Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

On Michael Schumacher and NASCAR Canada fisticuffs

Yesterday, I suggested it was time that Michael Schumacher retire for good from Formula One racing because I don’t think his mental ability to process information quickly and to react physically is as razor sharp as it once was.

In other words, like the aging heavyweight who’s been on the receiving end of a left hook or right cross from a much-younger opponent and unable to do anything about it, it’s time for Schumacher to call it a day – I think.

Seems I’m not alone.

The picture above was posted on a Facebook page yesterday populated by fans of world championship leader Fernando Alonso. Click here for a link to that site.

Now, just because I think Schumacher should call it a day in F1 doesn’t mean he can’t keep racing and winning, although I would hope he doesn’t follow the lead of Rubens Barrichello and take a crack at Indy cars because that series is not the walk in the park a lot of people think it is.

But Le Mans and other European-style sports car races would be right up  Schumacher’s alley.

Meantime, last Saturday night at Kawartha Speedway, NASCAR’s "have at it, boys" dictum was taken literally by some of the Canadian Tire Series combatants.

In short, there was a fight at the finish of the last race of the season.

What got some folks riled up were the shenanigans during the green-white-checkers finish.

At the green, eventual winner (and 2012 Canadian Tire champeen) D.J. Kennington (about to win his seventh of 12 races) led Scott Steckly, Andrew Ranger, Pete Shepherd III and J. R. Fitzpatrick across the line. At some point in the next two laps – and cars were sometimes three wide at this point – Fitzpatrick got under Steckly and pushed him out of the groove and up into the marbles.

By the time Steckly regained control, most of the the front-runners had passed him by.

At the checkers, the order was Kennington, Ranger, Fitzpatrick, Shepherd, Rookie-of-the-Year Martin Roy and then Steckly, who - as you can imagine - was steaming.

On the cooldown lap, Steckly – a two-time Canadian Tire champion – and Fitzpatrick - who finished second to Kennington in points this season - played bumper cars on the backstretch.

At that point, NASCAR Canada announcer Adam Ross stopped talking about the wonderful performance of D.J. Kennington and drew everybody’s attention to the developing feud.

"J.R. Fitzpatrick has stopped his car at Scott Steckly’s pit," yelled Ross, approximately, over the track's PA system.

"He’s exchanging words with some of Steckly’s crew," he continued (these quotes are paraphrased, by the way).

"J.R. Fitzpatrick is getting out of his car and it looks like a brouhaha is developing. He’s taking quite a chance. His pit crew is all the way down at the first turn. They’re starting to run to his assistance but in the meantime J.R. Fitzpatrick is surrounded by Scott Steckly’s crew. NASCAR officials are getting involved over there. J.R. Fitzpatrick’s crew, the cavalry, are starting to arrive but they’re all out of breath . . ."

And then it was over and the Victory Lane celebrations to crown Kennington King of NASCAR Canada were held.

I had watched the race from the "press box" in the Kawartha clubhouse, so I went to the infield to track down the 24-year-old Fitzpatrick to find out what had transpired.

I found him over at the post-race tech inspection area, laughing it up and thoroughly enjoying himself.

One thing: he hook hands with his left hand and kept his right hand stuffed deep down in the pocket of his jacket. It seems it was just a tad tender.

NM: What happened, J.R.?

JRF: "Well, I got my car started (after the contact with Steckly’s) and I drove around and Scott’s crew was leaning over the wall all yellin’ at me so I stopped to have a discussion.

"One guy was gettin' really lippy so I took off my helmet and got out of the car and went over and I said, ‘Who wants to go?’ And this guy says, ‘Me,’ so I grabbed him and I got two really good shots in, wham! wham! – and that’s how I hurt my hand – and then by that time they were all over me and they got some good ones in on me too and then the officials arrived and broke it up."

NM: So you got hit?

JRF: "Yeah, I got hit on the side of the head and I got one on my ear but I don’t think anybody hit me as hard as I hit that first guy."

NM: So do you think they’re going to fine you, or anything? I mean, you have a habit of getting into scraps at this track (several years ago, he was involved in a ‘brouhaha’ with Kerry Micks and his crew)."

JRF: "Listen, I’m the only driver who brings any excitement to this series. Without me, it would be boring. Without me, all you’d have is D.J. Kennington winning seven races - and how exciting is that?"

And the whole time, he had the biggest grin on his face you’ve ever seen.

Lewis Hamilton, Jimmie Johnson are class acts

WEEKEND HEADLINES:

1.  Hamilton had F1 field covered from the start

2. Johnson and Knaus in a class by themselves

3. A.J. Allmendinger done like dinner

It’s ironic that A.J. Allmendinger’s drug case was back in the public eye on a day when two of the finest examples of clean living, talent and determination won races in their respective disciplines: Jimmie Johnson in NASCAR stock cars and Lewis Hamilton in F1.

Johnson won his third race of the Sprint Cup season and his fourth Brickyard 400 when he won the race at Indianapolis Sunday.

And Hamilton won his second race of the F1 season and his third Grand Prix of Hungary.

Allmendinger, lastly, finally got what he deserved after his drug test came back positive: a public tongue-lashing.   

1. FORMULA ONE IN HUNGARY

From the moment he first drove out on the track in Hungary on Friday, Lewis Hamilton was faster in his McLaren-Mercedes than anybody else and he carried that through all weekend to win the Grand Prix on Sunday. Results and details here 

Kimi Raikkonen finished second and Roman Grosjean was third for Lotus-Renault. Defending world champion Sebastien Vettel was fourth for Red Bull-Renault while Fernando Alonso was fifth.

The race was largely uneventful, with analyst David Coulthard comparing it to a game orf chess, which he said he found "terribly exciting."

Thanks for the hype, David.

I’m in shock, however. I know that F1 shuts down in August so everybody can have a vacation – and that’s fine. It used to be three weeks. Now, however, it is up to five weeks.

The next race in F1 will not happen until Sept. 2, in Belgium. I expect severe withdrawal to set in around Aug. 18th.

What language do they speak in Hungary? Hungarian, right? So how come the podium ceremony was conducted all in English?

Wow! What a surprise! None other than opera tenor Placido Domingo appeared on the podium to interview the drivers!

I thought it was wonderful for the spectators (if they could understand what was being said – it was in English, again, remember?) and so much better than whisking the drivers off to some interview room where nobody actually at the event could hear them answer questions about their race.

However, Domingo was nervous, English is not his first language (Spanish is) and the questions were beyond superficial. So by all means continue doing that but have someone (Coulthard, perhaps?) doing the asking and if the race is in a country where English is not the first language then have a translator present.

But most of the drivers are multilingual anyway, so it really shouldn't be a problem.

Team orders at Lotus? I don’t think so. Raikkonen took second place coming out of the pits from his teammate, Grosjean, and ran him off the track while doing so.

Now, I like the Kimster. But he ticked off his team after the race by complaining that they had failed to remind him about using his KERS on the second start (the first start was aborted when Michael Schumacher stopped on the grid).

I immediately yelled at the TV: WHY DID THEY HAVE TO REMIND YOU? AREN’T YOU THE DRIVER???

I say this every year but I’ll say it again. The first crack in the Iron Curtain, which led to the eventual fall of totalitarian-rule communism in most of eastern Europe and western Asia, came in 1986 when Formula One, the most capitalistic of sports, first went to race in Communist Hungary.

The symbolism was somehow lost on the world’s press.

Michael Schumacher had a miserable day. He got to the grid and the lights flashed yellow instead of going to red so he shut off his car because his engine was running hot. Then he had a flat, and he got a pit road speeding penalty and – well, he retired.

As I have reported previously, in an interview with Canadian reporters at the time of the Canadian GP, Mercedes boss Norbert Haug did not seem keen on Schumacher continuing his F1 career with Mercedes beyond the end of this season.

I don’t think Michael wants to quit – again – until he is absolutely sure he is ready. And, most of the time, he's right up there. He's had a pole this year, and a podium.

That’s why I am even more convinced than ever that he will return to Ferrari to support Alonso and maybe capture a little more glory for himself. I know there’s talk about Raikkonen going there, but Alonso is No. 1 and I don’t think he will stand to have another No. 1 in the team, which would be the status and opportunity afforded Kimi.

Schumi would also be No. 1, but really No. 2, and everybody would know it.

In addition, why would Raikkonen want to leave Lotus just as it appears to be on the rise? Any race now, Kimi or Grosjean will win. It would be just plain foolish for him to go.

I love Coulthard’s commentary. He is so much more observant, and his personality so much more delightful, than Martin Brundle. Coulthard is probably the best "sidekick" since the days of James Hunt holding up Murray Walker, although on occasion he does go a little over the top (see chess analogy,  above).

But most of the time, he's spot-on and highly entertaining.

Example: he’s talking about the cars losing two kilos of weight every lap as the fuel burns off but he doesn’t put it exactly that way. "It’s like losing a bag of sugar every time you pass the start line," he said.

I think that sort of thing is classic.

Fernando Alonso turned 31 Sunday but he’s still leading the world championship standings and, in fact, driving like a 21-year-old. He got hung up behind Sergio Perez for half a lap before just slicing and dicing his way past the young fellow and putting him firmly in his place.

You could almost hear the two-time world champion say, as he blew by: "Outtamyway, junior!"

