Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Was the Denny Hamlin-NASCAR spat real?

I inherited my cynicism from my mother.

Years and years ago, in the early 1950s, we were sitting in the dentist’s office and because there were no comic books, I was looking at Photoplay, which was a "movie magazine" of the times. There was a picture of Elizabeth Taylor on the cover, taken of her in a nightclub, and in front of her, on the table, slightly out of focus, was a package of Salem cigarettes.

So I said to my mother that I had never seen Elizabeth Taylor smoke in the movies and here was a package of cigarettes in a picture of her. And my mother looked at me and said, decades before I heard anybody talk about product placement:

"They pay her to let them put those cigarettes there."

I was astonished.

Really, I thought?

But the more I thought about it, the more what my mother had said made sense and I learned a valuable lesson from it, one that has stood me in good stead throughout my newspaper career: don’t believe everything you hear or see because there are people out there cooking up all sorts of gimmicks and stunts to draw attention to their products or businesses or causes and the interest generated may not accurately reflect reality because of this manipulation.

Which brings me to last weekend.

After the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Phoenix, Danny Hamlin got out of his car and, in answer to a question about the new generation six car, said: "I don’t want to be the pessimist, but it did not race as good as our generation five cars. This is more like what the generation five was at the beginning."

Tuesday, NASCAR announced it was fining Hamlin $25,000 for comments detrimental to stock car racing. Hamlin reacted by saying he wasn’t going to pay the fine and that the powers-that-be could suspend him if they wanted to.

To my knowledge, neither party has said anything more since.

But others have. Boy, have they ever.

Usually after a car race (any car race, by the way, be it F1 or IndyCar or NASCAR), there is a lull in publicity. After the Sunday night TV shows are watched and the overnight blogs and Monday morning race reports are read, nobody (except the most rapid of fans) really cares all that much about car racing until interest naturally starts to build for the next race, which could be three or four days later. That’s the way it is with NFL football and PGA golf, too. Sports restricted to weekends pretty much endure the same pattern.

Except this time, there was no lull. There was no letup. Google "Denny Hamlin" and "NASCAR" and "fine" and count up the number of stories and columns written about this "controversy" that had its start last Sunday night and continued through to the race in Las Vegas this weekend (and that’s not considering the number of sports radio call-in shows and TV programs that tackled the "issue"). You will need a calculator to add them all up.

Now, if Denny Hamlin had said something – anything – about NASCAR or stock car racing or the new race cars that could be considered controversial or damaging, then I might understand NASCAR getting upset.

But there was nothing; absolutely nothing.

So was there something else going on here?

Something like: I heard what Denny Hamlin said and I saw NASCAR’s reaction to it and then I thought of my mother and that picture of Elizabeth Taylor with the cigarettes.

Sixty years later, they’re not only still at it, they've perfected it.

I watched Wind Tunnel on Speed Channel last night because it featured two of my favourite motorsport personalities, Robin Miller and James Hinchcliffe, and I saw – for the most part – a replay of the Speed Center news program.

For the first 15 minutes, I had to endure a repeat of all of the NASCAR stuff that had been on for an hour previously, including yet another interview with Sam Hornish Jr.

Sam might be a nice guy, but let’s be honest: he puts you to sleep.

Then, after the break, Miller "interviewed" Hinchcliffe by reading questions off a teleprompter. James kept looking down at his notes for the answers.

What a waste of two wonderful talents.

Somebody has got it in for that program and is sabotaging it by making it as boring as possible. What used to be an hour of off-the-wall fun and outrageous opinions has been cut back to 30 minutes of scripted predictability.

Such a shame.

Matt Kenseth and Joe Gibbs Racing showed Sunday why they should be taken seriously for the 2013 Sprint Cup Championship when they won the Kobalt Tools 400 at Las Vegas Speedway.

Kasey Kahne finished second and defending Cup champion Brad Keselowski was third, just ahead of Kyle Busch. Carl Edwards finished fifth.

In only his third race for the team, Kenseth opted to take no tires when he went to the pits for fuel on Lap 225. It was this decision that eventually gave Kenseth the win. Full race report here.

In the Nationwide Series Saturday, Sam Hornish Jr. won. Kyle Busch was second, with Brian Vickers third, Trevor Bayne fourth and Elliott Saddler fifth.

Thank goodness the long winter is over. Formula One starts its season in Australia Friday, the American Le Mans Series has the 12 Hours of Sebring scheduled for Saturday and the IZOD IndyCar Series kicks off 2013 with the St. Petersburg Grand Prix in Florida a week from Sunday. Check George’s TV Listings for Race Fans at wheels.ca for times and channels.

Tony Stewart isn’t exactly setting the world on fire this Sprint Cup season. Maybe he needs a dose of sprint car racing to get him going.

Two years ago, he hadn’t won a Cup race by the time he showed up in July at the Six Nations Ohsweken Speedway to run with the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series. He won that race on the little dirt track near Brantford and it turned his NASCAR season around.

Who knows? Maybe it will happen again. It was announced last week that Stewart will return to Ohsweken this July to see if he can score a hat trick (he won the race last July, too).

As the Ohsweken release put it, "Smoke" will compete against Ohsweken’s Corr/Pal Merchandising Sprint Car teams in the "Norther Summer Nationals"  on Monday, July 29. The next night, July 30, Stewart and the Outlaws will race in the "Six Nations Showdown."

Get your tickets early. You couldn’t move in that place last summer, so many people were there.

Ryan Villopoto won his second Monster Energy Supercross of 2013 Saturday night at Daytona Speedway in Florida. Villopoto, James Stewart, Chad Reed and all those guys will be at the Rogers Centre in Toronto a week from Saturday. They always put on a great show.

I like a good story, too, but I can’t get excited about A.J. Allmendinger driving two races for Roger Penske.. . . . David Ostella of Maple, who’s been in the Indy Lights Series the last couple of seasons, is going sports car racing and will be competing in the Prototype Challenge class in this weekend’s 12 Hours of Sebring. Kyle Marcelli of Barrie will be an opponent. . . . Remo Ruscitti of Vancouver has signed with Compass360 Racing (C360R) of Toronto to drive the team's No. 72 Honda Civic Si in the 2013 Pirelli World Challenge Touring Car championship. . . . I was all for this electric car formula car racing series until they said the drivers would switch cars during the "race." That’s not competition, that’s a demonstration. That’s like the movement a couple of years ago to make the point of tennis the length of the rally, rather than scoring points. Or youth soccer where nobody keeps score. What is this, anyway?

Grand Prix Preview: Hamilton will be champion, Donaldson says, but Norris disagrees

Every year, around this time, usually over breakfast, I sit down with my good friend, Gerald Donaldson, to break bread and discuss the upcoming Formula One season.

Donaldson, of course, knows more about F1 than any other Canadian alive and has been covering the sport and writing books about it — several dozen books, in fact — since the 1970s.

So we order our pancakes and bacon and I turn on the tape recorder and ask the questions and “Gerry” answers away. I then transcribe the conversation and dress it up a little bit and usually put it in Toronto Star Wheels the day before the season starts, which would be next weekend.

Big mistake.

This is because Donaldson (or I) will go on record as saying this driver will be fast and that car will be slow and this is fine — except the timing often turns out to be terrible.

By putting predictions in the paper the day before the first race, I leave us open to ridicule because the cars have already been out for two practice sessions the day before, on the Friday, and we are left with egg on our faces because our predictions sometimes turn out to be wrong.

So, this year, I’m not taking any chances. This is the preview and it’s on this website a whole week before the first race. This way, we won’t be wrong until at least next Friday.

Of course, it might very well turn out that we’re right.

Whichever — I hope you enjoy what follows.

Gerry, right off the top, what kind of a season do we have to look forward to?

For the most part, the rules are the same as they were last year so the cars will be pretty even and this suggests close racing. Next year, there will be big changes. They are going from 2.4-litre V8 engines to 1.6-litre turbos. The big teams have already said they will switch their focus to next year pretty early in the season, which further opens up the possibilities for this year. The small teams are just going to invest in this year because they don’t have any money to invest in the future so that could make things really interesting.

