Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Webber wins but did Vettel try to embarrass Red Bull?

'CRAZY LEO URLICHICH' WINS RALLY OF THE TALL PINES; WICKENS LOSES OUT ON F1 SEAT

Mark Webber won the Grand Prix of Brazil on Sunday, with his teammate Sebastian Vettel second and Jenson Button third (see Sunday post below, or click here for race details) but the question must be asked:

Did Vettel deliberately try to make his Red Bull-Renault team look bad when he was asked to give way to Webber, allegedly because of problems with his gearbox?

There are all sorts of conspiracy theories out there about how the gearbox story was concocted by Red Bull in order to throw Webber a bone.

The team’s No. 2 driver had been decimated by his World Championship-winning teammate this season (a record 15 poles and 11 victories in 20 races for Vettel, zero and three for Webber going into Brazil) and the feeling is that Red Bull – as Ferrari did with Eddie Ervine and Rubens Barrichello during the Schumacher years – wanted a win for Webber, if for nothing more than to boost his confidence heading  into winter.

Whether there were problems or not, Red Bull notified Vettel about a third of the way through the 71-lap race that he’d have to baby his gearbox if he wanted to make it to the finish. It was suggested he not hold up his teammate, Webber (they were running one-two at the time).

A radio transmission between Vettel and the team was garbled, but you got the feeling that he wasn’t 100 per cent in agreement.

Three laps later, on Lap 28, he turned the fastest lap of the race, to that point. Then, a lap later, he pulled over and suddenly slowed down to let Webber pass and take over P1. He left no doubt in anybody's mind who was watching that he was following team orders.

Despite having to be warned at least twice more to stop trying to take it to Webber (he set another fastest lap on Lap 46), Vettel subsequently held station and drove his car home in second place, well clear of third-place finisher Button’s McLaren-Mercedes.

It must be hard for a racing driver to be told to slow down, particularly a driver who’d recently wrapped up his second consecutive world championship season and one who is clearly – at this point in time – head and shoulders above his competition.

But auto racing is a team sport and selfishness has no place. He didn’t have to stick it to Red Bull with that ultra-quick lap before ceding his position, as well as the one later, and I suggest Christian Horner will have taken note.

Note: With the basketball strike settled, and tons of hockey and baseball news out there, this blog might not appear regularly in the Top 5 sports blogs lineup on the sports home page this winter. But it's updated almost daily and can be found at wheels.ca and thestar.com/sports/auto racing. Have a great off-season.

Notebook Jottings:

– An interesting part of watching the last race of the season was guessing which drivers will be back in 2012. As announcer Martin Brundle pointed out, the same five drivers have been on the podium in the last 51 races, so I suggest that everybody outside the top five should be worried about keeping their jobs.

Rubens Barrichello, for instance, won’t be back at Williams (but is Sir Frank really serious about hiring Kimi Raikkonen?) And Jaime Alguersuari likely won’t be back at Toro Rosso because Red Bull wants to promote Jean-Eric Vergne and although Alguersuari beat his teammate, Sebastien Buemi, in the standings, Buemi brings big money to that team and money seems to be the name of the game in F1 again: drivers with money get the rides and drivers without it, don’t.

Case in point. Charles Pic is a French driver with bags full of cash. He has had a very ordinary motor racing career to this point. However, the Marussia-Virgin F1 team announced at Brazil Sunday that Pic will partner Timo Glock in 2012, leaving Canadian Robert Wickens, who has had a pretty successful motor racing career to this point but who hasn’t got a dime, on the outside looking in.

Jerome D’Ambrosio has been dropped to make way for the ultra-quick Pic (ultra-quick, as in nobody can write a cheque faster).

- Quick Monday Morning update: Patrick Head, Sir Frank's right-hand-man at Williams forever, will end his involvement with the race team during the off-season as he moves to another role with the company, director of Williams Hybrid Power.

– I’ve got a call into TSN about F1 coverage in 2012, so that will be a blog entry this coming week when they get back to me (everybody was out west at the Grey Cup).

But F1 coverage could be a problem because TSN gets its feed from the BBC and in 2012, the BBC will only televise 10 of the expected 20 races live. Sky Sports, a British pay-TV channel, will cover all the races live and has announced a dynamite package in which every practice, qualifying session and race will be carried live with all sorts of digital add-ons available.

Anchorman Brundle has already announced that he is leaving the BBC for Sky and analyst/sidekick David Coulthard, Eddie Jordan and the rest will undoubtedly follow.

The implications for Canada are, shall we say, interesting. Hopefully, TSN will be able to make a deal with somebody so that live coverage of all races continues.

– Speaking of TSN, their commercial placement in the first hour of Sunday’s telecast interfered with some serious on-track action.

I know that it’s a crapshoot – they have to stick the commercials in somewhere, and at least we get side-by-side coverage so we’re not left totally in the dark – but it’s still irritating to have a commercial playing (complete with sound) on the right side of the screen and all hell breaking loose on the other.

When they went to commercial the first time at 11:14 a.m., Michael Schumacher and Bruno Senna collided and there were repercussions as Senna was subsequently given a drive-through penalty (yes, there were replays, but that’s like missing a goal in hockey).

When they next went to commercial at 11:24, everybody went into the pits for fresh rubber. Vettel, Alonso, Hamilton, Webber – everybody. Lots of action on a screen the size of a postage-stamp.

Here’s a suggestion: when the checkered flag fell, it was 12:36 p.m. When Webber, Vettel and Button went out on the podium, is was 12:42. If they put six minutes of commercials in there, would anybody mind?

– Everybody in F1 is stick thin – the drivers, the engineers, etc. So when I saw a Force India jack man with a pot belly, I didn’t know what to think:

1, Formula One has an image to protect and what’s a fat guy doing out there?

Or . . .

2, Hey, there’s a fat guy in Formula One! There's hope for all of us fat guys yet!

– I’m confused. Martin Brundle clearly said F1 is so sophisticated now that "you can’t damage your own gearbox any more . . . it’s the luck of the draw whether or not it holds up." If that’s the case, why would a driver be told to be gentle with the gearbox?

– Coulthard kept switching back and forth between pronouncing Vettel’s name VET-ul and Vu-TELL during the telecast (it’s really FET-ul, if you want to know). I don’t know why he can’t get the correct pronunciation around his tongue, considering that he sits (or stands) right beside Brundle, who’s got it mostly right.

Which is reminiscent of Jacques Villeneuve’s years in CART, when Paul Page used to call him "Vellano." I loved Paul Page, the true voice of Indy car racing, but I couldn’t figure out what was so hard about "Veel-noov."

– Being an F1 fan requires effort. Most of the summer, you have to be up at the crack of dawn to watch the races, or else rest up in anticipation of staying up half the night.

Which is why Canada and Brazil are my two favourites. The start times are just so much more civilized.

We had an early lunch Sunday, while enjoying the 11 a.m. race. Delightful.

CRAZY LEO WINS RALLY OF THE TALL PINES

THE MAN HIMSELF, 'CRAZY LEO' URLICHICH, HAS X-GAMES AMBITIONS.

Hey, talk about timing. Two days ago, I posted a feature interview I did on Thursday with rally driver 'Crazy Leo' Urlichich. Saturday, he went out and won the Rally of the Tall Pines in Bancroft.

