Norris McDonald's Auto Racing Blog

Top Ten motorsports stories of 2012

There were many more than 10 "Top Ten" motorsports stories in 2012 but somebody had to bite the bullet and make the calls, so I nominated myself.

I’ll tell you about four right off the top that didn’t make it – but boy, were they close.

1: Dodge winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup and then withdrawing from the series. You guys never heard of "Win on Sunday, sell on Monday?"

2: Juan Pablo Montoya escaping death in the Daytona 500 when his car hit a jet dryer that exploded (left). It was the second time in three Daytona 500s that the race was delayed because of something that had little to do with racing. In 2010, there were two long delays because of potholes.

3: Brad Keselowski attracting hundreds of thousands more fans to his Twitter account by tweeting during the lengthy red flag that followed Montoya’s accident – and NASCAR then forbidding him from doing it later in the season. Earth to NASCAR: Sprint sponsors the Sprint Cup and WANTS people to tweet.

4: Sebastien Loeb winning his ninth straight World Rally Championship title. I mean, what more is there to say?

So here are the Top Ten.

No. 1

Car owner Roger Penske and driver Brad Keselowski winning their first NASCAR Sprint Cup championships.

Penske, who’s dominated North American Indy car and sports car racing for decades, finally made it to the top step of the NASCAR podium after years of trying.

Keselowski comes from a racing family and won his first title on the basis of talent, moxy, drive and determination. Like champions in other leagues before him, he influenced Penske to build a team around him (he brought in his own crew chief, for starters). This title will likely be the first of many.

No. 2

Sebastian Vettel winning his third consecutive Formula One world championship, with Red Bull Racing (Christian Hornder, team principal; Adrien Newey, chief designer) scoring its third straight constructors championship.

After a slow start (he didn’t win his first race of 2012 until the fourth of the season, in Bahrain, and then he didn’t win again until the 14^th of the year, in Singapore), Vettel finally got the bit between his teeth late in the season and ran off a string of victories that put him in front to stay.

Fernando Alonso had a brilliant season for Ferrari (Joann Villeneuve, widow of Gilles, told me that Alonso made a slow car fast this year) and finished second, only three points behind the champion. If Alonso doesn’t get taken out of two races, in which he scored zero points, he might be champion today.

And Kimi Raikkonen finished an astonishing third in points after being out of F1 for the previous two seasons, preferring to drive WRC cars and NASCAR trucks. He was consistent all year and won a race, at Abu Dhabi, near the end of the season. The Iceman is back and will be one to watch in 2013.

No. 3

Canada losing two major international races was a real kick in the teeth for motorsport in this country.

Gone from the IZOD IndyCar Series calendar in 2013 will be the Edmonton Grand Prix and the NASCAR Nationwide Series will not return to Montreal for the annual NAPA Auto Parts 200 either.

Both were crowd-pleasers and both were broadcast live over international television.

Both were promoted by Octane Management, Inc., owned by Francois Dumontier of Montreal, whose other company, Octane Racing Group, promotes the F1 Grand Prix du Canada. Dumontier said he was losing millions on both races and unable to continue. Critics suggested there were other reasons.

The Grand Prix is not affected.

As well as taking two important races off the national calendar, Dumontier’s decisions put the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series in a bind. The stock cars were on the undercard in both Edmonton and Montreal and, when combined with losing a contract to race as part of the Honda Indy Toronto following the 2011 event, it meant the country’s only national racing series lost three major dates in 14 months.

No. 4

The branding of Mosport as Canadian Tire Motorsport Park knocked long-time Canadian racing fans for a loop.

Although selling the "naming rights" to North American sports arenas is a well-established practice (two exceptions, both in New York: Madison Square Garden and Yankee Stadium – some things are not for sale), the commercial branding of road racing circuits has never been popular. It has happened, though.

But Mazda incorporated the historic name of the circuit when it took over Laguna Seca race track in California and renamed it Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. Infineon Raceway, named arfter the technologies group, was previously Sears Point but Sears Point started life many years ago as Golden Gate Raceway so name-changes at the San Francisco-area circuit are not uncommon.

But Watkins Glen, Road America, Road Atlanta, Daytona, Indianapolis, Mid-Ohio, Le Circuit-Mont Tremblant and on and on are storied names that live on.

Now, with the branding of Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, the internationally known, loved and respected "Mosport" is no more.

Would they change the name of Silverstone? Brands Hatch? Monza?

Would it have been hard to incorporate "Mosport’ into the new name?

Of course not, which is a shame and shortsighted because, as will inevitably happen, at some point somebody in control of Canadian Tire is going to decide not to continue the arrangement, and what then?

On the bright side, the announcement of a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race there on Labour Day weekend in 2013 is a wonderful, positive step as new owners Carlo Fidani and Ron Fellows strive to update the aging facility to 2013 standards.

No. 5

D.J. Kennington’s winning of the 2012 NASCAR Canadian Tire Series championship was one of the most dominant displays of race-driving ever seen in all of Canadian motorsport.

En route to winning his second national title in three years, Kennington won seven of the 12 races , a series record; five in a row for another record; and six of the seven oval-track races, also a record. He also scored the most top five finishes in a single season.

His performance during the last race of year, at Kawartha Speeedway near Peterborough, was inspiring. Having to finish 21^st or better to clinch the title, he left no doubt about his intentions: he flat went out and won it.

In short, it was a banner year.

Which is a good thing, because there are – as they say – signs.

