Brack captures Indy 500 on last lap
INDIANAPOLIS, IND.—
Kenny Brack was one of the primary challengers throughout Sunday’s Indianapolis 500, but in a racefull of unpredictable incidents it took the most unpredictable turnabout to send Brack speeding to the checkered flag in the 83rd running of the 500-mile classic.
Brack had battled pole-sitter Arie Luyendyk, Greg Ray and defending Indy winner Eddie Cheever through a race that shaped up as being fast and exciting to the finish. But after Luyendyk, Ray and Cheever were eliminated in a sudden and bizarre series of plot twists, Brack seemed a reluctant but certain runner-up to Robby Gordon at the end.
However, Gordon, who gambled along with his Team Menard crew, on having enough fuel to bring his car through the final 31 laps, ran out of fuel with one lap to go. As Gordon coasted into the pits after 199 laps, Brack sped past and led the last lap around the legendary 2.5-mile oval. A crowd of 350,000 celebrated the first Indy victory for Brack, and the first Indy victory as car-owner for A.J. Foyt, a four-time winner as a driver.
When Gordon coasted into the pits, yielding first place, Foyt radioed Brack and said: “Bring it home, you’ve won it.”
“As a matter of fact, I thought the race was over when he said that, even though I didn’t see any checkered flag,” said Brack, after taking the traditional few gulps of milk in Victory Circle.
Jeff Ward wound up second, with Billy Boat third and Gordon, who returned to the track after getting a splash of fuel, was fourth. Rookie Robby McGehee was fifth, after starting 27th, and Robbie Buhl was sixth. That made it a particularly memorable day for Foyt, who not only owned the Brack car, but also the cars of Boat and Buhl, giving him all three cars among the top six.
The Indy Racing League was formed to give U.S. circle-track racers a place to aspire to, instead of allowing road-racers, and particularly foreign road-racers, to dominate at Indianapolis. The fact that Brack is a road-racer from Sweden, who won the IRL season championship last year, was an irony that wasn’t lost on Foyt, who proved at age 63 that switching from driver to owner hasn’t caused him to lose his ability to captivate a roomful of people.
“Everybody laughed when I brought a foreigner here,” said Foyt. “But I got his papers changed and made him move to Texas.”
That makes it OK, then. “I got as much thrill out of this as winning myself,” Foyt added, sharing the post-race interview podium with Brack. “But this is his day — talk to him.”
With that, a questioner in the interview room started to ask Brack a question. “Let me finish,” Foyt interrupted, then went on to explain how he had gone 10 years between his third and fourth victories as a driver. “But I waited 22 years before winning as an owner.”
Gordon, who spun out and crashed after only 11 laps in the rival Motorola 300 CART race in St. Louis on Saturday, almost made up for that misfortune in the biggest possible way. Both he and car-owner John Menard knew they were gambling on reaching the finish, and Menard said he told Gordon not to worry about fuel, that there was enough.
“It’s frustrating, but what are you going to do?” said Gordon. “My fuel meter said we were getting 2 miles to the gallon, and it indicated we had 2.3 gallons left, coming out of Turn 4 on the next-to-last lap.”
The race started badly, with Eliseo Salazar crashing after eight laps. Most of the drivers decided to make an early pit stop during that yellow-flag clean-up period, and the scene turned chaotic. Johnny Unser came in he found he had no brakes, and a moment later, rookie Jeret Schroeder and Jimmy Kite collided on pit lane. Kite, who was leaving his pit, suddenly found his car veering into McGehee’s pit, striking Steve Fried, a McGehee crewman from Mentor, Ohio. Fried was the day’s only serious casualty; he was taken to Methodist Hospital where he was reported in critical condition with head and chest injuries.
Luyendyk, competing in his only race of 1999 and having announced he would retire after the race, had to contend with Team Menard’s Greg Ray and Brack from the start, but, except for fluctuations during pit-stop exchanges, Luyendyk was in command until Ray passed him after 45 laps. Brack then passed both of them for the lead and the three were joined by Sam Schmidt, until he crashed on Lap 62, and then by Scott Goodyear, who stayed a close fourth while the top three put on a dazzling show.
At the 100-lap midpoint of the race, Cheever had moved up to challenge Luyendyk, Ray and Brack, just as Goodyear’s engine expired in Turn 2. There were all indications of a scintillating four-car duel through the second 100 laps, but then things got strange for the leaders.