Here's the report.

“Crazy” Leo Urlichich, of Thornhill, and co-driver Martin Brady of Ireland defeated a record-breaking number of entries at the 2011 Rally of the Tall Pines, their first win at a Canadian Rally Championship event.

The competition was extremely strong, with 2011 Canadian Rally Champion Antoine L'Estage of St.-Jean-sure-Richelieu, Que., second-place Pat Richard of Squamish, B.C. and 2011 Rally America champion David Higgins of Trefeglwys, Wales, in action.

 “Wow, this is incredible,” said Urlichich, who literally jumped around on the podium in excitement. “All season the whole team has been working hard to get to this point, and so this win really proves how much the team has put into the effort.”

With the Canadian Rally Championship already decided in favour of L'Estage and co-driver Nathalie Richard of Halifax, nobody was holding anything back and all teams were attacking from the start.

L'Estage won the first four stages, taking control of the event, until disaster struck at the end of the fifth stage. The transmission in his car shattered, with large pieces of the casing falling off.

Said L'Estage: “Well, it's too bad. We were leading the rally, and had a good lead, but it's okay. The important thing is we are Canadian Rally Champions.”

The 2012 Canadian Rally Championship season is only a few short months away, with the season kicking off Feb. 4th and 5th with the Rallye Perce Neige in Maniwaki, Que.

The Canadian Rally Championship is comprised of six events held nationwide in a season that goes from February to November. The series is presented by Subaru Canada, supported by Yokohama Tire Canada and features contingency programs from Subaru Canada and Mitsubishi Canada.

'Crazy Leo' tackles the Tall Pines

Photo by Mèlina Lamoureux (www.melinalamoureux.com)
'CRAZY LEO' URLICHICH LETS IT ALL HANG OUT DURING A RALLY EARLIER THIS SEASON

 

The 41^st Rally of the Tall Pines, taking place in Bancroft this weekend, is featuring the winners of the last five TPs – Antoine L’Estage, who's won three of them, including last year’s, and Pat Richard, who's won two – as well as a new kid on the block, 26-year-old Leonid Urlichich, a.k.a. “Crazy Leo.”

 

Urlichich, who’s sitting third in this year’s Canadian Rally Championship and hopes to make a run for second at the final rally in the national championship this weekend, insists his nickname has nothing to do with marketing.

“Everybody thinks I named myself that for publicity,” he told me during a telephone conversation we had this week, “but that’s not what happened. When I first started rallying, one of my teammates asked me why I didn’t take better care of my car. They said, ‘Your car’s all scratched up, aren’t you going to paint it?’ and I said,'Not until I roll it,' and they thought I wasn’t serious.

"But then I did and they said, 'That's it, you’re crazy,’ and that’s been my name ever since.”

One of the largest fields in Tall Pines history will start the rally Saturday morning - 60 cars and driver/co-driver combinations are entered - and although L'Estage and his co-driver, Nathalie Richard, have wrapped up the 2011 title, that doesn't mean there won't be plenty of action.

The Tall Pines covers more than 500 kilometres of twisty roads (including 200 km of stages) around Bancroft, a town about mid-way between Peterborough and Pembroke.

The big matchup of the weekend is expected to be between national champion L'Estage, who was runner-up this year in the Rally America championship,  and British rally driver David Higgins, who won the Rally America tiitle.

And the Tall Pines is no picnic. Those roads around Bancroft at this time of year can be muddy, icy and sometimes snow-covered.

Urlichich, who came to Canadian from Russia nine years ago to attend Trent University in Peterborough, thinks he might have an edge in the Tall Pines.

"The Tall Pines is based out of Peterborough," he said. "When I left Russia, I had the choice of three countries - the U.S., the U.K. and Canada. I chose Canada and I came to Peterborough, which is the home of the biggest rally in the country.

"So I know these roads. I have a better knowledge of these roads than any other. I don't want to sound too optimistic but if I stand a chance at any rally, this is the one."

Urlichich nearly wasn't around to follow his dream of rally driving. A big crash on the street three years ago last summer left him seriously injured with six broken bones, including his spine.

"It took me a year to recover," he said. "Thank God that nobody else but me got hurt and I learned my lesson and that's the last time I drove fast outside of motorsport. I have a metal plate in my arm, all sorts of things, as a result of that.

"I like to think that it made me better because the one thing it really made me do is exercise regularly. If I didn’t go to all that physio, all that recovery, I wouldn’t have been able to race."

Besides his success in rallying, Urlichich has also taken a crack at auto racing. His rally team, Can-Jam Motorsports, treated him to an outing during a round of the Castrol Canadian Touring Car Championship at Mosport on the American Le Mans Series weekend in July.

"The road race was a bonus from the team because I didn't crash a rally car this year," he laughed. "The deal was that if I kept the rally car in one piece, and they didn’t have to spend money fixing it, I would get a road race as a bonus. So we went to Mosport.

"I qualified second to last, but finished the first race in eighth place and the second race in seventh. I was off the track, but for me I considered that normal. But the marshals weren’t impressed. One marshal said he counted that I went off 11 times and maybe I went off once but not 11 times. Anyway, I was in a Subaru, so I knew how to handle it in the run-off areas."

Urlichich said he has plans to go rally racing in the United States next year and would like to take a crack at the X Games. 

"Next year, we almost certainly have secured the funding to do U.S. events that would allow us to go for the North American rally cup," he said. "I'm really excited about that. Obviously, the X Games would be a dream come true sort of thing, too." 

(With a monicker like "Crazy Leo," I don't know how he could miss.)

Urlichich, who works for a Toronto media company and is busy these days promoting it on social media, says his ultimate ambition is to rally race on the world stage - the World Rally Championship.

"Every day I eat, sleep and dream to become a good competitor in WRC. That’s the goal. Between myself, the team and my family, we’re pushing so hard to make it happen. Maybe nothing will come of it, maybe I’m just not fast enough or I don't have enough talent, but we’re doing everything we can to make it there. I’ll do whatever it takes to get there."

"Crazy Leo" says he's still single but he wonders how long he's going to be able to hold out.

"My mother starts into me, you know, saying that maybe I should find a permanent girl, but not yet. She's not pushing for grandkids yet, but I’m starting to feel the vibes."

 

Robert Kubica released from hospital

WEEKEND HEADLINES:

1. Kubica on the road to recovery

2. IndyCar inconsistent on inconsistencies

1. Kubica should know by August if he can race F1 again

The good news today is that Renault Formula One driver Robert Kubica was discharged from hospital in Italy on Sunday, just short of three months after he was nearly killed in a rallying accident in early February.

The not-so-good news (as distinct from "bad" news) is that the jury is still way out on whether Kubica will ever be able to resume his F1 career.

Although understandable when it first happened, the word "if" continues to be used in any statement concerning Kubica’s ability to, a) get into an F1 car again and, b) drive it competitively.

The Polish driver, winner of the 2008 Grand Prix of Canada (a year after surviving a horrendous accident at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve that still has veteran race-watchers shaking their heads at the memory), was driving in a fun rally in Italy when he lost control of his car and hit the end of a fence, the armco piercing the front of the car.

He suffered multiple fractures; his right hand was nearly severed.