Immediately post-race, Hamilton greeted his old buddy Raikkonen with the following words:

"This is like old times, Kimi!"

And why would he say that?

Because every time Hamilton has won this Hungarian race – 2012, 2009, 2007 – the driver who finished second was none other than Kimi Raikkonen.

2. NASCAR AT INDY

Jimmie Johnson had absolutely no trouble winning the Brickyard 400 on Sunday and he and crew chief/team manager Chad Knaus served notice they are a force to be reckoned with so far as this year’s Sprint Cup championship is concerned.

Johnson won five straight titles before being dethroned in 2011 and nobody will be surprised, particularly after Sunday’s display of dominance, if he isn’t champion again this season.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished fourth (results and details here) and is now leading the championship standings, something he hasn’t done since 2004.

Junior said after the race that to be in first place is nice, but he wants to win more races. Being consistent is one thing, winning races is another, he said.

I couldn’t agree more. His latest losing streak is now up to five – and counting.

They promoted the Brickyard weekend at Indianapolis Motor Speedway as a racing extravaganza. The economy in the United States really has to be in the outhouse because the racing didn’t attract much more than flies.

Starting with the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series on Friday, which was attended by exactly no one (an exaggeration, but I suggest there were more people in the pits than there were on the grounds), through the Nationwide Series race Saturday, which drew a sparse crowd, to the Sprint Cup race on Sunday in which the grandstands were about a third full, I suggest if you took the spectators from all three races and added them up, you still wouldn’t fill all the seats in the place.

Sebastien Bourdais won the Grand Am race, by the way; Brad Keselowski won the Nationwide, giving Roger Penske his first stock car victory at Indy.

While the Speedway is perfect for IndyCar racing – 200 mph-plus speeds all the way around the 2.5-mile facility – the stock cars seem to lumber around there. They have to brake going into the turns and the corners are nearly flat, compared to high-banked stock car tracks, so you don’t see "pack" racing there like you do at other circuits like Daytona or Talladega.

As a result, you don’t get to see "big one" crashes like you do at those other speedways and NASCAR fans, as a result, might find the whole Indianapolis thing somewhat boring.

Brian France is on record as saying he wants more action when the next generation of NASCAR cars debuts in 2013. Whether the Indianapolis Motor Speedway will continue to be on the Sprint Cup schedule, as a result, remains to be seen.

If I hear one more NASCAR driver or announcer say that Indy blows them away because of the "history" and "tradition," I think I’ll scream.

The history is because the Speedway is more than 100 years old. The history is because of the Indianapolis 500, which is not a stock car race.

They turned their backs on the tradition when they started to drive their cars out of the garage area to the pits, just like they do at every other NASCAR track.

If they loved the tradition so much, they’d still be pushing the cars out, with the drivers walking beside them, like they did when they first went to Indy back in the Nineties.

So stop with the platitudes. It really gets tiring.

Tony Stewart is the great racing driver in the world. Well, at least the busiest.

Friday he practiced at Indy. Saturday he qualified for the Brickyard. Saturday night he won a sprint car race at Eldora Speedway in Ohio (which he owns, incidentally). Sunday he raced from 28^th position to tenth in the Brickyard (only Clint Bowyer passed as many cars). Monday (today) he will test at Michigan for the upcoming Sprint Cup race there. Monday night he’ll be at Ohsweken Speedway on the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford for a local sprint car race. Tuesday, he’ll be back in Michigan for tire testing and then Tuesday night he’ll return to Ohsweken to race in a World of Outlaws meet, a race he won a year ago.

Wednesday, I betcha he’ll be back at his shop in the Charlotte area, giving hell to his Sprint Cup engineers for not having a better-prepared car for him at Indianapolis.

3. If there was ever any doubt, Allmendinger is out of NASCAR

I said it not once but twice last week: A.J. Allmendinger made a humongous error by not standing up and taking his medicine in public after he failed the second half of his NASCAR-administered drug test.

His business advisers let him down, his corporate partners let him down and his friends let him down by not insisting that he call a news conference and answer each and every question as open and honestly as he could about what caused NASCAR to administer the test in the first place, exactly what he had been ingesting and what he planned to do about it.

It might not have done him any good in the end, but it would likely have saved him (and his reputation) the lambasting that he finally got from some of NASCAR’s heavy hitters on Sunday morning.

All week, his business manager kept putting out press releases suggesting that this whole thing was an honest mistake, inferring that it was a fluke, that although the two tests had been positive that they had both been just an eensy, weensy bit over the legal limit and Allmendinger and his people "would get to the bottom" of whatever it was that caused him to test positive.

And, of course, later in the week, A.J. himself got active on Twitter to thank people for their support and to suggest that he was as mystified as anyone else as to what had happened.

Sure.

Sunday morning on NASCAR Raceday on the Speed Channel, Darrell Waltrip, Kenny Wallace, Kyle Petty and Larry McReynolds had had enough – enough of the political correctness ("we’re all behind A.J. in his fight to reinstate himself" and yada, yada, yada) and enough of the ongoing suggestions that Allmendinger would go to a 28-day treatment program and slot right back into the No. 22 Sprint Cup car.

In short, led by Kyle Petty, they said he doesn’t have a hope in hell of ever getting a NASCAR Sprint Cup ride again and the only way he’d find himself back in even the Nationwide Series would be to show up with $4 or $6 million of sponsorship dollars and even then it would probably be chancy.

Waltrip started the piling on by saying the NASCAR substance abuse program is foolproof. And McRaynolds added that despite suggestions that Allmendinger’s reading was just a little over the limit, it’s like being pregnant: "You’re either pregnant or you’re not."

Petty, however, made the most biting comments.

"This is NASCAR and this is racing and this is competition and this is somebody else’s money. We’re spending corporate America’s dollars on this and he’s not going to come back. . . I’ll say it . . . I don’t mind saying it. . . I’m glad he’s on the ‘Road to Recovery’ (program) but he might as well be on a weight-loss program when it comes to coming back in NASCAR because I don’t see any way for him to come back to this sport."

So what is the lesson here for the next guy?

When George Washington’s father caught him cutting the bark off the cherry tree (or so the story goes . . .) the future first president of the United States ’fessed up; he didn’t take the Fifth Amendment, which is a life lesson that just about everybody has forgotten (including another U.S. president who had to resign when caught in a lie, or lies).

Allmendinger had his chance and he blew it – in more ways than one.

And this business about him sliding back into A.J. Foyt’s car over in the IndyCar series?

I can’t see all the other drivers in IndyCar being all that happy about that scenario, can you? And since one of the most powerful owners in IndyCar – if not the most powerful – also happens to be Allmendinger’s employer in NASCAR, I would suggest he’s going to have to pay many more dues before being welcomed back there too.

This has just been a big mess from start to finish.

Okay, why are most observers angry about this – including me?

Because this is the Sprint Cup. This is the top of the mountain. This is the Indy 500 and the world drivers’ championship and Pikes Peak and every great motor race in the world all rolled into one.

Every kid who ever sat behind the wheel of a racing car has prayed for an opportunity like the one handed on a silver platter to A.J. Allmendinger.

I mean, it’s not like he earned it. He was not exactly a winner in stock cars. But he was given the chance of a lifetime to become one and he pissed it away – literally.

When he was nailed for DUI several years ago, he did the right thing by accepting full responsibility. But if he’d been smart, he would have stopped everything he was doing right there – cold. No more booze and no more whatever.

I know it’s easier said than done for some people. But millions of those people have changed their habits and changed their behaviour, particularly when handed the key to the kingdom.

A.J. Allmendinger obviously didn’t and that’s why the vitriol is as loud and as shrill as it is.

Because he was stupid and he blew it.

Sam Hornish Jr. will get the ride in the 22 car for the remaining 17 races to show what at he can do. If he wins or has top fives or top tens, he might get the ride in 2013. But if he falters – and remember: he’s no rookie – then his 15 minutes will soon be up, so far as Roger Penske in NASCAR is concerned.

And why Sam the rest of the way? Because Penske trusts him. He knows Sam is clean, sober, polite, co-operative and media-trained to a fault.

And if not Sam for the rest of 2012, who?

Robbie Gordon? Casey Mears? Elliott Sadler? Ryan Briscoe (only kidding)?

If I’m Roger, the only guy I look at it the short term, besides Sam, is Trevor Bayne.

The rest of them are journeymen and Penske wants, and needs, a winner.

In one of my columns/blogs last week, I said I would make a suggestion in this Monday Morning Roundup about how to save Canada’s Formula One race.

But, as they say, there have been developments and this is long enough. I’ll save my suggestions for later in the week.

A.J. Allmendinger has to come clean - today

A.J. Allmendinger, when he was caught driving under the influence of alcohol a few years ago, did exactly the right thing when — within hours — he owned up to his mistake and told reporters it would never happen again.

It saved his career.

Now he’s in another mess and the clock is ticking. It is Thursday, and it’s been public knowledge since Tuesday that he’d officially flunked NASCAR’s drug test and the only person doing any talking is his business manager, who’s been sugar coating everything.

The question that must be answered is this:

What was in his system?

Allmendinger, it’s hoped, will call a media conference today and explain what happened. It’s not good enough that he’s entering NASCAR’s recovery program. It’s not good enough that he’s talked privately with his employers and his sponsors. He has to tell the world exactly what happened.