There are five rookies and they are all pay drivers. Is this good?

It’s always been the case in Formula One. The most famous pay driver was Niki Lauda, who borrowed money against his life insurance policy and won three world championships. A superstar. The Mexican, Esteban Gutierrez, is being supported by Carlos Slim, the richest guy in the world. Max Chilton at Marussia, his father (Grahame) is so wealthy he bought half the team.

However, all of these guys have a good track record. It’s not as if they’re diluting the talent pool. And they’re replacing guys who didn’t do a lot — Bruno Senna, Kamui Kobayashi, Vitaly Petrov. It’s not a bad thing necessarily and it’s not a new thing at all.

I have to slip in some Canadian content here. Robert Wickens, a very talented Canadian, when they were racing in the lesser categories, consistently defeated Gutierrez. Robert is in the DTM and Gutierrez is in Formula One. Poor Wickens beat Jean-Eric Vergne for the Formula 3.5 championship and Vergne is in Formula One and Robert is in touring cars. Is there any justice in the world?

What Robert Wickens needs is a Canadian multibillionaire to back him, which is the case with Gutierrez and Carlos Slim. Robert is not doomed; he had a good year last year in his rookie season, he’s very popular with the team and the fans and the future bodes well.

Okay, the testing is finished and it was really quite amusing this year because, at one time or another, just about everybody led a session; just about everybody topped the charts. For what it’s worth, I think the McLaren is going to turn out to be a rocket. What do you think?

You say you have a hunch about McLaren. I can tell you it’s a wonderful year for hunches. Everybody in the paddock is talking with hunches. Nobody knows what’s going to happen; there’s no foregone conclusion. This year could be even more unpredictable than 2012, which was wonderfully unpredictable.

Okay, quit beating around the bush. Who do you think will win the championship?

It’s my custom every year when we do this to take a big gamble. I’m going to take a driver who switched teams, to a team that hasn’t done much of anything but this year they seem poised to do well. I think Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes will be champion.

My goodness! You mean to tell me that Sebastian Vettel’s reign is coming to an end?

He will have much stronger competition than last year. All the testing didn’t prove a thing, other than to show that the championship and the racing will be extremely close.

Adrien Newey, the greatest designer in F1, has no idea where his team stands in relation to the others. It was a typical pre-season, in that some were sandbagging, some were really testing different things. The kicker here is the Pirelli tries. This year, they have gone more aggressive than ever with the tire compounds.

It’s a bit of a dichotomy for a tire company. Pirelli’s brief is to make tires that don’t last. They wear out quickly, deliberately. They have different compounds that have different stages of degradation. No one has any idea how they will behave in race conditions. It will be a big free-for-all, particularly in the early races until everybody becomes familiar with how the tires behave.

Okay, let’s go down the list and discuss the teams. How do you see Red Bull-Renault doing in 2013?

Vettel will not lose any of his talent. He’s improved every year and he’s a triple world champion. So he’s going to be right up there. But I wonder about the management of that team. The sponsor – Red Bull’s – representative is Dr. Halmut Marko who has a knack of putting his foot in his mouth and he’s done it again.

He says Mark Webber, Vettel’s teammate, is not capable of winning a championship. That’s going to light a fire under Webber. He’s 36, the oldest guy in the field and this is his last chance. Unless they give team orders right from the start of the season, those guys will be fighting each other harder than anybody else in the field, particularly Webber.

Maybe this is a psychological ploy but those are fighting words and they could have been said behind closed doors rather than in public. To do it out front like that is not good for team morale. We have to remember that the cars are side-by-side in the garage and the engineers and mechanics on either side are with their driver. So he’s really dividing the team.

Will Fernando Alonso come close to winning the title. And what about Ferrari as a whole?

Alonso will be close-er to the championship. Both Alonso and Massa have said the car is on a different planet. It is much better. Everybody in the field agrees Ferrari is looking good. Alonso would probably be a safer bet for a champion than Lewis Hamilton, but I’ve made my pick. He is probably the best all-rounder in F1 at the moment.

Massa? First, Alonso will not tolerate a quick teammate; we know that and he’s the team leader. Massa came on strong at the end of last season (after his contract was renewed) but he knows his place, he’s a real team player and he knows his place. Everybody in the paddock loves him, including Alonso — so far. Ferrari will be strong and Alonso will be basically backed up by Massa.

How do you see McLaren? I think they have a rocket. Sergio Perez was a surprise signing and, at 33, Jenson  Button ain’t getting’ any younger.

Jenson won the championship in 2009 because he had the best car. He’s a good journeyman driver who, on a good day, can beat anybody but he doesn’t have a good day every Grand Prix. Everything’s got to be perfect; he won’t drive around a problem.

He’ll be pushed by Perez, who’s a bit of an unknown quantity with a top team. He did well with Sauber but he’s got a bit of a reputation of being a hot-head and it will be interesting to see how he handles the pressure of being with a team like McLaren.

During this conversation, we’ve danced around a bit and neither of us has mentioned Lotus-Renault, or Kimi Raikkonen. How do you see that team and Kimi?

First, Romain Grosjean (the No. 2) has been given yet another chance; he crashed a lot last year, stupid crashes. . . but he will straighten out. We used to watch him in GP2 and he was as good in GP2 as Lewis Hamilton, who was the best there’s ever been in GP2. So he’ll straighten out.

Kimi, his teammate, is without doubt the most popular Formula One driver of them all. Everybody loves him because he’s so quirky. He’s so against the grain. Remember last year, he put himself into history with the simple phrase over the radio, ‘Leave me alone, I know what I’m doing.’ And he does know what he’s doing.

Lotus is a feel-good story in F1. It’s a grand old name and last year it was a comeback team with a comeback driver. Kimi loves racing. He’s a hard racer but a safe one. Last year, he was the only driver to complete every lap of every race despite the fact he was so aggressive. Yes, he knows what he’s doing.

So you’re picking Lewis to win the championship. Tell me about the team, Mercedes.

They have a whole bunch of new technical people and the car is better. They’ve also got a driver who can get the best out of that car, Lewis Hamilton. His teammate, and they’ve been good friends their entire lives, Nico Rosberg, is a good, steady driver. This will be a test of their friendship; they live next door to each other in Monaco.

But there is a bit of dissension within that team. They brought in Niki Lauda and a new team manager and the personnel are a bit confused about who’s in charge. At the moment it’s Ross Brawn and he says he’s in charge but I wouldn’t be surprised if he leaves. It will be a test of his perseverance to hang in there.

Niki Lauda is a wonderful character but he doesn’t have a great track record of being in charge. That will be the only part of Mercedes that might not work. I think they’re good with the car, the engines and the drivers.

But the rest of the team . . .

Okay, those are the top dogs. Let’s talk about some of the lesser teams, starting with Sauber.

This is the best of the rest. Sauber has always punched above its weight. The team is Swiss and is a reflection of the country — prudent money managers, cautious and safe but also aggressive. Williams? They think they’ve got a good car. Count on them to be up there. And Paul Di Resta is a talent, as is Adrian Sutil, so don’t pass on Force India.

Toro Rosso is a curious team. It’s supposed to a farm team for Red Bull. But neither Jean-Eric Vergne nor Daniel Ricciardo have shown themselves to have superstar potential.

We had one team drop out at the end of last year, HRT. Will the others hang in there, and do they have a chance?

Caterham has a lot of money but they will never catch up. They and the other ‘new’ teams were brought into F1 in 2008 by Max Mosley, who promised them that budgets would be reduced and everybody would be able to get along on $50 million a year and everybody would eventually be equal and it’s never happened and never will happen. They are doomed to be backmarkers.

But, they build their own cars like everybody else and hire pay drivers. Nobody is going to drop out. Anyway, in the background is the great orchestrator, Bernie Ecclestone, who will look after anything and everything that needs looking after.

Okay, we’re nearly finished. Let’s return to the rookies. Which ones will impress?

Gutierrez  might; he’s well-placed. Sauber is a respectable, competitive team; they know how to bring people along. Vettel, Robert Kubica, Raikkonen, Perez — they all made their debut with Sauber, so he’s best placed to do well. He has a respectable track record, too.