The plan at the moment is for him to go home and rest up from his hospital stay. He will then report to a rehab facility in Italy to embark on a comprehensive program to regain the use of his hand. He’ll also start light physical training.

An answer to the question of whether he will ever race in F1 again is expected by August.

2. IndyCar walking a tightrope on penalties

When a referee issues a penalty in the NHL, or one in the NFL/CFL, all they have to do is cite the infraction and the length of time, or penalty yards, to be served(two minutes for holding, 15 yards for unnecessary roughness). They don’t have to explain their decisions.

If the infraction is sufficiently serious, the league can take further action and suspend the athlete for one game or 10. Nobody has to explain how that decision was reached.

Fans can scream bloody murder about the lousy officiating all they want. Their opinions matter not.

Which means the IndyCar series officials are treading on dangerous ground every time they go public with an explanation of why something was called, or not called.

The league found itself in a tight spot last year when Helio Castroneves had victory stolen from him in Edmonton when it was determined that he had blocked Scott Dixon on a restart late in the race.

The fact that there was no block should not have been of consequence. The call was made, right or wrong, and in this particular case it was wrong.

But instead of clamming up and letting people (like me) stew, IndyCar went to great pains to explain what Castroneves had done wrong. It just made matters worse because their convaluted excuse for calling the penalty has people (like me) now watching them like a hawk. The next time somebody does what Castroneves is alleged to have done, it will be documented (I can hardly for the Toronto race) and the IndyCar series will be made to look dumb, if not worse.

Now they’ve done it again. The sent Al Unser Jr. out last week to talk to certain select reporters to try to explain the unexplainable: how Castroneves drove like a battering ram through the field at the Grand Prix of Long Beach, hitting Justin Wilson and Will Power and ruining both their races. For this, he was let off scott-free.

Paul Tracy, meantime, returned to the series and hit Simona De Silvestor enough to spin her out and was immediately sent to the back of the pack as punishment.

Now, anybody with a brain knows that Tracy has been pigeon-holed, labelled, targeted - whatever you want to call it -   by race officials everywhere. His nickname is the "chrome horn." He’s also crashed about a million times during his career. So if he’s in a collison of any kind, any where, I guarantee you that the officials will immediately rule it was his fault, whether it was or not.

Castroneves, on the other hand, has not be known to be a rough racer and so – with the glaring exception of Edmonton – has usually been given a break or. in the case of Long Beach, breaks.

It’s the way it is, in the world of racing as well as the real world: certain people are deemed to be troublemakers, whether they are or not, and others aren’t, even when they are. We’ve all been to school at one time or other in our lives. You know what I’m saying.

But because of a fan uproar over what many saw as inconsistencies in the Long Beach officiating, the IndyCar people dispatched Unser Jr. to explain the reasons and they didn’t make much more sense than the explanation of blocking that was made last July in Edmonton.

I’m not going to go into what Unser says IndyCar officials consider avoidable contact and/or unavoidable contact because, at the end of the day, there are other currents at work (see my paragraphs above about labelling).

And there are also little nuggets like - well, chew on this, courtesy of Al Unser Jr.

". . . we figured [since] it had to do with his teammate (when Castroneves clobbered Power), maybe Roger (Penske) would have more influence on Helio in the races to come. More so than we would have with [giving him] a drive-through penalty."

As I said at the beginning, they should call the penalties and then just keep their mouths shut. Because every time they start talking, they just make matters worse.

ALMS Champion Simon Pagenaud will drive in this year's Indianapolis 500 for his sports car team, Highcroft Racing, which is gearing up to switch to the IndyCar Series in the next season or two. The Indy announcement will be made later this week.

Stock car racer J.R. Fitzpatrick of Cambridge was featured in an article in the Saturday Star. See the post below for a report on how he made out this weekend.

Kubica recovery off to good start

Formula One drivers are a breed apart in so many ways. Chief among them is an ability to recover quickly.

Stirling Moss broke his leg in a crash and was told it would take months to recuperate. He was back in a car four weeks later.

Niki Lauda was given the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church in 1976 after his horrible accident in Germany. He was driving again six weeks later, finishing fourth in the Italian Grand Prix.

It’s much too early to speculate on the recovery time for Lotus-Renault driver Robert Kubica, except to say that there are hints from his doctors that he is starting his recovery in a very strong way after nearly losing his right hand and suffering other terrible injuries to his right arm and leg in a rallying accident in Italy on Sunday.

Said his doctor, Giorgio Barabino, who is head of the intensive care unit at the Santa Corona hospital where Kubica is being treated, Kubica is coming along in an "excellent way."

"It's difficult to make predictions," he told the website IGV.it said. "What's certain is that it's rare to find such a strong patient.”

The statement,  "it's rare to find such a strong patient" gives you an idea of what those drivers are made of.

An official statement issued by the Louts-Renault team late yesterday said: “After spending the night under constant observation, (Robert) was briefly woken up by the doctors of the Santa Corona Hospital this morning. (He) was then able to talk to his relatives. He was also able to move his fingers, which is encouraging for the rest of his recovery process.

“Prof.  Mario Igor Rossello, Director for the Regional Centre of Hand Surgery at San Paolo Hospital in Savona, did not notice any swelling or infection on his right forearm, and this is another good sign, although it will be several days before it is known if the operation has been 100 per cent successful.

Kubica’s manage, Daniele Morelli,  said: “I finally talked to him and Robert has been shown to understand everything perfectly. His mental capacities are intact and we are extremely relieved. This really leaves us hope. Obviously he feels a lot of pain in his leg and hand. It will take time.”

But how much time?

If you use Moss and Lauda as barometers, perhaps not as much time as initially thought.

More details here

Photographs of the accident here

Canadians forced out of Dakar rally

The Toronto-based international rally team attempting to become the first Canadian entry to finish the punishing Dakar Rally on four wheels was forced to drop out of the competition this afternoon.

A message on the Team Chinook website said it all:

"Our Dakar 2011 race ended today, Jan. 10th, in the 8th stage. The fan went and we could not get it fixed in time."

For the full story on driver Conor Malone's and team manager Glenna Chestnutt's Dakar dream, please go to this earlier post.

Toronto driver going strong in Dakar rally

Marc Coma of Spain rides his KTM motorcycle during the seventh stage of the third South American edition of the Dakar Rally 2011 from Arica to Antofagasta Jan. 9, 2011. (REUTERS/Eric Gaillard)

In Saturday’s Toronto Star Wheels section, I wrote a feature on Georgetown’s Lawrence Hacking, who – in 2001 – became the first Canadian to finish the dangerous and gruelling Paris-Dakar Rally.

The Dakar, as it’s now known, is as gruelling as ever but perhaps not as dangerous because the threat of terrorism was removed three years ago when the race was moved from Africa to South America.

In the article, Hacking – who did the Dakar on a motorcycle – said he hoped someday to become the first Canadian to finish the contest on four wheels.

The news today is that a fellow from Toronto driving for the Toronto-based Team Chinook is in the process of beating him to it.

Conor Malone and co-driver Tom Frank have passed the half-way point of the 15-day event that began on New Year’s day in Buenos Aires. They are still very much in contention to finish the rally; on average, fewer than half the 500-plus starters make it to the end.

On Sunday, Malone and Frank started the day in 70^th place in the cars class (89 were still in contention at that point) but were soon running 87^th and two hours behind because of a leaking radiator that they managed to fix at the first check point.