I’m not the only one who thinks this.

Jeff Hammond, NASCAR analyst and former Sprint Cup crew chief, said:

“He will have to step forward and make sure we all understand what substance was involved. That must come first and must be addressed by A.J. His honesty and candor, like he displayed when he handled his DUI, will directly impact whether he can get over this hurdle. A.J. must be willing to man up and come clean.”

Okay, another curiosity is the connection that the other A.J. allegedly has to this story.

Even before the results of Allmendinger’s second test were known, A.J. Foyt reportedly said he would be willing to have him on his Indy car team and this has been interpreted by some columnists and some fans as a green light for the Dinger to waltz right back into single-seaters.

There’s a whole bunch wrong with that scenario, starting with the fact that — as of this writing (Thursday morning) — I have not heard A.J. Foyt himself say any such thing.

The problem with phrases like “reportedly said” is that the words in the horse’s mouth are being interpreted by somebody who might very well have misunderstood the meaning or intent of really what was said. Or is deliberately torquing things up.

Here’s an example.

Reporter: “If A.J. Allmendinger mistakenly took an over-the-counter cold medication that contained a banned substance, and he failed a NASCAR drug test as a result, and he completed a 28-day treatment program,  and sat out the rest of the 2012 season, but then Roger Penske told him he won’t give him his job back, would you consider talking to him about maybe driving for you in the IndyCar series so long as you were confident he was clean and sober and had been for at least six months and he swore he would never do anything like that again?”

A.J. Foyt: “Sure.”

That’s how things get to be “reportedly said.”

There are not going to be any slam dunks for A.J. Allemendinger going forward.

But he can start to repair the damage today but standing up and saying just what it was he did, with what.

Meantime, can you believe it? D.J. Kennington of St. Thomas has won yet another NASCAR Canadian Tire Series race, this one on the oval at Saskatoon, Sask., on Wednesday night.

The victory at Auto Clearing Motor Speedway was his fifth straight of the 2012 season and the 16^th of his NASCAR career.

Kennington, who started fifth on the grid in his No. 17 Castrol Edge/Mahindra Tractors Dodge, led briefly just past the midway point of the race before being passed by Jason Hathaway of Dutton, Ont. Kennington gained the lead back when Hathaway's car broke on a late-race restart.

From there he held off challenges from pole-sitter J.R. Fitzpatrick of Cambridge and Mark Dilley of Barrie. Kennington held on for the win despite contact with Dilley in Turn 3 on the last lap. Dilley took second, with Fitzpatrick crossing the line in third.

Defending series champion Scott Steckly of Milverton finished fourth, with Ron Beauchamp Jr. of Windsor in fifth. The pace of the event was slowed by six cautions covering 46 laps.

In the point standings, Kennington has opened a formidable lead of 41 points over Steckly with Andrew Ranger of Roxton Pond, Que., and Fitzpatrick holding down the third and fourth positions, respectively.

The race will be telecast by TSN2 on Sat., Aug. 4, at 6:30 p.m. ET.

The next race in the 12-race series will be at the Grand Prix de Trois-Rivieres on Aug. 5.

Podium won't save Schumi's seat at Mercedes in 2013

On Sunday, Michael Schumacher scored his first podium since returning to Formula One three seasons ago but his third-place finish in the European Grand Prix at Valencia, Spain, which was won by Fernando Alonso with Kimi Raikkonen second, likely won’t save his seat with Mercedes for 2013.

If the way Mercedes boss Norbert Haug was talking about him in Montreal a few weeks ago is any indication, that is.

Haug is in charge of all motorsports for Mercedes – including F1 and the German Touring Car Championship (DTM) – and he was largely dismissive of the seven-time world champion when asked about him during a breakfast meeting with Canadian reporters on the first day of the Canadian Grand Prix.

It wasn’t what he said about the 43-year-old Schumacher that was startling. It was the way he said it.

In fact, when you read the words, he seems to be a big supporter of the legendary racer. But trust me: he might have spoken the words but his hand was waving away from his face in the manner of someone shooing away a fly.

I had asked whether Mercedes was optimistic about Schumacher’s chances in Montreal, considering he’d set fast time at the Monaco Grand Prix the week previous and had nearly made it to the podium in Canada a year earlier.

Haug, a former journalist, mused that being optimistic doesn’t help in today's Formula One.

"Yes, he was on the podium here (in 2011) until the last lap, or the last couple of laps (when he was passed for third). But you need to get the job done.

"We have 15 cars within six-tenths of a second of each other in Formula One and that says it all. If you get it just a little bit wrong . . . "

Dean McNulty of the Toronto Sun followed up by asking about a new contract.

"That is something that is not decided yet," Haug said. "We have a contract that runs out at the end of this year and we will take a decision together later in the year."

Then he said these words:

"You can see the speed of a driver best during qualifying. He has done well there, better than the two-time world champion, in fact. It just goes to show that the basics are still there.

"But we are a young team now." (My italics.) "Michael, of course, is very experienced but his time in Formula One until 2006 was a very different period. Testing was allowed, tire development was allowed for the particular car for the particular team. Now it’s controlled tires, the same for everybody. You have to adapt to that."

The inference was that Schumacher wasn’t adapting as well as someone younger might.

But he sure looked good Sunday in Spain. As was the case with Alonso (see blog post below), he needed some help and a lot of luck to get up to third.

But third place is a podium and you can’t take that away from anybody.

Mercedes might not want Michael Schumacher back after this year but the old guy is going to go out looking like a champion. He qualified 12^th and finished third on Sunday, which is pretty up and walkin’ good.

His much younger teammate, Nico Rosberg, who turns 27 on Wednesday and who’d outqualified his elder by six positions, could only manage a sixth-place finish.

The adage about hockey goalies – you have to be lucky to be good and good to be lucky – could have applied to Alonso on Sunday.

After missing pole position Q3 qualifying on Saturday, and starting the European Grand Prix from 11^th position, the Spanish hero proved on Sunday that he’s the driver of the year by bulling his way through to win the race at Valencia.

The two-time world champion was quite caught up in the emotion of the moment, first by tearing up during the playing of his country’s national anthem and later by saying that the victory was the greatest of his career.

Yes, Sebastien Vettel's Red Bull-Renault had to break down while leading, and Romain Grosjean had to suffer a mechanical misfortune with his Lotus-Renault that took him out of the contest, but Alonso was the class of the field (closely followed by Schumacher on this day) and was not to be denied.

Like Nigel Mansell in another era, Alonso has the heart of a lion and a mindset that won’t allow him to be beaten once he has the bit in his teeth. He was not to be denied.

A couple of quick observations about the F1 race:

– How many years have they had a safety car in Formula One? How come it always looks like the first time?

– Marshals and corner works are out on the track pushing Vettel’s car out of the way and some dimwit flagger is waving a green flag. How does that happen?

(I’ll tell you how it happens: it’s a professional sport worth billions of dollars officiated in many ways by non-professionals working for a ham sandwich and a beer at the end of the day, which is ludicrous.)

– I watched the replay several times Sunday night and have changed my mind about the Maldonado-Hamilton accident. I originally thought Hamilton was the victim. He was – but he brought it on himself. He pushed Pastor wide – and off the track – but the Williams driver had to get back on the track or else run into a wall. Hamilton didn’t leave him room to re-enter and bam! So since Hamilton pushed him off the track in the first place, setting up the ensuing scenario, how come Pastor gets a 20-second penalty for the subsequent collision, dropping him to 12^th from 10^th?

– In the closing laps, every time Alonso passed a grandstand, those sitting there would rise in unison to wave and cheer and salute. There was a "wave" all the way around the circuit as Alonso drove to victory.

It reminded me of the glory days of Jacques Villeneuve in Formula One, when he would race in Montreal and it didn’t matter whether it was an out lap during practice or during the race itself: every time JV would drive past a grandstand, they would Rise up! Rise up!

It was glorious to watch then, as it was to watch on Sunday in Spain.

Quick observations on other weekend races:

– Villeneuve’s arrogance is getting a little tiresome. Okay, he might not have meant to nail Danica Patrick on the last lap of Saturday’s Nationwide Series race at Road America but it was damn careless of him, regardless of the circumstances, and his post-race comment of, "It didn’t have anything to do with me, I don’t care," was unacceptable.

It was your fault, Jacques. ‘Fess up like a man.

- Hey, the TV folks spent most of the hour before the NASCAR Sprint Cup race from Sonoma talking up the "tradin' paint" aspect of stock cars racing on road courses. The message was simple: sparks will fly today, folks.

Well, by NASCAR standards, it was kinda tame. They went ab out 80 laps before there was even a yellow; there were only a couple of fender-benders thereafter. Clint Bowyer won. Dale Jr. didn't.

– Twice during the weekend, Ron Fellows, a child of 52 who finished third in that Nationwide Series race, made reference to racing as "keeping him young." Ron , 52 is not old. Trust me. I know.

– The IZOD IndyCar Series might think it’s the cat’s meow but it’s anything but. To have a race in the series scheduled to start at 10 p.m. Eastern was stupid to start with. Then, of course, it rained and it didn’t get going till after 11 p.m. and finished well after midnight.

I am a rapid fan of Indy car racing but I fell asleep on my couch. I suspect I was not alone.