Jules Bianchi (Marussia) has the best credentials. I expect the latest Finn in F1, Valtteri Bottas, to do well. He’s been Williams’ reserve driver, so knows his way around, and he could be the pick of the crop.

I think it will be a good year for the championship and it’s a very high quality class of rookies. It’s going to be very interesting.

NORRIS' TAKE

I agree with Gerry that 2013 could be a banner year for F1 excitement. But Niki Lauda aside, I’m not crazy about the high number of pay drivers (more than the rookies are bringing money).

As mentioned, I suspect McLaren has a rocket ship of a racing car but I’m not sure the drivers will be up to it. Perez was signed when the team was on the rebound from Hamilton’s defection and I’m not sure he was the best choice. And Button? He’s no Mark Webber.

But I’ve been wrong about Button before . . .

In the end, the title fight will be between Fernando Alonso and — tad-da — the “Iceman” himself, Kimi Raikkonen. Personal habits, though, will make the difference in the end.

And what do I mean by that? Well, the Kimster missed a test session in Barcelona last week (Lotus had to call Grosjean back) because his tummy was acting up as a result of Kimi out being Kimi the night before.

He’s a character, for sure, but Alonso is too disciplined for that and will be world champion as a result.

IndyCar: Consultants did what they're supposed to do

The reaction to a weekend news story about a report from a consulting group concerning what the owners of two well-known auto racing properties should do with them illustrates perfectly why the consultants were hired in the first place.

It also illustrates a misunderstanding of what consultants are supposed to do.

Let’s go back to the start.

Last Friday, AP motorsport writer Jenna Fryer reported that Boston Consulting Group had been retained by Hulman & Co., owners of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the IndyCar series, to conduct studies and make recommendations about the future of those businesses.

The most important recommendation, according to the 115-page report that Fryer obtained, is for the parent company to continue owning the speedway and the race series.

And then, according to the story, there were these other suggestions:

– A series of 15 races in 19 weeks should be held in major American cities (in a nod to Ben Affleck, Toronto was included) followed by a three-race playoff and a grand finale on the road course at the Indianapolis Speedway;

– The series’ "daredevil" drivers should be promoted.

– There should be just one television partner in the U.S. instead of the current two.

– Ticket prices should be increased for the Indianapolis 500 and lowered for the Brickyard 400 and the Moto GP race.

There were other suggestions (you can pack a lot into 115 pages) but you get the drift.

In short, Boston Consulting is suggesting a radical shift in order to not only rescue the two businesses but to grow them.

Two things happened after Fryer put the story out on the AP wire.

First, the Speedway issued a statement. Mark Miles, CEO of Hulman and Co., said the report was an early version of one of many prepared by the consultants. He said no decisions had been made and discussions were continuing.

Second, fans of the series panned the report and its suggestions. Many wanted to know how come Hulman and Co. had hired a firm that obviously knew next to nothing about racing.

Let’s start with why companies – and governments – hire consultants in the first place. It’s usually because fresh thinking is needed. Something isn’t working and nobody in management can come up with the answer so a person or group is invited in to make suggestions to trigger discussions in hopes of finding a solution.

In the case of IndyCar, you have a racing series that isn’t on anybody’s radar. Yes, it’s on my radar and yours (if you’re reading this blog) but there are about 300 million people in the United States and Canada and it’s a good bet that most of them have no knowledge of IndyCar because if they did, more people might go to the races and/or watch them on television.

The board of directors of Hulman & Co. is made up primarily of either racing people (the descendents of Tony Hulman and Elmer George) or people who know about racing and are fans. They’ve been trying for years to make this series work. They haven’t been successful.

So they reached out to Boston Consulting and asked them to, a) answer some specific questions (I would guess that among them was whether or not Hulman & Co. should even continue to own the speedway and the race series) and, b) make some suggestions that might help turn IndyCar from being auto racing’s biggest secret to auto racing’s latest success story.

Now, if I’m Boston Consulting (and with all due respect), the last people I’m going to ask for their opinion are fans of this racing series. And this includes columnists and pontificators like me. IndyCar has already got us; they want to go after people they don't have.

Fryer, in an analysis written several days after she first broke the story, seems to mock the consultants for including seven cities that don’t have IndyCar races at present and for suggesting that three races currently on the schedule be dropped.

Remember, it is not the consultants’ job to come back with a report that says everything’s rosy. They obviously pushed the envelop by suggesting cities where, in their opinion, IndyCar races should be held. And one of the three races they want dropped – Fryer called it "stalwart Milwaukee" – is such a challenge to promote that last year, one of the series’ drivers, Graham Rahal, bused fans up from Indianapolis to fill seats because interest in the Wisconsin city was less than overwhelming.

Why keep putting on races in places where people could care less? I suggest Milwaukee is right up there. And while 20,000 people might show up to watch IndyCar in rural Alabama and in the middle of an Iowa cornfield, the corporate sponsors that IndyCar desperately needs are not interested, but might be if those races were held – instead – in major cities, right downtown.

The job of a consultant is to suggest alternatives to the status quo, to challenge conventional thinking.

I’d suggest that Boston Consulting, from what’s been reported to date, has done a pretty good job.

Of course, I wonder how Fryer came to get the copy of the report that she did – if, in fact, it’s an early draft, as the CEO of Hulman & Co. insists it is.

As a news editor and political reporter most of my working career, I’ve been on the receiving end of any number of confidential documents slipped to me in brown manila packages. And, in my experience, the people doing the leaking fall into three categories: political (or business) enemies looking to cause mischief; disgruntled people (frequently employees of the subject company); and/or deliberately by government or business looking for reaction – the proverbial trial balloon.

It’s hard to say which this is, but it’s certainly got the natives restless – another sign that, yes, Boston Consulting has done what it was hired to do: stir the pot.

- NORRIS McDONALD

SPEED fading; Subway driver wins Subway race

The weekend’s racing was kind of so-so, with the possible exception of the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series event at the Circuit of the Americas on Saturday (won by Jon Fogerty and Alex Gurney, incidentally), but there were a couple of off-track stories that merit attention, with one in particular being of utmost importance because it affects us all.

That one in particular is that the Speed Channel will soon be gone, replaced by yet another general sports network.

The rebranding of SPEED by the parent Fox Sports will likely happen this summer, Charlotte Observer radio and TV columnist Mark Washburn reported at the weekend. The relaunched channel will be called Fox Sports 1 and will probably feature baseball, football, soccer and amateur sport in addition to some auto racing and other motor sports.

Gone will be such Emmy Award-winning programs as Pinks, Pinks All Out, Pass Time, Are You Faster Than a Redneck and Truck U. (Isn’t the name of that last show just hilarious? Just the sort of thing to attract sophisticated viewers and avertisers. . . .)

I say good riddance to them all. And although I’m not happy to be losing an all-motorsport station to yet another general sports channel (of which we have more than enough already, thank you), I’m not sad to see most of the SPEED lineup consigned to the waste basket.

I consider SPEED a lost opportunity. What could have been a great channel – like the Golf Channel is great, and the NFL Channel is great – was always pretty mediocre at best.

They did some things really well. Adam Alexander’s Speed Center newscast on Sunday night at 7 p.m. is must-viewing. And Dave Despain’s Wind Tunnel, also on Sunday night, is another "must-view" show. And where else will you get live coverage of sports-car racing and (most of the time) of 24-hour races like Daytona and Le Mans? And yes, even NASCAR Today with Kyle Petty and Kenny Wallace could be entertaining on a Sunday morning.

But the rest of it? See ya.

Where were all the old USAC sprint car films? Don’t tell me they couldn’t make a deal with Dick Wallen? And films of the old Indianapolis 500s and the Indy cars at Milwaukee and Riverside and Trenton? And the USAC dirt cars at Springfield and Du Quoin? And sports car racing from Daytona and Sebring back in the day? There must be a vault of motorcycle racing videos somewhere that would have made for great viewing.