On the 118th lap, Luyendyk, leading the chain, tried to pass tail-ender Tyce Carlson on the inside at Turn 3. Luyendyk stuck the nose of his car up next to Carlson’s left rear, but Carlson, who later said his radio was out and he hadn’t been informed that the leaders were right on him, started to pull down to the inside groove for the turn. Luyendyk slammed on his brakes, and the sudden move caused him to spin out, and his day — and his career — wound up against the wall.
“I feel stupid,” said Luyendyk. “I should have known better than to try to go underneath that car. I had the best car here, and it gave me so much confidence, and that was part of my demise. Maybe I got greedy and tried to get more. When I slammed on the brakes, it upset the car and made me spin out.”
Ray, Cheever and Brack were 1-2-3, and all the leaders made their usual dash for the pits on the yellow caused by Luyendyk’s crash. But when Ray pulled out of the Menard’s pit, his right front struck the left rear of Mark Dismore’s car, which was just entering the next pit. The impact wiped out the wings and front suspension on Ray’s car, costing Menard one of his contenders.
That left Cheever in the lead, but on the Lap 125 restart, Brack vaulted past Cheever for the lead. Cheever seemed to be slowing, as Ward also got past him, and on lap 140 the reason became clear, when Cheever’s engine blew.
With 40 laps to go, Brack led Ward, with Gordon back in seventh place. Gordon stopped for fuel on Lap 169, just as Dismore hit the wall. All the leaders pitted with 27 laps to go, giving them enough fuel to finish. But as Brack and Ward rushed out of the pits, their duel was suddenly for second place, because Gordon had stayed out on the track and inherited the lead. The gamble to try to go for it was worth it, leaving his challengers to only hope he couldn’t make it 31 laps.
They were right, but only because the fuel pickup wouldn’t deliver the last two gallons to Gordon’s Aurora engine.
Could CART Indy 500 road race solve IRL-CART feud?
The posturing is over for another year, as the racers from CART (the Championship Auto Racing Teams) goes on after their FedEx Champ Car series stops, including this weekend at Milwaukee’s State Fair park mile, and the IRL (Indy Racing League) packs up to head for its next venue.
While battling for the past three years, the fledgling IRL has gone through some growing pains, with its first-year cars not up to CART’s safety, technical or competitive standards, and its more-recent private formula spending two years becoming adequate from a safety standpoint and very competitive, at least with each other.
Last weekend’s races were both outstanding, with Michael Andretti winning Saturday’s CART’s Motorola 300 at Madison, Ill., before about 40,000 fans — television broadcasts showed a massive empty grandstand, but that is a new stand that won’t be open until the NASCAR Busch race later this summer — and Kenny Brack winning Sunday’s Indy 500 before an estimate 350,000.
The two races show that both the IRL and CART have their distinct assets and clear liabilities in this battle, in which neither side is as strong as both could be by reuniting. Here is a rough overview of both sides:
Indy Racing League
Strengths: Having the Indianapolis 500 as its centerpiece, with its record purse of $9,047,150, including a record winner’s share of $1,465,190 to race winner Kenny Brack. The concept of trying to control runaway costs with standardized chassis from Aurora, G-Force and Riley & Scott, and stock-based 4.0-liter engines which can be bought by any competitor. The foresight to mandate contemporary an engine formula that uses stock bases (from Aurora and Infiniti engines) but also allows high-tech dual overhead camshafts and multiple valves. Using the theme of lower costs to open the ranks to new drivers, particularly U.S. circle-track racers.
Weaknesses: Other than the Indy 500, the IRL is seen as a minor-league spec-racing show at all its other venues. While cost-control is worthy, chassis and engine limitations mean that at this point, it is a spec-racing series. While cost-control does allow a lot of new and eager racers to get into the IRL, inexperienced drivers and low-budget teams are the motorsports equivalent of the Minnesota Twins trying to compete with the New York Yankees. Despite its intentions for circle-track graduates, the IRL’s best drivers are former road-racers (Kenny Brack, Eddie Cheever, Arie Luyendyk, Robby Gordon, Greg Ray and Scott Goodyear), and the teams that spend the most from the biggest budgets (John Menard, for example), tend to be dominant. The oval-track concept means the IRL doesn’t run road-races, so all other races have a sameness that can’t possibly be as impressive as the Indy prototype. A loss of supporting revenue from the biggest sponsors, who are with the bigger budget CART teams.
