In 1971, I went to Indianapolis for the 500 with my great friend Billy Richards. I was on assignment and Billy was along for the ride.
Although I’ve since lost touch with him – in fact, I haven’t had any contact with him for years – I can tell you we were once the closest of friends: we drank booze in bars together, and chased women together and, at that time in our lives, that was pretty much all we did (except work, of course).
Billy was a graphic designer and magazine paste-up guy and I was copy editing for a national newspaper and writing about auto racing on the side. We had a lot in common.
On the morning of the Indy 500, I went up to my seat in the press box (at the time, a platform underneath the upper deck of seating on the outside of the main straightaway) and I looked down just as Billy was heading into the infield along with thousands of other people. I called down; he looked up and gave me a wave and then disappeared into a tunnel.
I’ll let him pick up the story.
"So I’m looking for a place to watch the race on the backstretch," he said. "Every available piece of real estate back there is occupied. I’m not that big (five-foot-eight, if he really stretched) so I can’t see over people. So after awhile I figure I’ll just lie down in the grass and listen to the cars go by.
"I’m standing there thinking about this and I look down and there’s this guy lying on the ground – leaning on his elbow, actually – and he’s looking up at me. He’s extremely muscular. His neck is bigger than my thigh. He’s got a square head and a flat-top brushcut. He’s looking at me and he seems kind of threatening and I’m thinking I should leave.
"So just before I start to walk away, he says to me: ‘Hey, you. Can you arm-wrestle?’
"I look back at him and I say, ‘No, thanks.’
"And so he says, ‘Can ya drink beer?’
" ‘Yes, I can do that,’ I say, so he motions me to sit down beside him. He gives me a beer out of his cooler, asks my name and introduces me to his family who are all there, and when it comes time to eat the fried chicken lunch they have with them, they count me in.
"They were from Kokomo and he was a real nice guy and I had a really great time.’ "
We agreed he probably had a better time than me, because I was working and there was no beer in the press box.
I started thinking about that trip, and Billy Richards, yesterday afternoon after I heard about the bombing in Boston.
Why?
Because after what happened at the Boston Marathon – the Boston Marathon, for crying out loud – there is a very distinct possibility that starting at the next really big public event, the Kentucky Derby, perhaps, or the Indy 500 right after, the security will be suffocating.
And it will never let up.
It’s highly unlikely that some guy from Kokomo – or others just like him – will be allowed to carry a cooler full of beer and chicken for his family into the infield at Churchill Downs or Indianapolis.
Which is really too bad.
We cry for the victims in Boston. And we cry a little for ourselves, too.
I have my memories. But I wonder about my 16-year-old.
This will be a slightly different Monday Morning Racing Roundup, in that rather than splitting the report up into sections – Formula One, NASCAR, IndyCar and so-on – I’m just going to throw everything out there and see where it lands.
For instance, although Fernando Alonso won Sunday’s Grand Prix of China in convincing fashion (click here for full results), attention will turn very quickly to the next stop on the tour, Bahrain, where protests against the Grand Prix there have already started (see photo).
This is an annual black eye against F1 – one it so easily could avoid, simply by not going there – that will dominate the headlines heading into next weekend and steal the spotlight from the raison d’etre: the Grand Prix.
Although there is an undercurrent of unrest in Bahrain at the best of times, the protesters know they can garner international attention by raising the ante when Formula One arrives in the country.
As a result of what’s happening in the Middle East, I fear there will be a repeat of last year’s unpleasantness in Montreal, when what started as a student protest against university tuition fees escalated into mindless violence directed at just about everything and everybody at the time of the Grand Prix there.
I love Montreal – I lived and worked there in the middle-to-late 1960s and have enjoy going back for visits ever since. But I can tell you that the sight of riot police lingering in the side streets, waiting for the nightly protest parades to start, as happened last year, was disconcerting to say the least.
And the economy of Montreal suffered seriously because of the unrest, with large numbers of Europeans opting not to attend the race, leaving any number of downtown hotel rooms unoccupied on Grand Prix weekend, an unprecedented occurrence.
They already are marching in Montreal (largely unreported in Canadian media, by the way), as they have been recently in Bahrain. Cross fingers that the political leaders in the city of Montreal and province of Quebec can talk some sense into people before the situation gets out of hand again.
By the way, talking about Montreal and racing, there is a gap on the two-race calendar at Circuit-Gilles Villeneuve now that the NASCAR Nationwide Series weekend has been cancelled. Only the Grand Prix is planned in early June. With the stock cars gone, another event could be held in August.
All sorts of rumours have been floated about German touring cars and Indy cars and what-have-you-cars being lined up for a race there but I have it on very good authority that a Moto GP motorcycle race could be slotted in there, perhaps as early as 2014.
As they say, you read it here first.
I also understand that improvements to the Circuit-Gilles Villeneuve track and its infrastructure are in the works and that is very good news indeed, as it would seem that F1 will continue to come to Canada despite fears it would stop after the current contract runs out in 2015.
Where organizers (not necessarily the current ones, by the way) expect to get the money necessary to keep F1's owners happy is the $64,000 question and one to be revisited on another day.
When the Grand Prix of China finished yesterday, with Alonso on top followed by Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton, my wife – a casual racing fan – said, and I quote: "That was the most exciting Formula One race I’ve ever seen."
She went further: "That’s the first time in 10 years that F1 got my heart beating."
She was talking, of course, about the last six laps in which three-time world champion Sebastien Vettel emerged from the pits with fresh, soft, Pirellei rubber on his Red Bull-Renault racing car and set off to run down third-place Hamilton who, at that moment, was more than 12 seconds in front of him.
It was an incredible charge and he just missed, finishing two-tenths of a second behind the last man on the podium. In fact, both Hamilton and Vettel had to pass Caterham's Giedo van der Garde two corners from the checkers, causing Vettel to slightly miss his braking point and go wide. That miscue might have cost him his shot at Hamilton. In fact, I will go so far as to suggest that if van der Garde hadn’t been there, Vettel would have finished third.
Colour commentator David Coulthard said something that got my better half going even before Vettel’s pursuit brought her out of her seat. When McLaren’s Jenson Button didn’t fight Hamilton when the Mercedes driver went to pass him late in the race, Coulthard opined that it was "sensible racing."
"Is that another ‘new rule?’ " my wife asked, making reference to the Masters decision to let Tiger Woods keep playing after he made an illegal drop on Saturday.
"Whatever," she continued, "I’d expect something like that from David Coulthard, who was always getting out of the way for faster drivers. I want Michael Schumacher back. If he was 20th and the 21st guy was trying to pass him, he’d fight him as hard as if he was protecting the lead."
You can see why we get along. I like racing, too."
Talking about racers, NASCAR’s Brad Keselowski is a cut above. He’s probably the most self-assured racing driver I’ve ever met – and that’s saying something because the No. 1 quality of most successful racing drivers is self-confidence.
In the last week, he and his Penske Racing No. 2 team have been jobbed by NASCAR (penalized by being made to move their car for being outside the pit box at Martinsville when it obviously was inside the lines) and then made to replace the rear-end gear housing on the race car in the waning minutes before Saturday night’s Sprint Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway (full results here).