There are all sorts of Formula One films around. Why weren’t they shown on SPEED? If you’re going to be a Speed Channel, isn’t that the sort of stuff you want to have on the air all the time? If I can watch historic Daytona 500s and CART races from the 1990s on ESPN Classic Canada, why couldn’t I see them on the Speed Channel?

As I said, a wasted opportunity.

I just hope the Fox people see the value in Speed Center and Wind Tunnel and some of the other above-average programs like live race coverage and make them a large part of Fox Sports 1.

But I can get along quite nicely without Truck U and anything with the name Pinks in it.

The second off-track story of the weekend dealt with a leaked report concerning the future of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the IndyCar series. It is a complex subject and requires a full blog, so I will post my thoughts on it – and the reaction to it – Monday night.

Before moving on, however, I must ask out loud: what is going on with Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain? Usually an hour of interviews and call-ins, Wind Tunnel is back on the air after its usual winter hiatus but is now only 30 minutes long and that’s not nearly enough time.

Let’s hope once everything gets going – the American Le Mans Series season and Formula One will start in two weeks and IndyCar will follow a week later – that Wind Tunnel will revert to its usual hour.

If not, I fear for the future of that popular program.

Despain will be in Daytona for Bike Week next Sunday and will be represented on the show by Oakville's James Hinchcliffe and Robin Miller. It will be Hinchcliffe’s first gig since he signed a deal to contribute to both Wind Tunnel and Speed Center, which was announced this past week.

Okay, so Carl Edwards won the Subway Fresh Fit 500 at Phoenix Sunday, with Jimmie Johnson second and Denny Hamlin third. Click here for full race story.

But I’m confused.

There is a yellow line around the bottom of Phoenix International Raceway. NASCAR says you can’t go below the yellow line and improve your position. But Denny Hamlin dropped below the yellow line and took a short cut up the backstretch on the last lap to improve his position by shooting all the way up to second place. Johnson fought him off but he very nearly stole second in the race.

Now, the line on the track in Phoenix is a single line, rather than a double line of the kind you find at places like – say – Daytona. So maybe – maybe – NASCAR thinks it’s okay to go below the line.

But if that’s the case, why have a line there at all? If it serves no purpose, what is it doing there?

At one track it’s against the rules to pass below the yellow line and at another it’s okay?

As I said, I’m confused.

Now, I am not a conspiracy theorist (ED NOTE: ho, ho, ho), but Carl Edwards, who has not won a race in 70 tries, finally wins one on Sunday. It is the Subway Fresh Fit 500. Carl Edwards is sponsored by Subway. I guess it’s just a coincidence.

Here’s another coincidence. Two of the three Stewart-Haas Racing team cars went out after crashing because their right front tires blew out. Ryan Newman was the first to hit the wall in turn four and Danica Patrick followed a few laps later. Newman was credited with 40th place; Patrick started 40th but was running 26th when she crashed and officially finished 39th.

It was a typical NASCAR Sprint Cup race: nothing to get excited about until the end and then the green-white-checkers finish was interesting. But Edwards had the field covered and was pulling away at the checkers.

Kyle Busch, who has not had a good start to his Sprint Cup season, won the Nationwide Series race Saturday at Phoenix, followed home by Brad Keselowski and Justin Allgaier.

Later Saturday, the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West series took to the big mile speedway and Greg Pursley won. I wouldn’t normally report the results of this particular series but the second-place finisher, who happens to be Pursley’s teammate, was Cameron Hayley, 16, of Calgary. That kid's got a future, I'd say.

The NASCAR Mexican stock car series also raced as part of the Phoenix weekend. It likely gave that series a much-needed publicity boost at home as well as in the United States.

Dean McNulty, who writes for another Toronto paper, is reporting that NASCAR will give the Canadian Tire stock car series similar exposure by including it on the program at Watkins Glen in August when the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series stock cars travel there for the traditional mid-summer race weekend.

As mentioned earlier, Fogarty and Gurney won the Grand Am Rolex race at the Circuit of the Americas outside Austin, Tex., with Ryan Dalziel and Alex Popow second and Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas third. All were racing in Daytona Prototypes.

In the GT class, Toronto’s Paul Dalla Lana and American Bill Auberlen, driving a BMW M3, fought back from two laps down (Dalla Lana spun on the opening lap) to win. Dalla Lana and Auberlen earlier won the Continental Tire support race.

They are the only team to ever win both the Continental and Rolex races on the same weekend and it was the second time they’d done it, the first time coming at Homestead-Miami in 2011.

Auberlen actually drove the team car across the finish line in second place but the first-place-finishing car was penalized a lap plus 90 seconds for avoidable contact.

The "contact" was one of a number of instances in this race in which the sports-car drivers raced more like NASCAR drivers, with lots of rubbin’ and bangin’ going on out there.

Other Canadians – Rolex: Sylvain Tremblay of Montreal, second in the GX class. AIM Autosport of Woodbridge (Emil Assentato and Anthony Lozzaro aboard) was fifth in the GT class and a sister car, R. Ferri/AIM Autosport Racing With Ferrari, finished tenth in GT with Max Papis and Jeff Segal driving. Kyle Marcelli of Barrie finished ninth in GT.

In the Continental Tire race: Ken Wilden of Oakville was seventh overall in GS. Fraser Wellon of Mississauga was 12^th in GS. Ashley McCalmont of Ancaster was 15^th in GS. Scott Maxwell of Toronto, driving for Multimatic Motorsports of Markham, finished 18^th in GS. Another Multimatic driver, David Empringham of Toronto, was 42^nd overall but 22^nd in class. Taylor Hacguard of Vancouver was 29^th overall but 9^th in ST. The Toronto-based Compass360 Racing team had four cars in the ST class and they finished sixth, 19^th, 20^th and 26^th in class.

Lewis Hamilton was fastest for Mercedes as F1 testing continued in Barcelona. Felipe Massa was second in a Ferrari, although about a half-second behind Hamilton. Although some suspect sandbagging, I suggest the real reason the pre-season doesn’t mean much in F1 is because they are actually testing things and not racing. The season opens in Australia in two weeks and then we’ll see who’s got their act together. . . .

Ryan Villopoto won the Monster Energy Supercross in St. Louis at the weekend. James Stewart was second and Chad Reed third. Those guys will be at the Rogers Centre in Toronto in three weeks. Sat., March 23, to be exact.

Hinch on SPEED, women on wall at Daytona

The first debris caution on Lap 28 of last Sunday’s Daytona 500 was called because two women had crawled underneath the fence separating the motorhome park from the speedway between turns three and four and were sitting on top of the wall behind the SAFER barrier.

While most of the drivers made their first pit stops, speedway security went over and told them to get down and not to do that again.

Although some people questioned their sanity, I gave them some slack. In 1975, on the Friday night of the Indy 500 weekend, I walked right up to the fence between turns three and four of the mile-long dirt track at the Indiana State Fairgrounds and was enthralled as the USAC Champ Cars turned hot laps.

Those pilots would start to broadslide going into turn three (Larry ‘Boom Boom’ Cannon was the most spectacular) and the mud was just flying right at me. Those guys knew what they were doing and I was not the least bit nervous standing there as they slid straight toward me before nailing the throttle and hurtling themselves into turn four and out onto the main straight.

I was buzzed and was ready to stand there forever.

Except a state trooper saw me and told me to beat it or he’d arrest me. So I moved on, just as I’m sure those girls did last Sunday. But for a short time, they sure had the best seats in the house. I know; I was there – kinda – 38 years ago in Indianapolis.

From the moment James Hinchcliffe of Oakville started his long climb up motor racing’s ladder, from karts to Formula Atlantic to the A1 GP and Indy Lights and finally the IZOD IndyCar Series, he has been a marvelous self-promoter.

He has a wonderful sense of humour (mostly self-deprecating) and a sparkling personality and he knew right from the start that if he was going to make it to the top, he would have to be more than a good racing driver; he would have to exploit his own strengths.

So every opportunity he got, he made himself available to the media. Want a photo of a driver clowning around? I’m your boy, he’d say. Need a driver to comment on camera about how wonderful Cleveland/Edmonton/Milwaukee/Toronto is? I’m here, he’d say.