Signs of what, I don’t know. But they are there.

For the first time in his life, D.J. has a job outside of racing. He’s working for the county where he lives, which means (gulp) that he’s making pension contributions.

And he became the father of a son, Chase, just a few weeks ago.

You may now speculate about what all this means.

No. 6

Two women professional drag racers winning championships on the same day served to illustrate how women have shattered motorsport’s glass ceiling.

From Janet Guthrie at Indianapolis to Shirley Muldowney in Top Fuel dragsters to Danica Patrick about to become the first woman to compete full time in the NASCAR Sprint Cup, women racers have come a long way, baby.

On Aug. 5, at the O’Reilly Auto Parts NHRA Northwest Nationals near Seattle, rookie Funny Car driver Courtney Force (right, in photo)finished first in her class for the first time and Erica Enders (left in photo) won her second Pro Stock championship.

Auto racing is perhaps the only sport in the world where women can compete equally with men and more are not only getting involved but are becoming successful.

As 15-times NHRA Funny Car champion John Force (and father of Courtney) said: "It’s always been a man’s sport – but the rules are changing."

No. 7

CEO Randy Bernard’s firing by the IZOD IndyCar Series, although – according to some – justified, is yet another negative that Indy car racing is going to have to overcome.

Although the racing was great in 2012 and Oakville native James Hinchcliffe succeeding Danica Patrick in the Go Daddy car and Ryan Hunter-Reay’s winning his first championship were good stories, the off-track soap opera continued apace and garnered most of the headlines.

These included stories suggesting that Tony George was trying to buy back the series, Bernard himself tweeting that some of the team owners were plotting to get rid of him, driver Scott Dixon being penalized for something he didn’t do because race officials were watching THE WRONG REPLAY (I’m not making that up; can you see that happening in the NFL? ) and an absurd rule that penalized drivers for teams having to change leased engines before their time, which saw 11 drivers at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach – nearly half the field – assessed 10-grid-position penalties. (A guy who qualified 20^th was made to go back to the last race. Okay, I made that up but it shows how absurd the whole thing was.)

Now there’s a new fellow in charge. His name’s Mark Miles. He kinda sounds a lot like Bernard when he came in – someone who made another sport a raging success, in his case tennis rather than Bernard’s bull-riding, and somebody else thinking he’d be perfect for IndyCar.

And he’s starting out pretty much the same way, too: slowly, learning names, learning who’s who, learning the sport.

How many more times Indy car racing will be able to get away with this is anyone’s guess. But while some people are suggesting there will be about the same number of cars on the grid in 2013 as there were in 2012 – 25 or 26 – I say car count will be a concern as sponsorship (and interest generally) dwindles because of all the nonsense.

No. 8

A.J. Allmendinger’s failed drug test and then his relatively quick return to Sprint Cup competition toward the end of the season.

People shook their heads when Allmendinger, a former Champ Car driver who made the switch to NASCAR and was given the ride of a lifetime by Roger Penske, failed a random drug test early in the summer. Penske fired him, as a result.

Although the story of the circumstances changed several times – his management team would say one thing and the Dinger would say another – Allmendinger eventually ‘fessed up to the fact that a friend had offered him what he thought was an energy pill (it was Adderall, an amphetamine) and he "foolishly" took it (you betcha).

But he proceeded to do something that none of the other NASCAR stars who’d flunked drug tests (Jeremy Mayfield, Aaron Fyke, come on down) had done previously: he immediately entered and completed NASCAR’s drug treatment program (called the Road to Recovery).

And then the stars aligned and he was in the right place at the right time in October (Kurt Busch went to Furniture Row Racing early and Phoenix Racing needed a driver) and he finished the year back in Cup.

Whether his rehabilitation will continue in 2013 is unknown at this point. He’s looking for a ride in any series but hasn’t received a firm offer.

No. 9

The signing of McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton by Mercedes to replace the second-time-retiring Michael Schumacher had (and continues to have) Formula One watchers scratching their heads.

With McLaren, Hamilton – who won one world championship with the marque – could expect continuing to win races. In 2012, McLaren won seven times and Lewis was the driver for four of them. Nico Rosberg won but one race for Mercedes.

There are suggestions that it all has to do with money and the exploitation of Hamilton’s brand. At McLaren, he was contractually hamstrung when it came to personal sponsorship but there apparently are no such restrictions at Mercedes and so long as he fulfills the testing, racing and PR obligations of his contract, he’s pretty much free to do what he wants on his own time.

But I have a friend who sees something more sinister. He suggests Bernie Ecclestone, McLaren and Mercedes cooked this "trade" up for two reasons: that the Mercedes board was lukewarm, at best, about continuing in F1 but now, with the addition of one of the top three stars in F1, they are firmly behind continuing; and/or McLaren wanted to find a way to continue with Mercedes engines in their cars going forward and Lewis’ driving for Mercedes is simply the price they had to pay for doin’ business.

We’ll find out in 2013 how things work out, won’t we?

No. 10

Roger Penske using the end-of-season NASCAR awards banquet to both plug the Indianapolis 500 and to try to get the open-wheel-drivers-to-NASCAR scenario reversed.

Penske, who received the Sprint Cup along with his driver Brad Keselowski, used his acceptance speech to suggest to multi-time NASCAR champion and former IRL star Tony Stewart that if Tony wanted to do "the double" in 2013, Penske would have a car and crew ready for him.