Want to hear something even more ridiculous? The Indy Lights race got rained out earlier so they decided to run it after the Indy car race. Those guys took the green shortly before 1 a.m.

Oh, here’s another one. You’ll love this. The original start, once the cars got rolling, was waved off because the two-seater Indy car carrying a "civilian" was still on the track! The fact that Dario Franchitti's engine blew up moments later saved the series from certain embarrassment over that miscue.

– Talking about embarrassment, though, there was supposed to be a Plan B in place in case the race in China had to be cancelled. It was. Cancelled, that is. Where is Plan B?

- Poor James Hinchcliffe. The Oakville racer has had a stellar season in Indy car and went into the race at Iowa in second place in the standings. He spun out and crashed mid-way through and today's he's all the way back in sixth place.

Just like in F1 - Alonso is now leading the championship, replacing Hamilton who dropped to third place - a bad race in Indy car can cost you.

At Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (courtesy of Ryan Chalmers):

The final day of the Sports Car Doubleheader Weekend at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park saw non-stop action with five races to cap off the weekend.

In the Pirelli World Challenge Championship, Charlotte, N.C., native Mike Skeen made it a weekend sweep in his Chevrolet Corvette taking the checkered flag by 12.284 seconds over Maryland resident Lawson Aschenbach in a Porsche 911.  Alex Figge of Denver, Colo., finished third in the GT class driving a Volvo S60.

Aurora driver Mark Wilkens drove his Kia Motors Optima to a win in front of his home track fans in the GTS class.  

In Touring class action, Markham’s Gary Kwok drove his Honda Civic to victory for a second straight day.  Andre Rapone of Thornhill won for the third time over the weekend in the B-Spec class.

Scarborough racer Mike Mallais won both Porsche 944 Cup races in the Super Cup class while Coldwater’s Randy Smith and Tyler Comat of Burlington won in Cup class respectively.

The Can-Am Cup race in the Ontario Formula Ford Championship was won by Orangeville’s Caitlin Johnston.

(Norris Note: Way to go, Caitlin!!!)

In the Canadian Touring Car Championship (courtesy of Dominique Longval):

 Round 5 Saturday at Mirabel Airport's Circuit ICAR saw Sasha Anis of Mississauga win in a Hyundai Genesis with Benjamin Distaulo of Lorraine, Que., second in a Honda Civic and Philip Fayer of Montreal third in a Pontiac Solstice. Michel Sallenbach of Roxton Pond, Que., in his MINI Cooper and Damon Sharpe  of Tottenham in a Honda Civic Si were one-two in Touring Class.  Jacques Belanger of Quebec City finished third in his Honda Civic.  Nick Wittmer of Hudson, Que., and Simon Dion-Viens of St-Joseph de Kamouraska, Que., were first and second in Honda Fits in B-Spec with  James Bergeron third in a Mazda. 

Round 6 Sunday, also at Mirabel, saw the same three - Anis, Distaulo and Fayer - repeat their Saturday finish in Super Touring. In Touring, Belanger won with Sallenbach second and Adam Isman of Vancouver third in a MINI Cooper. Wittmer led from start to finish in B-Spec with Dion-Viens second and Bergeron third. 

The CTTC will next race at Le Circuit-Mont Tremblant on July 6th and 7th.

At Toronto Motorsports Park (courtesy of Bruce Mehlenbacher and Tim Miller):

At the Canadian Nitro Nationals, three-time PMRA champion Bruce Boland returned to his winning ways, capturing the Pro Modified Racing Association final. Michael Hinbest drove his Top Dragster to his first win in Quick 32 Sportsman Series racing and Pete Stewart took another win in the PBSS.

 Boland, of Hamilton, driving his 1941 Willys Pro Modified, took his first win of the season, defeating Kenny Lang of Grande Point, Man., in the final round. Boland also qualified No. 1 for the race with a 6.005-second, 238.05-mph pass, his fourth straight No. 1 qualifying run in PMRA racing.

 

Lang struggled after leaving the line, while Boland motored on to a solid 6.008, 237.71 drive over Lang’s 9.824, 94.14. Semi-finalists were Rocky Dilecce of Mississauga and Eric Latino of Whitby. 

 

Hinbest, of Orangeville, marched through a strong field of Top Dragster entries in the Quick 32 Sportsman Series to meet up with Top Sportsman driver Spencer Hyde in the event final. With his supercharged ERD-powered Mike Bos dragster, Hinbest left first and drove to a 6.551, 198.09 win over the 7.043, 196.82 of the 1968 Camaro of Hyde, from Stratford. 

  

On his way to the final, Hinbest, who qualified No. 4, took out Top Dragster finalist Bill Moloughney of Shawville, Que. Victor Puglia of Clarence Center, N.Y., and Brody VanDerGeld of Cambridge were semi-finalists.

 

On the Top Sportsman side, Hyde, who also qualified fourth, met up with and defeated the supercharged 1957 Chevy of Paul Martin of Breslau in the class final. Darrin Grubb of Pine River and Bob Bauer Jr. of Elma, N.Y., were semi-finalists.



After qualifying 13th in the field, Pete Stewart rode his Pro Bike Suzuki GSXR to the PBSS win over Milton's Ted Glinny with his Pro Bike Kawasaki Ninja. Stewart, of Toronto, ran a 9.47 at 145.67 to best Glinny’s 8.467 at 154.74. The win was Stewart’s second in PBSS racing.

 

Semi-finalists were Pro Bike rider Mike LaLande of Sturgeon Falls and the Pro Sled entry of Jeff Lippert of Amherstburg.

 

With the three events completed in the 2012 season, Boland leads the PMRA with 838 points. Second is Jeff Roth of New Dundee with 798 points, and third is Jack Grainy of North Tonawanda, N.Y., with 797 points.

 

The team of Michael Hinbest and Katie Ward (the two drivers share racing events) leads the Quick 32 Sportsman Series with 698 points, followed by Hyde with 658 points, and Top Dragster driver Mike Everitt of Stratford with 645 points.

 

Pro Bike rider John Orfanidis of Toronto is ahead in the PBSS points race with 600 points, followed by the Pro Sled entry of Chris Bondi of Aurora with 596 points and another Pro Sled rider, Jeff Lippert.

 

The next event for the Quick 32 Sportsman Series and the PBSS will be the Community Weekend at Cayuga Dragway Aug. 3-5. The next event for the PMRA is at the IHRA Mopar Nitro Jam Nationals at the Grand Bend Motorplex July 20-22. Then, the PMRA returns to Cayuga with its companion series for the Community Weekend event.

 

The Pro Modified Racing Association, www.PMRA.ca competes with its two companion series, the Quick 32 Sportsman Series, www.Quick32.ca and the Pro Bike & Sled Series, www.PBSS.ca to offer an exciting and diverse package of drag racing action.

Tony Kanaan wins Long Beach GP (not really, but . . .)

WEEKEND HEADLINES

1. Rosberg wins F1 race for Mercedes - what a coincidence

2. Power wins IndyCar race but Kanaan is real winner

3. NASCAR goes crazy over truck race at Rockingham. Really.

4. Other racing

Nico Rosberg won the first race of his 111-race Grand Prix career and he drove a Mercedes Silver Arrows into Victory Lane for the first time since 1955 to do it at Sunday’s Grand Prix of China.

The fact that shareholders at a Mercedes-Benz meeting last week called for the company to pull out of F1 racing and that the team is most unhappy with the way Bernie Ecclestone has been manipulating the signing of the new Concorde Agreement has nothing at all to do with the two surprising victories – apparently.

To get the nuts and bolts out of the way before getting into my latest conspiracy theory, Rosberg won the first pole of his career on Saturday and then ran away with Sunday’s race to finish well clear of second–place finisher Jenson Button, who was driving a McLaren powered by a Mercedes engine.

McLaren-Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton was third, for the third time in three races this season, while Mark Webber finished fourth for Red Bull-Renault - his third straight fourth-place finish. Defending world champion Sebastien Vettel was fifth (complete results here).

They say the best time to tune into an NFL game is after the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter and that was the case with Sunday’s Grand Prix, as all of the excitement happened in the last few laps.

With five laps to go in the 58-lap contest, Kimi Raikkonen was holding down second place for Lotus-Renault, with Vettel third, Button fourth, Webber fifth and Hamilton sixth. At the finish, it was Button second, Hamilton third, Webber fourth and Vettel fifth with Raikkonen all the way back in 14^th as his two-stop gamble saw his tires disintegrate.

It was a good race with lots to talk about afterward, such as Michael Schumacher’s second retirement in three races (he’d started second but his crew failed to tighten his right-front wheel at the first pit stop and he was forced to pull off the circuit before he crashed), whether Button could have caught Rosberg if his crew hadn’t taken so long to tighten his left-rear tire on his final pit stop (nearly 10 seconds), and whether the Mercedes F-duct front wing system gives that team an unfair advantage (at least until everybody else copies it).

One side note:

I don’t want to sound like Don Cherry but F1 will rue the day it did not put a stop to side-by-side "racing" on pit lane. McLaren released Hamilton from a pit stop early in the race and Lotus gave Raikkonen the signal to go as Hamilton drew alongside. Raikkonen and Hamilton then went side-by-side till the end of the pit (albeit on the speed limiters), at which point Raikkonen gave way to Hamilton.