Later, during a special stage through sand dunes, many of the cars got lost and missed a check point and had to double back, leaving Team Chinook in 70^th place again at end of day.

Overall, Marc Coma of Spain was leading the motorbike division, Tomas Maffei of Argentina was ahead in quads (four-wheel motorbikes), perennial world rally champion Carlos Sainz of Spain was in front in cars and Firdaus Kapirov of Russia was leading in trucks.

While the top professionals, supported by multi-million-dollar sponsorships, contend for victories at the Dakar, the majority of the more than 500 entries are made up of non-professionals whose prime motivation is simply to get through it.

Several years ago Malone, an electrician in the construction industry, and his Toronto friend, Glenna Chestnutt, who works in insurance, decided to enter the Dakar. That they had next to no experience was of little consequence; they were both in their mid-40s, they had a dream and they were going to go for it.

And if they could raise money for a couple of charities, Prostate Cancer Canada (Malone lost his father to the disease) and the Minimally Invasive Surgery program at Toronto East General Hospital, so much the better.

Since then, they’ve secured sponsorships, launched a website, embarked on public relations campaigns to draw attention to their adventure and made arrangements to produce a documentary film and to publish a book on their participation in the rally.

Most important, they contracted with a U.S. company, Colorado Sand Cars, to build their Corvette engine-powered Chevrolet vehicle. When Chestnutt, who originally intended to co-drive and navigate during the Dakar, was injured in a ski accident last year, she stepped back from the rally car to drive the support truck and her place was taken by the car’s builder, Tom Frank. One of his employees at Colorado Sand Cars, Troy Dees, replaced Frank as chief mechanic.

As the saying goes, so far, so good. They have gone from the start in Buenos Aires to the west coast of Chile and now are on their way back to the Argentine capital. Keep your fingers crossed.

Hacking has been following their race and is cheering them on to make it to the finish.

In an email to me last night, Hacking said: "To get as far as they have is an incredible accomplishment. If they finish, which looks possible, it will be very good for everyone who is thinking of doing the Dakar.

"I really hope everything stays together to the end. It has been a tough go for them with at least one night spent in the desert and lots of repairs done, according to their twitter posts."

And that’s a key. To follow their progress, and to cheer them on, go to www.teamchinook.com where there is everything you would ever want to know about them, including links to their Twitter account.

Johnson wins NASCAR title the right way

Weekend headlines:

1.     Johnson wins NASCAR Chase for the Championship

2.     L’Estage and Nathalie Richard are Canadian rally champs

3.     Big day for Canadian karters

NASCAR:

As was the case a week ago in Formula One, when Sebastien Vettel won the world championship of drivers by going out and winning the final Grand Prix of the 2010 season, so it was with Jimmie Johnson on Sunday, who put his head down and drove to his fifth consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup championship at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Although Carl Edwards won the Ford 400 season finale, Johnson finished second in the race, which was good enough to win the title over Denny Hamlin, who was 39 points behind when the final figures were tallied, and Kevin Harvick, who ended up trailing by 41.

Johnson was enormously excited at the checkers, whooping and hollering over the radio to his crew chief and team members: "Unbelievable! Yeah! You guys are the best!"

One reason why Johnson was overly elated was because he had to come from behind to win his fifth straight championship – a record, incidentally, that will likely never be matched as three consecutives were the most anyone could put together before.

Going into the final race, Hamlin was leading the championship with Johnson second (15 behind) and Harvick third (46 in arrears). It was a situation that Johnson and his crew chief, Chad Knaus, had not  faced in winning their four previous championships.

So they had to hunt down Hamlin and pass him and then keep him behind, which they did successfully. As Knaus said: "We had to come down here and beat ‘em, and we beat ‘em."

Hamlin didn’t do his own cause any good by, first, qualifying poorly (he started the race in 37th place) and, second, running into Greg Biffle’s car on the 24th lap, which resulted in a spin and damage to the front of his car.

Although he initially complained to his crew that "the 16 came right down on me (which was not true, as TV replays showed)," he’d calmed down enough following the race to explain that the accident had knocked the toe out (toe settings determine straight-line stability and corner handling) and "the car was never the same after that."

Harvick, on the other hand, did everything he said he’d do, which included sending Kyle Busch for a ride into the inside guardrail when Busch the Younger drifted up into his path, expecting Harvick to lift,  which didn’t happen.

While Harvick’s aggressiveness was admirable, his speeding ticket on pit road was not and it likely cost him second place in the championship. If he hadn’t been sent to the rear of the field as penalty, he might either have won the race or finished ahead of Johnson, which might not have won him the overall title but would have had him ahead of Hamlin in the final points (6583 for Hamlin, 6581 for Harvick).

Oh, well. As he said: "We went down swinging."

Unlike last Sunday’s F1 race, which was a bit of a bore after Vettel went into cruise control and Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber appeared content to trundle around behind Vitaly Petrov (except for a couple of half-hearted attempts to pass by Alonso), the Sprint Cup race was full of tension until the final checkers.

Yes, Johnson was in second place and in the catbird seat for the last 20 laps, but this is NASCAR and one never knows when a tire will go flat or a leader will come upon a wreck happening back in the pack.

Anyone who remembers Dale Earnhardt apparently winning the Daytona 500 in 1990, only to have a tire go down midway through the third turn on the last lap, knows you don’t count your chickens in NASCAR until you cross the finish line for the final time.

Okay, one of these years, somebody driving for some other team will beat Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus.

But they’ve been saying that since he won his first title and it hasn’t happened yet.

Maybe — maybe — next year.

Notebook jottings:

– Sebastien Vettel is world F1 champion, Dario Franchitti is the IZOD IndyCar Series champion and Jimmie Johnson is the NASCAR Sprint Cup champion.

For all intents and purposes, racing is finished for 2010 (although the German Touring Car Championship remains to be determined, with the final race of the season scheduled for next Sunday in Shanghai. Canadian Bruno Spengler is in the lead, so cross fingers for him).

Which means, however, that for the first time since last February, there will be no live racing on television next Sunday afternoon.

What ever will we do?

– NASCAR should find a way to end the season in a place other than Homestead, Fla. The track is okay, but as a tourist destination, it is the pits.

The best thing about Homestead is that it’s only 60 miles away from Fort Lauderdale.

– Kevin Harvick was interviewed post-race while holding the ever-present bottle of Coca-Cola — a product placement that is the most irritating of all product placements.

When the interview was over, but while the camera was still on, Harvick handed the Coke to someone and accepted a bottle of water.

The drivers might have to hold it but they won’t drink that stuff and that might tell you something.

– It looked like a full house at the Homestead-Miami Speedway but NASCAR’s final race of the season wasn’t on network TV in the U.S. and that is another problem for the sanctioning body.

As attendance has fallen, and TV ratings have dropped, long-time sponsors are turning away from the sport. For instance, Sunday was Jeff Gordon’s last race with DuPont on his car; next season, he’ll be racing in support of U.S. food banks (yes, it’s come to that).

As NASCAR falters, IndyCar seems to be gathering momentum with more and more announcements being made concerning 2012.

It’s like a boxing match. The challenger knocked the old champ down and has been dancing around the ring, arms upraised in triumph.

