Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Weekend rdp: F1, Kyle Busch and Bob McCown

For those of you who emailed wondering where I was, my real newspaper job sometimes gets in the way of my fun newspaper job and the fun newspaper job (this) has to take a back seat.

So, after a week’s absence, here are some random thoughts about the state of the sport following a weekend of ho-hum racing (at least the offerings on television).

1. The people who run Formula One have outsmarted themselves once again. To make the sport more exciting – they didn’t really have to do this; it was exciting enough – they ordered the one tire supplier, Pirelli, to build degradation into the product so the drivers would have to make more pit stops.

Now, everybody is either up in arms (if you’re a fan) or "concerned" (if you’re one of the people in F1 who thought this stuff up) because the tires are coming apart faster than anybody expected.

Most teams had to make four (count ‘em, four) pit stops during Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix (click here for story and results) and critics (including 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve) were making fun of the spectacle rather than marvelling at the skill of the pit crews in getting the tires changed so quickly.

Said Villeneuve: "At this rate, F1 is going to become a pit-stop contest with a few race laps thrown in."

Every time anybody in any sport starts monkeying around with the thing to make it more "appealing" or more "exciting," they are just inviting trouble. Has baseball gone to four strikes to enable more hitters to reach base? Or moved the mound back a foot? Has hockey gone to four quarters instead of three periods? Of course not.

But F1 now has tires that disintegrate and drag reduction systems and kinetic energy recovery systems and, as a result, except for the opening laps there is very little racing going on any more.

Memo to F1: Stop this.

2. See second last paragraph above. The first lap of Sunday’s Spanish GP was edge-of-your-seat stuff with everybody reacting so quickly to lights out that analyst David Coulthard suggested at least one driver had jumped the start.

And although Mercedes pole-sitter Nico Rosberg held the lead to the conclusion of that first lap, everybody else was either charging to the front or sliding back.

Eventual race winner Fernando Alonso went from fifth to third in his Ferrari and passed two cars on the outside of one corner. Lewis Hamilton, who started second for Mercedes, dropped to fourth. Kimi Raikkonen, who went off third for Lotus-Renault, dropped to fifth. Three-time world champion Sebastian Vettel moved from third to second in his Red Bull-Renault and Felipe Massa went from ninth to sixth in his Ferrari. But the best of all was Adrien Sutil rocketing from 13^th place to eighth in his Force India-Ferrari and that, ladies and gentlemen, was an incredible example of car control and balls.

Oh, before I forget, Mark Webber had his usual crappy start and dropped out of the top ten from his seventh starting position and – I ask you – why should we be surprised? I suggest they put Webber in the simulator for a week and not let him out until he can make flying starts in his sleep.

3. In winning the Grand Prix, Alonso joined Vettel as two-time winners this season. Raikkonen is the only other winner, scoring his victory at Australia. Rosberg has now won two poles on the year but both times, in Bahrain and again at Spain, he faded out of the top five. He finished fifth in Spain and ninth at Bahrain.

And Esteban Gutierrez was the best of this year’s rookie crop, finishing in 11^th position for Sauber-Ferrari and beating his more experienced teammate, Nico Hulkenburg, who was 15^th. More impressive was the fact that Gutierrez qualified 16^th but was penalized three places for blocking Raikkonen during qualifying. Racing from 19^th starting position to 11^th earns him the McDonald "Hard Charger Award."

Elsewhere this weekend, Carlos Muniz – an Indy Lights driver – was fastest of the IZOD IndyCar Series drivers who went out to practice at Indianapolis Motor Speedway as the track opened for practice and qualifying leading up to the 97^th Indy 500 in two weeks.

Muniz recorded a speed of 223.023 miles an hour Sunday (it took him 40.3545 seconds to drive a lap of the 2.5-mile speedway; click here for details). James Hinchcliffe of Oakville was sixth fastest of the 23 drivers who turned time, recording a lap of 220.907 mph. Qualifying and bumping (if any) is scheduled for next weekend.

Speaking of Hinchcliffe, I was pleasantly surprised last Monday afternoon when, while driving home, I heard everybody’s favourite afternoon drive sports talk radio show host Bob McCown wax eloquently about James’ victory the previous afternoon in Brazil (which he won on the last corner of the last lap).

I haven’t heard McCown talk about car racing before, although I’m sure he has at one time or another. He simply said he’d tuned in the race to check it out with 15 or so laps to go and Hinchcliffe was running fifth and that he "had a feeling" and stayed till the end.

He went so far as to call the finish one of the most exciting moments in recent live sports television history (or words to that effect).

He brought it up with a couple of his guests – neither had been watching, by the way – and opined that he would be keeping an eye on young Mr. Hinchcliffe, whom he later interviewed (although I didn’t hear that).

Now, I realize that Bob McCown works for Sportsnet, and that Sportsnet is televising this year’s IZOD IndyCar Series races as well as the Indianapolis 500 and some "cross-promotion" is to be expected.

But I honestly think McCown was impressed with the finish (who wouldn’t have been!) and saw the potential that Indy car racing and Hinchcliffe both have. Good stuff.

One last thing: he said he didn’t like cars racing on ovals because ovals are for horses. Then he hesitated, and mused: "I wonder how horses would do on a road course?"

Okay, moving right along, I have two things to say about the NASCAR Southern 500 at Darlington Saturday night (for story and results, click here)

1. That Matt Kenseth won was the perfect revenge for Joe Gibbs Racing, which had been put through the wringer in recent weeks by NASCAR over nothing. I hope Kenseth wins every race between now and the end of the year and that Joe Gibbs rubs NASCAR’s nose in it when he stands up to accept accolades at the season-ending banquet.

Joe Gibbs is a religious, God-fearing man. NASCAR, which cast the first stone, should brace itself for what’s coming.

2. NASCAR loves to go around penalizing and fining drivers and teams enormous amounts of money in order to show them who’s boss. I think it’s time Kyle Busch was fined something like – oh, off the top, I‘d say – $200,000 for having a snit yet again because he didn’t win a race.

All the others losers of the Southern 500 – all 41 others – made themselves available to TV and other reporters after the race because that’s what they’re supposed to do as representatives of the sport of stock car automobile racing.