Keselowski let loose at the conclusion of Saturday’s race – won the Kyle Busch, by the way – and told reporters his team was being targeted. Not only that, he let it be known that "we’re not gonna take it," and "we’re not gonna be treated this way."
The strong rumour is that he’ll be fined by NASCAR for his comments and that his crew chief will be penalized, perhaps even suspended.
His owner is Roger Penske and you wonder what he’s going to say – and to whom?
Kyle Busch, by the way, won Saturday night’s Sprint Cup race after winning Friday night’s NASCAR Nationwide Series race. It is the second time this season and the seventh time in his career that he has won the two major NASCAR stock car races on the same weekend. Incredible.
Kyle Larson is a young guy on the way up. He has amazing talent. He wins in sprint cars, midgets, stock cars – you name it. He will be in the Sprint Cup next year, let there be no doubt – if he survives.
Larson was the driver of the car that went halfway through the fence at Daytona in February (more than two dozen people in the stands were injured) and yet walked away without a scratch from his wrecked car after it landed back on the racing surface.
Friday night during the Nationwide Series race at Texas, he was driving along the backstretch and a tire went down on his car and he came so close to piling into the back of a safety truck that was trundling along down on the apron.
It was very reminiscent of the scene in which Juan Pablo Montoya was trying to catch the field during a yellow at last year’s Daytona 500 and a blown tire sent his car crashing into a jet-dryer, which started a God-almighty fire.
Larson was luckier and there wasn’t a crash – this time. Good thing, too. He went on to win Sunday’s Camping World Series truck race at the North Carolina Motor Speedway in Rockingham.
Speaking of Montoya, the big rumour in NASCAR circles is that his team owner, Chip Ganassi, is looking to unload his stock car team. If true, Montoya would likely be out of a ride in NASCAR because he certainly hasn’t lived up to his advance billing and reputation since leaving Formula One.
Ganassi, of course, is an open-wheel guy at heart, driving (and surviving) Indy cars before becoming an open-wheel team owner. He also is big in sports car racing as well as fielding his NASCAR team.
The other interesting thing about this rumour is, if true, is it a signal that Target might be getting out of auto racing sponsorship? Target is the only serious sponsor Ganassi has ever had. For ever and ever, in fact.
If the team is sold to Menard, his chain of midwestern hardware-type stores would be – in part – in competition with Target, so it would not be a match made in heaven.
Or Target might just be cutting back its involvement, which means the Chipster – if he has a choice – would undoubtedly prefer to keep the Indy car team going than the stock car team.
Back to F1. I was watching the Three Stooges Sunday morning and some of their slapstick got me thinking about Red Bull. Please follow along.
Shemp is using a mop to clean the top of a table. Every time he moves the mop back and forth, the end pokes Mo in the eye. When Mo confronts him about this – and twists his nose around for good measure – Shemp says: "The mop did it, Mo! Not me, the mop!"
And why did this get me thinking about Red Bull? Because when Mark Webber ran out of fuel during qualifying on Saturday, Red Bull said it was a computer error. We all know that computers only do what people tell them to do. So it wasn’t a computer error, it was a human error, just like it was Shemp who was poking Mo in the eye and not the mop.
It was just one of about a thousand things Red Bull did wrong on the weekend, which saw Webber have to start the race last from pit lane, run into the back of Jean-Eric Vergne, pit for a new nose and tires, and then have a wheel fall off.
Vettel, despite giving it the old college try, finished fourth and off the podium, which is a pretty poor performance for a team that went one-two at the last GP in Malaysia.
But it’s a young season. They’ll bounce back.
By the way, until a team clinches the constructors championship, which translates into millions and millions of dollars, nobody will do anything stupid to penalize one of their drivers or to give one in a team a leg up over the other.
After the clinch, maybe. But at the third race of the season? Not a chance.
I am a champion conspiracy theorist and I see all sorts of shadowy things happening. But not this time. Keselowski in NASCAR? Maybe. But not Webber and Red Bull in F1.
Short takes: Audi drivers Allan McNish and Benoit Treluyer finished first and second in the FIA World Endurance Series race in England over the weekend. Audi, by the way, is reportedly considering entering the Daytona Prototype class of the new United SportsCar Series that will start racing in 2014 and could start to produce engines for the IndyCar series. . . . Sebastien Ogier of France won the World Rally Championship stop in Portugal at the wheels of a Volkswagen . . . Ryan Villopoto finally lost a Monster Energy Supercross race. His incredible run of victories, including one in Toronto a few weeks ago, came to an end in Minneapolis Saturday night when he lost to another Ryan, Ryan Dungey. . . .
Lewis Hamilton will start from pole in Sunday's Grand Prix of China, with Kimi Raikkonen beside him on the front row.
The rest of the top ten qualifiers: Fernando Alonso, Nico Rosberg, Felipe Massa, Romain Grosjean, Daniel Ricciardo, Jenson Button, Sebastien Vettel and Nico Hulkenburg.
Mark Webber will start last. Red Bull says that a computer error resulted in not enough fuel being loaded into his car.
When he stalled out on the course (he was qualifying around 14th at the time - gee, after the two weeks Red Bull just had, what a coincidence, eh?) he didn't have the required amount of fuel for post-qualifying testing so was sent to the back.
Vettel will go off ninth, but he and Button will be at the front pretty quickly because they will start on medium tires and the drivers in front of them will have to go off on the soft tires they used in final qualifying.
In NASCAR Nationwide Series racing, Kyle Busch won the race at Texas Motor Speedway Friday night. Brad Keselowski was second and Austin Dillon third. The Sprint Cup race from Texas goes tonight.
FRIDAY:
It was July 1968, and I was sitting in the coffee shop of the Bayview Golf & Country Club interviewing Carol Mann, a professional golfer who later that day would win the LPGA Supertest
Ladies Open for the second year running.
In the middle of our conversation, she interrupted what she was saying to say hello to a guy who was walking past our table. "Hi, Johnny Esaw!" she said.
I knew who she was talking to, of course. Everybody in the country knew Johnny Esaw, or knew his name. He was the sports director of CFTO and the host of CTV’s Wide World of Sports and the voice of the Canadian Football League.
Carol Mann and Esaw exchanged pleasantries and then he kept going and we resumed our interview. Of course, they were to meet again that afternoon when, after playing the final 18 holes, she was awarded the tournament trophy and he interviewed her for television.
I was thinking about this Friday at Rosedale United Church in Toronto during a funeral service for Esaw, who died last weekend at age 87. I was among several hundred mourners – Maple Leafs play-by-play announcer Joe Bowen and the long-retired Brian Conacher were just two from the sports community there – who gathered to salute a media giant who truly was one of this country’s originals.
I didn’t say anything to him that day way back in 1968 and it was only a year or so ago that we sat down to talk about one of his great successes – I wrote at length about it last Sunday on thestar.com and in the Toronto Star on Monday – which was broadcasting the Indianapolis 500 live across Canada for nearly 10 years before ABC went live-to-air with the race in 1986.
But I knew him, if you get my drift, because of what he did for my sport.