Within a day, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway let it be known it would move back the time of the Indianapolis 500 so that Stewart – and any other NASCAR stars who wanted to take a shot (Danica Patrick, for instance) – would have more time to finish that race and get to Charlotte in time for the start of the same-day Coca-Cola 600.

Several days later, Stewart met with Penske and said he’d like to try but that he wouldn’t do it. He said IndyCar is too competitive for a driver to just "show up" and expect to win and that he was too involved with his NASCAR operation to even begin to think about it.

Now, ever since Jeff Gordon called every team owner in CART in 1990 and asked for a ride, only to be rebuffed again and again, thus sending him south to race in NASCAR, supermodified, midget and sprint car drivers don’t consider for a second a career in Indy cars.

Since Gordon went to stock cars, so have Ryan Newman, Kasey Kahne, Stewart, Patrick and any number of others.

If Stewart and Patrick did "the double," you can bet pressure would be on some of the others to give it a shot, too. NASCAR is a Goliath but the Indianapolis 500 is still the biggest and most prestigious race in the world and most racing drivers would like to have it on their CVs.

The feeling is that a good performance in the Indy 500 might whet the appetite of some of the other NASCAR drivers to give the whole circuit a try. After all, Cale Yarborough drove at Indy in the late 1960s and liked it so much that he left stock cars for the Indy-car circuit in 1970 (he wasn't very good in an open-cockpit car, so went back to the taxis where he excelled).

In any event, Roger Penske is always thinking, always plotting, always looking for an angle, an edge. He fights fair but he fights really hard, too.

He knew exactly what he was doing when he stood up at that NASCAR function and started kidding around about Tony Stewart driving for him at Indianapolis.

Exactly what he was doing.

- Norris McDonald

Electric-car racing and the NASCAR Canada schedule is out

My friend, Gary Morton, has another idea – and he might really be on to something this time.

You’ll recall that he was the fellow I quoted a few weeks ago as saying the solution to the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park controversy is to just do what the founders of the place did back in 1961: contract "motor" and "sport" into one word, Mosport, and call the place Canadian Tire Mosport Park and everybody would be happy.

Three things:

– First, and this sort of thing is inevitable, some people wrote and said Gary was way behind because this had been suggested before, which was news to me or I would have put it in the paper sooner.

– Many others wrote to say it was a wonderful idea, because they hadn’t heard anybody suggest anything like it before either.

– Last, it’ll never happen. Canadian Tire Corp. bought the naming rights to the place and that’s what they want to call it. The signage, the letterhead and the souvenirs have all either been changed, or are on order, and there’s no turning back.

In the short term, anyway.

But as I said, he has another idea and it has to do with electric cars and racing – two things that keep turning up in the motorsport news cycle with a degree of regularity these days.

For instance, last week it was announced that Rome would become the first European city where a round of the FIA Formula E Championship would be held, in 2014. The first city to announce a date in what is promised to be a 10-race series was Rio do Janeiro, in August.

Still no word on a North American city but there will be likely be one or two. A full schedule is promised soon.

This is for real, folks. The FIA is behind it and McLaren has announced that it will design and build the powertrain for the first Formula E cars, in partnership with Spark Racing Technology (SRT).

They’re going to build 42 cars to get the championship going with, hopefully, 10 teams and 20 drivers. Formula E, however, is an "open" championship and other car designers and constructors are being encouraged to build a Formula E car.

My friend "Mort" says he has the answer.

"Take the Delta Wing car and put an all-electric motor in it, preferably one built by Tesla," he writes. "Get the universities involved – Virgina Tech., U of T, Queen’s, Cal Tech., MIT, etc. It’s the perfect way to save open-wheel racing in North America."

He got a big response to his Mosport suggestion. We’ll see how he does on this one.

Other Monday Morning Morning Roundup items:

- The 2013 NASCAR Canadian Tire Series presented by Mobil 1 schedule was issued at the weekend and features 12 races at 11 tracks across five provinces. Of those dozen races, three of them will be held at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park north of Bowmanville – two on the road course and one on the oval speedway.

The series will open on the road course at Old Mosport on the traditional Victoria Day weekend in May and race there again in June on the oval. Labour Day weekend will be the biggie, though, when the stock cars share the stage with the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.

The Canadian series has two other road-course races, both in Quebec - at the Grand Prix of Trois-Rivieres and at Circuit ICAR at Mirabel Airport.

Short track oval speedway races will be held at Autodrome St. Eustache, Riverside Speedway in Nova Scotia, Motoplex Speedway in Vernon, B,.C., Auto Clearing Motor Speedway in Sakatoon, Delaware Speedway outside of London, Ont., and Barrie Speedway.

The season will wrap up, as it traditionally does, on Sept. 21 at Kawartha Speedway near Peterborough.

The schedule was issued at the Night of Champions Touring Awards at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte on Saturday night.

D.J. Kennington of St. Thomas, who won his second NASCAR Canada title in three years this season, was among those honoured at the affair. Martin Roy was named Rookie of the Year in the Canadian series and the Most Popular Driver award went to Ray Courtemanche Jr. (and I have no idea how that happened . . .).

– Lotus has been released from its contract by IndyCar, so the only engine suppliers in 2013 will be Chevrolet and Honda. They shouldn’t have any trouble supplying the field because I suggest car count will become a story again. We won’t cross that bridge till later but it is highly unlikely that 25 or 26 cars will be showing up for every race, as was the case this year.