But the old champ is getting up off the canvas. The challenger has been too busy mugging to the crowd to notice.

He’d better be careful. If he doesn’t watch it, the old champion’s going to deliver a knockout punch.

Ask anybody in the fight game about that scenario. It’s only happened in the ring – oh, about a thousand times before.

Triple Crown for Canadian rally champions

Antoine L'Estage and Nathalie Richard of Ste-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., drove their Rockstar Energy Drink-sponsored Mitsubishi to a decisive win in Saturday’s 40^th Rally of the Tall Pines, the final round of the Canadian Rally Championship Presented by Subaru and supported by Yokohama.

The win is their third Canadian Rally Championship and combined with their Rally America and North American Rally Cup titles makes them only the second team ever to win all three titles in the same year.

"I'm so happy that we've done it," L'Estage said after the event, which is held each year in Bancroft.

"The car was so good all season, and my family and sponsors have all been very supportive. I am so happy that I can show my appreciation by winning every rally title there is in North America."

Second place in both the event and the championship went to Craig Henderson and Lyne Murphy of New Richmond, Que. By finishing second, the team won the manufacturer’s title for Subaru.

Bruno Carré and Yvan Joyal of Lavla, Que., who won the opening round of the six-rally 2010 season and led the point standings for much of the year, finished third.

Pat Richard of Squamish, B.C. and Alan Ockwell of Toronto were forced out with a broken suspension. They had gone into the rally in second place, only two points behind L’Estage and Nathalie Richard.

"Congratulations to Antoine and Nathalie on their win," said Pat Richard, who was seeking his third consecutive national championship.

"We've done so well in the past, it's tough not to be able to continue that trend. This rally was really hard on us, and we wanted to win, but sometimes that's just not how things go."

Antoine L'Estage and Nathalie Richard have developed into one of the most dominant teams in North America, winning six of the last seven rallies they entered and earning the U.S. title in their first full season south of the border.

The 2011 Canadian Rally Championship season will start in Maniwaki, Que., with the Rallye Perce Neige next February.

The Canadian Rally Championship is made up of six events held nationwide in a season that extends from February to November. The series is presented by Subaru Canada, supported by Yokohama Tire Canada and features contingency programs from Subaru Canada and Mitsubishi Canada.

The Canadian Association of Rallysport (CARS) is the official sanctioning body for rallying in Canada.

My thanks to Keith Morison, who’s in charge of media relations for the championship, for supplying the information published here.

As well as an excellent journalist, Morison – of Calgary – is also a pretty good rally competitor himself, finishing fourth in the Tall Pines with Martin Rowe of Whistler, B.C. driving.

Canadian karters show the world

It was an unbelievable day for Canadian karters at the world championships in Muro Leccese, Italy, as Canadians won two of the four world titles at the Rotax Max Challenge Grand Finals.

Scott Campbell of Sakatoon held off Dennis Kroes of the Netherlands to win one championship and Daniel Morad of Markham, after starting 13^th on the grid, charged through the field to win the second.

Congratulations!

As was the case a week ago in Formula One, when Sebastien Vettel won the world championship of drivers by going out and winning the final Grand Prix of the 2010 season, so it was with Jimmie Johnson on Sunday, who put his head down and drove to his fifth consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup championship at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Although Carl Edwards won the Ford 400 season finale, Johnson finished second in the race, which was good enough to win the title over Denny Hamlin, who was 39 points behind when the final figures were tallied, and Kevin Harvick, who ended up trailing by 41.

Johnson was enormously excited at the checkers, whooping and hollering over the radio to his crew chief and team members: "Unbelievable! Yeah! You guys are the best!"

One reason why Johnson was overly elated was because he had to come from behind to win his fifth straight championship – a record, incidentally, that will likely never be matched as three was the most anyone could put together before.

Going into the final race, Hamlin was leading the championship by xxx, points, with Johnson second (xx behind) and Harvick third (xx in arrears).

It was a situation that Johnson and his crew chief, Chad Knaus, had never faced in winning their four previous championships. Previously, they’d gone into the final race of the year already in first place.

So they had to hunt down Hamlin and pass him and then keep him behind, which they did successfully. As Knaus said: "We had to come down here and beat ‘em, and we beat ‘em."

Hamlin didn’t do his own cause any good by, first, qualifying poorly (he started the race in xxth place) and, second, running into Greg Biffle’s car on the 24^th lap, which resulted in a spin and damage to the front of his car.

Although he initially complained to his crew that "the 16 came right down on me (which was not true, as TV replays showed)," he’d calmed down enough following the race to explain that the accident had knocked the toe out (toe settings determine straight-lin stability and corner handling) and "the car was never the same after that."

Harvick, on the other hand, did everything he said he’d do, which included sending Kyle Busch for a ride into the inside guardrail when Busch the Younger drifted up into his path, expecting Harvick to let off, which didn’t happen.

While his aggressiveness was admirable, his speeding ticket on pit road was not and it likely cost him second place in the championship. If he hadn’t been sent to the rear of the field as penalty, he might either have won the race or finished ahead of Johnson, which might not have won him the overall title but would have had him ahead of Hamlin.

Oh, well. As he said: "We went down swinging."

Unlike the F1 race, which was a bit of a bore after Vettel went into cruise control and Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber appeared content to trundle around behind Vxxx Petrov, the Sprint Cup race was full of tension until the final checkers.

Yes, Johnson was in second place and in the catbird seat for the last 20 laps, but this is NASCAR and one never knows when a tire will go flat or a leader will come upon a wreck happening back in the pack.

Anyone who remembers Dale Earnhardt apparently winning the Daytona 500 in 1990, only to have a tire go down midway through the third turn on the last lap, knows you don’t count your chickens in NASCAR until you cross the finish line for the final time.

One of these years, somebody driving for some other team will beat Jimmie Johnson and Chad Knaus.

Maybe.

Notebook jottings:

– Sebastien Vettel is world F1 champion, Dario Franchitti is the IZOD IndyCar Series champion and Jimmie Johnson is the NASCAR Sprint Cup champion.

For all intents and purposes, racing is finished for 2010 (although the German Touring Car Championship remains to be determined, with the final race of the season scheduled for next Sunday in Shanghai. Canadian Bruno Spengler is in the lead, so cross fingers for him).

Which means, however, that for the first time since last February, there will be no live racing on television next Sunday afternoon.

What ever will we do?

– NASCAR should find a way to end the season in a place other than Homestead, Fla. The track is okay, but as a tourist destination, it is the pits.

The best thing about Homestead is that it’s only 60 miles away from Fort Lauderdale.

– Kevin Harvick was interviewed while holding the ever-present bottle of Coca-Cola – a product placement that is the most irritating of all product placements.

When the interview was over, but while the camera was still on, Harvick handed the Coke to someone and accepted a bottle of water.

The drivers might have to hold it but they won’t drink that stuff and that might tell you something.

– It looked like a full house at the Homestead-Miami Speedway but NASCAR’s final race of the season wasn’t on network TV in the U.S. and that is another problem for the sanctioning body.

As attendance has fallen, and TV ratings have dropped, long-time sponsors are turning away from the sport. First instance, Sunday was Jeff Gordon’s last race with DuPont on his car; next season, he’ll be racing in support of U.S. food banks (yes, it’s come to that). \

As NASCAR falters, IndyCar seems to be gathering momentum with more and more announcements being made concerning 2012.