When he was driving in Champ Car Atlantics, he provided colour commentary on international broadcasts of the Champ Car World Series races. He became an expert at utilizing social media and created a web site around the mythical community of Hinchtown, appointing himself mayor.

When Danica Patrick wound down her IndyCar career and left for NASCAR, and sponsor GoDaddy went looking for a replacement, it didn’t take them long at all to zero in on Hinchcliffe. He’s about to start his second season in the IndyCar series, driving the GoDaddy car for Andretti Autosport.

Now comes news, which was officially announced Thursday, that James has been hired by the FOX Sports Media Group to appear on SPEED Channel’s Sunday night racing newscast Speed Center and on Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain that comes on later in the evening.

He’ll join Speed Center host Adam Alexander and NASCAR driver Sam Hornish in reporting and analyzing the weekend’s racing during the newscast and will also be available for comment during the Wind Tunnel program.

This is great for SPEED, great for IndyCar and great for James.

It's also a lesson for every other ambitious young race-car driver out there: you have to do more than drive the car.

Lots more

Two weeks from now, on the eve of the iconic 12 Hours of Sebring sports car classic, the American Le Mans Series and the Grand Am Rolex road racing club will hold a press conference to announce the name, branding and logo for the unified sports car series that will start in 2014.

I don’t know whether to get excited, or not. I know the merger (the sale, actually) is going to happen, because they told me so last Sept. 5. But I’m not sure it’s wise to be beating the drums for 2014 before the 2013 ALMS season has even started. (The Grand Am season will be two races old by the time of the announcement.)

They will have plenty of time to do all this name-changing and branding and logo-ing in the fall. Then they'll have the winter to really go to town to publicize it all.

It’s almost as if they’re devaluing this season’s racing on purpose in order to get people excited about next year.

I don’t get it.

The World of Outlaws sprint car series is out in Arizona these days and a release they sent out on Thursday caught my eye.

Next Saturday, March 9, at Tucson International Raceway, the special Grand Marshal for a meet there will be one of my all-time favourite race track announcers, William "Windy" McDonald.

Windy announced forever at the now-lost Manzanita Speedway in Phoenix and I can still hear his distinctive, high-pitched, emotion-filled voice when he would say, after the sprint car warmups:

"Ladies and gentlemen, it’s SHOWTIME!"

Manzanita, or ‘Manzy’ as it was called, was located in a section of southwestern Phoenix that was, to be polite, rough. The sprint cars didn’t have to run mufflers, it was said, because the sound of the engines covered up the gunfire. (THAT’S A JOKE!)

Whenever CART, and later the IRL, raced at Phoenix International, my pals and I would always fly out. We did this for three reasons: Indy cars, Mexican food and the sprint cars at Manzanita – and not necessarily in that order.

I couldn’t believe it four years ago when they said Manzanita had been sold and would be turned into an equipment depot for a crane company. The almost-sacred place where guys like Billy Boat, Ronnie Shuman, Tracy Hines and J.J. Yeley had gone wheel to wheel would be no more and never again would I be able to hear Windy McDonald say, as the field for the evening’s feature came through four and onto the front straight, all lined up and ready to go:

"AND HERE THEY ARE – THE SPRINT CARS, ON PARADE!"

Maybe I’ll fly down to Tucson next weekend and take in that Outlaws show. And maybe have a word with Windy McDonald.

Maybe.

Fresh from his IndyCar test with Penske Racing, A.J. Allmendinger will climb into a Sprint Cup stock car for the NASCAR race this weekend at Phoenix International Raceway.

The deal, while rumoured for months, just came together Tuesday.

Allmendinger will replace Regan Smith in the Phoenix Racing car. Smith finished seventh in last Sunday’s Daytona 500.

Okay, so that’s the news. Here’s my question:

Why is this race team replacing a driver who finished seventh in the Daytona 500 with a guy who lost his full-time ride last year because of his conduct and has only been in a stock car once since?

I have nothing against Allmendinger. He did his time. But while he’s a dynamite open-wheel race driver, he’s not that good in stock cars. And from what I know about Phoenix Racing, which could best be described as a low-buck team, it really doesn’t have the luxury of being Mr. Nice Guy when it comes to the rehabilitation of racing drivers. We’re not talking here about a team with the resources of, say, a Hendrick Motorsports.

In short, I don’t get it.

NASCAR and the sponsor Sprint announced this week that the Sprint All-Star exhibition race on the U.S. Memorial Day weekend would be more complicated than ever.

They didn’t phrase it that way, of course. They said changes they had planned would make the race more challenging for the drivers and entertaining for the fans.

Ho, ho, ho.

I say the words "total confusion" would be more like it.

This paragraph is is right out of the press release and, after reading it, I want anybody who understands what it all means to put their hand up so they can explain it to the rest of us. Here goes:

"The running order at the completion of the fourth segment (lap 80) will be repositioned based on the average finish for the first four segments directly behind the caution car prior to the opening of pit road for the mandatory four-tire pit stop. The order of the cars returning to the track will determine the starting order of the fifth segment."

That makes about as much sense as "Drivers and Danica, start your engines" did last Sunday.

I still can’t figure that one out either.

#################

Photo of Larry Cannon, courtesy the Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Photo of Windy McDonald, courtesy of the Arizona Republic

Photo of James Hinchcliffe and his lady, courtesy www.thebiglead.com

Facebook entry about Daytona 500 surprising

I consider myself a tolerant person. To each his (or her) own, I say.

And following that logic, I consider myself a fan of all types of auto racing. Yes, I like some forms more than others, but I appreciate it all and can watch it all and enjoy it all over the course of time.

And while I used to think that some types of auto racing were more difficult than others, that it was harder – say – to drive a Formula One car at tenth-tenths through the streets of Monaco than to handle a midget on the high-banked dirt oval at Belleville, Kansas, I have since changed my mind after actually going racing myself and discovering, in my own little world, that it’s just plain hard to do.

The drivers I have come to admire and appreciate the most are the competitors in a series that races in all sorts of different conditions in all sorts of different configurations. I used to think, for instance, that the CART Indy car drivers were the cat’s meow because one week they would be on a super speedway, the next on a road course, the next on a short oval and the next on a street circuit. The only thing missing from the national championship, I thought, was a round on a dirt track at – say – the Indiana State Fairgrounds or maybe the miles at Springfield or Du Quoin, Ill.

The drivers who race in the NASCAR Sprint Cup these days are a pretty versatile group. They have to go from the high-banked, restrictor-plate, flat-out-balls-to-the-wall Daytona Speedway to the short, tight, relatively flat Phoenix International Raceway to the even shorter and tighter Bristol Motor Speedway and then, later in the year, to the up-hill-and-down-dale, right-turn-left-turn, gear-up-gear-down Watkins Glen International and they do it all with speed and style and panache.

Yes, watching the Daytona 500 unfold last Sunday was maybe not the riveting sports spectacle that we all had anticipated (not really knowing how the Gen 6 cars were going to behave, for instance), but it was amazing to watch and appreciate the skill, daring and particularly the concentration of all those drivers rocketing around and around that race track at 200 miles an hour and not one of them making a false move. It really was – cliche time here – poetry in motion.

So it was both surprising and disconcerting to come across a Facebook entry from retired sports car racer Bill Adam that basically dissed the entire 43-car field on Sunday. Wrote Adam:

"Amazing race cars...", "the best drivers in the world....". Are these comments directed towards McLaren, Red Bull or Ferrari? Are they about Vettel. Tom Kristensen, or......??? Nope. All were just uttered on the NASCAR broadcast......

"So let me get this straight.........these drivers and cars ALL run flat out, all the way around the Daytona speedway, in this long follow the leader procession and the only time they have to lift off the throttle is to come into the pits. And this is racing ???? Give me a break !!!

"I WILL agree that they are amazingly boring, and that the drivers are the best drivers on the Daytona track - at this moment. Sad......Bill Adam."

 As I said, I’m a tolerant guy. I believe in freedom of speech. People can say what they want. I do it all the time; it’s how I make my living.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t shake my head on occasion and wonder where some of these people are coming from.