CART
Strengths: Competition that is at the peak of the sport, with Honda, Ford-Cosworth and Mercedes all with completely different engines that are virtually identical in performance (each had four of the top 12 finishers), and Toyota closing fast, plus body styles from Reynard, Swift and Lola that are also very competitive. Extremely skilled young drivers, such as Juan Montoya, Greg Moore, Helio Castro-Neves, Dario Franchitti, Patrick Carpentier and Tony Kanaan, who make veterans such as Michael Andretti, Al Unser Jr., Paul Tracy and Christian Fittipaldi seem old. The engines are all leased, not bought, to allow manufacturers to retain their secrets of success instead of sharing them with every after-market high-performance part shop. A guaranteed exciting show that is the biggest attraction to appear at those tracks and road courses where it runs. Big budget sponsors who have allowed CART to be positioned somewhere between the costliest Formula 1 series and the low-budget IRL, but with a good blend of skill, sophistication and technology.
Weaknesses: The lack of its logical centerpiece — the Indianapolis 500. Exorbitant costs, although the high cost of cars comes mostly because of evolving safety concepts that can’t be retrofit onto year-old cars. The comparative lack of identity of its top young drivers, who dazzle all who see them, but who need a venue like the Indy 500 to be properly appreciated by the masses. A diminishing number of adequate race tracks, such as Elkhart Lake’s Road America in Wisconsin, or Laguna Seca in California, for cars and drivers who can’t show their full measure of skill on flat-out ovals better suited to NASCAR stock cars. All the drivers, team owners and sponsors would love to be running in the Indy 500, and are frustrated by being effectively boycotted.
Both series put on good races, and, presumably, will continue to do so. But even when CART chairman Andrew Craig and IRL boss Tony George met a couple of weeks ago, George’s camp denied there was such a meeting the same day that Craig acknowledged there had been. George then issued several vitriolic missives about CART just trying to cut in on Indy’s popularity, while Leo Mehl, the IRL’s tech boss, said that there would be no compromise on such IRL rules as leasing engines and engine rules.
The political hassle has overshadowed some technical problems of reunification. Indy’s 4.0-liter stock-based V8s have rev-limiters that were lowered to 10,300 RPMs for reliability sake, and will next be dropped to 10,000 revs. The more exotic, purpose-built CART engines rev to around 15,000 RPMs and competition has spurred their development and sophistication.
It is extremely unlikely that Roger Penske will give up his multi-million-dollar association with Ilmor Engineering and Mercedes, or that Chip Ganassi and various other teams will relinquish their alliance with Honda, or that Newman-Haas and others will break up with Ford-Cosworth arrangements, to run less-sophisticated and restricted IRL engines in CART’s series. It is equally unlikely that the IRL would allow CART engine suppliers to come in with IRL-spec engines, unless they could be bought by any and every team.
While every CART team would love to race at Indy — still the biggest race in the world — not many IRL teams would welcome the CART racers back. Team Menard owner John Menard said: “I’m all for reunification.” And his driver, Robby Gordon, did compete in both events — because Menard can afford to help enter two such different cars in the different races. Other teams said similar things after the Indy 500 ended. But most of them — and all the low-budget teams — know that if the CART teams came in, their drivers and budgets would bump a lot of current IRL teams out of the Indy 500.
It is ironic that now that the IRL has seemed to bring its car/engine levels up to full competitiveness, it is calling for new car designs and a new engine formula — 3.5-liters instead of 4.0 — for next year. That will rule all the current race cars obsolete, and will cause every team, including the low-budget, limited-sponsor outfits, to spend a lot for the new cars. That seems completely opposite of the IRL’s basic premise.
Still, that could lead to a potential compromise. CART engine builders could produce a nonturbocharged 3.5-liter V8, although it undoubtedly would not meet the IRL’s price limits, and those manufacturers would probably be unwilling to sell them on the open market.
Another suggestion is to have the war continue during the overall seasons, but to have CART purchase and set up a half-dozen IRL cars, then allow its point-leaders to go to Indy and try to prove their superiority.