It’s like a boxing match. The challenger knocked the old champ down and has been dancing around the ring, arms upraised in triumph.

But the old champ is getting up off the canvas. The challenger has been too busy mugging to the crowd to notice.

He’d better be careful. If he doesn’t watch it, the old champion’s going to deliver a knockout punch.

Ask anybody in the fight game about that scenario. It’s only happened in the ring – oh, only about a thousand times before.

Triple Crown for Canadian rally champions

Antoine L'Estage and Nathalie Richard of Ste-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., drove their Rockstar Energy Drink-sponsored Mitsubishi to a decisive win in Saturday’s Rally of the Tall Pines, the final round of the Canadian Rally Championship Presented by Subaru and supported by Yokohama.

The win is their third Canadian Rally Championship and combined with their Rally America and North American Rally Cup titles makes them only the second team ever to win all three titles in the same year.

"I'm so happy that we've done it," L'Estage said after the event, which is held each year in Bancroft.

"The car was so good all season, and my family and sponsors have all been very supportive. I am so happy that I can show my appreciation by winning every rally title there is in North America."

Second place in both the event and the championship went to Craig Henderson and Lyne Murphy of New Richmond, Que. By finishing second, the team won the manufacturer’s title for Subaru.

Bruno Carré and Yvan Joyal pf Lavla, Que., who won the opening round of the six-rally 2010 season and led the point standings for much of the year, finished third.

Pat Richard of Squamish, B.C. and Alan Ockwell of Toronto were forced to drop out with a broken suspension. They had gone into the rally in second place, only two points behind L’Estage and Nathalie Richard. Their DNF, however, knocked them well down in the final standings.

"Congratulations to Antoine and Nathalie on their win," said Pat Richard, who was seeking his third consecutive national championship.

"We've done so well in the past, it's tough not to be able to continue that trend. This rally was really hard on us, and we wanted to win, but sometimes that's just not how things go."

Antoine L'Estage and Nathalie Richard have developed into one of the most dominant teams in North America, winning six of the last seven rallies they entered and earning the U.S. title in their first full season south of the border.

The 2010 edition of the Rally of the Tall Pines marked the event's 40th anniversary, making it one of the oldest events in the championship.
"With the 40th anniversary this year, we've been focused on making this the best Tall Pines ever," said Mike Koch, rally co-ordinator. "We were able to improve some of the roads over previous years to make things better for the competitors, and have continued to foster great spectating . . . and I am really happy with the results."

The 2011 Canadian Rally Championship season will start in Maniwaki, Que., with the Rallye Perce Neige next February.

The Canadian Rally Championship is made up of six events held nationwide in a season that
extends from February to November. The series is presented by Subaru Canada, supported by
Yokohama Tire Canada and features contingency programs from Subaru Canada and Mitsubishi
Canada.

The Canadian Association of Rallysport (CARS) is the official sanctioning body for rallying in
Canada.

My thanks to Keith Morison, who’s in charge of media relations for the championship, for supplying the information published here.

As well as an excellent journalist, Morison – of Calgary – is also a pretty good rally competitor himself, finishing fourth in the Tall Pines with Martin Rowe of Whistler, B.C. driving.

NASCAR, rally titles on line this weekend

Just about the last two remaining motorsport championships of 2010 will be decided this weekend and only one will be available on live TV and then only if you get TSN2.

The televised event, of course, will be the Grand Finale of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Chase for the Championship from Homestead-Miami Speedway on Sunday at 1 p.m. Three drivers are in contention for the title — four-time title holder and defending champion Jimmie Johnson, and Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick, both of whom are hoping to win their first.

As was the case in Formula One last weekend, there are all sorts of scenarios in play so far as who can win the championship and how. I think it’s pretty safe to say, however, that the winner of the NASCAR championship is going to have to win that race, just as Sebastien Vettel did in F1 at Abu Dhabi.

And who might that be?

Well, as of today, Hamlin — who leads Johnson by 15 points and Harvick by 46 — has done more winning this season than the other two. He’s taken eight checkered flags to Johnson’s six and Harvick’s three. As it’s the end of the road, and points going forward don’t matter, Hamlin would look to be in a better position because of his winning record.

But Hamlin has never been this close to the title before. He’ll be feeling the pressure, for sure, and Johnson, in particular, has taken great pleasure this week in needling his opponent about his lack of experience in this area.

Harvick could win the title but he has to win the race as well as the bonus points for leading the most laps and hope that the other two melt down totally for that to happen.

It probably won’t. I think the championship is really down to two drivers, Hamlin and Johnson, and I won’t be surprised at all if Johnson wins his fifth title.

He’s a marvelous driver who’s been there before — the last four times, to be exact. And his crew chief, Chad Knaus, is a ruthless businessman who does what has to be done to ensure his driver has all the tools necessary to be successful — witness his “firing” of Johnson’s crew in mid-race two weeks ago and the elevation of Jeff Gordon’s crew to service Johnson’s No. 48 car, a decision since made permanent.

It will be a nail-biter to the end on Sunday. Some say the Chase could go down to the last lap.

We’ll see.

Oh, the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and the Nationwide Series both close out their seasons at Homestead-Miami too, with the truck race available tonight at 8 on Speed Channel and the Nationwide race tomorrow at 4 on — yep — TSN2.

Meantime, at Bancroft this weekend, the 2010 Canadian Rally Championship season will come to an end with the annual running of the Rally of the Tall Pines and it will be another nail-biter with two teams going into the final separated by just two points.

The leading team is the duo of Antoine L’Estage and co-driver Nathalie Richard of St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que. Two points behind are Richard’s brother, Patrick, of Mission, B.C., and Alan Ockwell of Toronto. Whichever team wins this rally will win the championship.

There’s more at stake for L’Estage and Nathalie Richard, however. If they win the Canadian title, they will have won the Triple Crown of North American rallying – the Canadian national title as well as the Rally America series and the North American Rally Cup.

They are the most successful team in the history of Canadian rally racing. He has won three North American championships, two Canadian championships, an American title and 24 overall victories in Canada and the U.S. His parther Nathalie Richard holds five overall national championships (Canada and the U.S.) and has won 30 rallies on both sides of the border. She clinched her sixth North American title in seven years in September.

The rally tomorrow (Saturday) will be the longest of the six-event national championship. Starting at 9 a.m., competitors will be on the road for 13 hours  and cover 488 kms with 188 scrambled over 15 speed stages.

Want to watch in person? Bancroft is located in eastern Ontario, about mid-way between Peterborough and Pembroke and is about a 4-hour drive from Toronto.

The rally will be on TV at some point in the future. However, if you can’t drive to Bancroft tomorrow and still want to follow the rally, go to flatovercrest.com for live updates.

Danica proves she's got the Right Stuff

Weekend headlines:

1. Franchitti wins championship but Danica wins respect

2. Chase tightens but all eyes are on Kyle Busch's antics

3. Petit Le Mans, World and Canadian rally sport, and lots more

IZOD IndyCar Series

The night-of stories were expected, and the day-after ones too, but it’s now two days after the final IZOD IndyCar Series race of the season and it’s time to focus on the real story of that joust, which happens to be Danica Patrick.