They are on the top of the mountain and they owe it to their fans and sponsors to address the media after the races, win or lose. Kenseth won the race but Jimmie Johnson went on TV, as did Jeff Gordon and Kevin Harvick and a couple of the others.

But not Kyle, because he was off somewhere having a hissy fit. He was only too happy to talk on Friday night, after he won the Nationwide Series race, but not Saturday because he lost.

I can remember several years ago everybody making great fun of Danica Patrick stamping her feet in anger after being edged out of a win in the Indy car series. But after she did what competitive people do - which is to work out their frustrations and then take a deep breath and calm down - she went to the post-race press conference and answered questions like a true professional.

But not Kyle and I think it’s time NASCAR brought him to heel. Every professional sport demands its performers be accountable to the media. Win or lose, the hockey players and coaches have to talk to reporters. Baseball managers and players are contractually obligated, and so on.

The next time Kyle Busch doesn’t win and then pulls one of his disappearing acts, he should be hit in the pocketbook.

And told to grow up.

Other racing: Lucas Luhr and Klaus Graf won the American Le Mans Series race at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca on Saturday. Jan Magnussen and Antonio Garcia were first in GT, with Marino Franchitti and Scott Tucker first in P2. Mike Guasch and Luis Diaz won the Prototype Challenge race while Nick Tandy and Henrique Cisneros were first in GT Challenge.

Ryan Briscoe finished fourth overall and second in P2 before heading off the Indianapolis where he is among the favourites to win this year’s Indy 500. Townsend Bell also raced in ALMS before flying to Indy.

Kyle Marcelli of Barrie was eighth overall and fourth in PC. Kuno Wittmer of Montreal didn’t do all that well this weekend and was well back.

Okay, I have to say it: sometimes sports car racing doesn’t make any sense. We all know that all the classes – five of them this season – all go out and race together. And that the first three finishers in every class make it onto the podium, which means 15 or more drivers can sometimes be on the podium in a sports car race.

Saturday evening, I got an email that trumpeted "Delta Wing car on podium in ALMS race in California." Hey, I thought. That’s damn fine. And Katherine Legge, who’s been run out of Indy car, must be feeling pretty good about making it onto the podium in her first ALMS race.

Then I looked at the results. There were 36 cars in total in that race Saturday and the Delta Wing finished 32^nd. I don't care about rules or tradition. That is not a podium.

The Southern Ontario Sprints will start their 18^th season next Saturday night at Brighton Speedway. Lee Ladouceur of Alexandria will try for his third consecutive championship this season. Other top runners expected to be on hand include Glenn Styers, Keith Dempster, Chris Jones, Adam West and Warren Mahoney. I betcha Warren's Dad, Dick Mahoney, will be out there too.

Indy car driver and partner in the Schmidt-Petersen Indy car team, Davey Hamilton, won the supermodified feature at Oswego Speedway on Saturday night. At Merrittville Speedway outside Thorold, Erick Rudolph and Kevin Knapp scored their first 2013 wins in the Bobcat of Hamilton 358 Modified and Hoosier Stock Divisions respectively. In Lucas Oil Weekly Racing Series action, Kyle Pelrine, Josh Sliter and Brad Rouse won in the Turn 4 Collision 4 Cylinder, J&S Heating and Air Conditioning Modified Lites and the Rick’s Delivery Sportsman Features.

Most southern Ontario oval facilities will be in action next weekend and the Victoria Day Speedfest is on tap at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park but that’s not all. Attention all you drag racing fans out there. Toronto Motorsports Park near Cayuga has got a monster lineup scheduled with 300 mph jet dragsters, the Pro Modified Racing Association, the Quick 32 top dragsters and sportsman plus pro bikes and sleds. They get going out there on Friday night and plan to blast all the way through till Sunday. Go to torontomotorsportpark.com for more info.

Speaking of "most southern Ontario oval facilities," if you head on out to Peterborough Speedway, it won’t cost you anything to sit in the grandstand. Country 105 radio station is picking up the tab for the season-opener. For info, go to peterboroughspeedway.com.

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Gilles Villeneuve, Gordon Smiley, and me

We all, or many of us, have our memories of this day 31 years ago when Canada and the world lost Gilles Villeneuve.

It was May 8, 1982, and Gilles – still seething with anger at the double cross performed by Ferrari teammate Didier Pironi at the previous Grand Prix at Imola – was on it, as he always was, in qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder when he collided with Jochen Mass’s car.

And then it was over.

I can still hear my wife, a few moments after 5 o’clock that Saturday afternoon, yell these words down the stairs to where I was in the cellar: "Villeneuve! Fighting for his life."

She’d heard the news on the radio but there were no other details. No Internet in those days, we had to wait till 6 o’clock for the next CBC Radio news update and I couldn’t believe that the accident wasn’t the first item. (Some things never change.)

By 11 p.m., he was dead and it led the TV news. And then his story dominated the airwaves and the front pages of the newspapers until his funeral in the week that followed (click here).

I was crushed when I heard those five horrible words that my wife had called out to me, for several reasons. I’d been in my rec room that day, going over a checklist in anticipation of my debut the following weekend as a driver of supermodified racing cars at New York’s Oswego Speedway. I’d had some experience in less-powerful oval race cars, and had done a season of formula car racing, but I’d never been pushed off in as powerful a racing machine as a supermodified and I was apprehensive.

So, as well as being destroyed by the initial news that my hero had been grievously injured, my faith in my own existence was shaken. I started wondering if I was doing the right thing.

All weekend and into the week of the funeral, I was thinking (and you’ve heard this sort of thing from professional drivers after someone of the talent and stature of, say, a Jim Clark or an Ayrton Senna dies by racing accident), "If it can happen to Gilles, it can happen to anybody."

I thought about that, a lot.

But I’d pushed those thoughts aside by the time the following Saturday arrived. It was May 15. I was in the pits at Oswego and just about ready to strap into the car for my first warmup session when the late Mike Stone, a race driver from Toronto, walked up to me and said these words:

"Gordon Smiley just hit the wall at Indy. He never had a chance."

Smiley was trying to qualify for his third Indianapolis 500 that day and had overcorrected going into Turn 3, sending the car straight into the concrete at 200 miles an hour, destroying it and himself.