Yes, some of the things Darrell Waltrip said last Sunday were a bit over the top – but so what? It was the Daytona 500, stock car racing’s biggest day. Does anybody really think ol’ Dee Double-ya’s gonna say something like, "And look at these cars, the greatest race cars in the world – except fer Formula One cars, of course. Or sports cars. And there’s Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch and Dale Jr. and they’re the greatest racing drivers in the world – oh, maybe not as good as Sebastian Vettel, but they’re tryin’ jest as hard."

Give me a break.

Bill Adam has a wonderful road-racing curriculum vitae. He's a member of the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame and is about to debut as a colour commentator on Sportsnet’s coverage of the IZOD IndyCar Series this summer.

If anybody should appreciate the skill needed to be a top racer, and the hyperbole that tends to leak out of any announcing booth attached to any racing series just about anywhere, it’s him.

That Tony Stewart was the only one of the 43 NASCAR stars to go over to the hospital in Daytona and visit some of the fans who were injured in that Nationwide deal last Saturday should come as no surprise.

Stewart went to the Halifax hospital Sunday night and stayed for about two hours.

Despite being a champion stock car star, team owner and speedway owner, Stewart is still a short-track racer at heart. At local speedways, fans go down to the pits after the races to chat with the drivers and to drink beer and even help load up if some of the car owners don’t have a lot of help.

It’s a community feeling that you don’t get at the big league racing events.

Stewart knows of this and appreciates it. As well as racing at NASCAR events, you’ll find him behind the wheel of a midget at the Fort Wayne indoor races in January, at the Chili Bowl in Tulsa, with the World Outlaws sprint cars at Volusia County in February and half a dozen times during the summer, including at the Brantford-area Ohsweken Speedway in July, and when he’s in that environment he’s not Tony Stewart, great big important NASCAR driver, he's just another face in the crowd.

He might got out and win the race but when he’s in Victory Lane he thanks the fans for coming out and the guys he’s raced against for letting him do it and he’s just down-home natural. When he got out of his car after he won that race last Saturday in Daytona, the first thing he talked about was the crash and his concern for what might have happened to people in the grandstands – his people.

Those folks might wear the T-shirts and buy the souvenirs and cheer for the Martin Truex Jr.’s and the Greg Biffles and the Joey Loganos but they are not "their people."

But they sure are Tony Stewart’s people and that’s why he was at the hospital and the others weren’t.

For years, tickets to sporting events had a little disclaimer printed on the back about how the holder accepted the risks associated with attendance. In fact, I have an old ticket stub around here someplace from Maple Leaf Gardens (Leafs vs. Red Wings, 1952) that has a message like that on it.

One winter, some fan sitting up behind one of the nets got a puck in the mouth and sued the living daylights out of the NHL, the Gardens and the Toronto hockey club. There hasn’t been anything on the back of hockey tickets since except advertising.

There have been suggestions that NASCAR and the Daytona Speedway will fight lawsuits launched by some of the fans who were injured last Saturday when parts of a racing car and a wheel flew into the grandstands. Apparently, on the tickets they held, they were reminded that the sport of auto racing is dangerous and to keep their heads down. Or words to that effect.

If NASCAR doesn’t quietly try to settle out of court, they’re foolish because they’ll lose. Maybe not immediately, but at some point. Better to get it over with quickly before it gets out of hand.

Humpy Wheeler has been quoted as saying that Charlotte Motor Speedway, which he used to run, settled for between $10 million and $15 million with the families of three people killed in the 1990s when a wheel off an IRL car flew into the stands and hit them.

This is nowhere as serious, in that nobody was killed. But 28 people required medical treatment and nearly 10 of them were still in the hospital Wednesday, so their injuries sound somewhat serious. If NASCAR is smart – and I think NASCAR is very smart – they will reach agreement first with the two or three who are most hurt and then pay off the others on a sliding scale.

When I say it’s inevitable that they’ll have to pay up, let me tell you a little story. It is the way things work in the United States of America.

I have a friend we’ll call Bill (not his real name and, in fact, not even close). Bill was working on a barge in a river in northern New York one January day about 10 years ago when the local power authority opened a dam without telling anybody and the barge my buddy Bill was on was ripped from its moorings.

Bill was thrown into the river and it’s just by the grace of God he was plucked out of the frigid water. Hypothermia was setting in and it took about two days in hospital for him to thaw out and get some colour in his cheeks.

On the third day, he was feeling pretty chipper and another friend of ours, a lawyer, dropped in for a visit. The conversation went something like this:

"Bill, if you want to sue for negligence, I guarantee you will win. If you want to settle for $100,000, I can have a cheque for you by next Monday afternoon. However, although it will have to work its way through two or three courts and will take about a year, I can probably get you at least $1 million. Your choice, but I take 10 per cent regardless."

Bill thought for a moment and opted for the latter. Just over a year later, the power company cut him a cheque for $1.2 million and he’s been living happily ever after ever since.

NASCAR should get in there fast before my pal Bill’s lawyer starts laying out the options for people in Halifax hospital.

'Daytona' replaces 'Indy' on public's radar

In a column in the Toronto Star last Saturday, in which she made fun of the Oscars and the Hollywood movie stars up for the awards, Heather Mallick wrote this sentence:

"What you are watching is the Daytona 500 of status anxiety."

I work in the same office, so asked her why she had selected "Daytona 500" over, say, the "Indianapolis 500."

Was it because Daytona was on the same day this year as the Academy Awards?

No.

And her explanation shocked me.

"I was searching for imagery and ‘Daytona 500' was the first thing that popped into my head," she said. "Nothing more."

I told her that most people who are not fans of auto racing would have been prone to say "Indianapolis 500," or "Indy 500."

Prepare to be shocked even more.

"I never would have thought of Indianapolis," she said. "I only thought of the Daytona 500."

So, there you have it.

The Daytona 500 is now ingrained in the public consciousness much like the Indy 500 used to be.

When the Heather Mallicks of the world think of "Daytona" before "Indianapolis," the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and its marquee event are in more trouble than anybody ever realized.

I interpret this as yet another nail in the coffin of a once-iconic car race and a once-iconic form of racing.

Most of the drivers in IndyCar, or many of them anyway, were so jealous of Danica Patrick’s popularity and the fact that she was constantly being promoted that they bitched and complained about it behind her back. As a result, IndyCar went to great lengths to keep the boys happy by de-emphasizing her celebrity.

NASCAR drivers had no such qualms. They welcomed her with open arms. Millionaires already, they saw her as a way for all of them to become billionaires.

"Her presence will help our sport grow," said Jimmie Johnson, even before he won last Sunday’s Daytona 500.

And how right he was.

FOX television released the ratings story Tuesday of Sunday’s classic and it was all anybody'd hoped for: the rating was up 24 per cent over 2012 and the number of viewers increased 22 per cent. Overall, it was the biggest audience since 2008. An estimated 31 million watched at least some of the race and it was the best-ever year-to-year rise.

Guess who’s responsible?

When Dale Earnhardt was killed at Daytona in 2001, there were three reactions.

First, everybody was very shocked and very sad. Second, it did wonders for NASCAR because TV ratings and attendance at races had both been declining and they bounced right back up as the result of his death. (So, in that way, it was good for business.) Third, NASCAR heard loud and clear from sponsors that they didn’t want to be part of a sport in which people were killed and to do something about it. (So, in that way, it was bad for business.)

As a result of (3), NASCAR very quietly started to design a "safe" racing stock car and five years later, in 2006, the Car of Tomorrow was introduced to the media.

I suggest today that NASCAR, perhaps even in company with the IndyCar Series, is very quietly starting the research and development of something to replace the catch fencing that currently keeps out-of-control racing cars from flying into grandstands and killing substantial numbers of people.

NASCAR, and all of auto racing, dodged a huge bullet last Saturday at Daytona when 28 spectators were injured, two critically, when pieces of a car and at least one wheel went through the fence.

That nobody was killed is a miracle.

Although everybody – NASCAR people, Daytona Speedway people – have kept a stiff upper lip about the whole business in public, you can bet that behind the scenes they've been sweating bullets.

