he’d be a milquetoast. (She was headed off by security before there was any confrontation.)

So I’m thinking that she is now going to drive a full season in the Sprint Cup series and what happens if she pushes someone a la Jeff Gordon, or there’s a bench-clearing brawl as happened late last season between Gordon and Clint Bowyer’s pit crews?

I’m thinking that not only has she got a boyfriend, she’s got herself a bodyguard. She’s got somebody riding shotgun for her.

Because as much as they say that each of them is on their own when they’re racing, I think Stenhouse will protect her, which is only natural.

This will become a story before the season is over. You watch.

The ISMA supermodifieds will be racing at Sunset Speedway south of Barrie on Sunday, Aug. 18. The supers will run Delaware Speedway near London on Friday and Saturday nights and stop in at Sunset on the way home.

2012 champion Mike Lichty of Kitchener and steady campaigner Mark Sammut of London will be among those entered. Ex-NASCAR star Johnny Benson Jr. will also be there.

The Sunset website has a photo of the No. 70 super of Gary Morton of Stouffville. He only drives one race a year now – the Oswego Classic. The rest of the time he has Brampton’s Dave McKnight in the car. So will it be McKnight, or Morton? We’ll find out Aug. 18.

I know endurance racing is a team sport, and particularly so when a race is 24 hours long, but I think it’s too bad that Scott Pruett, who tied Hurley Haywood’s record of five Rolex 24 at Daytona victories at the weekend, wasn’t driving when the Chip Ganassi-owned car got the checkered flag Sunday afternoon.

And who, pray tell, was driving? We know it wasn’t Pruett, and I can tell you it wasn’t his regular partner, Memo Rojas, either. No, it was Juan Pablo Montoya, doing a one-off. and I really wonder how Pruett felt about it.

Oh, he had the requisite smile pasted on his face in Winner’s Circle, and he said all the right things, but I suggest he was disappointed and angry. As well he should be.

Of course, Ganassi probably wanted Montoya to win something because he can’t win anything in NASCAR, despite having great equipment provided by Ganassi.

In fact, maybe that was the deal. Ganassi gave him something to feel good about because sometime this season, he plans to give Juan Pablo the old pink slip if his NASCAR performances don't improve substantially.

But Ganassi still owed something to Pruett for serving him so well over the years.

Wheels.ca’s Gary Grant, and photographer John Larsen, were in Daytona for the Rolex and did a great job Tweeting, Facebooking and posting to wheels.ca’s rolling blog all weekend.

But in case you missed their reporting, and didn’t see any of the race on Speed Channel, click here for full results. And click here for the results of the Continental Tire race that was held on Friday.

Finally, three-time F1 world champion Sebastien Vettel was awarded the Mario Andretti Trophy as the Speed Performer of the Year on last night’s edition of Speed Center.

NASCAR champion Brad Keselowski finished second in the voting and Kyle Larson, an open-wheel short-track standout, was third.

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.