I still went out to race, but Gilles Villeneuve and Gordon Smiley were heavy on my mind and I just couldn’t bring myself to put my foot down all the way – that night, or ever.

They say all things happen for a reason.

I wonder.

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Racer 'Irish' Jack Murphy dies

“Irish” Jack Murphy of Liverpool N.Y., a hard charger to the core and a wonderful contributor to the sport of supermodified auto racing, has died.

Murphy won the first Oswego Classic at the northern New York speedway in 1957 and was second that same year in the NASCARSportsman/Modified championship at Trenton Speedway in New Jersey.

His other racing accomplishments included the Oswego Speedway points championship in 1952 and two New York State modified championship wins on the Syracuse Fairgrounds mile on Labour Day in 1959 and again in 1970.

The Oswego Oldtimers Internet site says that during the mid-1950s, Murphy - who started racing after leaving the military following the Second World War - competed weekly at central New York speedways like Brewerton, Canandaigua, Oswego and the Monro County Fairgrounds. His ability to race on both dirt and asphalt made him, as the website says, one of the finest drivers in the U.S. northeast.

Murphy’s cars, be they modifieds or supermodifieds, were easy to spot. They were painted green and white and had a shamrock on both sides. He always ran the number 6.

Following his retirement as a driver, he was an organizer and pit steward for the International Supermodified Association and provided methanol for the race cars at Oswego Speedway and wherever the ISMA cars were running.

More to come

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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.

Auto racing: John Judson, Salt Walther and me

A couple of years ago, I wrote a column for Toronto Star Wheels about evil sometimes being present at race meetings.

I wasn’t talking about meets where there’s a fatal accident. Auto racing is a dangerous sport and death can be part of the game.

But sometimes there’s something else going on. I choose to call that evil.

In that column, for instance, I discussed the Grand Prix of San Moreno at Imola, Italy, in 1994, when Rubens Barrichello was injured in practice on the Friday, Roland Ratzenberger was killed in qualifying Saturday, there was an accident at the start of the race on Sunday in which drivers and spectators could have been injured, or worse, and then Ayrton Senna (left) was killed in a crash shortly after the safety car pulled off and the race was re-started.

Even after all that, a wheel came off a car in the pits later on and narrowly missed beaning people, including one other driver.

There was really nothing else that could have gone wrong that weekend.

But there was definitely something sinister present. It was evil.

I was reminded of evil this weekend when I heard the news that David (Salt) Walther had died at age 65. (Click here for Robin Miller's tribute.)

Many will remember that Walther was terribly burned in an accident on the front straightaway at Indianapolis in 1973 (left). It was a horrible crash (my colleague, Gary Grant, had a link to the video – click here – in Monday’s Insider Report at wheels.ca) but it wasn’t the only accident that May.

In fact, May 1973 was an absolutely horrid month in racing. It was evil, and there is no other explanation for it.

Shortly after practice started at Indy, in which rain was almost a constant and several racers had ridden their cars into walls, three drivers – Bobby Allison (yes, him), Gordon Johncock and Dick Simon – flew to Talladega, Ala., to race in the NASCAR Winston 500. A massive crash in which 21 cars were eliminated (Allison’s among them) saw several drivers injured, including Wendell Scott, who never fully recovered and was never able to race in NASCAR again. 

Back at Indianapolis, popular driver Art Pollard was killed on the first day of qualifying. Pollard (left, who drove a turbine car for Andy Granatelli at Indy in 1968) was a star of the old Western Canada-northwestern United States CAMRA supermodified series, out of which came Indy drivers Jim Malloy, Eldon Rasmussen, the Sneva brothers (Tom and Jerry) and Cliff Hucul, among others. Pollard's death was a big loss.

Rain delayed the Indy 500's scheduled 11 a.m. Central Time start on Monday, May 28, and it was after 3 p.m. when the green flag finally flew. There was an immediate 11-car crash and Salt Walther’s mount very nearly went into the crowd. After touching wheels with another car, the No. 77 Dayton Steel Wheel Special climbed up the retaining wall and sprayed fuel on spectators, injuring 11 of them.

Eleven cars crash, 11 spectators are hurt; coincidence, or what?

The front end of Walther’s car was torn off and photographs of his upside down car with his lower legs and feet sticking out (left) were published on front pages all over the world.

Walther survived, albeit scarred for life. His addiction to morphine and the other pain killers that helped him to recover from his burns plagued him for the rest of his days.

The rains that came almost at the same time as the accident forced cancellation of the 500 until the following day but further inclement weather kept it from being restarted until the Wednesday.

In the race that finally got going, Swede Savage lost control coming out of Turn 4 and crashed in a ball of fire. Although alive when taken from the speedway by ambulance, Savage (left, below) was to eventually die. But in the commotion and fear that immediately followed the crash, a crew member for another team who was running toward the scene was struck and killed by a fire truck travelling the wrong way along pit road.

When the rains came yet again, the race was stopped on Lap 133. Only 11 cars were running (11 again?) and only two were on the lead lap. Gordon Johncock was declared the winner.

There was no Victory Banquet in 1973. No victory laps for the winner. Three people were dead and the career of another was cut short by injuries.

Evil.

########

Now, I was at Indianapolis in 1973 but I was there as a spectator, not as a reporter. I’d recently left the Globe and Mail, where I’d covered every 500 from ’69 through ’72. I’d just started at the Star and Frank Orr was on the car racing beat, so if I wanted to be at the 500, I’d have to pay my own way and, well, Indy was Indy for me in those days and there was no way I could miss it.

My travelling companion was the late John Judson, a fantastic guy who was more than twice my age but we fit together like two peas in a pod. "Jud" was a WWII veteran who was involved in the restoration of a Lancaster bomber (he’d been a gunner on one) and earned his living as an oil-company dispatcher (leading to his classic response, when asked what he did: "I’m in oil."). He also learned how to ride a motorcycle at age 65 and that sort of thing is five-star in my books.

(If there’s a perfect death, Jud’s was close: he passed away in 1978 while at the bar of the Ashbridge’s Bay Yacht Club in Toronto. He’d just tucked into a large Canadian Club and ginger ale and – just like that – was gone.)