But here’s one more idea. Tony George is renovating the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and installing a road-racing course that will use part of the straightaway and Turns 1 and 2 and the infield twisty parts to hold a U.S.Grand Prix for Formula 1 cars next year, in September. Forget the irony of George, who has been so outspoken against foreign drivers, road-racers and high-budget racing, to now embrace the world’s highest-budget road-racing series with all foreign drivers.
That will give the Indy Motor Speedway the 500 in May, the Brickyard NASCAR race in August, and the Formula 1 race in September. What would be better than to run a CART 500-mile race, on the new road course, on, say, the Fourth of July?
It could be the Indianapolis 500-Roman-Numeral-II. It would allow CART to return to Indy without disrupting the IRL’s future, and it would allow George to bring back the high-buck CART folks he so clearly dislikes, and make a few million dollars off them.
Stanley Cup finals sure to have Up North touch
If you are among those watching the Stanley Cup Playoffs on television, you are aware that the climactic finals are just about to start. And Up North hockey fans can take special interest this year, regardless of what happens.
First, the favored Western teams lived up to all expectations, with evidence that Dallas, Detroit and Colorado were arguably the best three teams in the whole NHL. I thought Detroit was primed for a third Cup run in a row, but Colorado clipped the Red Wings. I thought Dallas had ‘way too much for St. Louis, but it took a determined effort by the Stars to subdue the Blues.
The conference final in the East was a rough and rowdy affair, with Buffalo beating Toronto for the Eastern berth in the Cup finals, although everyone West of Lake Erie will consider the Sabres a decisive underdog in the finals.
That is, if Dallas and Colorado have anything left after their Friday night seventh game.
Naturally, the Stars have a lot of allure Up North, because they used to shine in Minnesota, and still have remnants of those days. Mike Modano was a young box-office idol in Minnesota, and he’s a still-young-looking but more mature box-office idol in Dallas. The Stars also have Brett Hull and Joe Niewendyk as stars, but all of them must bow to Cloquet’s own Jamie Langenbrunner this time around.
When Dallas got past Edmonton in a tough opening series, Langenbrunner scored two game-winning goals and assisted on another, to take care of three of the four victories in that series. It was interesting to note that after scoring only 12 goals in the regular season, Langenbrunner’s constant hustle and fearless determination to get to the front of the net regardless of the degree of congestion, had earned a regular spot on Niewendyk’s line.
Coincidentally, NHL hockey was in its annual Cup semifinal surge, during which play gets closer, tougher, nastier, and quadruples in intensity from its comparatively casual regular-season pace. Dallas had acquired Derek Plante, another Cloquet native, and has Tony Hrkac, former North Dakota Hobey Baker star. But neither of them seems to get into the games at this point.
That may indicate that NHL hockey has reached a sorry state, when two such skilled, fantastic players can’t get ice time. But we also can marvel at the play of Langenbrunner, who also is very skilled but adds an incredibly large dose of tenacity to his game, which often overshadows his own skill level. As these games get more rugged through the playoffs, Langenbrunner simply takes on the combative circumstances as one more challenge, and churns through them in an unrelenting effort. Then, once he penetrates, he does something.
Colorado had battled to gain the upper hand in the series, with a 3-2 lead in games and home ice for Game 6. The Avalanche led 1-0, but Dallas tied it. It stayed 1-1 well into the third period.
And then the puck came out front for a Dallas shot, which Patrick Roy blocked, going down in a V. Langenbrunner, near the left boards, bolted for the net, fighting a checker all the way, and somehow got to the crease and stabbed the puck with his stick, just enough to send it squirting through Roy’s legs for a 2-1 lead.
Claude Lemieux drew a stupid penalty for flattening Stars goalie Ed Belfour — another former North Dakota star — with an elbow-flipper in the crease, and Langenbrunner smacked in another shot for a 3-1 lead on the power play. He also had a great chance on a one-timer from the slot, and was stopped by Roy’s toe on a breakaway. But Dallas won the game 4-1, to send the series back to Dallas for Friday’s exhausting final.
Langenbrunner, meanwhile, went into that game with eight goals in the playoffs, after his 12-goal regular season. While flashy scoring stars like Modano, Niewendyk and Hull have played well but found themselves restrained and harnessed, and outstanding talents like Derek Plante and Tony Hrkac find themselves out of the lineup to let more muckers and grinders play instead, Jamie Langenbrunner continues to score, and to score pivotal goals that keep the Stars shining.