Granted, the fact that Dario Franchitti won his third championship in four years is a pretty good tale, as is Scott Dixon’s drive to victory in the Cafes dos Brasil Indy 300 at Homestead-Miami Speedway (full story here).

But that Danica Patrick scratched and clawed and flat-out raced her way to second place after many fans, most media and just about everybody inside the sport had written off her season is really front-page stuff.

Anybody who says they watched the last 10 laps of that race Saturday night and yet still has the nerve today to say that Patrick isn’t a race-car driver of the top rank couldn’t possibly be telling the truth (or, if they really had been watching, they must have been drunk).

For 10 laps, Patrick and Tony Kanaan were side-by-side, going 200 miles an hour, their wheels only inches apart. Neither one of them blinked; neither one of them lifted.

With three laps to go, Patrick dropped back slightly and dipsy-doodled around behind Kanaan in an effort to fake him into moving up the track to block her, which he did. When he literally wasn’t looking (he said later he hadn’t seen her), she shot down low on the inside and held that groove through to the checkers.

She also could have been trying to get him to use his "push-to-pass" button (which boosts an engine’s horsepower for 18 seconds; each driver starts a race with 15 pushes and must wait 10 seconds after each push for the system to reset; a push can be used to defend against a pass as much as it can be used to attempt a pass). Kanaan had started those last 10 laps with six pushes remaining while Patrick only had three.

Whether Kanaan used his last pushes to fend her off or whether she was on the button too, they were dead even starting the last lap and stayed that way all the way around.

She took second-place from Kanaan by 0.0111 seconds – about the thickness of the paint on the snout of her car.

It was her second storming second-place finish in IndyCar this year (she finished second in the Texas race in June) and it moved her into the top ten in the final standings (she’d finished in fifth place a year ago).

The rest of her season has been so-so, however, and had led to criticism of her for trying to drive in the NASCAR stock-car Nationwide Series at the same time she was driving Indy cars.

If nothing else, then, her performance Saturday night at Homestead-Miami Speedwayl will go a long way to prove that if she’s given a fighting chance in a good racing car, she can battle it out with – and beat – the best of them.

Franchitti is one of the best Indy car drivers of this generation. You don’t win three championships in four years, including two Indianapolis 500s, and not know what you’re doing.

But he couldn’t learn to drive a NASCAR stock car. World of Outlaws King Steve Kinser couldn’t either. Sam Hornish, a whiz in an Indy car, has struggled in the big stockers.

Whether Patrick ever gets the hang of NASCAR is still a question. But she sure showed on Saturday night that she can drive an Indy car.

IndyCar notebook jottings:

– There was nobody at this race. It was embarrassing to actually see how few people bothered to drive the 40 km south of Miami to watch what was a pretty thrilling showdown in person.

Homestead-Miami Speedway can hold 80,000 people. It has four sections that can hold 20,000 each. Three sections were closed entirely. The section near the fourth turn was open and was half empty – or half full, whatever.

I wrote a column for Toronto Star Wheels on Saturday, saying IndyCar has to take drastic action if it wants to stay in business. I got some nasty feedback from fans of the series but my point was made when the TV came on Saturday night.

There are those who will say that the race was held at a track owned by NASCAR (true) and that there is never any promotion there (also true).

But that is a cop-out. People living in south Florida are not stupid. There were stories about that race in the papers and on radio and TV. They just weren’t motivated enough to bother going. The product, for one reason or another, isn’t good enough to get people to go out and buy tickets and that is what IndyCar has to address – and fast.

(In fact, it was reported last night that Andretti Autosport has lost a major sponsor. The 7-11 convenience store organization will not sponsor Kanaan’s car next season and one look at that grandstand - and the dismal ratings on a U.S. cable channel that few people get or even know about - will tell you why.)

As I said in my column (and which the people who wrote to me seemed to have missed) is that I like Indy car racing. I like the drivers and I like the competition. But millions of people don’t and if that series wants to survive, it has to make changes.

Soon.

– Franchitti defeated Will Power by five points to win the title. He trailed by 12 points going into the finale in Florida.

Right from the get-go, the Scot took it to his Aussie opponent. He’d won the pole on Friday and just took off when the green flew on Saturday. In fact, he led the most laps before easing off toward the end of the race, eventually finishing eighth.

And why did he ease off? Because Power got careless on Lap 134 of the 200-lap race and drifted up into the wall, doing damage to his rear suspension. Although the Team Penske crew made repairs, Power wasn’t comfortable going 200 mph in a damaged car and parked it.

Franchitti had to finish 10th or better at that point and was comfortable finishing eighth.

His teammate, Dixon, took the lead when he dropped back and wasn’t really challenged for the win.

His margin of victory, although only two seconds, could have been smaller if Patrick and Kanaan had ganged up on him instead of battling each other. Their argument, of course, was over who should have been the principal chase-er.

– Danica Patrick "interviewed" the new CEO of IndyCar, Randy Bernard during the pre-race show. It was softball stuff but she did get in a zinger: "How long is your contract?" meaning, how deep is his commitment to Indy car racing.

And he wouldn’t answer.

Hmmm.

I’ve been around long enough to know that if anybody – politician, newspaper editor, hockey coach – is in for the long haul, they will take whatever action – sometimes radical action – they think is best for the company or the country.

If they’re just there for the short term, they won’t rock the boat. And he doesn’t appear to be rocking any boats.

– At 7 o’clock Saturday night, TSN had auto racing (Indy car). TSN2 had auto racing (NASCAR) and the Speed Channel had auto racing (the ALMS Petit Le Mans). I’d like to see the numbers for all three and add them up. I bet the total would be north of 500,000, which would put auto racing ahead of the CFL, which typically attracts 400,000 or so (except for the Grey Cup, of course).

– Patrick was the best of the five women in the race. Sarah Fisher (who’s dropping hints she might retire as a driver to concentrate on running her team; she should hire Paul Tracy) was 22^nd, Simona de Silvestro was 23^rd and Milka Duno and Ana Beatriz both crashed.out while running near the back and finished 24^th and 26^th respectively.

– There were 18 lead changes involving eight drivers, including Canadian Alex Tagliani, who led one lap and eventually finished 14^th.

NASCAR Sprint Cup

When NASCAR President Mike Helton urged the company’s drivers to "have at it, boys," there’s really only one driver who took him literally – Kyle Busch.

Sure, there have been others who periodically got themselves a little excited – Carl Edwards and Brad Keselowski come to mind – but only one driver has consistently acted in an anti-social manner all season and that driver has been Busch the younger.

His older brother Kurt, an arrogant elitist in his own right, seems downright genteel when compared to Kyle.

At one point this season, Kyle Busch threatened – over the radio, to his crew – to kill another driver. Of course it was probably in the heat of the moment, and nobody should have expected him to really do it, but a threat is a threat in any discipline or language.

His employer is Joe Gibbs, a successful football coach and racing team owner who is also a God-fearing man. As he did in pro football, Gibbs leads his team in a prayer before and after the race. I would not be surprised if he asks for strength to deal with Kyle Busch.

Busch’s bumper got him into trouble twice during the weekend, and he came out on the short end of the stick both times.

In Saturday’s Nationwide Series race at Kansas Speedway, he had a solid second locked up when he tried to nudge Joe Logano out of the way in order to maybe win. He missed, and had to check up before he ran into the wall.