It had been a disappointing weekend that end of May in '73. When you went to Indy in those days, there was a full weekend of racing leading up to the classic, starting with the USAC sprint cars at the Indiana State Fairgrounds and then the Night Before the 500 midget races at Indianapolis Raceway Park.

Rain had washed out both events. In fact, it was raining so hard - and the temperature would be warm one minute and chilly the next - that some weather reports suggested a tornado was possible.

To pass the time, we did a lot of eating and drinking, not necessarily in that order. Jud enjoyed playing a game in which he would flirt with the female bartenders, just to see how far he could get, and I – being married at the time – would keep track of how he did so I could entertain him on the drive home. Trust me: when it’s raining in Indianapolis in the springtime, you sometimes have to grasp at straws.

In any event, on race day, we’d driven into the infield of the massive Indianapolis Motor Speedway through the tunnel midway between the third and fourth turns. As the day stretched out – it would rain for 10 minutes and then dry up for an hour, then rain for 10 minutes and so-on – and the race kept being delayed, we decided to move the car closer to the exit, just in case. This turned out to be a very wise move.

A little after 3 p.m., the command went out: Gentlemen, Start Your Engines! There was a hot dog stand right in the middle of the Turn 3 infield and Jud and I looked at each other and, silently saying "What the hell," managed to climb up on top of it.

The crowd is still huge at Indy each May but the Indy cars and the 500 were really the big dogs back then so every seat was filled in the stadium and there were thousands of people in the infield straining to see something – anything – and here John Judson and I were standing on top of a hot dog stand and we could see forever and we could see it perfectly.

As a result of this catbird seat we occupied, it quickly became very clear that the U.S. Auto Club officials in charge of the "Greatest Spectacle In Racing" should never have tried to start that race. Although the skies had looked dark when we were down on the ground, once we were head-and-shoulders above everyone else, it quickly became clear that the weather was about to let loose again and there was no way anybody was going to be able to go racing for any length of time.

And it was as if the drivers didn’t have their heads in it, either. I have never seen a worse set of parade laps nor a worse pace lap in all my years of going to car races before or since. The drivers were all over the place and out of line and although they seemed to get it together at the last second before pulling onto the main straight for the start, you could sense disaster coming.

And come it did.

As the field went through Turn 4, I felt the first sprinkles. "It’s starting, Jud," I said. And then I heard the voice of the late, legendary, Speedway announcer Tom Carnegie, say these words:

"And the green flag is out! . . . There’s a fire. . . And another fire. . ."

And it started to pour rain as he was saying those words and Jud and I, without speaking again, were off that hot dog stand and running for the car. We were in it and moving before anyone else could react.

We moved so quickly that we were the very first car through that tunnel and on out of the Indianapolis Speedway. We were dry and safe and soon home at our 38th Street Holiday Inn, where we sat drinking maragaritas and smoking long, unfiltered cigarettes and watching replays of the horror on the TV set in the hotel’s lounge.

And Salt Walther (left) was fighting for his life underneath a car that was caught up in an accident at the start of an Indianapolis 500 race that should never, ever have happened.

My wife sometimes asks me how, when I see things like this happen, I can continue to love this sport as a do.

I sometimes have a hard time answering.

- Norris McDonald

What are all those losers still doing in the big leagues?

I have said for a number of years now that if I ever win big money in the lottery, I will take Otto Sitterly to Indianapolis.

Otto Sitterly? Last Sunday, he won the 56^th Budweiser International Classic 200 for supermodifieds at Oswego Speedway in New York. It was his second in a row and his third in four years.

He had stiff competition. Indy 500 veterans Davey Hamilton and Joe Gosek were in the field, as was NASCAR’s Johnny Benson Jr.

When we shook hands afterward, I asked him if he ever thought about a one-off shot at the 500. “Of course,” he said, “but I don’t have the money.”

What a terrible state of affairs: “I don’t have the money.”

What the hell should money have to do with it?

Once upon a time, Sitterly would have been off to Indianapolis in a heartbeat, simply because of his talent. Gordon Johncock, Johnny Rutherford, A.J. Foyt, the Unser brothers – they all made it to the big time because they could drive and race better than just about anybody else and not because they had the gift of the gab or a pipeline to a Swiss bank account.

I know, times have changed, etc. etc., and employers now look for the total package — race car smarts as well as boardroom savvy.

But the racing has suffered. You can be sure of that, because no longer do drivers have to win in order to feed their families; they’re all under contract and their money goes into the bank after every race whether the finish first or last.

And once they get to the bigs, it seems as if they have jobs for life regardless of how successful, or unsuccessful, they are.

So even if an Otto Sitterly could somehow get close to the top, it’s unlikely he could take the last step because of this tenure system that seems to exist in today’s racing.

Although I like him because I like old guys, being one myself, I have to ask: what is Mark Martin still doing in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series? And just so nobody thinks I’m biased, I will now turn to a young guy. What has Joey Logano done to rate being hired by Roger Penske to drive the No. 22 car next season? Joe Gibbs (and Home Depot) can’t wait to get rid of him and Penske rolls out the red carpet?

What are, in no particular order, Juan Pablo Montoya, Jamie McMurray, Dave Blaney, David Gilliland, David Ragan, Bobby Labonte, Regan Smith and about 10 others still doing occupying full-time rides in the top stock-car racing series in the United States?

Because they smile nicely?

I mean, it has to be that because they're certainly not proving anything in their racing cars.

The worst is Casey Mears. How does that man keep getting himself hired?

And it’s not just NASCAR. What is Oriol Servia still doing in IndyCar? And Rubens Barrichello. I mean, they have done nothing. No-thing. Yes, they are  “steady performers,” but they don’t win races and that is what auto racing should be all about: winning.

If you don’t win, you shouldn't get to continue playing.

I know a whole bunch of drivers — Ryan Coniam, Kyle Larson, Michael Adams — who are ready, willing and able to take their places.

They all have one thing in common: they are winners.

Starting with Otto Sitterly.

Norris Note: The photo of Otto Sitterly in this column was taken at Oswego Speedway by Lauren Long of the Syracuse Post-Standard.

All hail Otto Sitterly; TSN and roll cages for F1

Lots to catch up on after a mini vacation and lots of weekend racing, some of which I saw and some of which I didn’t.