If Dallas could beat Colorado in Game 7, and go onto to the finals, Jamie Langenbrunner could be the most valuable player of these playoffs. Not bad for the kid from Cloquet.
Meanwhile, if Colorado were to win and advance, Up North fans are not without a favorite. Shjon Podein, who starred at Rochester John Marshall and then for the UMD Bulldogs, struggled and battled his way through the NHL traffic before, and made it big with Philadelphia, but not big enough. Now he’s with the Avalanche, and he, too, has stepped forward in a starring role as the congestion gets tougher and superstars like Peter Forsberg and Joe Sakic get restrained and subdued.
Meanwhile, off in Buffalo, Erik Rasmussen, who left the University of Minnesota after two frustrating seasons, has not only earned a regular spot with the Sabres, but he, also, has risen to stardom when the traffic got heaviest. Rasmussen, a rugged physical specimen, is not only handling the pounding but making key plays on key goals that got the Sabres into the finals.
The focus is always on the goaltenders at this time of year. Dominek Hasek for Buffalo is awesome, and so is Patrick Roy of Colorado, and Belfour is a money goaltender for the Stars. But when the going gets rough, and then much rougher, it’s gratifying to see young men from Up North, such as Langenbrunner and Podein, rise up, grab some spotlight, and give us something extra to cheer about.
Excitement of sports could be easily improved
Pick your favorite sports scene:
* The New York Knicks, trailing by three points with 12 seconds to go in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference NBA playoffs, get the ball to big (they’re all big) LarryJohnson, while Indiana’s Antonio Davis tried to prevent him from moving in. Johnson made a little feint one way, then the other, and Davis took a swipe at the ball. Maybe — just maybe — there was a bit of contact, but nothing major. Then, as the whistle blew, Johnson pulled clear of Davis, went up for a jump shot, and swished it, from 3-point range. The referee declared the shot good, tying the game at 91-all, and gave Johnson a free throw, which he also made, for a 92-91 Knicks victory. The Pacers raced to the other end of the floor in the final five seconds, and, after what appeared to be at least as much meaningful contact, Mark Johnson’s final shot fell short.
* Tune in a major league baseball game — any game, any day. The pitcher throws a fastball, curve or slider, and it comes in right over the plate, maybe an inch above the belt buckle. “Ball,” the umpire calls. A minute or so, after several steps out of the box to clean the spikes or look for a signal, the count is 3-and-2, and the same pitcher throws a darting slider at the knees that breaks four inches outside the plate. “Strike three,” screams the ump. The same ump, the same pitcher and the same hitter. No wonder the pitcher has a problem, having to throw his pitches into a strike zone that measures a mere two feet high and an irregular 16-18 inches wide, and no wonder we see a whole squadron of hitters leaning back and lunging at 60-75 home run seasons.
* Watch the NHL playoffs and marvel at the intensity, the pace and the stout team defenses, but also count the number of open-ice finesse plays because of the constant physical coverage, much of it interference, and the precious lack of room as a whole league-ful of 6-foor-3 guys fill the 200-by-85 ice surface and clog each zone.
* Now go out to a local softball field and watch the slow-pitch guys play. Big guys, wearing batting gloves and waving $300 bats made of the latest, high-tech aircraft aluminum with compressed-air chambers and special thin-wall construction guaranteed to give a springy, catapault-like thrust to send the soft-arcing pitch an extra 20 yards. And then these guys take a strike, or maybe two, in order to get the perfect pitch.
What’s wrong with those pictures? This is sports at the end of the millenium. There is no longer any doubt that sports has moved squarely into the entertainment biz. In this era of superlatives, it seems that well-executed subtleties have all been brushed aside so that ESPN’s nightly highlights can all be game-breaking spectacles. Does anyone else get bored by seeing 11 consecutive home runs, from different games, all passing as highlights? Or slam-dunk after slam-dunk, mostly after the player takes three steps before liftoff?
So here are a few modest suggestions, aimed at helping the games people play become more satisfying as the games people watch.
BASKETBALL: This goes for the college game as well as the NBA style. In the final two minutes of every game, both sides get one, and only one, 30-second time out. More importantly, every foul is a two-shot foul, and the team that is fouled also gets possession of the ball. Outrageous, you say? Right on. What would happen is that teams would have to stop intentionally fouling whomever is perceived to be the other team’s worst free-throw shooter as a tactical move. It simply would be too costly to foul, intentionally or otherwise. As it is, basketball has eroded into a game where committing an intentional infraction is now an acceptable and applauded strategical tactic of the game.