– 12-year-old Devlin DeFrancesco of Toronto, who won a Canadian karting championship this season, travels to Brazil next weekend for the famous 12-hour Gran ja Viana 500 kart race. His teammates? None other than Tony Kanaan and Rubens Barrichello.

Another Canadian youngster will also be making the trip. Jamie Riberdy will represent the Brian Stewart Racing Karting Championship Series and his trip is being paid for by Luis Ruibal and Wagner Rossi of MG Tires.

Care to keep an eye on these kids? Follow the action at: www.betocarrero.com.br/500milhas

– The World of Outlaws sprint car series issued their 2013 schedule last week and it’s a killer. Get this: they will race more than 90 times from February until November. Their Canadian swing starts on Sat., July 27, at Drummondville, Que., and goes to Cornwall Motor Speedway on the Sunday. Then, it's on to Ohsweken Speedway on the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford two nights later on Tuesday, July 30.

The last two times the Outlaws raced at Ohsweken, NASCAR star Tony Stewart was the winner. Will he make it a hat trick in 2013? You can bet he’ll try.

– Austin is after the FIA to give it another date for its Grand Prix because it was discovered that the 2013 event (Nov. 17) is being held the same weekend as a Texas Longhorns football game.

They just found that out? That football schedule's been out for months! Don’tcha think somebody might have looked and told the FIA to take that into consideration? Just wondering . . .

Roundup: NASCAR stock cars to join trucks at Old Mosport

Canadian Tire Motorsport Park has announced its major event schedule for 2013 and the really good news is that two of Canada’s finest racing series will be on the program next Labour Day weekend with the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series.

The NASCAR Canadian Tire stock cars and the Canadian Touring Car Series sedans will be sharing the legendary road circuit north of Bowmanville, formerly known as Mosport, with the Camping World trucks, which make up one-third of NASCAR’s top travelling series, the Sprint Cup and Nationwide stock cars being the other two.

The NASCAR Canada stock cars will actually be racing at Old Mosport three times next year. The Canadian Tire Series will headline the annual, traditional, Victoria Day SpeedFest on the road course that will also feature the Trans-Am Series, the Canadian Touring Cars and the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Canada.

And in addition to Victoria Day in May and Labour Day in September, the stock cars will also race at the Old Mosport oval on June 22.

Other big events at Canadian Tire Mosport Park (heh, heh) next summer will be the American le Mans Series on July 18-21, making its last stop before unification with the Grand-American Road Racing Series the following year; the Canadian Historic Grand Prix on June 14-16 and the Canadian Superbike Doubleheader Weekend in August.

More information and tickets can be found at: www.canadiantiremotorsportpark.com.

Meantime, the Formula 1 Grand Prix du Canada has announced a special ticket package for next June that will allow a person to purchase a reserved seat in a different grandstand for each day of the three-day event.

Quantities are limited, so if you want in you’d better get cracking. Ticket combinations come in three packages - gold, silver and bronze and are on sale for $485, $449 and $267.50, respectively. More information at 514 350-0000 or 1-855-790-1245. Or go to www.circuitgillesvilleneuve.ca.

And tickets for the 2013 Honda Indy Toronto will go on sale next Monday, Dec. 10. And remember, the event will now feature two official, fully-sanctioned IZOD IndyCar Series races, one with a standing start on Saturday and a second with a rolling start on Sunday. Each event will be full length, with full points and full prize money.

The promoters are making changes to some of the grandstands. They plan to build three new “super-structure” grandstands – one at Turn 10 (consolidating three grandstands), a taller structure at Turn 11, and a Turn 3 Grandstand that will see the addition of 15 rows.

According to a release, the switch to larger grandstands will result in an important additional benefit: greater track-side access for General Admission ticketholders and fans who might wander around looking for multiple viewpoints. Tickets start at $35 for General Admission. For more information, go to www.hondaindy.com.

Here’s a change of pace: The Canadian Motortsport Hall of Fame has launched a new, redesigned, website — www.cmhf.ca

This easy-to-navigate website details the history of motorsport in Canada and features biographies, including photos, of more than 150 inductees.

Said general manager Sid Priddle: “Thanks to the development efforts of highly respected freelance journalist (and Wheels Insider) Gary Grant, CMHF is able to bring you this new look. Gary is also responsible for the creation of our Facebook page.”

As is the case with any new project, the website is a work in progress. However, the hall hopes to keep the site informative and current.

And the CMHF is looking forward to your feedback. Just click on “contact” and submit any comments or questions.

Meantime, Andretti Autosport introduced its drivers lineup for 2013 on Wednesday and it’s the same as 2012 with two minor twists. Series champion Ryan Hunter-Reay will carry the No. 1 on his car instead of his familiar 28 (although “28” is included in the livery) and Marco Andretti will drive car No. 25, instead of 26. They have their reasons. James Hinchcliffe of Oakville, meantime, will continue aboard the No. 27 Go Daddy car.

Conor Daly, the son of ex-F1 and Indy car star Derek Daly who cut many of his racing teeth on the Ontario Formula Ford circuit driving for Brian Graham, will test for A.J. Foyt's IndyCar team at Sebring soon. Daly had designs on a career in Formula One but the IndyCar test would indicate he’s going to Plan B. He’s smart. You have to be the absolute best and have all the connections and the money needed to get into F1. That’s a triple whammy and very few young athletes have all three. It’s why I really hoped Guelph’s Robert Wickens would have taken a crack at IndyCar a year ago when his path to F1 was blocked. Believe it or not, it might be too late now.