He was not only the first television broadcaster to show a race live at Mosport Park back in the 1960s but his – and CTV’s – support of Formula Atlantic racing in the 1970s helped to put that series on the international auto racing map.
So I was thinking about all that Friday as hymns were sung and tributes paid, the most enlightening and emotional delivered by retired figure skating champion, and former MP, Otto Jelinek.
Jelinek told of how he auditioned to be a colour commentator on CTV telecasts of national and international figure-skating competitions and how he wasn’t really very good.
But rather than reject him, Jelinek said, Esaw spent months with him, two nights a week, coaching him on style and delivery.
"He would drive out to Bronte, west of Oakville," Jelinek reminisced. "I was living with my parents and we would go down to a dark cellar and he would put on tapes of figure skating and work with me on my analysis. He was my mentor."
Calling him a visionary, Jelinek said figure skating in Canada wouldn’t be where it is today if it hadn’t been for Esaw. "He took what was essentially a recreational sport and made it a spectacle for the masses."
He did as much, or more, for football, international hockey, horse racing – you name it. He was a national treasure because much of what we enjoy in television sports in Canada had its genesis in him.
The late Chris Economaki, when he would bid farewell to a friend in print, would use the acronym for rest in peace. In that tradition, I’ll end this simply by saying:
RIP, Johnny.
Notes: Blackberry (formerly RIM of Waterloo), which has entered into a sponsorship agreement with Mercedes F1, will sponsor F1 practice sessions on TSN for the rest of the 2013 season. That means on F1 weekends, TSN will broadcast a Friday practice session live, Saturday qualifying and the race on Sunday. Bravo TSN, bravo Blackberry. . . Qualifying will be over in Shanghai by the time you read this (likely . . .) but the three-time world champion Sebastian Vettel had not been particularly quick in either of the two practice sessions on Friday. Of course, we’ve seen that from him before: he lulls his rivals into a false sense of security and then goes out in qualifying and crushes everybody. . .
EARLIER:
Helmut Marko made headlines for himself again this week by telling everybody who would listen that, a) there would be no more team orders at Red Bull Racing after the “misunderstanding” at Malaysia and, b) he really didn’t mean what he said in Red Bull’s own publication about Mark Webber.
Marko does an awful lot of talking for somebody who doesn’t have all that much power at Red Bull. Yes, he is the director of driver development (his official title is motorsport director) but — translated — that means he’s in charge of drivers in the minor leagues.
It's true that he can make or break the career of a young racer – as was the case with Marko and Canadian Robert Wickens, who got on well with him but was fired after his season in Formula 2 when he didn’t win the championship.
But it's also true that Marko is not in charge of the Red Bull Formula One drivers. That is part of the job description of the team principal, Christian Horner, who decides who will drive for the team in consultation with the owner, energy drinks gazillionaire Dietrich Mateschitz.
When it comes to the team's drivers, Horner, for the most part, keeps his own counsel, as does Mateschitz. Which leaves Marko to pick up the phone and talk to the media about no more team orders and who may or may not drive for the team in future (Kimi Raikkonen’s name keeps popping up) and that gives everybody the impression he's an influential somebody at Red Bull when, in fact, he's not.
If Marko had the power he pretends to have, Webber would have been gone at least a year ago. But Mateschitz likes the Australian star, as does Horner, so he’s in the team and Marko’s favourites are not and that should tell everybody something.
How do I know this? I have friends in Formula One and I talk to some, or exchange emails with others, frequently.
No more team orders? Ha! There will be team orders, if the need arises. Trust me — regardless of what Marko says.
Whether Vettel will obey them or not is really the question. He said some pretty outlandish things at a news conference in China Thursday but you have to wonder if he really meant them or if he was just testing how far he could go.
Was he being deliberately provocative in order to start a fight with Horner? Does he want to make Horner, or somebody else, the bad guy so he can pull the plug and drive for Ferrari in 2014?
Or perhaps he’s trying to undermine Horner so the team principal is forced to leave. This would open the door for his mentor Marko to take over and actually become a somebody at Red Bull.
However, his disdain for just about anyone in authority came through loud and clear when reporters asked him Thursday about being disciplined for disobeying those team orders. Said young Mr. Vettel:
"Maybe it is a little bit of a dreamland that you all live in, but what do you expect to happen? Make a suggestion!"
Meantime, Marko told the winter issue of the Red Bull corporate publication Red Bull Magazine that Webber couldn’t handle the pressure of a full F1 season and that’s why he’s never won the world championship. Asked about this in recent days, he told a Spanish newspaper that stories about that story were exaggerated.
I have the magazine. Nobody had to exaggerate anything because he said what he said and he said it simply to insult Mark Webber.
Marko and Vettel: nice guys.
Meantime, Jean Todt says there are too many pay drivers in F1.
Helmut Marko is making headlines for himself again, this time
telling everybody who will listen that, a) there will be no more team
orders at Red Bull-Renault Racing after the “misunderstanding” at
Malaysia and, b) he really didn’t mean what he said in Red Bull’s own
publication about Mark Webber.
Marko does an awful lot of talking
for somebody who doesn’t have all that much power at Red Bull. Yes, he
is the director of driver development (his official title is motorsport
director), but - translated - that means he’s in charge of the minor
leagues.
It's true that he can make or break the career of a young
driver – as was the case with
Canadian Robert Wickens, who got on well
with Marko but was fired after his season in Formula 2 when he didn’t
win the championship. (Jean-Eric Vergne, on the other hand, lost to
Wickens in the Formula 3.5 championship but got to keep his Red Bull
sponsorship and is now in F1 with Scuderia Toro Rosso, apprenticing for a
chance to drive for the big team and how did that happen?)
But it's also true that Marko is not
in charge of the Red Bull Formula One drivers. That is part of the job
description of the team principal, Christian Horner, who decides who
will drive for the team in consultation with the owner, energy drinks
multimillionaire Dietrich Mateschitz.
When it comes to the team's
drivers, Horner, for the most part, keeps his own counsel, as does
Mateschitz. Which leaves Marko to pick up the phone and talk to the
media about no more team orders and who may or may not drive for the
team (Kimi Raikkonen’s name keeps popping up) and that gives everybody
the impression he's an influential somebody at Red Bull when, in fact,
he's not.
If Marko had the power he pretends to have, Webber would
have been gone at least a year ago. But Mateschitz likes the Australian
star, as does Horner, so he’s in the team and Marko’s favourites are
not and that should tell everybody something.
How do I know this? I have friends in Formula One and I talk to them, or email, frequently.
And no more team orders? There will be team orders if the need arises. Trust me. Regardless of what Marko says.
Whether
Vettel will obey them or not was answered Thursday in China when the
three-time world champion said, in so many ways: in your dreams.
And
to suggestions that he should have been disciplined for disobeying the
order to hold station, the young German said this to the reporters:
"Maybe it is a little bit of a dreamland that you all live in, but what do you expect to happen? Make a suggestion!"
Meantime, Marko told
the Red Bull corporate publication called (natch) Red Bull Magazine,
that Webber couldn’t handle the pressure of a full F1 season and that’s
why he’s never won the world championship. Asked about this in recent
days, he told a Spanish newspaper that it was all exaggerated.