Make the change, and instead of the last two minutes of the game lasting 10 minutes for endless timeouts and trips to the free-throw line, the last two minutes would simply be racehorse, high-intensity basketball, played to a frantic finish.
Oh, and call traveling when it happens, instead of allowing everybody to take two or three running steps, like a halfback going off-tackle, before shooting or passing.
BASEBALL: Call the strike-zone the way Abner Doubleday intended it to be called — anything from the letters (armpits?) to the knees is a strike, so long as it is over the plate. Simple. Pitchers are better than ever these days, but hitters have almost all the advantages of the slackened rules. OK, so once in a while the pitcher gets that liberal-outside-corner strike, but that’s small consolation when the rest of the pitches have to be in a zone barely taller than the barrel of a bat is wide.
As for college and high school ball, where more accurate strike zones and aluminum bats have given just as unfair an edge to the hitters, we could make a small adjustment, too. There is no question that aluminum bats — similar to those high-tech softball beauties — have gotten out of control. But there’s no need to eliminate them or go back to all wood. Simply go back to the older, first style aluminum bats, that were actually designed to simulate wood bats for impact and velocity of the hit. They provide the advantage of being cost-effective, not breaking, and not changing the game.
HOCKEY: Two things could allow hockey — even high-intensity playoff hockey — to again allow the artful style to play a role. First, go to Olympic size rinks. The extra 15-feet of width would allow all those 6-3 guys to play with some room, and they’d have to skate instead of merely knowing that they’re always within stick’s reach of each other (literally). Second, the NHL should go to the college and high school red-line rule. Take away the center red line except for icing, which would allow teams to pass across their own blue line and the red line. That would allow a defenseman to come around his net and throw a 120-foot pass to a winger who could be flying all the way to the far blue line, instead of having to find anybody open in the congested space short of the red line.
The NHL won’t change to Olympic size, because they’d be sacrificing high-buck seats to make the game better, and we know which is more important to the powers that be.
SOFTBALL: Big guys, wearing uniforms from their favorite bars, and batting gloves, taking strikes to wait for the perfect pitch. The best pro softball teams in the best tournaments routinely hit 35 or more home runs in a game. It’s a joke. So, two rules to improve slow-pitch softball. One, eliminate the fences. Yup, make teams decide whether they want to play ‘way back in the outfield, or move in and take away the singles, and make the hitting team decide whether to try to go for singles or try to hit one over the outfield. Better game, already. The second thing is to change the rules — four balls for a walk, but one strike and you’re out. Then let’s see the big guys take a pitch. The game of slow-pitch was designed for players who weren’t up to the difficulties of baseball or fast-pitch, a recreational sport where every pitch should be hittable, and hit. So let’s get back to that intention. Unless a pitch is unreasonably awful, swing at it, or risk being called out by the ump.
It’s time to reel in pro sports, and even amateur sports, so we can get back to what we used to admire about the “spirit” of the game. In the long run, it will make games even more enjoyable, to watch and to play.
Tommy Archer among favorites at LeMans
The Archer Brothers — Tommy and Bobby — native sons who brought road-racing fame to Duluth as part of the city’s most famous motorsports family, are both racing Dodge Vipers. But no, not as teammates.
Tommy Archer, who still minds the Archer Brothers high-performance race and street shop up by the Duluth Airport, is off to LeMans, where this weekend he will once again help Team Oreca try to dominate the GTS class. Bobby Archer, who moved to Texas to continue racing, is racing a Viper in the Speedvision World Challenge GT series.
Team Oreca has three Vipers racing this time in the 24 Hours of LeMans. Olivier Beretta and Karl Wendlinger, unbeaten in this year’s manufacturers championship series, will be joined by Dominique Dupuy in the No. 51 Viper. Tommy Archer, who codrove to second place in a 1-2 team finish in class last year at LeMans, shares the No. 52 second team car with Justin Bell and Marc Duez. David Donohue and Jean-Philippe Belloc, who have codriven to second place behind the Beretta-Wendlinger car at both Monza and Silverstone this season, are joined by Soheil Ayari in the No. 53 Team Oreca third car.