Here’s not very good news. The Star Mazda Series is for sale and whether a buyer can be found in time for the 2013 season is questionable. In a letter to drivers and sponsors, Star Mazda owner Gary Rodrigues said the series would fold if it can’t be sold.

It seems that it doesn’t only cost a fortune to go racing these days, it costs as much or more to build a platform for racing.

Here are the nominees for the Mario Andretti Trophy as the SPEED performer of the year:

2010 SPEED Performer of the Year Sebastian Vettel (F1), Fernando Alonso (F1), Brad Keselowski (NASCAR), Jorge Lorenzo (MotoGP), Casey Stoner (MotoGP), Ryan Hunter-Reay (IndyCar), Antron Brown (NHRA), Kyle Larson (USAC), Sammy Swindell (WoO), Sebastien Loeb (World Rally), Andre Lotterer (WEC), Max Biaggi (World Superbike), Scott Pruett (Grand-Am), Donny Schatz (WoO), Josh Hayes (AMA Pro Superbike) and Ryan Villopoto (Supercross).

Andretti will present the trophy, a 100-pound sculpture created by bronze artist Elie Hazak, as part of a SPEED Center special on Jan. 27.

Any guesses who'll win?

On Formula One and trucks at Old Mosport

There were two announcements from NASCAR in recent days about the Camping World Truck Series.

One was that there would be a race at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park next Labour Day and one that there would be a race at the half-mile dirt speedway in Ohio owned by Tony Stewart.

Guess which announcement has received the most attention south of the border?

The road-course race at Old Mosport isn't even on the radar down there. Columnist after columnist and website after website are all full of the race at Eldora Speedway.

In all the stories, there is much talk about NASCAR returning to its short-track roots. There are sugggestions that the dirt race will be the first of many and that the focus of the truck series will start to shift back to what NASCAR once was: a small oval speedway racing series.

So this makes me wonder who will be driving those trucks next September when the series comes to Canada because I'm not sure a short-oval, dirt-track racer is going to be all that comfortable shifting gears and turning right while going up hill and down dale.

With NASCAR more and more becoming a "pay-driver series," particularly when it comes to the trucks, I worry that many of the Camping World Series regulars might take a pass on CTMP and their owners rent their rides out to the highest bidder.

I mean, will Kyle Busch be here (he owns a team in the truck series and frequently drives)? Joe Nemechek? Todd Bodine? Series champion James Buescher?

Just wondering . . .

It looks as if - for the moment, anyway - Ferrari will drop the idea of appealing the finish of last weekend's Brazilian Grand Prix because of suspicions that Sebastian Vettel's pass of Jean-Eric Vergne was illegal.

But then you see a headline like this - "Ferrari never intended to diminish Vettel's victory" - and it really makes you wonder.

If that's so, why did they bring it up in the first place? And who amongst us wants to bet that it won't be brought up again? 

It's bad enough during the racing season, but the off-season headlines and stories are often a joke.

Here's a sampling.

"Force India seeking talent, not money" (Sure.)

"Ferrari says Vettel overtake matter is closed" (Ditto)

"Perez expects title in first year" (Is he crazy?)

"Webber will not play supporting role" (Wanna bet?)

 

We all know better, don't we?

 

Have a great weekend.

NASCAR will use sports cars to fight IndyCar, F1

If you are in the ketchup business, you are in it to dominate the market. If need be, you will do just about anything and everything to put your competition out of business.

Same with beer, soft drinks or politics: if you’re a winner, your attitude is that this town ain’t big enough for the two (or more) of us.

Like it or not, this is also the way it is in big-league auto racing.

I’m not talking about the drivers, who obviously are out there to beat each other.

I’m talking about sanctioning bodies and I think this is the thinking behind NASCAR’s purchase recently of the American Le Mans Series.

There’s more to this than a simple buyout. Much more.

The competition for auto racing sponsorship mega-dollars, primarily, and bums-in-the-seats is heating up in the United States.

For years, NASCAR has had the No. 1 position all to itself but the ground is shifting.

Formula One is returning to the U.S., with a vengeance. After a promising start, F1 racing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway stumbled badly: people really didn’t take to race cars going the wrong way at the fabled facility and the tire fiasco in 2005, when only six cars “raced,” and Michael Schumacher’s dumb attempt to “tie” with teammate Rubens Barrichello in 2002 turned the event into a joke.

After the 2007 race, F1 left the U.S. again — this time with its tail between its legs.

Next month, F1 returns to the States for a race at a purpose-built circuit outside Austin, Tex., and you can almost feel the excitement in the air all the way up here. There are only a few tickets left for the inaugural event. It is going to look fabulous on television. The Circuit of the Americas will rank right up there with Abu Dhabi and some of the other, newer, GP venues in the world.

And in about seven months, a second U.S. Grand Prix will be held, this one through the streets of several picturesque towns in New Jersey with the New York City skyline in the background.

This will be a powerful one-two punch.

Talking about television — there was a reference several paragraphs ago — Formula One has just signed a new deal with NBC to take race, qualifying and practice coverage away from the Fox-owned Speed Channel, starting in 2013. Bernie Ecclestone is delighted, and said he expects NBC to “promote Formula One to a level not seen before in the United States” across three platforms: over-the-air, cable and digital.