– Many people are upset because TSN2 scheduled a recording of the Baltimore IndyCar race at 11 p.m. Sunday night and then didn’t show it. Me, I could care less because I don’t watch anything that’s recorded. I already know who won and the order of finish and I have better things to do with my time. For the record, report and results here

In answer to a query, TSN says the IndyCar race was indeed shown – after tennis, which ran three hours long.

So to all you people who emailed me about this, it’s your fault. Just because you got tired and couldn’t stay awake till 2 or 3 in the morning on Monday is of no consequence. The Indy car race was on TV in the middle of the night and you missed it.

There’s only one race left this season, on Sept. 15. The championship will be decided at California Speedway and although one or two other drivers are still in the mix, either Will Power or Ryan Hunter-Reay will likely be the winner.

But that's not the real question. The one on everybody's lips? Will TSN show it live on Saturday night or at 5 in the morning on Sunday?

Or the following Wednesday . . .

– David Ostella of Maple had his best finish on a street course in his Indy Lights career when he finished fourth at Baltimore.

– When IndyCar driver Dan Wheldon was killed at Las Vegas last October, there was a flurry of talk about better protection for drivers in open-cockpit cars. I suggested at the time that roll cages similar to those used for years on supermodified racing cars (see photo at left) would do the trick.

But then everybody calmed down and the usual excuses started to be heard: a canopy might be damaged in a crash and the driver wouldn’t be able to get out; a cage would interfere with a driver’s vision, etc.

Now, following the huge crash at the start of the Belgian Grand Prix in which Fernando Alonso came this close to having a car land on his head, the F1 people are suddenly talking about it. For the record, Belgian GP report and results here

Memo to IndyCar, F1, Formula Ford, Star Mazda, Indy Lights and all other open-cockpit sanctioning bodies: stop talking about it and just put them on.

It’s no big deal. Oval track racers – those who pilot supermodifieds, limited supers, sprint cars, midgets, dirt champ cars – have been crawling out of wrecked racers for decades and, to my knowledge, have never been hindered by the existence of a cage.

And those cages have saved countless lives.

– I saw one of the great race drivers in action over the weekend. Otto Sitterly (what a great name, eh?) won the 56^th Budweiser International Classic 200 for supermodifieds at Oswego Speedway Sunday and to say he did it in convincing style would be an understatement.

Sitterly, a dairy farmer from Canajoharie, N.Y., won the Classic for the second consecutive year and for the third time in the last four years. Several weeks earlier, he wrapped up his fifth Oswego Speedway supermodified track championship.

He defeated 11-time Indianapolis 500 driver Davey Hamilton, of Boise, Idaho, who finished second, and Dave Gruel, of Fulton, N.Y., who was third. Gary Morton of Stouffville was the top-finishing Canadian in ninth.

Sitterly was a champion modified racer at Utica-Rome Raceway in the 1990s and moved on to Oswego when the small-block supermodified division was created there. Following his progression to the big-block supers, he’s been a consistent winner in that class

His Classic-winning car is owned by John Nicotra of Oswego and Homestead, Fla., who also owns the car that Hamilton drove. It was the second straight year that Nicotra-owned cars finished one-two in the Classic; Sitterly passed Cambridge’s Mike Lichty on the last lap a year ago for the victory then.

As soon as I saw Hamilton after the race, I asked him whether he would consider taking Sitterly to Indy for a one-off in the 500 (Hamilton co-owns a team in the IZOD IndyCar Series with Sam Schmidt) ?

"Oh, the cars are so different it would be like throwing him to the wolves," said Hamilton. "But he is very, very good."

Naturally, I had to ask Sitterly whether he’d be interested in running Indy. "Sure," he said without hesitation. "But I don’t have the money."

I will have more to say about this later in the week.

The Classic was run on Sunday. Saturday night, I witnessed one of the great race-driving performances I’ve seen in my many years of race-watching and reporting.

Ryan Coniam of Denver, Colo., the son of two-time Oswego Classic winner Warren Coniam of Burlington, started on the pole for the 60-lap winged-supermodified ISMA Super Nationals. Veteran Mike Ordway of Pelham, N.H., was outside on the front row in a rocket designed by legendary car builder Clyde Booth of Charlotte, N.C.

At the green, both drivers went flying into Turn One at well over 100 miles an hour. Ordway went down on Coniam, looking to chop him and to take the lead. They touched wheels.

Instinct suggests that when something like this happens, a driver will lift his or her foot off the accelerator. Not Coniam; not Ordway.

Both kept the hammer down, and Coniam flew onto the backstretch with the lead, Ordway right on his tail.

They had a great race but, in the end, Timmy Jedrzejek of Independence, Ohio, was the winner, with Mike Lichty of Cambridge second and Johnny Benson Jr. (yes, that’s NASCAR’s Johnny Benson Jr.) of Cornelius, N.C., third. Coniam was fourth; Ordway, 18^th.

– On the way home from Oswego Sunday night, I listened to the NASCAR race on Sirius satellite radio and the announcing team did a great job. I didn’t feel as if I’d missed a thing by not seeing it on television. For the record, report and results here

The last race of the regular season will take place at Richmond next Saturday night. Only the top ten drivers in the standings, plus two "wild card" drivers, will make the playoffs, a.k.a. the Chase for the Championship.

Now, I know NASCAR tries to have a points system that makes sense. But I do not understand how a guy like Martin Truex Jr. can hold down fifth place in the standings and have no wins, six top-five finishes and 14 top-tens when the guy behind him in sixth place has three wins, 10 top-fives and the same number of top tens, 14.

That makes no sense to me.

In fact, it makes no sense to me how a guy who has won three races can be behind a guy who has no wins.

And to carry this to its extreme, I don’t understand how two guys – Truex and Kevin Harvick – who have no wins can make the playoffs and four guys who have actually won races – Jeff Gordon, Marcos Ambrose, Joey Logano and Ryan Newman – likely won’t.

If you win, you’re in – or you should be.

I know NASCAR changed the scoring system a few years ago to put a greater emphasis on winning but they’ll have to take another run at it. Even the drivers will tell you that nobody remembers who finished second, so how come those losers – and all the other losers from third on back – are awarded so many points?