Analyst David Coulthard went so far as to say the pit lane "is part of the race track" but it shouldn’t be. As in IndyCar, teams should have to hold the driver till the coast is clear. Otherwise, there will be a collision in there one of these days and somebody will get hurt. That shouldn’t have to happen in order to force F1 to act.

Now F1 travels to Bahrain where the majority Shiite population feels oppressed by a minority Sunni family headed by Sheikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. This political unrest forced the cancellation of the race last year and there are again fears of revolution.

As Bob Varsha said on Speed TV Sunday, "We worry that this sporting event will turn into a news event." For that, we will have to wait and see.

Meantime, I have to say that I never believed that a car race could be fixed until it was proved that Nelson Piquet Jr., Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds conspired at the 2008 Grand Prix of Singapore to create a situation (Piquet would crash on purpose) that would benefit his teammate, Fernando Alonso, who then went on to win the race.

The reason they did this was because Renault had not won a race for close to two years and was reportedly considering leaving the sport.

In no way do I think Nico Rosberg or anybody else in Sunday’s Grand Prix did anything knowingly illegal or immoral, but I still find it really interesting that – on the heels of suggestions that Mercedes might not continue in the sport – the team suddenly has wonderful success.

When there is big business at play, and there are billions of dollars at stake, anything is possible. Anything. And it goes beyond Formula One. The National Hockey League’s mission statement is that come hell or high water, it will sell hockey in the United States. Ergo, it is no coincidence that, with the exception of the Vancouver Canucks, every professional hockey team in Canada stinks. Remember that, and believe it.

The Mercedes shareholders revolt is being led by a fund manager named Ingo Spech of the Daimler shareholder Union Investment. Worried that Mercedes is losing ground to rivals BMW and Audi, Spech called on Daimler to pull its Mercedes team out of F1, just as BMW withdrew several years ago. His motion reportedly drew support from other large investors.

In a parallel development, Ecclestone announced several weeks ago that he had agreed terms on a new contract with a "majority" of teams but not Williams and Mercedes.

Mercedes has not commented publicly but reports suggest the company - if it remains unhappy - could either challenge the contract, citing the European Union’s competition laws, or else walk away from F1.

So with Mercedes and its shareholders down in the dumps over its involvement in F1, what better medicine than success? So a company that hasn’t won a Grand Prix since 1955 - Juan Manuel Fangio was the driver then - suddenly wins one.

And to put an exclamation mark on that, there are Mercedes engines in all of the first three cars. And Nico Rosberg, who’s always shown lots of promise but hasn’t been able to follow through until now, suddenly delivers in spades.

It will be verrrry interesting, as Arte Johnson used to say, to see if Rosberg can keep it up.

Why do I say that?

Well, do you remember the Belgian Grand Prix of 2009? That was two years after two Indian businessmen bought the Spyker F1 team (which had previously been owned by Canadian businessman Alex Schnaider’s Midland Group, who’d bought it from Eddie Jordan) and renamed it Force India.

Force India had entered 29 races and hadn’t scored a point and there were suggestions that if it didn’t finish high enough in the standings to qualify for a share of F1's travel and TV money that it would either be shut down or put up for sale again.

That year, there were 20 cars in F1. Nobody wanted to lose another two. Veteran Force India driver Giancarlo Fisichella qualified most of the time at the back of the pack that season. In fact, three times in 20 races he was dead last; twice he was 19^th, twice he was 18^th – and, well, you get my drift.

The race before the Belgian GP that year was the European Grand prix at Valencia. Fisichella qualified 16^th and finished 12^th. The race after Belgium was in Italy, where he qualified 14^th and finished ninth.

But at Belgium that year, he qualified on the pole – yes, really – and finished second in the race. The points he earned, plus the fourth-place finish at the Italian GP by his teammate, Adrien Sutil, gave the team enough points to finish high enough in the standings to qualify for financial aid.

What a coicidence. . .

As I said, if something has to happen in F1 (or any other mega-billion-dollar sport) to make somebody happy, it happens.

2. Kanaan wins Long Beach Grand Prix, Hinch second

Okay, Tony Kanaan didn't win. He officially finished fourth in Sunday's Grand Prix of Long Beach (official results here) but because the IZOD IndyCar Series penalized 14 of the 26 starters for unauthorized engine changes, and gave those 14 drivers 10-grid-position penalties, I think it must be taken into consideration when calculating who really won the race in California on Sunday.

Officially, Will Power won the race, with Simon Pagenaud second and Hinchcliffe third. Fourth was Kanaan and fifth was J.R. Hildebrand.

However, because of the stupidity of sticking to the engine-change rule rather than taking the spirit of the rule into consideration (which would have seen the penalties suspended – see my blogs on this in posts below), here is the way the race should really have been scored:

Kanaan qualified 10^th but was made to start 19^th (which is not a 10-grid-position penalty but this thing is so complicated that you will just have to bear with me). He officially finished fourth, which is an improvement of 15 positions. But because he was only penalized nine places instead of 10, we have to dock him a position, so he only improved 14 positions. But nobody did it better on Sunday in Long Beach than this.

Hinchcliffe qualified sixth but then was made to start 16^th – a full 10-grid-position penalty. Because he eventually came home third, that means he improved his position 13 places, which puts him second behind Kanaan's 14, in my books.

Will Power finished third in my "race" because he qualified second, was made to start 12^th, and then finished first for an improvement of 12 positions. Good for him – but not as good as Kanaan and Hinchcliffe.

Oh, before somebody says J.R. Hildebrand should have made it onto my podium, consider this: he qualified 16^th, was only penalized four places instead of 10 (he should have had to go off 26^th but you’d have to ask the geniuses at IndyCar why he didn’t) and so by improving his position from 20^th to fifth, he made up 15 places but really only nine.

UNDERSTAND???

I’m going to stop now because I’m getting a headache. Let’s just hope IndyCar never does this to us again.

3. NASCAR tries to inject excitement into non-crashing boredom

After putting on two of the most boring big-league races in the history of NASCAR, the sanctioning body’s management group pulled out all the stops Sunday afternoon by arriving en masse at Rockingham Speedway in North Carolina to watch a Camping World Series truck race that turned out to be about as boring as the Nationwide and Sprint Cup races that preceded it.

NASCAR is all about crashing. If there is no crashing, there is no excitement. The strategy of the drivers and teams is predicated on yellow flags necessitating pit stops where tire changes, fuel fill-ups and chassis changes can be completed.

No yellows means big trouble because, on top of everything else, the fans get restless.

Friday night’s Nationwide race at Texas Motor Speedway was a yawn (Ricky Stenhouse Jr. the winner). Saturday night’s Sprint Cup race there was no better (Greg Biffle the winner, with but two yellows – including one for a hat that blew out on the track). The commentators spent much of the time explaining why "long green runs" are bad for teams.

So Sunday afternoon, NASCAR president Mike Helton and his entourage flew into Rockingham to say how much NASCAR liked being back at one of its spiritual home tracks. Unfortunately, the truck race that followed (Kasey Kahne the winner, with James Buescher second (James who? See what I mean?) and Matt Crafton third (ditto) was about as unexciting as the two stock-car snoozers.

Rockingham used to be NASCAR’s third race of the season. For years and years, the series would start with the Daytona 500, then go north to Richmond, Va., for the second race, Rockingham for the third and Atlanta the fourth (usually held the same weekend as the start of Ontario’s March break, which used to guarantee a huge snowstorm for all those folks driving their kids to Myrtle Beach or Jacksonville).

But those races were cold for everybody. It was winter, after all. So NASCAR wised up and went west and that’s why, after Daytona, there are now races in sunny (or sunnier) southern California, Arizona and Nevada.

They made those changes eight years ago and since Rockingham only had one race on the NASCAR schedule at the time, it meant the end of racing at the facility. Traditional NASCAR fans were not happy

Owner Andy Hillenburg, a former racer, bought the place at auction five years and has been sprucing it up since. He finally convinced NASCAR to give him something – anything – and they responded by adding a truck race there to the schedule.

Hillenburg said he was happy with the turnout Sunday – the NASCAR communications folks used the term "nearly full grandstands" – but it could have been better. A lot better. In fact, there were a lot of empty seats. But that’s understandable, because truck racing ain’t Cup and Cup is what used to pack the place.

But it’s a start and Helton’s presence was a bit like a blessing from the Pope. The symbolism was obvious: keep tryin’, son, and someday you might see stock cars at this place again.

The bloom is off the NASCAR rose (and if there are any more races like the ones on the weekend, that rose will soon be wilting). Going forward, you can predict the strategy: it was a Southern sport to begin with; to revive it, what better way than to return it to its roots.

And there's probably no better place to do that, than at the Rock.

4. Other racing:

Klaus Graf and Lucas Luhr, driving the Muscle Milk Honda Performance Development ARX-03 LMP1 car, won the Tequila Patrón American Le Mans Series at Long Beach for the second straight season Saturday.

Tommy Milner and Oliver Gavin gave Corvette Racing its first victory at Long Beach since 2009 and its first in ALMS since Mosport last July by finishing first in the GT class.

Kyle Marcelli of Barrie finished fourth in the Prototype Challenge class. Tony Burgess of Toronto was eighth in PC.