Although it has had its ups and downs, NBC is the most powerful and influential television network in the U.S., followed by its two old-time rivals ABC and CBS. Fox and its subsidiaries are way off in the distance.

Meantime, after years of struggle because of a civil war and coupled with bad management, the IZOD IndyCar Series has regained its sea legs and is embarking on an expansion program in 2013 that will see double-header races promoted in three of North America’s largest markets: Detroit, Toronto and Houston. Led by CEO Randy Bernard, IndyCar is making serious waves again.

The return of Formula One with not one but two races in a little more than half a year and a rejuvenated IndyCar series spells bad news for NASCAR.

It’s not that it won’t hold its traditional audience but the potential for NASCAR to grow is substantially limited in the face of increased competition, particularly in the boardrooms of Madison Avenue.

And anybody who knows anything about business is aware that it’s not good enough to just make a profit any longer; it’s the rate of growth and ability to attract new business that counts.

Now, NASCAR has the oval track crowd in its pocket. But the road-racing audience — that’s another kettle of fish.

NASCAR created the Grand American Road Racing Series in 1999 and took the Rolex Sports Cars Series under its wing in 2000 when the U.S. Road Racing Championship went out of business. Much like it's handled its Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Camping World truck series championships, NASCAR concentrated on cost-effective sports car racing rather than high-tech. The result was club racing. The people doing the racing had a fine time but the product was not particularly spectator-friendly. This year’s Daytona 24 was a fine example: a good race with zero people there to watch it.

The Grand Am has been in competition with the much more exotic and high-tech American Le Mans Series, which puts on good races in front of sizable crowds. But much like the Indy car war, sports car racing was stymied when it came to growth because of two series instead of just one. As IndyCar has benefitted from unification, so could sports car racing — if some one or some thing wanted to make it happen.

Don Panoz, who started the ALMS, told me once that he had talked to NASCAR about unification but had balked “because they wanted to run everything." NASCAR finally made Panoz an offer he couldn’t refuse and unification will happen in 2014 under the Grand Am banner.

Since the announcement, many people have speculated about the makeup and direction of the new series and there has been an underlying suggestion that NASCAR will “dumb it down” so it’s much like the present Grand Am Series.

I thought so initially too. I’ve since changed my mind — and here’s why.

NASCAR bought the ALMS in order to be in control of what will eventually be a very high-tech sports car racing series to compete directly against the IndyCar Series and to blunt any inroads Formula One might have designs on making into the boardrooms of corporate America.

To do otherwise would be folly. And NASCAR has already indicated it will be going in that direction by meeting in Paris with officials of the Le Mans-centric Automobile Club of the West, which organizes and makes the rules for the annual 24-hour race.

NASCAR can revert to being a growth-oriented corporation by being as upscale and as high tech as it can in sports car racing.

And by so doing, it can cut IndyCar and F1 off at the pass.

Schumi to Ferrari? Allmendinger rumours

Friday morning musings:

1. Ferrari has let the option to pick up Felipe Massa’s contract for 2013 lapse, which means he will not be in the team next year.

By interviewing Mark Webber for the job, Ferrari tipped that it’s looking for a solid second banana rather than a young speedster who would make Fernando Alonso uncomfortable.

There’s another veteran in F1 who doesn’t have a contract for next year. He’s fast — but not fast enough to really challenge Alonso — and he has strong ties to Ferrari.

I don’t think it’s beyond the realm of possibility that Michael Schumacher could sign on for 2013 and then ride off into the sunset for the last time wearing Ferrari red.

2. A.J. Allmendinger has still not said anything about what made him flunk the NASCAR drug test. There are suggestions it had to do with emphetamines and his business people are pushing the “accidental” angle — that somehow, something he ingested legally put him over the line and it was all an accident. I’m hearing it was something else entirely. And that’s the problem: when there is no clear explanation forthcoming, the rumours start. Speak up, A.J., before it’s too late.

3. Danica Patrick told the media at Indianapolis Motor Speedway Thursday that she wants to do the “double” next U.S. Memorial Day weekend — the Indianapolis 500 as well as the Coca-Cola 600 — if the logistics can be worked out and she can get a good ride at Indy. She’ll be driving in the Sprint Cup series for Tony Stewart next year and he’s done it previously, so if she wants to try I can’t see him standing in her way. Who knows? Perhaps he’ll start laying the groundwork for the eventual establishment of an Indy car team to compliment his NASCAR team after he retires from driving. If Roger, Chip and maybe Michael can do it, why not him?

4. JR Motorsports has launched a contest around everybody’s favourite all-‘round Canadian driver, Ron Fellows, who will be competing for them at Watkins Glen and at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in the Nationwide Series in August. Go to www.JRMracing.com or www.Fellows5.com for contest details and questions. The Grand Prize is a three-day driving experience package at Ron Fellows Performance Driving School at Spring Mountain Motor Resort and Country Club outside Las Vegas.

5. While a lot of attention will be on Paul Tracy in the Daytona Prototype class this afternoon in the Grand Am Rolex Sports Car Series race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, let’s not lose track of the fact that the AIM Autosport of Woodbridge Ferrari driven by Jeff Segal and Emil Assentato is very likely going to win the GT class in that race. Segal will start the race with the best race-win record in the series as well as the GT class championship points lead. Segal and the first-year AIM Autosport Team FXDD Ferrari program also have a series-best six GT podium finishes in the season’s first eight races, with only one result out of the top four all year.