No it isn’t. I have the magazine. He said what he said.
So why’s he backtracking? Maybe somebody is mad at him.
Like the boss, Mateschitz, perhaps?
Meantime, Jean Todt says there’s too many pay drivers in F1.
No kidding.
It's
amazing how so many people can go through life, allegedly paying
attention, and then one day they open their eyes and say: Holy cow!
How'd this happen?
Welcome to the real world, Jean.
The
Chinese GP will be on in the middle of the night this weekend (check
George’s TV Listings for Race Fans for times) but there are plenty of
encore presentations of practice, qualifying and the race itself on TSN
and TSN2 that should deter your need to set your recorder.
Trailers for the auto racing movie Rush, about the 1976 battle for the world driving championship between James Hunt (left) and Niki Lauda (far left), are starting to pop up in theatres and online and you see them and you hope, really hope, that the film does proper justice to the sport we all adore.
(When I say we "all" adore, I mean that in the context of, if you’re reading this column, you presumably have an interest in, or a soft spot in your heart for, auto racing primarily, and motorsport in general. Otherwise, welcome – and I hope you stick around.)
Rush is produced and directed by Ron Howard and he has a great track record of being associated with quality motion pictures - A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man, Apollo 13 and The Paper, among them. So fingers are crossed that Rush is a winner.
I mean, ever since Grand Prix and Winning in the 1960s, we have been stuck with nothing but turkeys when it comes to auto racing movies. Many people point to Days of Thunder as being cinematic art when, in fact, it stunk. Any time the producers feel the need to speed up what is already a high speed sport, you know they’re trying too hard for a reason.
Stroker Ace (a wonderful, wonderful book that was ruined by Burt Reynolds and Jim Nabors), Bobby Deerfield (I mean, really) and the corker of them all, Driven, starring Sylvester Stallone, are some of the stiffs we've had to endure. It was bad enough when, in one scene in Driven, they needed a starter to get an Indy car going (which, in fact, is correct) and then in another scene two guys just jumped into two of them and went roaring off through the streets of Chicago. (Huh?) But when a car turned around and drove backwards on the circuit during a race, I felt like crawling under my seat I was so mortified.
The story of Lauda’s remarkable comeback from that horrible, fiery crash at the Nurburgring in mid-season '76 is inspiring and you hope Howard has been able to tell it properly. And Hunt was the classic F1 driver, a guy who lived fast, loved hard (and very, very often) and died kinda young. Yeah, and he did leave a beautiful memory, too, didn't he.
Here are two video links, thanks to my friend John. One is a theatre preview and the other is a partial interview with Howard. I present them here to whet your appetite because Rush won’t be in theatres until September.
- David Deacon has been named Grand Marshal of the 2013 Canadian Historic Grand Prix, which will be held on Father’s Day weekend in June at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. Deacon, of course, was the creator of the wonderful Rothman’s Porsche Challenge and Turbo Cup Series and the VARAC-organized weekend (that stands for Vintage Automobile Racing Association of Canada, by the way) will pay tribute to the Porsche 944 and the series that featured so many great Canadian drivers including co-Grand Marshall Ludwig Heimrath.
In a release, Deacon said: "You could say, with me at six-foot-six and Ludwig at whatever he is on his tip toes, as co-grand marshals, you have the long and the short of it for a lot of Canadian Porsche racing in the Seventies and Eighties. I used to joke that in my height category, I was the fastest in the world for about a decade. Unfortunately, they didn’t have height categories and I had to race against little guys like Ludwig. Can’t wait for him to read this . . . the guy rises to all bait! That’s what made him such a competitive driver."
Hmm, I guess we'll see whether Ludwig has, in fact, mellowed in his older age, won't we?
– I didn’t get everything that I wanted into my Monday Morning Racing Roundup yesterday. Left out was the fine result recorded by AIM Autosport of Woodbridge Ferrari drivers Max Papis and Jeff Segal at Barber Motorsport Park in Alabama on Saturday. Papis and Segal were fourth in the GT Class of the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series event, with the second AIM car raced by Emil Assentato and Anthony Lazzaro finishing ninth in class.
– I love dropping into Peterborough Speedway in the summertime for some great Saturday night racing. I usually catch a Can-Am Midget event and I can tell you that the regular late-model racers usually on the same program put on an excellent show. The Speedway announced in recent days that Attersley Tire of Peterborough had signed on to sponsor the Sat., Aug. 10, meet for the Lucas Oil Sportsman Cup. It’s great to see local businesses support area speedways.
– Meantime, the Ontario-based National Drag Racing Association, which features Alcohol Funny Cars and Pro Doorslammer racing, has announced that Xylotek Solutions Inc. of Cambridge have signed on as a corporate sponsor. Xylotek is a full-service IT consulting firm and is one of Canada’s fastest growing companies with revenues of more than $5 million.
– And NASCAR Canadian Tire Series racer David Thorndyke has announced that LubeSource, which distributes Shell lubricants in Ontario, will be his primary sponsor for the 2013 racing season. Thorndyke, who plans to run a limited schedule this year, will race in the season-opener at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park on Victoria Day weekend, May 19th.
This entry might not be as comprehensive as usual for a Monday Morning Racing Roundup but I spent much of Sunday researching and writing the entry directly below, which is about the death at 87 of Canadian broadcasting pioneer Johnny Esaw, and so I didn’t get to watch a lot of racing.
However, I’m not sure I missed all that much. The NASCAR and IndyCar Series races were both won from the pole – Jimmy Johnson in Sprint Cup and Ryan Hunter-Reay in open wheel. Yes, I’m sure there was a lot of action between the start and the finish of both those races but the fact that the two guys in front at the beginning were still there at the end indicates, to me, anyway, that there was really never any doubt about who was going to win.
And the fact that Canada’s great new hope in IndyCar, James Hinchcliffe of Oakville, spent the entire race strapped in his car while marooned on the far side of the Barber Motorsports Park circuit also meant I wasn’t all that disappointed to have to miss most of the race.
I’ll return to the racing in a moment. First, though, I have to say some more about Esaw.
Although he was primarily involved, and interested, in the traditional stick and ball sports, Esaw was a great friend of racing generally, and Canadian racing in particular.
What’s intriguing is that he wasn’t all that interested in the sport. But, as he told me when I interviewed him at length just about a year ago now for a feature in Toronto Star Wheels, he recognized that there was an audience for motor racing and that he and his station and network would benefit if he treated it with the respect it deserved.
It’s a pity that more of Canada’s broadcasters and newspaper editors haven’t felt the same way.
As I reported in the story below, Esaw and CFTO/CTV produced the first racing broadcast from what was Mosport International Raceway (or Mosport Park, if you want) in the early 1960s, shortly after the station and network went on the air.
For years, Esaw made the Canadian Formula Atlantic championship a part of CTV’s Wide World of Sports program on Saturdays. Much of the program came from ABC’s Wide World of Sports but Esaw had the races inserted into the lineup, with the late Craig Hill as host and analyst.