In World of Outlaws Sprint Car Racing, Joey Saldana won the round at Paducah Speedway in Kentucky.

The ALMS and the Outlaws will both be racing in southern Ontario in July - the sports cars at Canadian Tire Motorsports Park (nee Mosport) and the Outlaws at Ohswegen Speedway near Brantford.

New Jersey F1 race preparations well under way

While there continues to be hand-wringing over whether the much-publicized Circuit of the Americas near Austin, Tex., will be finished in time for the return of Formula One racing to the United States come November (I’m betting it is), there’s no doubt they’ll be ready for the one to follow in New Jersey next year.

Alex Howe, vice-president of communications for Global Strategy Group of New York, emailed me this photo the other day that shows construction already under way on garages and corporate suites for the June, 2013, Grand Prix of America at Port Imperial in Weehawken and West New York, N.J.

Howe advises that when construction is completed, the lower level will house the garages while the upper levels will contain luxury hospitality suits where guests will be able to see the pits, the front straight and, most important, the skyline of New York.

A 3.2-mile course on public roads – yup, just like Monaco’s – will start and finish at the Port Imperial ferry terminal and rise and fall 150 feet as it meanders close to existing residential neighbourhoods (I wonder how they’re going to like the noise . . .).

Much of the course will be on a road beside the Hudson River waterfront.

Organizers (the guy who invented the Yes Network – that stands for Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network – is behind the New Jersey race; one of the investors in Austin is the fellow who owns Patron Tequila, which is title sponsor of the American Le Mans Series) plan to repave the roads on which the cars will run and to erect concrete barriers and to put up grandstands to hold 75,000 people.

Otherwise, as is the case with the Honda Indy through the streets of the CNE in Toronto (July 6-8 this summer) or the Grand Prix of Canada on Ilse Notre-Dame in Montreal (June 8-10), the terrain will be as natural as natural can be.

Hey, Formula One and the city of New York. What an incredible combination!

One of the iconic events of North American racing, the Long Beach Grand Prix featuring the cars and stars of the IZOD IndyCar Series, takes places this weekend (be sure to check "George’s TV listings for race fans" on wheels.ca’s home page for channel and time) and a wonderful multimedia event is going to take place to publicize it.

Drivers Rubens Barrichello and Tony Kanaan will answer live questions from fans around the world and have the questions, answers and full conversation instantly translated using technology developed by Ortsbo, which translates emails (no cutting and pasting required) into more than 50 languages.

The moderator will be another driver, Canada’s own James Hinchcliffe, of Oakville.

Do you want to be a part of this? The Q & A will start at 7 p.m. Eastern on Saturday and you can register to watch in advance or join live at www.liveandglobal.com/indycar

Now, F1 is in Shanghai this weekend and, as mentioned, IndyCar is in California. NASCAR, on the other hand, is in two locations – Texas and North Carolina.

The Nationwide cars will be at Texas Motor Speedway Friday night and the Cup cars will race at night on Saturday. Meantime, the trucks are returning to Rockingham on Sunday afternoon and that race is generating some excitement because of the locale.

The facility, situated in the Sandhills of North Carolina, held its last NASCAR Sprint Cup Series event in February 2004 and pretty much sat there until former racer Andy Hillenburg purchased it in 2007.

Under Hillenburg, racing returned to "The Rock," and last September, NASCAR announced its plan to head back to the one-mile speedway with the Camping World Truck Series (in which J.R. Fitzpatrick of Cambridge, Ont., has had a couple of good runs so far this season).

The inference is that if Rockingham does a good job with the truck race, it might - might - land a Nationwide or Cup race sometime down the line. (Remember, Rockingham was an early-season stop on the Cup circuit for years and years and only lost its place because NASCAR wanted to run races in the southwest when it was cold in the east - and it was sometimes freezing in the Carolinas in March.)

Said Speed TV reporter Ray Dunlap (and, frankly, I can’t figure out why the various networks don’t make better use of this guy in other series, because he does an excellent job in the pits):

"There truly is a great heritage at Rockingham. The drivers are even more excited to get the race started than the media or fans. The surrounding area was hit hard by the loss of Sprint Cup racing, so I think this will be a big boost to the area with the fans travelling in from Raleigh, Charlotte and the Triad."

And me, travelling to my couch, in my Family Room, in Mississauga, Ont., to be there in spirit.

F1 should cancel Bahrain; why can't racers be more like golfers?

Short takes after a long Easter holiday weekend:

Formula One returns to the streets of Shanghai next weekend but all anybody will be talking about is the race that comes a week later, the Grand Prix of Bahrain.

Once again there is a race scheduled and once again there is serious unrest on the island in the Persian Gulf of the type that led to the cancellation of the event a year ago: demonstrators being killed (at last count, more than 40), the military being used to stifle dissent and the incarceration of hundreds of protesters including one man who was sentenced to life in prison.

He has been on a hunger strike for nearly 60 days and there are fears he may die.

Bernie Ecclestone met in London (the perfect place to get a grip on the actual situation, don’t you think?) with Bahrain GP organizers last week and told reporters later that there are "no worries, the race will be held."

No worries?

Hopefully, someone close to Ecclestone, or to FIA chief Jean Todt, will help them come to their senses and call it off again.

F1 cannot be seen to aggravate a situation so that more people are killed. F1 cannot put its own people – drivers, team personnel, FIA employees – in danger. F1 has to protect its sponsors, who could unwittingly find themselves on the wrong side of the world opinion fence.

F1 has to stay out of Bahrain and if it doesn’t, it will be making a huge mistake.

Who names their kid "Bubba?"

I was wondering this as I watched the last few holes of the Masters on Sunday, which was won by Bubba Watson. The other thing I was wondering about is how come professional golf is as commercially-driven and commerically oriented as auto racing and yet I never hear a professional golfer thank his sponsors for helping him win a golf tournament.

For instance, Phil Mickelsen was interviewed while TV was killing time before the extra-holes playoff. He wore a visor that had K.P.M.G. written on it, a shirt that had the Barclays logo on it, the word Callaway on his golf bag could be seen a mile away and yet he didn’t mention any of them in the interview, which was all about how he screwed up out on the course and didn’t win the Masters.

Contrast that with any racing driver in Victory Lane who can’t wait to thank each and every one of his team’s sponsors, which is so hokey and boring that your eyes immediately glaze over and you wonder how it all started?

Give me the golfers over the car racers any day when it comes to sophisticated face time on TV.

Once upon a time, you really had to know what you were doing when you applied to drive a racing car at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

In fact, when you were just a wet-behind-the-ears wannabe Indy car driver, they often wouldn’t even let you into the place, never mind get into a car, and you can ask legends like Parnelli Jones and A.J. Foyt if you don’t believe me.

The "four phase (speed)" test, carried out under the watchful eyes of veteran drivers, saw more than a few future champions sent away to "get more experience" before they would be granted the privilege of trying to qualify a car for the "500." Guys like Eddie Sachs and Don Branson were made to eat crow before going on to get their first big chance.

Then came the rear-engine revolution, which brought the "sporty car" set to the Speedway, and the era of ride-buying began. All sorts of people who had absolutely no business being in racing cars at Indianapolis were not only passing the test but qualifying for the big race too (they used to flunk them in the old days, but not anymore).

Remember the Whittington brothers, Don, Dale and Bill, who all made the field in 1982 (and then went to jail for drug smuggling)? And Patrick Bedard, a columnist for Car & Driver magazine, who qualified in 1984 (and then managed to survive an absolutely God-awful wreck, which convinced him to stop being so foolish)?

As a result, all sorts of people became convinced that Indy was easy. Remember Phillipe Gache? Neither do I, but he made it into the Indy 500. Lynn St. James made it in one year and Bobby Rahal didn’t. Figure that one out. I could go on.

Now Jean Alesi is going to try. Alesi was a Formula One driver who drove for six teams in a 12-year career that ended in 2001. He was very popular with the fans, worked hard, was very cooperative with the media and won exactly one race – Montreal in 1995.

He is 47 and is going to drive in the Indy 500 for Lotus, he says.

It has been amusing for me, over the years, to listen to the drivers in a glamour-puss class like – say – Indy cars say things like: "Yes, when I finish with the open-wheel cars, I think I’ll go to NASCAR." And they said things like that because, at the time, guys like Richard Petty were still racing when they were in their fifties and a lot of them were balding and had pot-bellies, like Benny Parsons. So how hard could it be?

But while they were waiting to "retire" to NASCAR, NASCAR itself was changing and as a lot of single-seat drivers have found out since, stock car racing is not a walk in the park and, in fact, a lot of them have had their butts kicked.

Indy car racing is enjoying something of a renaissance (more drivers are being paid than are paying) and, as Rubens Barrichello is finding out, it’s tougher than it looks from the outside.

So, it's tough out there. And Indianapolis can rise up and bite you, too, as Nelson Piquet Sr. found out in 1992 when he lost control and went into a concrete wall at very high speed, breaking most of the bones in his feet and ankles.

Three-time world champion Piquet found out the hard way. One-race Alesi should take note.