President Mike Helton appeared on television about a half-hour after the crash and he was a very shaken-up senior executive of NASCAR.

I suggest within three years that a fail-safe barrier will be developed and available for installation at speedways. Whether the tracks will want to spend the money to put it up will be another question, but it will be ready.

Meantime, everybody had better keep their fingers crossed that nothing calamitous happens before that barrier is patented.

Sportsnet announced yesterday that it would televise the IZOD IndyCar Series races this year, would start the season at St. Petersburg on March 24, that Rob Faulds would anchor the broadcasts with Todd Lewis in the pits and Bill Adam and Paul Tracy doing colour for pre-race, in-race and post-race coverage of the Indy 500 and the Honda Indy Toronto and . . .

But we knew all that, didn’t we . . . ?

A grandma tunes in to watch 'that girl' at Daytona

My friend, the late Art Wright – Arthur L. Wright to his friends – had a favourite expression.

When commenting on something that didn’t particularly excite him, be it a house party he’d attended or a month in his life, he would describe it as being "largely uneventful."

I think if Art was still around – he died in 1979 – he would use those words to describe Sunday’s Daytona 500, much of which was made up of racing cars following each other around and around in one great, long, line.

Even the crashes – there were only two – were largely uneventful, as compared to some of the ka-boomers we’ve come to expect from NASCAR over the years.

In the end – and yes, the last lap was very exciting and even my pal Art would have been on his feet cheering – Jimmie (Five-Time) Johnson managed to hold on to the lead and score his second Daytona 500 victory, with Hendrick Motorsports teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. second and Mark (the Ageless Wonder) Martin in third.

Defending Sprint Cup champion Brad Keselowski was fourth, Ryan Newman fifth, Greg Biffle sixth, Regan Smith seventh, Danica Patrick eighth, Michael McDowell ninth and J.J. Yeley tenth.

Drivers thought to have had a chance of winning the classic – Tony Stewart, Kevin Harvick, Kasey Kahne, Kyle Busch, Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards – were eliminated from contention either by crashes or mechanical gremlins.

For a detailed race story, with full results, click here.

That Johnson won is no surprise. He has won the Sprint Cup championship five times – in a row, actually – and although his record in this particular race has been abysmal the last six years, he won it for the first time in 2006 so has been to Victory Lane in Daytona before.

The big surprise – for many people – was the performance of Danica Patrick, who started from pole but was widely expected to fall back and maybe, maybe, finish, now that she is finally racing full-time in the Big League.

But Patrick held her own the whole race and only inexperience and the selection of the wrong partner going down to the checkers kept her from scoring a podium finish.

The Sprint Cup competitors now move on to Phoenix and the contrast will be telling. Daytona is a big, wide, high-banked, 2-1/2 mile restrictor-plate speedway while Phoenix is a mile-long oval that’s narrower and fairly flat – just the sort of place to separate the men from the boys, and maybe the girl.

NOTEBOOK JOTTINGS

– Although there were 28 lead changes recorded at the start/finish line, a bunch of them took place during a succession of green-flag pit stops that you don’t often see in Sprint Cup racing.

So there might have been lead changes but they weren’t noticeable.

For instance, Patrick and Jeff Gordon led the field down for the start. Gordon managed to get up in front of Patrick and Kyle Busch fell in behind her and they went round and round like that for 28 laps before NASCAR threw a caution because of debris on the track.

When was the last time you can remember a NASCAR Sprint Cup race going 28 laps without a lead change and the first three cars were in the same order the whole time?

– I made a notation in my book at this point: "Very conservative race." My pal Art would have said it was "largely uneventful."

– Brad Keselowski illustrated why he is the Sprint Cup champion. On Lap 137, in a crash that involved Trevor Bayne and Edwards, Bayne and Keselowski got together and Bayne spun, collecting other cars in the process. Keselowski looked to be on the verge of losing control but managed to straighten his car out and to keep going. A lesser-talented driver would have lost it and it would have been game over. But not Keselowski, who not only kept going but was in contention for the win right to the very end.

– I thought the TV show was okay. Dave Despain, on his Wind Tunnel program on SPEED Sunday night, said the technicians and the announcers had all done a wonderful job. (Of course, FOX was the presenting broadcaster and SPEED is owned by FOX so what would you expect?) But as I said, I thought it was okay.

But a friend of mine, who shall go nameless, did not. He was not impressed, at all. Far from it, in fact. Here is what he wrote to me after the telecast:

"After months of waiting, we saw the worst broadcast and almost as bad a race that has ever started the NASCAR season. Race? I use that term very loosely, since it was only a race from the last 15 laps to the finish and even then, many of the regular contenders had been eliminated.

"I am so totally outraged and appalled at the blatant favoritism towards Danica. I’m convinced it broke some broadcast standards, as low as they may be. As if that wasn’t enough, that low standard was only matched by the infuriating number and length of commercial interruptions, mostly without the ‘side-by-side’ image. Three laps of on-track was followed by five laps’ worth of interruption all day long. It must have set a new record. Even the broadcast image quality was crap."

I suggest this guy is not alone in his criticism.

Before we return to the "Danica 500," however, I have one other observation.

– I have always considered auto racing to be an individual sport. I know, I know: everybody calls it a team sport but, frankly, I have always considered the "team" aspect to be secondary to the individualism of the driver.

I have now officially changed my mind – at least so far as racing at Daytona and other restrictor-plate speedways is concerned because without a "drafting partner," be it a teammate or a buddy, you are unable to do anything. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

This was illustrated perfectly on Saturday near the end of the Nationwide Series race. Brad Keselowski was running near the front of the pack and his Penske teammate, Sam Hornish Jr., was way, way behind. He’d "lost the draft" and was helpless.

This is what Keselowski heard over his radio: "Feel like going back and rescuing a teammate?" Although he was given a choice of saying no, the team wanted him to give up his position and to drop back to where Hornish was and then between the two of them they would be able to catch him back up so he could go racing.

And that’s what happened. Keselowski waited for Hornish and then the two of them drafted their way back into contention. They did this so well, in fact, that Keselowski was going for the win when he was blocked by Regan Smith and that move triggered the pileup that saw Kyle Larson’s car come apart and injure all those spectators.

Hornish? He finished second in that race behind Tony Stewart. But without Keselowski and the draft, he’d have been nowhere.

– Okay, let’s get to Danica Patrick.

She won the pole, she was in the top ten all day Sunday and usually in the top five, she led five green flag laps (the fans in Daytona were all standing and cheering when she took the lead for the first time), making her the first woman to do that in Sprint Cup competition and her eighth-place finish was the best finish by a female.

Tommy Kendall said on Wind Tunnel that her performance didn’t surprise him, that he’d told Tiger Woods’s agent back in 2003 that she would change motor racing in North America and that her top ten finish would give "the haters" reason to reconsider their bias.

I wish he hadn’t used the word "haters." I happen to be a fan of Danica Patrick and I think she is going to go on to become a great NASCAR driver (I love how pissed off she was that she’d only finished eighth – as others have also pointed out) but I also have respect for people – and I have friends who feel this way – who don’t like the constant promotion and think she is doing more harm to the sport than good.

I don’t think the word "hate" or "hater" is appropriate. Maybe they dislike her, maybe they resent her, but I don’t think they "hate" her. At least, I hope not.

NASCAR, of course, knows a good thing when they see it. She is a star and when you have a star you exploit it. I suggest when the TV ratings come in for this Daytona 500 that they will be among the highest, if not the highest, every recorded.

And I’ll tell you why.

Sunday night about 6 p.m., my wife was talking to her mother, who is the grandmother of seven.

"So what did you do today, mom?" she asked.

"I watched the Daytona 500."

"What? You don't like racing. You’ve never done that before. Why?"

"I wanted to see how that girl would do."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, illustrates perfectly why the spotlight these days is always on "that girl."

I ask you: what are NASCAR and the TV announcers supposed to do?

Pretend she isn’t there?

The race drivers are safe now, what about the fans?

