Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Paul Tracy teases his fans, 2 Canadians approach Dakar finish

Paul Tracy has been teasing his fans all week, suggesting via Twitter that he’s on the verge of landing a full-season ride in the IZOD IndyCar Series.

On Tuesday, he Tweeted: "The emails were flying today, the fax was fired up and the pen moved across the paper."

(Some fans interpreted this to mean he’d signed the long-awaited contract.)

Thursday, he sent this out: "Ordered helmets today, really happy with how the call went. Going back to where it all started."

(Other fans interpreted this to mean he’ll be driving for Dale Coyne Racing this year, which was the team he drove for at Long Beach in 1991 where he attracted the attention of Roger Penske. We’ll see.)

Whatever it is, I hope it officially happens soon.

I can’t stand the suspense.

As a busy week of IndyCar signing announcements came to a close (Alex Tagliani of Montreal at Bryan Herta Autosport Monday, James Hinchcliffe of Oakville at Andretti Autosport Tuesday), Jay Penske’s Dragon Racing announced that Sebastien Bourdais and Katherine Legge will be the team’s pilots in 2012.

Meantime, two Canadians from Montreal are on the verge of becoming the first from this country to finish the Dakar Rally in the car division.

Not only can they finish fairly high up in the four-wheel division but, as of Thursday, they were 41^st overall (more than 400 cars, trucks and motorcycles started the annual marathon event), which is a stunning performance.

David Bensadoun and navigator Patrick Beaule are representing our country.

The first Canadian to make it to the finish of the Dakar rally, Lawrence Hacking of Georgetown, did it on a motorcycle in 2001. Other Canadians who've been successful on two wheels since include Guy Giroux , Eric Dubeau, Bob Bergman, Patrick Trahan and Shawn Price.

The Dakar will wind up on Sunday in Lima, Peru. If you’re interested in finding out how Bensadoun and Beaule make out, check the Dakar website.

The annual Chili Bowl midget racing extravaganza has been going on all week in Tulsa, Okla., and the grand finale, a.k.a. the "A Main," a.k.a. the "featch," etc., will get the green flag around 9 o’clock Saturday night.

The only Canadian at the race (with sponsorship from the Rochester Americans AHL hockey team, by the way!) is Ohsweken Speedway owner Glenn Styres, but he’s in good company.

More than 250 midget and sprint car racers from all around the United States and from Australia and New Zeland enter each year, including Sammy Swindell, his son Kevin Swindell, USAC greats Tracy Hines and Dave Darland, and interlopers like DIRT modified great Tim McCreadie and NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Tony Stewart, who locked himself into the Saturday night headline race earlier this week by finishing third in a qualifying feature before jetting back to Daytona for Daytona 500 practice.

If you’re interested in how Styres and Stewart make out – remembering that Stewart won a World of Outlaws sprint car race at Styres’ speedway last summer – check out the Chili Bowl website.

Speaking of Daytona, the boys (and girl) are back in town and turning speeds of more than 200 miles an hour as Sprint Cup off-season testing gets under way at Daytona International Speedway.

More than 30 cars have been on track over the last two days and Danica Patrick was eighth fastest on Thursday. She was drafting in a pack of about a dozen cars on Friday, learning the ropes.

NASCAR banned in-race radio communication between drivers this week, in an effort to make it harder for teams and drivers to arrange to piggy-back around Daytona. You’ll remember that last year, the cars looked like Siamese Twins joined at the bumpers as they tag-teamed around the place, frequently as a result of one driver asking another to hook up.

Now they can’t do that - at least not directly. Spotters can still make deals.

NASCAR also is playing around with the size of the Daytona restrictor plates and the size of the grilles in the cars an effort to keep speeds from getting too out-of-control (they’re really not fussy about anything much above 200 mph) and to force drivers to pull out of the two-car drafts before their cars start to overheat.

The end result, of course, is "pack racing" and we all know what happens when racing cars run in packs . . .

I'm supplying links to websites this weekend, as I'm taking a few days off to go to New York to see a concert by Christopher Cross, the singer-songwriter who was big in the 1980s and '90s. He still writes nice stuff and he puts on a good show.

Another reason I like him is because he's a former racer (Danny Sullivan was his coach) who still has a great interest in the sport. The release of his third album, Every Turn of the World, in the mid-1980s was delayed because he suffered pretty serious injuries in a Formula Vee wreck.

THE COVER OF CHRISTOPHER CROSS' THIRD ALBUM, 'EVERY TURN OF THE WORLD'

 

Canadian team enters Dakar to fight AIDS

More than 400 vehicles – cars, trucks and motorcycles – are embarking today on the most challenging off-road rally/race in the world, the 2012 Dakar, that will go 8,300 kms over 14 days through Argentina, Chile and Peru.

Canada is being represented this year in the car division by the ALDO Racing Team of Montreal (driver David Bensadoun, navigator Patrick Beaule and crew chief Yves Turcotte), which has entered a specially built "Desert Warrior" vehicle that was built by Rally Raid U.K. and is powered by a 3.0L BMW turbo-diesel motor.

Another Canadian, Don Hatton, planned to enter the Dakar in the motorcycle division but the B.C. off-road racer was injured in a farm accident and had to cancel his trip.

Since the Dakar started in 1979, only seven Canadian teams have entered cars and none have finished, something that Bensadoun and Beaule are determined to change. (The only Canadian to ever finish the Dakar, Lawrence Hacking of Georgetown, did it on a motorcycle in 2001. Conor Malone and Glenna Chestnutt of Toronto gave it the old college try a year ago in a Corvette-engined Chevy pickup and were more than half-way home before a bum engine fan put them out.)

The Dakar - previously known as the Paris-Dakar Rally - is no longer held in Europe and Africa. It was moved to South America after it was cancelled at the last minute in 2008 because of terrorist threats.

To say it is a gruelling adventure is an understatement. More than half the field, on average, never finishes. In 2005, for instance, 688 racers started in all classes and only 215 got to the end; in 2006, 475 entered and 193 finished. And there’s another grim statistic: nearly 50 people, including several spectators, have been killed over the years.

David Bensadoun has been involved in automotive competition for most of the last 20 years, competing in off-road motorcycle racing and rallying, road course car racing (he’s finished in the Top Five in the Castrol Canadian Touring Car Championship the last few years) and long-distance cross-country rallying (he and Beaule – an off-road motorcycle champion, also from Quebec – finished third in the Rally Tuareg in Morocco this March, which qualified them for the Dakar).

Now, as well as a motoring contest, Bensadoun and Beaule are also racing to raise money for charity. They hope to bring in $500,000 for CANFAR – the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research - and are already nearly half-way there: $200,000 is already in the kitty.

Said Bensadoun in a release; "Racing at Dakar is something I’ve been dreaming of since I was a teenager. Now that the moment is finally here, it felt strange not to use it for a higher purpose.

"I chose to deveote my race to ALDO Fights AIDS because it’s a cause that’s important to our company and it’s a cause that needs to be talked about. While we’ve made notable advancements in prevention and medication, the fact remains that there is still no cure for AIDS."

Now, motorsport fans hoping for TV coverage of the 2011 Dakar are out of luck. Unlike in the United States, where the cable channel Versus (NHL hockey, auto racing) will carry daily reports, starting today, nothing is planned for Canada till later in January, after the competition has concluded (OLN Network, reportedly).

However, the Dakar website is routinely updated and Bensadoun plans to Tweet their progress at twitter.com (@motobenny).

Good luck!