Roundup: Button, Keselowski, Audi, Piquet Jr. all win

WEEKEND HEADLINES:

1. Button wins F1 but Hamilton's sulking is getting tiresome

2. Keselowski wins NASCAR but what's with the drivers holding babies?

3. Audi 1-2 at 60th 12 Hours of Sebring; hybrid race cars coming!

4. Piquet Jr. wins in NASCAR; Toronto Supercross event might not have any stars

1. HAMILTON HAS TO SUCK IT UP AND TAKE FIGHT TO BUTTON

We all know that most world-class athletes are uber-competitive. We understand that they want to win and will do just about anything to come out on top.

But, in the end, when the game finishes or the event is over, most of them will shake hands or exchange a hug, put on a smile and rejoice in the success they’ve achieved, whether it’s in an Olympic relay race or the Super Bowl

You do your best and you move on.

Which means Lewis Hamilton’s post-Grand Prix funk at Melbourne Sunday, where he finished third to McLaren teammate and race winner Jenson Button and second-place driver Sebastian Vettel, struck me as a little over the top.

Yes, he was disappointed. Yes, the season hadn’t started on the high note he’d expected after winning pole position on Saturday. But it wasn’t the end of the world, although one look at his face suggested he was thinking exactly that.

In the initial post-race interview and in the scrums that followed, he offered congratulations to Button, said it was a swell way for McLaren to start the season, said he’d try for consistency from now on, and not much else.

During one interview, he even suggested the car he’d been given to drive on Sunday wasn’t as good as the car he’d had on Saturday – "it was not as spectacular," was the way he put it (and I interpreted that to mean he was perhaps blaming the team for his misfortune rather than accepting his defeat for what it was).

Now, Hamilton has been known to sulk previously. He gets that "poor me" look on his face and you think, ‘You’re 26, Lewis: grow up." Because all the while he’s wallowing in his self-pity and allowing his sense of entitlement to dominate his persona, his teammate, Button, is sitting beside him looking like the cat that swallowed the canary.

If there was a cartoon bubble above Button's head, it would say: "I’ve got him right where I want him – feeling sorry for himself."

The race next Sunday at Malaysia is terribly important – which is surprising, considering it’s so early in the season. But Hamilton has got to show immedately that he’s made of stronger stuff or Button will walk all over him the rest of the season.

And Red Bull – their cars could only qualify fifth and sixth in Australia; Vettel was very fortunate to finish second, and knew it – will have to take the fight right to McLaren if it hopes to get back in the hunt to win a third world driver's and manufacturers championship.

Notebook Jottings:

– Button has won three of the last four Aussie GPs; the victory was the 13^th of his career and it was decisive. (Full story, results here.) He was in charge from the moment the lights went out and didn’t put a wheel wrong. He’s looking like world championship material (although, before the weekend, I argued otherwise – video link here).

– Albert Park in Melbourne is very reminiscent of Canada’s Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve on Ilse Notre-Dame in that it is a relatively flat community recreation area in the middle of a metropolis and the circuit is made up, in part, by service roads. The grandstands are temporary. One difference: while the Villeneuve circuit in Montreal is surrounded by water, the Melbourne track surrounds water.

– Former world champion Kimi Raikkonen – one of six world champions on the grid – won the Hard Charger award (if they had one) for improving his position the most. He started 18^th in his Lotus-Renault and finished seventh, an improvement of 11 places. Sergio Perez in a Sauber-Ferrari was right behind with an improvement of nine places: he started 17^th and finished eighth. Fernando Alonso did pretty well for Ferrari. He started 12^th and finished fifth, an improvement of seven positions.

– Australian Daniel Ricciardo won the battle of the newbies at Scuderia Toro Rosso. Jean-Eric Vergne of France was ahead and in tenth place going into the last lap but a last-second scramble saw Ricciardo not only pass his teammate but make it up to ninth and score points in his F1 debut at his home Grand Prix. Vergne wound up eleventh.

– Michael Schumacher made short work of Lotus-Renault second-chance driver Romain Grosjean at the start (as did three or four others) but then either suffered a mechanical problem (his explanation) or he screwed up and created a mechanical problem when he went off the racing surface (as is maybe suspected by some) and was forced out of the Grand Prix.

But he looked good for awhile when he was out there, holding down a solid third place and keeping Vettel behind him.

Others who looked like they also had fire in their bellies: Raikkonen, Alonso, Vettel.

KESELOWSKI WINS BRISTOL SPRINT CUP RACE

Penske Racing driver Brad Keselowski got the jump on second-place finisher Matt Kenseth on the last restart at Bristol Motor Speedway Sunday to pull away and easily win the Food City 500 at the Tennessee track (details, results here).

A trio of Michael Waltrip Racing entries led by Martin Truex Jr. finished third through fifth, with Clint Bowyer fourth and Brian Vickers fifth.

Vickers missed most of the 2010 season with blood clots and then was left driveless after the 2011 season when his Red Bull Racing Sprint Cup employers went out of business.

Elliott Sadler was originally signed by Watrip to drive the Toyota Cup car when Mark Martin isn’t available but Sadler drives full-time for Richard Childress in the Nationwide Series and Childress was not amused that his Chevrolet driver would be behind the wheel of a Toyota and gave Salder the choice: full-time with me or part-time with them, take your pick.

Sadler wisely chose full-time employment, so that’s how Waltrip came to sign Vickers.

Waltrip – and the smartest thing Michael W. has ever done in his career is to utilize his vast promotional and public-relations talents and leave race-driving to people who know how to do it – said afterward that Vickers might be making a few more appearances in addition to the half-dozen he’s contracted for.

There were a couple of kaboomers but nobody was hurt. Kyle Busch, Kasey Kahne, Jeff Gordon and Carl Edwards were notable victims.

Notebook Jottings:

– The final appeal of that $100,000 fine and six-race suspension levied against Chad Knaus and Hendrick Motorsport will be held Tuesday and suggestions are that it will stand and Jimmie Johnson will be without his team manager/crew chief for more than a month, starting next weekend in California.

As written previously in this blog, NASCAR is sending a strong message here and if anybody is missing the symbolism of what’s happening, they’re blind. The sanctioning body is saying to Hendrick and, particularly, Knaus that one more false move and somebody’s going to take a very serious fall.

– Okay, I have to say it. How come all the NASCAR drivers stand at attention for the U.S. National Anthem before the races and hold their children in their arms?

I don’t take my kids to work with me. Do you? Do hockey players stand there on the bench with infants in their arms before the ref drops the puck? Baseball players? Politicians? Does Lil Wayne, before he starts singing (or whatever you call it that Lil Wayne does)?

I know that NASCAR is a family sport. I get it. But the babes-in-arms bit is phony.

– There were empty seats in Bristol but NASCAR’s TV numbers are holding up and it’s still winter, even in Tennessee. I don't know about you but I’m not partial to watching cars race while I’m wearing a parka.

AUDI FINISHES 1-2 AT THE 12 HOURS OF SEBRING

Audi, with Tom Kristensen, Dindo Capello and Allan McNish taking turns driving, won the 60^th anniversary 12 Hours of Sebring on Saturday (details, results here).

It was the third time the three drivers have won as a team and it was Audi’s tenth victory in the race. Individually, Kristensen has won it six times, Capello five and McNish four.

Another Audi R18, with Timo Bernhard, Romain Dumas and Loic Duval finished second while third place overall went to an LMP2 Honda team made up of Ryan Dalziel, Stephane Sarrazin and Vicente Potolicchio.

Joey Hand won a nail-biting battle with Olivier Beretta (Ferrari) to win the GT Class for Bobby Rahal’s BMW team. Second place went to Jan Magnussen’s Corvette after Beretta lost the lead and the race because of a puncture.

The top three Audi drivers will now spend much of the next week at Sebring testing a new Audi hybrid (the R18 e-tron quattro) for future Le Mans Series races in Europe, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans where it’s expected its chief competition will come from a brand new LMP1 hybrid being prepared by Toyota.

Notebook Jottings:

- TV star Patrick Dempsey announced at Sebring that he will be entering a Mazda in the LMP2 division of the American Le Mans Series this year with a partial schedule planned. Co-driver will be Joe Foster (a frequent partner of Toronto's Scott Maxwell in Grand Am Series competition). Dempsey said the team will run a full schedule in future ALMS seasons and definitely wants to be at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2013. No word on whether the 2012 "partial schedule" will include the ALMS stop at Mosport (oops! Canadian Tire Motorsport Park!) in July.

- The ALMS is doing great harm to itself by not having a television package (and no, two hours on ABC the day after a race is not good enough, regardless of what some of the tall foreheads think). From what I'm told, the ESPN3 feed (an online service in the States) is terrible; the ALMS site international feed is not much better, I'm told.

Now, to be fair, I didn't have any trouble. But I heard from lots of people who gave up in disgust while trying to find a link.

Meantime, I wish the ALMS people would stop making reference to Rogers Sportsnet as being one of their television partners. It is not.