– Christophe Bouchut and Scott Tucker, driving an LMP2 car, won the American le Mans Series race at Baltimore on Saturday. Another LMP2 car, with Luis Diaz and Ricardo Gonzalez aboard, finished second. The first LMP1 car was third, driven by Ryan Dalziel and Alex Papow

– The Canadian Touring Car Series championships were decided at the weekend. Following two races at Calabogie Motorsports Park, Sasha Anis (Hyundai Genesis Coupe) wrapped up the Super Touring class championship, with Benjamin Distaulo (Honda Civic Si) second and Johathan Rashleigh (Hyundai) third.

In Touring Class, Damon Sharpe (Honda Civic Si) is the champion, with Michel Sallenbach (MINI Cooper S JCW) second and Paul Gravel (MINI) third.

In B-Spec, Nick Wittmer (Honda Fit) is the champion, with Simon Dion-Viens (Honda) second and Karl Wittmer (Mazda2) third.

- Finally, big news. Jacques Villeneuve will return to sports car racing in the inaugural City Challenge race through the streets of Baku, Azerbaijan. Somebody tell all the other drivers that they'd better keep their heads up.

Racing roundup: On Danica, Jimmie Johnson and others

Musings, ramblings and confessions after a weekend of auto racing:

– You have to laugh about everything that’s happened to poor Danica Patrick this year, her first full-time season in the NASCAR Nationwide Series. She’s done just fine qualifying and the speed is there but Murphy’s Law has never been more clearly defined than when applied to her when she's road-course racing.

Earlier this year, at Road America, she was less than a half-lap from a top five finish when Jacques Villeneuve forgot to brake and knocked her off the track.

Last week at Watkins Glen, she was on the inside going into Turn One when a car that went flying past her on the grass re-entered the track right in front of her and stopped. She had nowhere to go and hit it dead-on, knocking her out of the race.

Saturday at le Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal, she qualified fourth and was leading the race - leading - when somebody threw a shoe on the track and she hit it. I mean, really. She had other mechanical problems but when she hit that shoe her race went south, so the timing couldn’t have been worse.

One of these days, she will win and that will get the monkey off her back. There’s no doubt the talent’s there; she’s just got to get it all together – speed, strategy, race craft and, most important for her, luck.

Justin Allgaier won his first road-course race at Montreal and the third of his Nationwide career, with Sam Hornish Jr. second and Jacques Villeneuve third. Details here

Now, it has been suggested by some that NASCAR kept throwing yellows so that a "regular" could win the race instead of a ringer, particularly if said ringer happened to be the son of the guy the Montreal circuit’s named after.

If not for the phantom yellows that left him low on fuel, or so go the the theories, Jacques Villeneuve would have won the race.

Now, JV denied that he was running out of gas on the final lap (although he did run out on the cooldown lap) and lost the race because Allgaier ran into him. Maybe. But there’s no doubt he was worred he was going to stall out because he was running noticeably slower on the last lap than the eventual winner.

Having said that, Allgaier didn’t have any fuel problems, so if NASCAR was playing fast and loose with the yellows, it didn’t appear to hurt him.

And nobody was shedding any tears for Villeneuve anyway. The Danica punt in Wisconsin was still fresh in everybody’s mind and he turned Alex Tagliani around late in the Montreal race. The fact that he was angry after being hit by Allgaier was really very amusing. Did somebody say it was like the pot calling the kettle black?

Two other quick notes: For the last fillup, Allgaier pitted later than the others, which explains why he had more fuel when the race got down to the short strokes. And why did he do that? Because at Road America in 2011, he ran out of fuel on the last lap. He obviously learned a lesson.

Oh, and Ron Fellows, Mississauga’s most famous athlete, finished fifth a week ago at Watkins Glen and was fifth at Montreal on Saturday. He is an absolutely incredible race driver.

– NASCAR hasn’t got a clue about yellows on road courses, period, as we saw at Montreal, and they sometimes over-react on ovals, too. David Gilliland lost control early in the Michigan Sprint Cup race Sunday afternoon and went flying through the infield grass but then got straightened out and went back on the track, albeit half a lap behind.

But he didn’t hit the wall and there was no damage or debris anywhere. But as soon as he started sliding, the yellow was on and there was really no need for it.

It’s a good excuse to close up the pack, though. Isn’t it . . . ?

– In the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series race at Montreal, J.R. Fitzpatrick of Cambridge won, with Andrew Ranger of Roxton Pond, Que., second and Robin Buck of Campbellville third. Scott Steckly of Milverton was fourth, he’s the defending national champion, and the leader of this year’s championship chase, D.J. Kennington of St. Thomas, finished fifth. Next race is at Barrie Speedway Sept. 8.

- As NASCAR doesn’t have a clue about yellow flags on road courses, neither does it have a clue so far as passes for the lead on road courses are concerned. Their rule is that in the case of a yellow, the order of finish from the last completed lap will be the order for the restart. Fine on ovals, stinks on road courses.

Ranger had passed Fitzpatrick fair and square and was clear and away in front of him when somebody spun at the back of the pack and since they all hadn’t completed the lap, the order had to revert to the previous . . . yada, yada, yada – you know what I’m saying, eh? – and when they restarted the race J.R. was back in first and Ranger was second and that is not fair, not fair, not fair. (I sound like Jack Lemon as Prof. Fate in The Great Race. . .)

– Okay, moving right along, I apologize for making the same mistake over and over. Every time I write anything about Lewis Hamilton, I say he’s won two world championships. Of course, he’s only won one but that hasn’t seemed to penetrate my thick skull. The latest example was in a story I wrote on the weekend that appeared on wheels.ca and in Toronto Star Wheels. I could change it online but not in the paper. Sorry.

It’s like every time I go to write 1996. It always comes out 1969. Why?

– They say auto racing has the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. We saw both in the Sprint Cup race at Michigan Sunday.

With nine laps to go, Jimmie Johnson took the lead in the race and the TV cameras showed his crew chief, Chad Knaus, fist-pumping with delight. Three laps later, his engine let go and Greg Biffle went blowing by him.