And, of course, as is also detailed below, starting in 1977 he had the Indianapolis 500 live on CTV for nine years before the ABC coverage went live in the United States. It was a broadcasting coupe.
Esaw told me he didn’t know much about racing but that he had to bone up in a hurry in order to negotiate deals for races. He said Tony Hulman, the late owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, was one of the nicest people he’d ever met and that Bernie Ecclestone was the toughest negotiator he’d encountered in any sport. He also said Stirling Moss was absolutely fascinating.
With his passing, another of the giants is gone. There really aren’t many, if any, left.
NASCAR
The highlight of the weekend, for me and my wife, was Megan McCormick’s song about Joey Logano that she performed with Kyle Petty on NASCAR Raceday Sunday morning on the Speed Channel (click here).
By the end, we were singing along:
Joey, Joey, Joey, Joey
I love you . . .
And our favourite line was:
Joey, pick me up
In your dad’s big truck. . .
The song was part of the all-week, never-ending, WWE-type buildup to Sunday’s race in Martsinville in which the villainous Joey Logano was, apparently, going to "get his" for deliberately wrecking, and hurting, Denny Hamlin in the race two weeks ago in California.
All we heard for most of the two weeks in between races was how there would be "payback."
Well, Logano was involved in a wreck at Martinsville, but so were a whole bunch of other drivers, which is what NASCAR is pretty much all about these days, but it wasn’t deliberate and so I guess we’ll have to wait another day for "payback" to happen, if it ever does.
Hamlin, of course, wasn’t racing Sunday – he’s too badly hurt to get into a car, although he was at the speedway Sunday – so any "payback" by him will have to wait but the word was out that one of his allies, or Tony Stewart, would do the deed and so that’s what all the pre-race excitement was about.
Johnson dominated, of course. He led most of the race and was never lower than fourth. Clint Bowyer finished second and Jeff Gordon was third (the last big "payback" story involved those two – remember the brawl after the race in Phoenix last fall? – but they were both on their best behaviour Sunday). Kasey Kahne was fourth, with Kyle Busch fifth – a heartbeat ahead of Brad Keselowski. Jamie McMurray was seventh, Marcos Ambrose was eighth and Greg Biffle ninth.
Driver of the race was Danica Patrick, who qualified 32nd but lost an engine and had to start 43rd. She was 11th until the final corner when she was bunted aside by Brian Vickers, who also moved Kevin Harvick out of the way.
She wound up 12th but that was a huge achievement, considering she has been struggling since her pole and eighth-place finish at Daytona and because Martinsville is not a place for the faint at heart. It is a physical wringing-out to go 500 laps on the half-mile short track and it’s a tradin’ paint place to boot. She more than held her own and even passed her boss, Tony Stewart, en route to the checkers.
Cool move of the race came when Kurt Busch crashed in Corner One and every liquid under the hood caught fire. Busch had the presence of mind to pull the on-board fire extinguisher to put out the flames before bailing out.
See AP Photo Gallery from Martinsville by clicking here.
INDYCAR
No songs to quote from to start this report but I’m sure James Hinchcliffe, with all his talent and imagination, could write one.
The winner of the first race of the season at St. Petersburg two weeks ago was hit from behind on the opening lap of the race by Oriol Servia, who – in turn – had been hit by Graham Rahal and required a tow back to the pits.
But a wheel came off his car and the IndyCar safety team had to park him in an access road, where he sat for all but the last 18 laps of the 90-lap event.
The team had told him to wait for a yellow and they would get him back to the pits – but there were no further yellows. So "the Mayor (of Hinchtown)" sat there in his car and did what all of us in our living rooms did: watch the race.
Hunter-Reay went pole to checkers. He was chased for the last 20 laps by Scott Dixon, who finished second at Barber for the fourth consecutive year. Helio Castroneves was third with Charlie Kimball fourth and Will Power fifth. Click here for full story and results.
Andretti Autosport, Hinchcliffe’s employer, told him to stay belted in his car for two reasons. First, points are awarded for every position from first to 26th (and last), so even if he was laps down before they could get him back in the race, he could benefit from points earned. Second, with no testing allowed, the team could benefit from having the car run laps in competition in anticipation of the next race, at Long Beach, in two weeks.
Said Hinchcliffe later: "From what I have been told, we all piled into Turn 8; I was behind Tony [Kanaan], [Graham] Rahal hit [Oriol] Servia who got in the back of me. I got in the back of Tony a little bit, but it was pretty square, and it didn’t do any damage to the front. I knew I had gotten hit, but everything was fine at first, but I guess, under caution, things started to work itself loose. As I started to warm the tires up, the wheel actually broke, that was what it was."
A.J. Allmendinger was doing really well in his return to open wheel racing but he stalled during a pit stop and eventually wound up 19th. Penske Racing will still run him at Long Beach in order to give him more seat time before Indianapolis.
Dario Franchitti’s miserable season continued. A broken header led to more serious problems and the four-time champion wound up 25th, one place ahead of Hinchcliffe.
Alex Tagliani of Montreal started 15th and finished 11th. He also was hit from behind and suffered structural damage but soldiered on for a good finish.
Three more things before I take my leave.
1. The last time an Indy car driver won a race and finished last in the next was in 1956 and the unlucky guy was hard-luck racer Lloyd Ruby. Hinch is in good company as Ruby was a helluva shoe.
2. Ryan Briscoe, dropped by Team Penske this year in as strange a move as its embracing of Allmendinger is, will race for Target Chip Ganassi Racing in the Indianapolis 500.
3. I just about fell off my chair when I heard one of the announcers say that a driver – I think it was Justin Wilson – had been seen before the race giving instructions to a volunteer pit-crew member on how to change a tire.
Canadian broadcasting legend Johnny Esaw has died. He was 87.
Other than CBC's Hockey Night in Canada, Esaw pioneered live sports broadcasting in Canada, concentrating on CFL football, figure skating, golf, tennis, horse show-jumping, auto racing and international hockey on the CTV network.
It was Esaw who conducted the famous interview with Team Canada captain Phil Esposito after the 1972 Summit Series loss to the Soviets in Vancouver that many believe united the country behind the team.
He was born in North Battleford, Sask., in 1925 and after trying to become a professional hockey player started a broadcasting career that took him to Winnipeg and then Toronto in 1960 where he was sports director of CFTO and launched sports broadcasting on the then-new CTV network.
Esaw was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 2004. He is in Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame, the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame, the CAB Broadcast Hall of Fame, the Canadian Figure Skating Hall of Fame and the Canadian Football Reporters Hall of Fame.
He was known internationally as the TV executive who broadcast the Indianapolis 500 live in Canada before it happened in the United States. He also produced the first live auto race broadcast from Mosport International Raceway (now Canadian Tire Motorsport Park) in the 1960s.
He was best known, though, for being the voice of the CFL on CTV, and announcing Grey Cup Games. He announced from 1962 till 1973 and was host of CFL broadcasts from 1974 till 1986.
Much of his success resulted from a close friendship he had with the late ABC executive Roone Arledge, who was president of ABC News and Sports. In an interview I did with him last year, Esaw reminisced about those days.
“I’d been hired to be sports director of CFTO, which was just going on the air (in 1960),” said Esaw.