6. I’ve been in the newspaper (and radio and TV) biz for longer than I can even remember. One of the things I was taught by my very first city editor, Jim Pauk, was to use language that people can understand. Ergo (that’s a fancy word for “therefore”), I can’t figure out why modern communication specialists (they used to be called “reporters”) have to copy down, or repeat, everything the way it’s written or spoken. This is particularly true when it comes to medical explanations. These days, you would think we are all doctors, the way things come out in the paper and on the web. Example. Charlie Kimball apparently crashed during an IndyCar test at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course.  All the stories are reporting that he suffered a fracture of the fifth metacarpal of his right hand. Okay, I’m not stupid. I suspect he has a broken hand. But why not just say it? What the heck if a metacarpal? Same thing with broken legs. Why not say, “broken leg?” Why say, “fracture of the femur?”

7. Chevrolet announced Thursday that its NASCAR Nationwide Series car for 2013 will be the Camaro. The Camaro, as we all know, is built in Oshawa. Wouldn’t it be neat if the Nationwide Series and the Grand Am Rolex Series raced a double-header at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park next summer? Maybe everybody employed at GM Oshawa would get a free ticket so they could cheer on “Canada’s car!”

8. Okay – so this is my scenario for 2013: Continuing student unrest in Montreal forces F1 to review the Canadian Grand Prix. Its future there could be in jeopardy. So Montreal needs a new headline event for Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve. How about a NASCAR Sprint Cup race? This means the Nationwide Series event would be free to move to Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. The Grand Am Rolex could support both. The NASCAR trucks could double-head with the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series at CTMP. Add the American Le Mans Series and the Canadian motorcycle championship and Summer 2013 at the facility north of Bowmanville could be non-stop action. I’m dreaming – but it’s a nice dream. (Oh, I have a sollution to the F1 problem. Coming Monday.)

On racing DQs, podiums and NASCAR at Mosport

Corvette Racing, westbound on the 407 at 6:15 p.m. July 22, its work done.

Fernando Alonso won the German Grand Prix (details here), Helio Castroneves won the IZOD IndyCar race in Edmonton (details here) and Klaus Graf and Lucas Luhr won the American Le Mans Series Grand Prix of Mosport (details and rolling blog here).

I was at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park all weekend for the ALMS, so didn’t see the F1 or IndyCar races, other than watching the highlights on TV. So here are just some meanderings on a Monday morning about what took place over the weekend.

1. The ALMS race ended on schedule at 2:45 p.m. and the podium ceremony was held immediately after. Jorge Bergmeister and Patrick Long stood on the top step of the podium as winners of the GT class in their Porsche 911 GT3.

They got to spray the champagne and were interviewed by three different television reporters as well as the track’s PA announcer. They went with the other winners to the post-race press conference and answered questions. Then, presumably, they went off to celebrate.

At a little after 5 p.m., more than two hours later, I was putting away my computer after filing my race story to the Star’s sports department and putting the finishing touches to the online blog I’d kept going most of the weekend when a photographer hurried into the media room and said these words to an ALMS official:

"What’s the 45 car still doing in tech?"

The "45 car" was the winning car in the GT class.

The ALMS official said he didn’t know but would go and find out.

"Mind if I tag along?" I asked, and away we went.

Half way to the tech centre, we ran into the series’ main tech inspector who looked at my official friend and shook his head.

"DQ’d," he said, meaning disqualified.

What was the problem?

"Failed the stall test," the tech inspector said.

The stall test on a normally aspirated engine is done by blocking off the air-intake valves and trying to start it. If there’s no air getting in, it can’t start.

It started – which meant air was getting in somewhere; Bergmeister and Long might have had an advantage from the extra air during the race.

So the second-place car in GT – the Ferrari of Van Overbeek and Sharp – moved up a notch and the car that finished fourth in class on track, the BMW of Joey Hand of Sacramento, Calif., and Dirk Muller of Germany, became third in the official results.

2. The podium ceremony at ALMS races is nuts.

Twenty six cars were entered at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park this weekend and each car had two drivers so there were 52 drivers in the race. There were five classes of cars — P1, P2, PC, GT and GTC. Each class rewards the first three cars (see where this is going?)

So 28 drivers showed up for the podium ceremony. There would have been 30, except there were only two cars entered in P2.

Anyway, more than half the drivers in the field were on the podium and that seems – to me, anyway – to be a little much.

3. Klaus Graf has won the pole for this race the last three years and has gone on to win the race each time and good for him. Muscle Milk Pickett Racing is a top-notch team and his co-drivers, Lucas Luhr this year and last, and Romain Demas the year before that, have been formidable teammates.

But, you know, Graf doesn’t have any real competition. It’s been a walk in the park. If the ALMS wants to grow, and to thrive, it’s got to talk someone – Roger Penske, maybe? – or some manufacturer – Audi, maybe? – to step up and take this guy and this team on.

Otherwise, it’ll get boring.

4. Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, like all the other motorsport entities around, won’t issue attendance figures. But there was a big crowd on hand for the race. On driver’s left, going from turn four down to where the track starts to sweep up into Moss Corner, people were standing shoulder to shoulder behind the fence and I haven’t seen that for years.

And that was the road course. As I drove out of the place Saturday night, I was surprised to see the Mosport Speedway stands were packed solid (much like Merrittville’s were when I was there three weeks ago. Who wants to say that short-track racing isn’t thriving in southern Ontario?)