OTHER RACING

Nelson Piquet Jr. won his first NASCAR race at the weekend, a late model deal at Bristol. The disgraced F1 driver (he was involved in the fixed race at Singapore a few years ago, remember?) has gone about rehabilitating himself the right way, I think, by taking it very slow and very easy in stock cars and trucks. His father could have paid to put him into the Sprint Cup right off the bat but it would have been a foolish move. This way, he’ll earn his stripes the right way. . . . Joey Pescarella, only 19, won the Daytona 500 of motorcycle races, the Daytona 200 on Saturday. He won by 0.048 seconds over Jason DiSalvo in a photo finish. . . . Ryan Villopoto won the AMA Monster Energy Supercross at Indianapolis at the weekend. What’s worrying for the 50,000 or so Supercross fans expected to flock to Toronto’s Rogers Centre next Saturday night is that two of the sport’s biggest stars, Ryan Dungey and James (Bubba) Stewart are question marks. Dungey broke his collarbone several weeks ago and it hasn’t healed enough after surgery to risk further injury. Steward was injured on Saturday night in a crash at Indy’s Lucas Oil Stadium and is pretty banged up. He passed a post-event concussion test, but barely. He’ll have to take another one before being allowed to race in Toronto.

Button, Audi win in Australia, Sebring

Jenson Button went from pole position in his McLaren to the top step of the podium at the Grand Prix of Australia Sunday (Sebastien Vettel was second for Red Bull and Lewis Hamilton was third for McLaren) and Tom Kristensen, Dindo Capello and Allan McNish finished first in an Audi at the 60th annual 12 Hours of Sebring endurance race Saturday.

Full details, analysis and links in tomorrow's Monday Morning Racing Roundup.

WATCHING RACING ON A COMPUTER

I have seen the future – and it’s your computer.

Right now, right at this very moment at 3:52 p.m. EDT Saturday, I am watching the 12 Hours of Sebring on the American Le Man Series website and the NASCAR Nationwide Series race on the NASCAR.com site.

In fact, I’m riding around with Danica Patrick at this very moment, courtesy of an in-car camera (and we’re really mixing it up out there, I might say).

This is fantastic. I'm free, at last, from the people who run television, who like to dictate when I can watch something (the Nationwide race won’t be on TSN till midnight Saturday; it'll be a recording, obviously. The NCAA basketball tournament is more important, apparently).

Now I just have to get my youngest son to show me how to connect my laptop to my big-screen TV and I’ll really be in business.

P.S. Nationwide race is over now. Elliott Sadler was first, Kasey Kahne finished second and Brad Keselowski was third. We (Danica and me) were 19th.

Okay, saying that qualifying results for Sunday’s Grand Prix of Australia were a surprise would be an understatement.

While it’s not a really big surprise that the McLaren-Mercedes cars of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button will start first and second in the 2012 Grand prix season opener Down Under, or that the Mercedes of Michael Schumacher will go off fourth, it is flat-out astounding that comeback kid Romain Grosjean qualified third in his Lotus-Renault and even more surprising that the Ferrari cars of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa are so far back.

Yes, Sebastien Vettel’s sixth-place raised eyebrows, particularly since his teammate, Mark Webber, outqualified him and will start fifth. But it was pretty much expected that Red Bull would be in for a fight this season after pretty much dominating things the last two years (two drivers’ and two manufacturers’ titles) and negative conclusions shouldn’t be reached too quickly on the basis of the year’s first qualifying session.

Alonso will go off 12th but suggested he could have eventually qualified third if he hadn’t spun off during the second session and didn’t even make it into the top ten. His teammate, Felipe Massa, had a miserable session and nearly didn’t get out of the first session. He will start 16th.

Kimi Raikkonen’s return to F1 started off negatively and he will start 18th. Although there was a mixup in communication, in which he thought he had time for another qualifying try in Q1 when he didn’t, he didn’t really have the speed anyway.

It was a great day for Australian Daniel Ricciardo, who got his Toro Rosso into the top ten, but then the team gave the finger to the Australian crowd by not sending him out at all in Q3. So Formula One, eh?

Finally, the HRT team of Pedro de la Rosa and Narain Kathikeyan won’t be allowed to start because their qualifying speeds – if you want to call them that – were beyond the 107% per cent of pole time rule.

Several quick observations:

– Michael Schumacher will make quick work of Grosjean at the start. It won’t be surprising if the seven-time world champion scores his first podium since his comeback. It will put an exclamation mark on his finest qualifying effort for Mercedes.

– Felipe Massa won’t last more than a couple of races for Ferrari in 2012 if he can’t do better than he’s shown so far in Australia.

F1 QUALIFYING RESULTS

Pos  Driver                Team                  Time          Gap  
 1.  Lewis Hamilton        McLaren-Mercedes      1m24.922s
 2.  Jenson Button         McLaren-Mercedes      1m25.074s  + 0.152
 3.  Romain Grosjean       Lotus-Renault         1m25.302s  + 0.380
 4.  Michael Schumacher    Mercedes              1m25.336s  + 0.414
 5.  Mark Webber           Red Bull-Renault      1m25.651s  + 0.729
 6.  Sebastian Vettel      Red Bull-Renault      1m25.668s  + 0.746
 7.  Nico Rosberg          Mercedes              1m25.686s  + 0.764
 8.  Pastor Maldonado      Williams-Renault      1m25.908s  + 0.986
 9.  Nico Hulkenberg       Force India-Mercedes  1m26.451s  + 1.529
10.  Daniel Ricciardo      Toro Rosso-Ferrari    No time
Q2

11.  Jean-Eric Vergne      Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m26.429s  + 0.960
12.  Fernando Alonso       Ferrari               1m26.4942  + 1.025
13.  Kamui Kobayashi       Sauber-Ferrari        1m26.590s  + 1.121
14.  Bruno Senna           Williams-Renault      1m26.663s  + 1.194
15.  Paul di Resta         Force India-Mercedes  1m27.086s  + 1.617
16.  Felipe Massa          Ferrari               1m27.497s  + 2.028
17.  Sergio Perez          Sauber-Ferrari        No time
Q1                            
18.  Kimi Raikkonen        Lotus-Renault         1m27.758s  + 1.576
19.  Heikki Kovalainen     Caterham-Renault      1m28.679s  + 2.497
20.  Vitaly Petrov         Caterham-Renault      1m29.018s  + 2.836
21.  Timo Glock            Marussia-Cosworth     1m30.923s  + 4.741
22.  Charles Pic           Marussia-Cosworth     1m31.670s  + 5.488
23.  Pedro de la Rosa      HRT-Cosworth          1m33.495s  + 7.313
24.  Narain Karthikeyan    HRT-Cosworth          1m33.643s  + 7.461

107% time: 1m32.214s

Will the next Daytona 500 be at night?

KENSETH WINS FIRE-AND-RAIN-DELAYED GREAT AMERICAN RACE

If there's anyone left out there who's still wondering how NASCAR became the dominant force in auto racing in North America, all they had to do was watch it in action over the three days it took to run the Daytona 500 - which finally finished early today with Matt Kenseth in Victory Lane.

Sunday, when the race was held up initially because of rain and it looked like the delay would carry on into the evening and the race would have to go up against the Academy Awards in a TV ratings showdown, NASCAR wisely cancelled its marquee event until Monday.

Then, rather than start the race in the afternoon (which was possible) when most people in North America were at work and the TV ratings would be negligible, the NASCAR braintrust announced Monday morning that the Great American Race would start sharp at 7 p.m., right when prime time starts in TV land.

Before you could say NASCAR! (and with no NBA basketball because of the all-star break) just about every eyeball on the continent was on that race and I would be surprised if the ratings don't turn out to be better than if they'd been able to run the thing when first scheduled.

Sunday afternoon is a time for families, recreation or shopping. So the Daytona 500 would have had competition. But Monday night? Particularly when most of North America is caught up in a deep freeze?

So the Daytona 500 had no distractions or other competition to speak of at all - and I won't be surprised if NASCAR now gives serious consideration to scheduling the 2013 race on a Monday night, rather than the traditional Sunday afternoon.

Having said that, isn't it weird - and I can't think of another word to explain it - that for the second time in three years a problem with the race track played havoc with the spectacle itself? And the delay pushed the end of the race - which took about six hours to complete - into the early hours of Tuesday, making it a three-day event.

Two years ago it was a pothole that just wouldn't stay fixed. Monday night, the most bizarre circumstance I think anybody involved in racing has ever encountered or experienced saw the speedway surface so badly damaged as the result of a fiery collision between Juan Pablo Montoya's car and a truck pulling a jet blower that it took more than two hours to repair it.

Earlier, five-time series champion Jimmie Johnson was crashed out of the race on the second lap, celebrity driver Danica Patrick's car was so badly damaged that she was knocked out of contention, and long-time favourite Jeff Gordon was eliminated by a blown engine.

So it had been a long night.

When they finally got the race going again shortly after midnight, with the grandstands still mostly filled and probably most of the TV audience sticking it out too, they had a couple of more "big one"-type crashes and a green-white-checkers finish that saw Kenseth win the classic for the second time, with Dale Earnhardt Jr. second and Greg Biffle third.

It would take too long to provide a blow-by-blow description of the last lap, but whether Biffle was blocking for Kenseth, or Earnhardt just couldn't push him past the leader, is something that could be debated in racing circles for some time.

On the other hand, it might not. As the racers like to say these days, it is what it is.

One thing's for certain, however. Jack Roush, whose Roush-Fenway Racing team owns the first and third-place cars, is off to a terrific start in 2012. His Ford engines not only powered the Daytona winner and the third-place car to the podium, but three of his other power plants finished one-two-three in the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona Grand Am Sports Car Series race at the end of January.

Five out of six places ain't bad. NASCAR will be pleased.