“Roone was just starting his career at ABC. He wanted to televise the World Figure Skating Championships from Vancouver and wasn’t getting anywhere with the organizers. He asked if I’d help out.”
Esaw, who was well known in western Canada for being the “voice” of both the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Saskatchewan Roughriders and who’d been lead announcer on several Grey Cup broadcasts by that time, managed to buy the figure skating North American rights for CFTO and the ABC network.
“Roone was very appreciative,” said Esaw. “So appreciative, in fact, that we kept in close touch and when we launched the CTV network (in October, 1961) I was able to get Wide World of Sports weekly, three major golf tournaments a year, heavyweight championship fights and just about anything else I wanted from ABC and it didn’t cost CFTO or CTV anything.”
A coup at the time, Esaw convinced Arledge to let him broadcast the Indy 500 live for CTV for the first time in 1977, nearly 10 years before it went live in America.
While ABC host Jim McKay and colour commentator Jackie Stewart were taping the spectacle for broadcast in the United States that evening, Esaw and Fort Wayne, Ind., radio personality Hilliard Gates were in a booth right beside them, broadcasting the race as it happened across Canada and into northern U.S. cities where aerials could pick up the CTV signals.
Gates, who died in 1996, was the best-known sports announcer in Indiana, a man whose voice was so distinctive he appeared as the announcer in the 1986 high school basketball movie Hoosiers. He was a legend in his own time and when Esaw went looking for a sidekick to do colour on that first Indy 500 broadcast, the selection of Gates (left, with Esaw) was a no-brainer.
“I made the deal with ABC to go live with our coverage,” he told me in that interview. “I didn’t see any reason to hold back. ABC was taping it. They would show it that night at 8 o’clock. They agreed to let me do it live. It was on our border stations across Canada, so some Americans were actually seeing it — but the vast majority had to wait till later.
“The guy who owned the speedway was Tony Hulman, who was one of the nicest men I ever met in sport. He treated us so well that first year. It was a great experience; there was 400,000 people there. Jim Nabors was singing, I never realized how good a singer he was, the marching bands would come along, and the Purdue University girls in their gold outfits . . .
“They played the U.S. national anthem and the cars would start up. My heart is pumping! I can’t believe what I’m seeing! The balloons would go off into the sky and the race would start. All those things were foreign to me, but I got so pumped up. . .”
In addition to Gates, Esaw also got to work with the late Chris Economaki, the editor/publisher of the weekly National Speed Sport News newspaper, who Arledge hired to work on race broadcasts.
“He was the first colour commentator on ABC,” Esaw said, “and I knew him very well. He was a writer and then a commentator. Unlike a lot of today’s sports announcers and commentators, he knew how to ask questions. He and I were very alike in that way. Anybody who worked for me did it my way and my way was to ask pointed questions.”
Esaw, Gates and CTV did the Indy 500 live until 1986 when ABC decided to go live itself. It wasn’t part of any long-range plan, though. In fact, the network was forced into it when a sports break announcer in 1985 inadvertently announced the winner of the race in the middle of the tape-delay telecast and there was a national outrage.
“So when ABC decided to broadcast it live in the afternoon, there was no reason for me to continue doing it,” Esaw said. “I got the feed as part of the original Wide World of Sports deal, so I was happy.”
Johnny Esaw retired from broadcasting and other media duties in 1996, when he was 71. Since then, he has lived quietly with his wife in midtown Toronto, spending the winters in Florida.
Here is a link to my complete story of how Johnny Esaw came to televise the Indy 500 before it happened in America. Click here.
Ryan Hunter-Reay won the pole Saturday for Sunday's Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama IndyCar series race with a blistering lap of 1 minute and 07:0871 seconds around the Barber Motorsports Park road course just outside Birmingham, Alabama.
Scott Dixon threw down the gauntler early in qualifying by smashing the track record by more than three seconds. But by the time the dust had settled, Dixon was fourth fastest behind RHR, Will Power and rookie Tristan Vautier.
It wasn't the best of days for the two Canadians racing in the series. Alex Tagliani of Montreal will go off 15th on Sunday afternoon and St. Petersburg race winner James Hinchcliffe of Oakville will start 20th.
Hinchcliffe was slowest of the four Andretti Autsport drivers, with Hunter-Reay on pole, Marco Andretti seventh and pay driver E.J. Viso 16th.
Said Hinchcliffe later: "We've been struggling a little bit this weekend compared to the test (before the season started when he set second fastest time). We didn't have the quickest car, but had enough for Q2 . . . got held up by another car and ended up getting knocked out.
"It's frustrating, but we've got an extra set of reds (Firestone red alternate tires) than those guys now in the race and maybe degradation will come into it tomorrow. We'll keep fighting and hopefully get the Go Daddy car up in a good position by the end of the day."
The competition in the IndyCar series is ferocious this season. Defending champion Hunter Reay's 1:07:0871 (that's an average of 123:422 miles an hour, by the way) was only a smidgen of a second faster than the 26th - and last - qualifyer, Ed Carpenter, who went around in 1:08:6362.
Other notables: A.J. Allmendinger qualified 10th in his return to IndyCar. Translation: bloody good. Simona de Silvestro, who was fastest in the last practice session before qualifying - one commentator suggested everybody drop the "Swiss Miss" monicker and make it "Swiss Missile" - dropped to 14th when the chips were down. Dario Franchitti continued turning in a less-than-stellar performance this year by qualifying 17th. And five-time Champ Car titleist Sebastien Bourdais will go off 23rd out of 26.
Finally, a bunch of people email me today to say they can't find where the race is on TV Sunday. Wheels has a service especially for folks like these and it's called Wheels Presents George's TV Listings for Race Fans and you can find it by clicking here.
Bookmark it, and you will never have to email me again.
Earlier,
I can’t figure out whether Denny Hamlin is still mad at Joey Logano or just mouthing off in hopes of stimulating interest in Sunday's Sprint Cup race at Martinsville, Va.
Or if he even listens to what’s coming out of his own mouth.
Speed Channel sent out the text of a question-and-answer session it conducted with Hamlin the other day and I read it and I ended up very confused.
For instance:
“I ultimately spun him out at Bristol. I did not intend to spin him out. It was a mistake. I said it was mistake. Said I was sorry on the radio when it happened. That was in retaliation to being chopped off twice and it frustrated me and I intended on bumping him, and then I did and it spun him out.”
See what I mean? He says he didn’t intend to spin Logan out, that it was mistake, he said he was sorry. So far, so good. Then he said it was retaliation. Excuse me? It’s either on purpose or not on purpose and Denny just managed to put both into the same sentence.
I’m sorry Denny Hamilin got hurt when he and Logano collided at Auto Club Speedway in California two weeks ago and they both crashed.
But it wasn’t Logano’s fault that Hamlin was injured; it was the Auto Club Speedway’s fault for not having either a SAFER barrier or foam blocks in place at the spot where Hamlin ran square into a cement wall.
That crash was no different than crashes that happen all the time in NASCAR. If there’d been foam or a SAFER barrier where Hamlin hit, chances are he walks away.