Back in the 1990s, when three fans were killed at Charlotte Motor Speedway and another three at Michigan International after wheels flew off Indy cars and landed in the grandstands, officials at most speedways responded quickly.

They increased the height of the catch fencing surrounding the tracks and ordered the bending of the tops of the fences so they hung well out over the racing surface in order to keep flying debris from going into the crowd.

So it’s hard to say what could be done to improve safety even more at Daytona International Speedway after Saturday’s last-lap crash in the Nationwide Series race injured 33 spectators (the number keeps changing), at least two of whom are reportedly in critical condition.  Link to story here.

But you would have thought the reaction might have been a little more urgent than that exhibited by the speedway’s president, Joie Chitwood, who, after delivering the almost-obligatory observation that the thoughts and prayers of everybody were with the victims, was quick to add that repairs were being made to the facility and everything should be ready for the running Sunday of the Daytona 500.

Everybody is so media trained these days that the words of the officials and even most of the drivers who were interviewed sounded as if they came directly from press releases.

How refreshing it would have been for someone in a position of authority to have said something like this:

"It’s absolutely terrible what happened here today and we’ve got to take a really hard look at how we can better keep these cars together and not have parts and wheels flying out of control and injuring people. Yes, these cars are going 200 miles an hour but we’ve got to come up with a fail-safe way of keeping them inside the arena. Anything less is unacceptable."

But we didn’t. What we heard was that it would be business as usual come sunup Sunday. Oh, Chitwood did say the speedway would review what happened but he didn’t sound as if there was anything to really get excited about.

When burning fuel sprayed spectators near the fence along the main straight at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway when there was a crash at the start of the Indy 500 in 1973, officials responded by removing all of the seating close to the wall and restricting fan movement there when the cars are at speed.

That’s something officials at Daytona and other speedways will have to specifically review in the aftermath of Saturday’s disaster.

People routinely walk near the fence during NASCAR races and a video taken by a fan Saturday shows dozens of people start to crowd toward the fence when the last-lap accident began happening.

Cars started to crash together at the beginning of the tri-oval but it took a few seconds for them to reach the centre of the sweeping turn near the start/finish line. In those seconds, people moved toward to fence to get a better look and they were most vulnerable when the car of Kyle Larson left the ground and smashed into the catch fence.

In an instant, the front end of Larson’s car was torn off (the rest of his racer landed back on the speedway and he exited the car unharmed) and the engine and front wheel assembly ended up on the spectator side of the safety wall. At least one tire went flying up into the crowd.

The 33 people hurt are the most ever injured at a NASCAR event. Several years ago, at Talladega, eight people were taken to hospital when Carl Edwards’s car nearly went through the fence. And there have been several instances since where cars came close to leaving the racing surface but didn’t and spectators escaped injury, as a result.

NASCAR – and all big-league racing – now has a challenge. The cars and the facilities (i.e., the SAFER barrier) have been made so much better that injuries are rare and there hasn’t been a fatal accident since Dale Earnhart Sr. died at Daytona in 2001. So the drivers are safe.

But what about the fans? Nearly three dozen fans injured at a sporting event is not good for business. The danger of being a spectator at a NASCAR race – as was the case with Indy cars in the 1990s – is now very real and this must be addressed as quickly as possible.

Repairing the facility and flagging racing cars off for the next event isn’t good enough. A call to action is what’s needed.

Tony Stewart won the race, by the way. He made it to Victory Lane for the seventh time. Sam Hornish Jr. was second and rookie Alex Bowman finished third. A link to the full race story is here.

By the way, they say that everything comes in threes so this should put an end to whatever’s been going on at Daytona Speedway recently.

Three years ago, you’ll recall, they had a hell of a time getting the 500 over with because a huge pothole opened up in the first turn and they had to keep stopping the race to fix it.

Last year, Juan Montoya crashed into a jet dryer and the resulting fire scorched the track so badly it took forever to clean up the mess and finish the race.

Now this.

Maybe whatever it is, is over.

The Daytona 500 pre-race show is scheduled to start on TSN at noon Sunday, with the race itself scheduled to get going at 1 p.m. or shortly after.

I think it would be nice if somebody from NASCAR or the Daytona Speedway said they’re sorry about what happened.

But don't hold your breath.

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CRASH PHOTO BY FRED STOLL/DAYTONA BEACH NEWS-JOURNAL

LINK TO VIDEO OF CRASH

NASCAR trucks: Sauter wins down low

When the NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers finished racing in their two qualifying races Thursday at Daytona International Speedway, they all said – or most of them, anyway – that the fast line was the high line.

Not so Friday night as the drivers in the Camping World Series trucks stuck pretty much to the low line and, in the end, winner Johnny Sauter was down there, as was runner-up Kyle Busch and third-place finisher Ron Hornaday Jr.

On any number of occasions during the 100-lap race, which saw three or four crashes, including one Big One that involved 13 trucks but no injuries, drivers tried to make the high outside lane work and even the middle lane (that’s when they were going three wide), but the only consistent speed was found down low against the double yellow line.

Another assumption that was going to be tested, but wasn’t because of a yellow flag that was thrown a blink after the white flag was shown, thus negating any further action and making the race finish under caution, was that second or third place was a better place to be than out front when the last lap started.

Everybody assumed Busch would pull out sometime during the last lap and slingshot around Sauter to steal the victory.

It’s too bad Busch didn’t try, because it would have put to rest all the speculation. The facts are, however, that first place might very well be the best place to be at Daytona these days and that if you’re first going into the last lap in front, you'll very likely be in the catbird seat.

That was the case Thursday in the qualifyers and again Friday night. Even thought the caution came out to put a stop to racing before the checkers were thrown, the fact of the matter is that Sauter was in first place after 99 laps and he was the one who went to Victory Lane.

Watch for that to be the case in Saturday’s Nationwide Series race and then on Sunday for the Daytona 500. Better to be first when the chips are down and have to hold everyone else off than to be second and never really stand a chance.

Saturday, TSN2 will be the place to watch NASCAR. A preview of the Sprint Cup season can be seen at 11 a.m., a Nationwide preview will be seen at 11:30, the Nationwide race from Daytona’s pre-race show will start at noon and the race itself – Trevor Bayne is on the pole – will go to the post at 1:15 p.m.

Sunday, TSN will broadcast the Daytona 500, starting with pre-race activities at noon to be followed by the big race at 1 p.m.

Now, when I talk about the big NASCAR race at Daytona in July, I still call it the Firecracker 400, just as I tend to call the 600-miler at Charlotte on U.S. Memorial Day weekend the "World 600."

I like tradition. I really don’t know what I’d do if the folks at the Indianapolis Speedway sold the naming rights to the Indy 500 because – well, it really wouldn’t be the same.

I’m telling you all this as a warmup to saluting the Subway sandwich shop people for getting the word "Firecracker" back into the name of the race they sponsor at Daytona in the summertime.

It was announced this week that Subway will call the Nationwide race the "Subway Firecracker 250," starting this July.

I think that calls for a foot-long, don’t you?

Here’s a NASCAR sponsor that puts its money where its mouth is. Quicken Loans Inc., a U.S. mortgage lender, announced Friday that every time Ryan Newman finishes a Sprint Cup race in the top five, it will make the mortgage payments for a month for five of its customers.

Can you imagine a bank or mortgage lender in Canada doing that?

In your dreams.

One of my best friends in life, as well as racing, used to have a team in the near-big leagues. He was one step below the top series and raced in that class for years and with great success.

But like many, many people in motorsport, he let his passion get the better of his judgment and three years ago, at Kansas Speedway, two of his cars were destroyed and he was wiped out because one of his drivers was racing on credit.

So I was most interested to read on the autosport.com website Thursday of a team in the European GP2 Series that is folding its tents and shutting down even before the season starts because it doesn't have the money in hand to stay in business.

Paul Jackson, who runs iSport Racing, said he’s trying to sell his cars and his entry into this year’s championship because he doesn’t owe anybody any money now and doesn’t want to start down that road.

Better to bail out now than to try to muddle through and go broke in mid-season and look stupid, he told autosport.

I’m impressed.