Biffle went on to win the race and Johnson drove straight to the garage area. He passed a dejected Knaus, who was walking in the same direction. Details here

Remember that Grand Prix of Monaco a half-dozen years ago, in 2006, when Kimi Raikkonen dropped out while in second place and he got out of his car and was so angry that he kept his helmet on while he walked around the course to his yacht in the harbour, where he disappeared below decks?

Well, Johnson got out of his car yesterday and didn’t take off his helmet. He walked from his car, between several transport trucks and through the hospitality area on the way to his motorhome.

He was obviously so upset that one of his PR aides, a woman, started to follow him and then thought better of it, staying behind in the garage area.

It's not often that you see Jimmie Johnson so browned off.

– By the way, while the Nationwide stock cars were at Montreal, the Camping World Truck Series was the support race for the Sprint Cup cars in Michigan and that race Saturday was won by Nelson Piquet Jr.

Piquet, who was forced to leave Formula One after admitting to participation in the conspiracy to fix the Singapore GP in 2008, would appear to have completed his rehabilitation. Look for him to move up to Sprint Cup before long.

– Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas won the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series race at Montreal on Saturday. Paul Tracy was third (with others). Alex Tagliani finished seventh. John Edwards and Robin Liddell won in GT. Jeff Segal and Emil Assentato driving the AIM Autosport of Woodbridge Ferrari were second in GT. Paul Dalla Lana of Toronto, who was featured in Wheels last weekend and who won the GT class at Watkins Glen a week ago, had a miserable race in Montreal and didn’t finish. There were only 21 cars in the Montreal race – and people can make as many excuses as they want but it’s the border. Americans competing in semi-professionals series like the Grand Am Rolex and the American Le Mans Series and who are field-fillers will run all the races in the U.S. and skip the ones up here. It’s a shame.

– At Road America, where 35 cars showed up for the American le Mans Series race (as compared to 26 that started the ALMS race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park/Mosport in July, see?), the closest finish in the history of the series took place with the P1 Lola-Mazda entry of Chris Dyson and Guy Smith defeating Klaus Graf and Lucas Luhr in their Muscle Milk HPD ARX-Honda by 0.083 seconds.

Tony Burgess of Toronto (and others) was third overall. Martin Plowman and David Heinemeier were first in P2, Tom Kimber-Smith, Jon Bennett and Alex Powpow were first in Prototype Challenge (Kyle Marcelli of Barrie, and others, who was on pole in PC, finished third in class and seventh overall), Bill Auberlen and Jorg Muller were winners in the GT class and Cooper MacNeil and Jeroen Bleekemolen were first in GT Challenge.

By the way, P2 driver Scott Tucker finished 11^th and 12^th overall in the race and third and fourth in the Prototype 2 class. How?

He teamed with Christophe Bouchut in one car – he did the first stint of driving – and with Luis Diaz in the second – he drove the final stint in the second car.

– In Canadian Touring Car Championship action at Montreal, Sasha Annis won the first race in Super Touring, with Jocelyn Hebert tops in Touring Class and Karl Wittmer in B-Spec. In the second race, Marc-Antoine Camirand was the winner in Super Touring, Damon Sharpe won Touring Class and Wittmer repeated in B-Spec.

The Touring Car championship will wrap its season over Labour Day weekend at Calabogie Motorports Park.

– Robbie Wickens of Guelph and Toronto had his best weekend in the German Touring Car Championship since he started his rookie season in the spring. He qualified ninth and finished seventh at the Nurburgring driving for Mercedes. Canadian driver Bruno Spengler won the race in a BMW.

– In World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series action, Sammy Swindell got over his disappointment at missing out on starting the Knoxville Nationals by winning the feature at Grand Forks, N.D., at the weekend.

In other sprint car news, Dustin Daggett of Grand Ledge, Mich., won the Northern Summer Nationals Championship by finishing first in the feature at Chatham-area South Buxton Speedway Saturday night.

- And two weeks out from the Budweiser Oswego Classic 200 for supermodifieds, Joe Gosek won his 42nd feature at the famous northern New York Oswego Speedway, which puts him fourth on the all-time win list behind Eddie Bellinger Jr., Bentley Warren and Jim Shampine.

And by finishing fifth in the super feature, Otto Sitterly of Canajoharie, N.Y., won his fifth Oswego Speedway track championship. I think Sitterly has one of the neatest names in all of auto racing, right up there with Parnelli Jones. I also think Otto has the talent to go to Indy. His sometimes-supermodified teammate, Davey Hamilton, could help pave the way.

Upcoming F1 movie triggers cinematic memories

Director Ron Howard, a.k.a. Richie Cunningham, a.k.a. Opie, announced this week that his movie about the 1976 Formula One Grand Prix season entitled "Rush" will premiere in September of next year.

The movie's focus is the battle during the 1976 season between James Hunt and Niki Lauda for the world driving championship after Lauda was nearly killed in a crash and fire at the Nurburgring. Lauda's amazing will to live and his return to the cockpit, after which he nearly won the title, is the basis of the plot.

Here's a short video about the film, sent to me by my friend, Rick Morris. I'm getting excited already.

 

When I read that the film will be out a year from September, I immediately wondered if it might possibly make its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival, as the documentary "Senna" did a few years ago. Naturally, I contacted my Entertainment department colleagues here at the Star, Peter Howell and Linda Barnard, who do a wonderful job reviewing films and know all about TIFF and movies in general.

 

Replied Howell: "I think it unlikely TIFF would have it. Ron Howard isn't a festival guy. I don't think he's ever had a film at TIFF, or any festival for that matter."

 

Added Barnard: "Interesting, but we won’t know until this time next year (sounds like a movie title!)

 

Okay, if not at TIFF, "Rush" will still open in Toronto in September '13 and the first thing that hit me about it was the title: what does "Rush" have to do with car racing?

 

Greater minds than mine make these decisions but movie titles are just like book titles. You would think the title would tell you what the book is about, wouldn't you? I have a friend, Alec Ross, who paddled a canoe across Canada. He wrote a book about it. The title? "Coke Stop At Emo." I don't think it sold a lot. Same thing with "Rush." I can think of a lot of things when I read or hear the word "Rush," but auto racing ain't one of them.