By continuing to talk about it in a way that suggests none of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for Logano, Hamlin is setting up the young Penske driver for payback. More than one driver in the last week has talked about Martinsville as being a great place to “get back” at people because the track is small and the speeds aren’t that great.
Which says to me that these guys (and the one woman) have all been lulled into a false sense of security that is going to end in tears one of these days.
Small track, big track – it doesn’t matter. If you’re going more than 100 miles an hour, as they do at Martinsville, you can be killed in a crash. There could be an equipment failure, or the angle of the collision with the wall could be just so, or (as I saw happen once, back in the 1980s) a car going quickly could hammer a stationary car unexpectedly and kill the person in it.
Yes, NASCAR Sprint Cup cars are just like bumper cars, most of the time. That’s why the drivers feel safe in them and talk in a cavalier manner about payback.
Sooner or later, the odds are going to catch up and somebody who starts a race isn’t going to be alive when it ends.
It’s bad enough when it happens to somebody like Dan Wheldon, or Dale Earnhardt – when it’s just “one of them racin’ deals.”
But when people talk in a manner that could be interpreted, by some, as a threat, and there’s a fatality, does NASCAR want to even think about going there?
This is not the WWE, where everything is staged. This is real life and real racing and NASCAR would be wise to step in and shut all this down before things really get out of hand.
In qualifying at Martinsville, Jimmy Johnson will start on the pole for Sunday's race, turning a lap in 19.244 seconds for an average speed of 98.400 miles an hour. All of the 43 drivers who attempted to qualify (Joe Nemechek was last) were less than a second behind the pole sitter. Wow. Marcos Ambrose, Brian Vickers, Joe Logano and Kasy Kahne were the others in the top five. . .
At Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama, Helio Castroneves was fastest in IndyCar practice for Sunday's race, with Canadian Alex Tagliani second and Tristan Vautier third. James Hinchcliffe of Oakville, who won the season opener in St. Petersburg, Fla., two weeks ago, was 15th fastest. A.J. Allmendinger, returning to the open cockpit wars after spending time in NASCAR - he's driving for Roger Penske this weekend - was eighth fastest. All 26 cars were within three seconds of each other. . . .
It's a Grand Am sports car weekend at Barber too. The two AIM Autosport of Woodbridge Ferrari entries will go off seventh and eighth in the GT class in the Saturday race. Jon Fogerty won the pole in a Daytona Prototype Corvette.
Conor Daly, a young America hot shoe who had to come to Canada to find out how a racing car really works, has been signed by A.J. Foyt Racing to contest the Indianapolis 500 in May.
The son of ex-Indy car star and F1 racer Derek Daly will join Takuma Sato in the team.
As is the case with most successful racing drivers these days, Daly, of Noblesville, Ind., just outside Indianapolis, started out in karts as a child and progressed to driving in occasional formula-car races in 2007, the year he turned 16.
In 2008, his first full season of car racing, he drove in the Skip Barber National Championship Series as well as the Ontario Formula Ford Challenge series.
And why come to Canada to race? His father had a ready answer when I talked to him about it once at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. He credited the Ontario FF series for much of his son’s development as a racing driver.
"We made the decision to come to Canada to run with Brian Graham Racing so that Conor could better understand the engineering of a racing car, something he couldn’t get in the United States at that time.
"He was running the Skip Barber (national) Series in the U.S. at the same time (as his time in Ontario) but he wasn’t allowed to change the car (to suit his style). His season up here gave him a much better understanding of the way a racing car works and how to change or adjust it to his advantage and he won races and was successful."
He’s been pretty successful since, too. He won the Star Mazda Championship in 2010 and has won races since in Indy Lights and the European GP3 Series. He’s raced twice this season in GP2 and tested for Foyt at Sebring earlier this year.
Antoine L’Estage of St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., the five-time North American Rally Champion and five-time Canadian Rally Champion with co-driver Nathalie Richard of Halifax, N.S., will be at the wheel of a World Rally Championship Mitsubishi Lancer for the remaining events of the Rally America series, starting the first weekend in May at the Oregon Trail Rally.
"This is big news!" L’Estage said in a release this week. "To take part in rallies at the wheel of a car that has been in the World Rally Championship is fantastic and I’m really looking forward to more great battles with (opponents) Ken Block and David Higgins," he said.
"Our hard work has come to fruition in the form of an agreement with MML Sports of the U.K., with whom we already tested the car last November in the Czech Republic. All of our sponsors play a big role in this as well and we are thrilled to have our partners on board."
L'Estage is unbeatable on this side of the Atlantic. Is the WRC team bringing that car over here to test the Canadian ace's ability for a possible ride in future? Stay tuned.
The U.S. Auto Club announced this week that eight "greats" would be inducted into the racing organization’s Hall of Fame: Earl Baltes (former owner and developer of the famed, Tony Stewart-owned, Eldora Speedway in Ohio), Henry Banks (midget racer-Indy 500 veteran-USAC competition director), legendary drivers Duane (Pancho) Carter Jr., Al Unser and Bobby Unser, car builder and chief mechanic A.J. Watson, USAC stock-car ace Don White, Indy car team owner and USAC supporter Bob Wilke, and drivers Tony Bettenhausen, Tom Bigelow, Jack Hewitt and Johnny Rutherford.
I have no personal knowledge of Baltes, other than what I’ve read, but I’ve been fortunate enough to have watched, met, interviewed and, in some cases, hung around with all of the others.
For instance, I spent an afternoon with Banks at Indy in 1969. The USAC competition director and his pal, chief steward Harlan Fengler, were giants at Indianapolis back then, when the "500" attracted the best from all the many and varied disciplines of racing – sprints, midgets, stock cars, sports cars, formula cars. They were glory days.
Banks scared me when he talked about his midget-racing days. Never mind roll cages; they didn’t even have roll bars when he raced and, as he put it, fatalties were common. He said it was a happy day when he left the cockpit to concentrate on race administration.
I loved watching Pancho Carter race sprint cars and dirt champ cars. One time at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, 22 champ cars took the green and all went into Turn One sideways, throwing huge rooster tails of dirt over the outside wall. There were plumes of dust and dirt everywhere and as they powered out of Two, one car straightened out before all the others and just shot itself down the backstretch, heading for Three. I can still hear my pal Al Listiak leaping to his feet and yelling at the top of his lungs: PANCHO!!!!
And that’s who it was, all right.
I had a long chat with him at the 1990 Molson Indy Toronto. He was driving for the Wilke family’s Leader Card Racing team and it had poured during the race. Because of his talent controlling race cars on dirt, he was passing cars left and right in the rain and I was going nuts thinking he was going to win. Dan Proudfoot of the Toronto Sun was standing beside me and was likewise impressed and excited. But water got into the electrics and the car stalled out and that was that but he told me afterward that if the car "had behaved," he was going to win.
I knew about Watson because of my fascination with the Indy cars of the 1950s (many of which were transformed into my beloved supermodifieds of the late 1960s and early '70s). At one time, most of the cars in the "500" came out of his California shop. His hair went white prematurely and you can still spot his flat-top brushcut a mile away.