In any event, the big draw Saturday night at the Mosport oval was the OSCAAR late model stock cars and they, my friends, are rockets. You should check to see where they’re running next and take in a show. Those guys in those cars were well worth it.

5. It’s plain that the new owners of the old Mosport are hot on the trail of a NASCAR race (will it be the trucks, or the Nationwide stockers, or – dare I dream – the Cup cars that come?)

In any event, there have to be 43 pit stalls to accommodate any of those series, which means the old control tower that has stood since 1962 will either have to come down or be moved and that could happen sooner rather than later if a NASCAR race is to be reality in 2013.

The new corporate centre is being built as we speak. Canadian Tire Motorsport Park is lookin’ pretty good.

5A. If a NASCAR race becomes reality, will the Grand Am Rolex Series be far behind? And will the Grand Am and the ALMS be able to co-exist at the same facility? Just wondering.

6. When I heard about (and later saw) Sebastien Vettel’s off-track pass of Jenson Button near the end of the German Grand Prix Sunday (he was subsequently penalized 20 seconds, moving him from second to fifth – although, like Bergmeister/Long at Mosport it was after the podium ceremony – the first thing I thought of was Alex Zanardi’s pass of Bryan Herta in a CART race at Laguna Seca in 1996.

In Germany, they had stewards to look at the circumstances and determine a penalty, if any. In California in the Nineties, Zanardi’s audacity caught everyone by surprise and it was only much later that people were saying that it shouldn’t have counted, that Zanardi left the race track to make the pass.

Even today, Herta will tell you it was illegal (you decide: take a look here).

7. I don’t know what D.J. Kennington of St. Thomas has been putting in his coffee but at Edmonton Sunday he won his fourth consecutive NASCAR Canadian Tire Series race – the 15^th victory of his career.

Kennington was running third when, during a late-race restart, the first and second-place cars of Scott Steckly of Milverton and J.R. Fitzpatrick of Cambridge collided, allowing Kennington to take the lead.

Jason Hathaway of Dutton, Ont., finished second – he’s having a great year – while Trevor Seibert of Williams Lake, B.C., was third. Steckly recovered to finish fourth.

8. Jordan Szoke of Brantford won the Mopar Canadian Superbike Championship round at Atlantic Motorsport Park at the weekend, with Jodi Christie of Keene, Ont., second and Frank Rombino of Kleinburg third. The motorcycles will be at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in August.

9. Rinaldo (Dindo) Capello has called it at a day. The sports car racer with an astounding record - two-time ALMS champion, 23 ALMS victories, three 24 Hours of Le Mans victories, five Sebring 12 Hours wins (including 2012) and three ELMS triumphs - is 48 and says his work is done.

Hey, maybe he'll be able to enjoy life a little. Years ago, when Mosport announcer Jim Martyn and I had a radio show on the Fan, Capello arrived for an interview and said he was starving. An aide was dispatched to a nearby restaurant to pick up a chicken caesar salad. Capello wouldn't start to eat it until he'd picked out every single one of the croutons.

10. Speedtv.com is reporting that Lotus will withdraw from the IndyCar series at season's end but CEO Randy Bernared says they have four years remaining on a five-year contract and will have to negotiate a settlement. Oh? If Lotus hasn't been able to afford to put any additional moneys into its dismal engine program, who thinks it will have any to buy its way out of its commitment?

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.

Canadian champion Don Thomson Jr. retires

THOMSON TO WRENCH FOR J.R. FITZPATRICK

 

Canadian racing champion Don Thomson, Jr. has put his Farewell Tour plans on hold - perhaps permanently - to take over as crew chief for rising young talent J.R. Fitzpatrick in the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series, effective immediately.

 

Thomson, of Hamilton, who's won seven Canadian championships, including five consecutive CASCAR national titles, is returning to the Fitzpatrick Motorsports shop where he spent many years as a mechanic and driver. 

 

Shortly after the 2011 season ended, in which Thomson drove the EHR/Team 3 Red Dodge car to fifth place in the standings, team owner John Fitzpatrick began discussing the idea of him returning to the fold to help his son, who finished third in points behind champion Scott Steckly and D.J. Kennington, win the NASCAR Canada championship.

“I know Thomson well and I know what he brings to the team,” said John Fitzpatrick. “We were a pretty
formidable program, winning eight championships between him and J.R. during the CASCAR days, and I expect at his transition to Crew Chief here will be pretty seamless.”

The role of Crew Chief and advisor to Fitzpatrick is not unknown to Thomson. When J.R. Fitzpatrick was just starting out,Thomson built and crewed a late model program for him and then mentored him when he moved into the CASCAR Super Series.

 

“I am really excited about this next chapter in my career and glad to be back at Fitzpatrick Motorsports," said
Thomson. “I am comfortable here, I know the way the system works and John is really committed to putting the best product on the track for J.R. and our sponsor partners.

 

"I have also known J.R. since he was 8 years old and he has grown to become the best driver in the series so I really want to be a part of whatever he does." 

“I am really pumped to get this season started,” said J.R. Fitzpatrick, who had success several times in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and the Nationwide Series for stock cars in the last few years. “I had a lot of good runs last season and Thomson’s addition to the team will only make us stronger."

The NASCAR Canadian Tire Series season gets under way May 20 on the road course at Mosport International Raceway. The championship will be made up of 12 races in Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia.

 

Thomson told me last fall that he would run one more season and then hang up his helmet. But the opportunity to resume working with the Fitzpatrick family apparently hastened his retirement.