 

Whatever, I wish Howard and the movie luck. It's about time we got a good movie about racing (presuming this one will be good). There hasn't been a good one produced since 1967 when "Grand Prix" came out. That's a lot of time between cinematic pit stops.

 

A few years ago, I wrote a column about racing movies I have at home - the good ones and the turkeys. Here are a few excerpts from that column; turkeys first.

 

"Stroker Ace," (1983) was with Burt Reynolds and Jim Nabors, "Days of Thunder," (1990) starred Tom Cruise and Robert Duvall, and "Driven," (2001) featured Sylvester Stallone and B. Reynolds (yes, him again).

 

All three were truly awful.

 

"Stroker Ace" was based on a hilarious book, Stand On It, by William Neely and Robert Ottum, which was a satire on all things auto racing. Reynolds and Nabors ignored the satire and went for the cheap laughs and the movie was a bomb, as a result.

 

"Days of Thunder" was a wasted opportunity. NASCAR opened itself up to the stars and the producers and what could have been a wonderful movie makes you cringe half the time.

 

And "Driven?" When Stallone couldn't suck Bernie Ecclestone into letting him build a film around F1, he turned to CART and the finished product illustrates perfectly why Bernie is such a genius.

 

I was at the Toronto premiere at the Yonge and Eglinton Silver City and when it got to the part where the hero turns his car around and starts driving the wrong way on the track to go rescue a guy who'd just crashed, I swear that everybody in the theatre wanted to crawl under their seats.

 

Those were the awful ones. Here are a couple close-to-awful:

 

"Heart Like a Wheel" (1983), with Bonnie Bedelia and Beau Bridges, is the story of Shirley Muldowney and her fight to make it in the man's world of drag racing. It's so-so. The song, which wasn't about racing, is still better.

 

"Bobby Deerfield" (1977), with Al Pacino, has its moments but, for the most part, is a boring art film. If you like the camera gazing into Pacino's eyes while he, a) looks at where he's going, b) looks at a woman, c) looks at a menu, then this film's for you. Me? I fell asleep.

 

Okay, I can hear some of you saying it: What about "Le Mans," with Steve McQueen? I'll tell you what turned me against that movie, which was released in 1971. There's a line that McQueen recites that goes something like this:

 

"Racing is life, the rest is just waiting." That's a pretty good line. The problem with it is that it's stolen.

 

The late Karl Wallenda of the Flying Wallendas tightrope act said the same thing, only 10 years earlier: "To be on the wire is life, the rest is just waiting."

 

So I was enjoying "Le Mans" until I heard that line and it just put me right off.

 

Here's why I like the movie "Winning," which leads off my list of pretty good racing movies: It got Paul Newman interested in auto racing.

 

Prior to making that film, he knew next-to-nothing about the sport. But filming it turned him into a fan and then a racer himself and the sport was so much better off because of his involvement.

 

Co-starring Joanne Woodward and Robert Wagner, the story is fun and the racing scenes are excellent. A moment that's magical is when Newman drives his road car around the big speedway at Indianapolis and maintenance people and others at work in the infield wave his way.

 

There's a huge pileup at the start of the Indy 500 (footage from the actual first-lap wreck in 1966 is used) and Newman is shown sitting in his car after the dust settles, eating ice cream while he waits for the restart and we hear his heart beating a million miles an hour.

 

This is poetic licence at work: immediately following the real wreck in '66, TV cameras caught driver Arnie Knepper tucking into a sandwich, moments after a wheel came so close to hitting him in the head that it left a tire mark on his helmet. I suspect Arnie's heart wasn't beating fast. Some of those old timers had ice water in their veins.

 

The special-effects photography plus the gripping musical score are what make "Grand Prix" (1966) a joy. Director John Frankenheimer's masterpiece is best seen in Cinerama in a movie theatre with stereo surround sound - but hey, you can't have everything.

 

The cast is near-perfect and the "race drivers" (James Garner, Yves Montand (left), Antonio Sabato and Brian Bedford) look more like race drivers than real race drivers do (Graham Hill, Richie Ginther, Jo Bonnier, Jochen Rindt and others from that era can be seen lurking in the background).

 

The women (Eva Marie Saint, Jessica Walter and Francoise Hardy) keep the heat turned up, too.

 

An old movie that I love and watch at least twice a year is "To Please a Lady" (1950), with Clark Gable and Barbara Stanwyck. Gable is a post-World War II midget racer; she's a crusading newspaper columnist who attacks racing as a blood sport. It's good stuff and if you've never seen it, it's available on DVD.

 

An incredible moment comes in mid-movie when he confronts her about her columns. When she gives him some lip, he slaps her across the face. You don't see this scene when the film's on TV these days. It's been cut out, probably because Stanwyck doesn't appear to be too put off about it. 

 

Five more to tell you about:

 

"The Crowd Roars" (1932) stars James Cagney and Joan Blondell. Cagney is a successful driver who cavorts with a succession of available women (hey, it's every man's fantasy) but worries that his younger brother will try to follow in his footsteps and wind up in the Marble Orchard (what old-time drivers used to call the cemetery).

 

"The Roar of the Crowd" (1953) stars Howard Duff and is a hoot because it's done in flashbacks while he's driving in the Indy 500. Some of these old racing movies are a stretch at the best of times but when you've got a guy daydreaming at 140 miles an hour, it's too much.

 

"Indianapolis Speedway" (1939) stars Pat O'Brien and Ann Sheridan. All the wives of the drivers wear fur coats. Enough said. 

 

"The Big Wheel" (1949) stars Mickey Rooney and Mary Hatcher. Against his mother's wishes, Mickey wants to go racing to clear his old man's name(too complicated to go into here). Doesn't win the Indy 500 but they give him the Borg-Warner Trophy anyway (you have to be there).

 

I was 7 years old when I first saw it; when I bought the DVD recently, it was pretty much as I remembered it. One surprising nugget: there's a reference in that movie to my Oswego Speedway - famous, even back then.

 

"The Racers" (1955). Kirk Douglas is an American trying to break into the European sports car circuit in the 1950s. His manager (Lee J. Cobb) wears a fedora in Monaco in May (what is with these people?). The death scene starring Gilbert Roland, after he's been thrown out of his car, is priceless.

 

And now you know what I do all winter . . .