The first Vancouver Molson Indy was in 1990 and I was driving along Robson St. one afternoon and I looked over at some people standing at a bus stop and there was A.J. Watson. So I offered him a lift and asked him what he was doing.
It turned out he’d started walking away from the B.C. Place stadium area (where the temporary race circuit had been built) to take a look at downtown Vancouver and he’d just kept walking and walking. By the time he figured it was time to go back, he was too tired to walk the return trip so he decided to hop on a bus.
I bumped into Abe Vigoda ("Fish" on Barney Miller) later that day, but that wasn’t nearly as exciting as being able to offer a ride to A.J. Watson.
In the summer of 1966, the USAC stock cars raced at Mosport and Canada’s own Billy Foster brought his Indy car for a demonstration run between the stock car heats. (Contrary to what you might have been told, Foster did not drive the track backwards. But I digress.)
Foster and Don White, a champion, put on an incredible show that afternoon, with White leading one time around and Foster the next. Foster eventually suffered a mechanical malfunction and dropped out; White finished but was beaten to the checkers by the little-known Sal Tovela (making for a wonderful bit of racing trivia).
Another bit of racing trivia that day was the professional debut of Tony Bettenhausen Jr., who went from the stock-car circuit to drive Indy cars and to own a team in the CART series.
I could go on about the Unsers, and Tom Bigelow (what a welcoming guy he was in 1977 at the Molson Diamond Indy at Mosport, once he found out that the reporter who barged into his garage after the race wanted to talk sprint cars instead of the Indy cars – he still has the most wins in USAC sprint car history) but I’ll close off this entry with a few paragraphs about the greatest character of them all, Jack Hewitt of Troy, Ohio.
Hewitt won 34 dirt champ car races in his career, seven midget wins and 46 in the sprint cars. He made it to Indy in 1998, where he finished 12th, and told me once in an interview that it was the greatest day of his life.
"I was gonna go race that night up in Ohio in the sprints," he said, "but you know, I was at Indy and I just didn’t want to leave. It got dark and they put the lights on and I just stayed and stayed and it was just the greatest feeling. They finally had to tell me to go home, they were gonna close up."
In 1998 at Eldora Speedway, he swept the USAC 4-Crown Nationals, an accomplishment I think should have been on front pages all over the continent. He won four races in one day, driving for four different teams in midgets, sprints, dirt champ cars and modifieds. Absolutely incredible.
Now, Jack has been known to get lippy, and if you want to see him in full meltdown mode, click here.
But what I value, more than anything else, is his sense of humour.
One night at the old Manzanita Speedway in Phoenix, Jack was being interviewed by track announcer Windy McDonald (no relation, although you sometimes wonder . . .) and they were talking about the Indy 500 Jack had been in.
"Jack," said McDonald, "what was really memorable about that race?"
And Jack said, "Well, with me in it, Lynn St. James wasn’t the only driver with a moustache."
People heard that, and their mouths dropped open in surprise and astonishment, and then they started to giggle and before long the entire grandstand was full of folks just killing themselves laughing.
Everything you read and hear about Danica Patrick says she’s five feet tall and weighs 100 pounds.
I don’t believe it. I’ve interviewed her – been in the same room, standing and sitting right beside her – and I don’t think she’s quite that tall and I suggest she weighs 90 lbs., not 100.
She’s remarkably fit-looking and obviously very healthy.
But she’s tiny. How tiny?
I came across this photograph the other day – it’s a year old, at least – of her dropping the puck at a St. Louis Blues-Chicago Blackhawks game. Her hair weighs more than she does. Beside those two huge hockey players, she’s a wisp.
In her own way, of course, she’s as tough as they are. But size-wise? No contest.
I have an excuse to use that photo today, thanks to the PR people for her sponsor, GoDaddy. They sent a release saying Patrick had participated in the Easter Egg hunt at the White House in support of Michelle Obama’s fight against obesity in schoolchildren.
A picture of health, Danica Patrick is anything but obese and a wonderful role model for young children, particularly the girls.
The Toronto Blue Jays begin their march to the World Series tonight at the Rogers Centre and one lucky fan is going to go home with a brand new, 2013, CR-V EX-L compact SUV, courtesy of Opening Night sponsor, Honda Canada.
It gets better. The second-place winner will receive a Honda CBR500R motorcycle and a learn-to-ride training course. The third place winner will receive a complete Honda lawn package, which includes a lawn mower, a trimmer and a tiller all powered by Honda 4-stroke engines.
(That is the prize I would want to win, if I should be so lucky, considering the disaster that's in front of my Mississauga dwelling.)
The three fans will be chosen at random from among the 50,000-plus who are expected to jam themselves into the sold-out Rogers Centre Tuesday night.
Jerry Bonkowski is a feature writer for the Bleacher Report (bleacherreport.com) and did a nice job this week on the late NASCAR champion Alan Kulwicki, who was killed in a plane crash months after winning the 1992 Winston Cup in a showdown against Bill Elliott in the season-ending race at Atlanta.
Monday was the 20th anniversary of the tragedy.
Entitled, ”Remembering Alan Kulwicki, a NASCAR great who truly did things his way,” the column captures much of what Kulwicki was about: a university educated kid from northern Wisconsin who “went South” and beat the NASCAR good ol’ boys at their game.
I only saw Kulwicki up close once and that was at New York’s Oswego Speedway in the mid-1980s, when he was running with the ASA and honing his craft. Bob Senneker, Butch Miller, Mike Eddy, Mark Martin and all those guys were there. They were a pretty professional bunch.
But one guy, Kulwicki, stood out. No, he didn’t win that night – I’m not even sure he was really in the hunt – but what struck me about him was his fastidious way of doing things.
When he and the four guys with him unloaded earlier in the day, one of the crew swept the pit area clean before the car came out of the trailer. All of the tools were taken out of boxes and organized on a portable work bench they had with them. It was a very sharp-looking operation.
About a half-hour before driver and team introductions, Kulwicki went into the hauler and emerged with crew shirts and pants in dry-cleaning bags. He took them out and hung them up in a row on a clotheseline that stretched out from the corner of the hauler. He kept going over to that row of clothes and moving a hanger a quarter of an inch one way or the other. You could have taken a photograph of that display of clothing and nothing would have been out of place, it was so picture-perfect.
Ten minutes before intros, they pushed the car out on the speedway and put it into line and then returned to their pit where each man took his outfit off the clothesline and went into the transporter to change, emerging with minutes to spare. They then went to the car and split up to form short rows on either side, with driver Kulwicki in front.
All the other cars and drivers looked good when introduced, the ASA being a first-class organization, but none were even close to Kulwicki’s gang when it came to spit ‘n polish.
I’ve often thought about that night. There were a lot of talented drivers in that field, but with the exception of Mark Martin, Kulwicki was the only one who made it to the big time, to “The Show,” and I’m sure one of the contributing factors to his success was that he paid attention to every last little detail.
Nothing was too small for his full attention and I’m convinced he became champion and the others didn't because of that high level of concentration and commitment.
He was one of a kind. Yes, there are drivers as good as he was, and crew chiefs as good as he was, and team managers as good as he was and team owners as good. But he was all of them, rolled into one.
