September 12th

On the eve of Road America, Cristiano Da Matta is set to celebrate his birthday this week on September 19th. The race is going to be difficult for a lot of people. Even though the series has raced twice since the accident, they are now going back to the scene. And while nobody expects another freak accident like that to happen, just being at the same track will make people’s heart heavier. We continue to pray for his complete recovery and wish him the very best of luck. And a happy birthday of course!

Now, I haven’t been in the loop lately as to what the happenings are in the world of Champ Car. I have taken another gig (must start thinking beyond Champ Car, as Road America is my last race) that is consuming a lot of my time and it pains me to only have a few minutes a day to read on the happenings. I did catch Robin Miller’s article on the DP01 Leasing program and the fact that you can lease the package for about a million dollars and run competitively at around 4 million. Like Mr. Kalkoven mentioned, this should encourage new teams to the series. While I certainly look forward to PCM and Gelles, I also really hope that HVM, Coyne and MiJack stick around next season. I have yet to hear anything on their situation. However, this could be a case of no news being good news as perhaps their intentions on coming back are just assumed at this point.

Congratulations to Sam Hornish on capturing the IRL crown and the Indy 500. Winning those two in the same year is pretty much the perfect season for any driver. He mentioned he’s coming back next year and the broadcast mentioned something about the team simply being called Team Penske next year and moving locations. Does anybody have any additional info on this?

Don’t look now, but a quiet yet very significant announcement has been made in Canada. Canadian Tire becoming the primary sponsor of the CASCAR series is a very big announcement and affects all forms of racing in Canada. When was the last time a Canadian company stepped up to sponsor an entire series? You can bet now that Carpentier, Ranger and possibly Tracy will be running some CASCAR races next year. Tracy, of course, is signed on to do some BUCSH races and we expect BUSCH to race in Montreal next season. NASCAR owns CASCAR. This is part of their expansion plans. This has already affected Champ Car with the Montreal saga. Will this announcement affect open-wheel racing in Canada? Now that CASCAR suddenly has more legitimacy, will young kids chose stock cars over open-wheel cars? Time will tell. I for one believe that any announcement like this is positive for motor sports in general, as we all share the same umbrella. Of course, I would prefer if Canadian Tire announced their intentions to create Champ Car team or to take over for Molson for the Canadian events. Nonetheless, the very fact that they demonstrated a renewed interest in motor sports is a positive and as Champ Car continues to grow (read above about new teams), then hopefully other companies will be interested in motor sports in the first place and then look towards open-wheel. Remember when Canadian Tire sponsored Jacques Villeneuve in the 70’s?