Donohue and Bell were codrivers of last year’s GT-winning car. The class, known as GT2 last year, is now categorized as GTS, and the Vipers will face a strong challenge from the aging but always-threatening Porsche team. Chevrolet, which entered its new Corvettes in a highly-publicized, factory-backed program at Daytona, realized it requires more development time but pulled off a guaranteed move to “lead” the LeMans classic — by supplying the pace car.
Coverage of the LeMans race, with the super-fast factory prototypes zooming along at over 200 miles per hour ahead of the GTS cars around the 8.451-mile course, partly on actual highways, will be tricky to locate, partly because it will run from 8:30 a.m. (Central time) Saturday and conclude Sunday morning, and partly because it will be covered live, in segments including the start, dawn at LeMans (10 p.m. Central) and the finish (5 a.m. Central), but only on Speedvision cable. Highlights are sure to be shown on motorsports shows on ESPN, ESPN 2 and TNN cable.
Meanwhile, Bobby Archer is running a similar but much more modest and private Viper in the Speedvision World Challenge, and after winning at Mosport and Lime Rock, he placed second to former Duluthian Peter Kitchak’s Porsche last weekend at Mid-Ohio.
While it is little more than coincidence that the now-split-up Archer Brothers are both racing Vipers, don’t be surprised if Tommy’s strong and repeated showings in factory cars doesn’t lead to some sort of arrangement where he will prepare Viper race cars to compete in various U.S. series, and it’s virtual certain Tommy will be driving more for Team Oreca, which has expansive plans for the future.
SUPERIOR WEATHER
Up North race tracks may have been lulled into warm, fuzzy feelings of success last season, but this season has been a nightmare of rain, cold and foul weather. Except, that is, for Superior Speedway, which has run off four full programs, much to the envy of race fans elsewhere in the area.
Last weekend was a good example, with Superior drawing 29 Sprint cars for a full showing of International Racing Association (IRA) Outlaw Sprints on Friday, and Brady Smith from Solon Springs casually winning the Super Stock feature. Again. No, there is nothing casual about the way Smith flies around a dirt oval, but Superior has held four programs this season and Smith has won all four Super Stock features.
Meanwhile, Ashland and Hibbing got rained out, as did Rice Lake, Wis., last Saturday night. Proctor has only gotten two shows in, and lost out to foul weather four other times, including Memorial Day’s Monday night special. Last season, Proctor ran 16 shows and only had one rainout all season, which makes this season’s weather luck seem doubly unfair.
Last Sunday looked hopeful, because it was beautiful on the Iron Range and in Ashland all day, and not bad in Proctor. Even when the fog from Duluth moved up over the hill and delayed the start at Proctor, Sunday night looked promising when track officials hustled to get in all the heats. But when they broke for intermission, the monsoon swept in and the features were eliminated.
“It was tough for us, because we had 115 cars Sunday,” said Proctor spokesman Chris Sailstad. “When the guys don’t get to race other places, they all get extra-anxious to run here on Sunday night. Now we run into the problem of how to reschedule. It’s not fair to make up the special shows with double features and cut out some of our regular events, and now we run into some other tracks running special events in midweek, too.”
CANADIAN GRAND PRIX
It’s a huge weekend, worldwide, with the only Formula 1 race in North America running in Montreal Sunday. The Canadian Grand Prix is of far more than merely cult interest this year, with Formula 1 returning to the U.S. next year at the new road course inside the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The big rivalry this weekend is whether the McLaren-Mercedes team of Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard can withstand Ferrari’s duo of Michael Schumacher and Eddie Irvine. Hakkinen and Schumacher have each won twice and Irvine once so far in Formula 1 this season, but this race takes on extra meaning with Jacques Villeneuve returning home to race on the course named after his late father, Gilles Villeneuve.
Meanwhile, Alex Zanardi, runaway CART champion the last two seasons, will try to prove he and teammate Ralf Schumacher can make the struggling Williams team cars competitive.
NASCAR is in action this weekend, with the northernmost run of Winston Cup stars at Michigan International Speedway, and the Indy Racing League will try to come up with a valid follow-up to the Indy 500 with a race at Fort Worth, Texas.
All that, of course, is just in case weird weather causes you to bypass Up North races and spend the weekend hunting for motorsports with your TV remote.
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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