In that split second, Brad Keseklowski blew past him on the low side to take second and drop Busch to third.

Kyle Busch is in the running for the Nationwide championship. Those points he lost when he pulled that little stunt could come back to haunt him before the season’s finished.

Yersterday, early in the Sprint Cup race that was eventually won by Greg Biffle, with Jimmie Johnson second (he’s now leading the Chase for the Championship) and Kevin Harvick third (full story here), Kyle Busch’s chrome horn got him into trouble again.

Following David Reutimann through a turn, he just couldn’t help bumping into Buzzi’s kid and sending him backwards up the track and into the wall. Kyle advanced one position and Reutimann was wrecked.

You know what’s coming next, don’t you? Kyle Busch is in the Chase and when you’re in the Chase you want to be able to collect as many points as you can in as many of the 10 races that you can and the last thing you want to do is get somebody angry at you.

So here comes Reutimann. He runs into Busch and walls him enough that Busch has to go to the pits for repairs. He eventually finished 21^st but could have been a lot higher.

Busch said some interesting things about the situation. In short: he admitted hitting Reutimann but Reutimann’s not in the Chase and how dare he retaliate against a guy who’s in in the Chase when he could have waited till the regular season races next year to do it.

You know, when you’re in the Chase, you’re royalty. At least, that’s what I think Kyle Busch was saying. When you’re not in the Chase, you’re a peasant – apparently.

That’s why nobody likes Kyle Busch. Nobody ever liked Dale Earnhardt either, except they really did.

But not Kyle.

(P.S. Kyle, all you had to do when you hit Reutimann was get on the radio to your crew to run down to Reutimann's crew and say sorry. Right then and there. But no-o-o-o-. He should have waited till next year to deliver his payback. Hey, Kyle: have you ever waited?)

NASCAR notebook jottings:

– Except for the tiff between Busch and Reutimann, it was a quiet race. The full house at Kansas Speedway undoubtedly enjoyed the spectacle, because that speedway is a lovely facility and the weather appeared to be gorgeous, but there wasn’t that much to really get excited about.

– The last time I was at Kansas Speedway, the tornado sirens went off (the sky got as black as ink) and I was huddled, with about 500 other guys, in a men’s washroom in the infield that was made of concrete blocks.

The sirens react to barometric pressure and their wail as the tornado skipped around just outside the race track struck fear in my heart. They would be almost silent and then would get louder and louder until they were almost shrieking as the twister came ever closer.

And then it was over. The sun didn’t come out but after the emergency it was just another cloudy day.

– As the camera panned the cars going through turns three and four, you might have noticed a water tower in the distance. There’s a plaza over there that includes a Ted’s Montana Grill – a restaurant chain that serves beef and bison that Ted Turner raises, now that he’s not married to Jane Fonda anymore and doesn’t have CNN to play with.

The tornado sirens started up again when we were in there, too.

Other racing

– I tried, but I couldn’t get myself too excited about the ALMS finale, the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta. I’m not sure that endurance racing lends itself all that well to TV, particularly after dark.

In any event, the Peugeot team of Stephan Sarrazin, Franck Montagny and Pedro Lamy led a one-two sweep for the French manufacturer whose No. 2 entry piloted by Anthony Davidson, Marc Gene and Alex Wurz finished just ahead of the Audi entry driven by Allan McNish, Dindo Capello and Tom Kristensen.

The Audis might – might – have finished second but when Capello left the pits late in the race he found that his balaclava had somehow slipped down inside his helmet and he couldn’t see. So he had to pit to get that little problem sorted out and that ensured the Peugeot team the sweep.

David Brabham, Simon Pagenaud and Marino Franchitti (Dario’s brother) won the LMP2 class (and won the ALMS prototype championship again). In GT2, the Ferrari driven by Gianmaria Bruni and Tony  Vilander ran out of petrol two corners from the finish, handing the victory to the Corvette team featuring Oliver Gavin, Jan Magnussen and Emmanuel Collard.

I think that was the first victory for Corvette since they parted ways with Ron Fellows, and it was a fluke at that.

Kyle Marcelli of Barrie was the most successful of the three Canadians in the race, finishing 24^th overall in the prototype challenge class. Mark Wilkins of Toronto had some mechanical difficulties and was 34^th while Toronto’s Tony Burgess was on a team that wasn’t running at the finish.

– Sebastien Loeb won his seventh straight World Rally Championship title when he won the Rally of France yesterday. It was his 60^th career victory in the series and his sixth this season for Citroen.

Kimi Raikkonen had not one crash but two on Saturday, driving for the Citroen Junior team, and it is no wonder he is trying to get back into F1 where he might get some respect again. He’s crashed so many times this year in the rally sport that he’s become something of a joke.

– Speaking of rallies and success, Antoine L’Estage and Nathalie Richard of Ste-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., won the Pacific Forest Rally this weekend to take the lead in the Canadian Rally Championship by two points over Pat Richard of Squamish, B.C., and Allan Ockwell of Toronto.

The rally was the fifth event of the national championship series, presented by Subaru and supported by Yokohama. One rally – the Tall Pines at Bancroft in November – remains.

– James Hinchcliffe of Oakville was second by an eyelash in the Indy Lights preliminary to the IndyCar finale at Homstead-Miami Speedway on Saturday. "Hinch" finished the season in second place in the championship and is looking to move up to the IndyCar series in 2011.

Philip Major of Ottawa finished eight in that race.

 

L’Estage, Richard wrap up 2010 Rally America Championship

 Antoine L’Estage and Nathalie Richard of St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., won the 2010 Rally America Championship at the weekend when they finished first in the New England Forest Rally in Maine.

It was the last round of the 2010 Rally America season. 

This was the first U.S. title for L’Estage, who is a two-time Canadian and two-time North American rally champion.

For co-driver Richard, this was the third overall American title she's earned, making her the most successful Canadian competitor in U.S. rally competition.

Sponsored by Rockstar Energy Drink and the Royal Group, and driving a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X, L’Estage and Richard finished every round of the U.S. series on the podium, with two victories (Maine and Pennsylvania), three second-place finishes and a third.

L’Estage, who has won a national and/or international title in each of the last five years, said: “We’re a small team of never more than five people, including Nathalie and I, and we’re battling top factory teams for titles on both sides of the border. It’s fantastic to see what we can accomplish.”

Overall, L’Estage has won 22 rallies in Canada and the United States. Richard has won 31.

The couple will now head to Los Angeles for the 16^th X Games, scheduled for July 31^st. L’Estage will contest the Rally Car Racing event as well as Super Rally, a rallycross-type event that's new this year.

This will be the Quebec driver’s third appearance in the X Games, which will be televised live on ABC. 

After that, L’Estage and Richard will head for Ste-Agathe, Que., to drive in the Rallye Defi, which is the fourth of six events that make up the Canadian rally championship.

After three rounds, they are fourth in the national standings.

TV ALERT:

The TSN broadcast of the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series Jumpstart 100 that was run last Saturday as part of the Honda Indy Toronto weekend will be re-aired this afternoon on TSN at 3:30 and again at midnight on Friday (July 23).
If you miss it on TSN, it will be seen on TSN2 this Thursday at 10:30 p.m. and on Saturday at 3:30 p.m.