Marcos Ambrose underlined the point that he is NASCAR’s top road racer these days as he came from the back of the grid to win Saturday’s second-division Nationwide race at Le Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montréal. It was Ambrose’s second road course win in six days coming hard on the heels of his first Sprint Cup victory at Watkins Glen.

But the story of the day was Patrick Carpentier’s retirement. The French-Canadian ran the last race of his career in a Michael Waltrip Racing Toyota sponsored by race backer NAPA Auto Parts. He qualified eighth and ran with the leaders until getting involved in a couple of fender-banging incidents, eventually crawling to a stop on the track.

Carpentier is one of a number of drivers whose careers were overshadowed, if not diminished, by the CART/IRL war. A native of Ville la Salle, outside Montréal, Patrick won the Canadian Formula Atlantic championship in 1992 and the Toyota Atlantic championship in ‘96 with a record nine wins. He broke into CART’s Indy Car World Series in ‘97 with the late Tony Bettenhausen’s team and took rookie of the year honours before joining the top-ranked Player’s/Forsythe team in ‘98.

Carpentier drove for Forsythe (below) for six years and established himself as one of CART’s top drivers. He scored his first win in the 2001 Michigan 500, beating Dario Franchitti by a car length, and enjoyed his best year in ’02, winning at Cleveland and Mid-Ohio and finishing third in the championship. In 2003 he won from pole at Laguna Seca and won there again in ’04 when he finished third in the points.

But by then CART had been driven into bankruptcy as top teams like Penske, Ganassi, Andretti-Green and Rahal defected to the IRL. Champ Car replaced CART for three years, while Carpentier also switched to the IRL in 2005 with a less than stellar team for what was his last year racing Indycars. He made his NASCAR debut at the end of 2007 and ran most of the Sprint Cup season in ‘08, taking one pole. In ‘09 he ran a handful of races but it was clear his career was coming to an end.

Patrick has run a few more NASCAR races over the past 18 months and went to this year’s Indy 500 in an uncompetitive car only to crash while trying to make the field. He celebrated his 40th birthday on August 13 and decided a few months ago to conclude his career in the Nationwide race in Montréal, where he was enthusiastically applauded as a national hero.

Carpentier is a fast, clean driver and a gentleman at all times, on and off the track. He is an amiable, good-humoured man who honoured a bet after winning at Mid-Ohio in 2002 by running a lap of the track on foot in the nude, save for a small chequered flag wrapped around his loins. But he is much more than that – an intelligent, softly spoken man who splits his time between Las Vegas and Quebec. Married in 1998 to the equally low-key but charming Anick, the Carpentiers have a daughter Anais and son Loic. We wish them the best in their new life after racing.

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From your responses to last week’s blog about Jim HalI at the Nürburgring, it’s clear that many of you were taken by the Chaparral 2F long-distance sports/racer from 1967. Phil Hill and Mike Spence drove the winged 2F in that year’s International Championship for Makes and it was often the car to beat. Spence turned the fastest lap at Sebring, and Hill was on pole and set fastest lap in the Nürburgring 1000Kms.

But time and again the main drive-bearing in the 2F’s automatic transmission failed to go the distance, until the Brands Hatch (above) season-closer where Hill and Spence came through to beat Jackie Stewart/Chris Amon’s Ferrari 330P4 and Jo Siffert/Bruce McLaren’s Porsche 910. The CSI rewrote the rules for sports car racing that winter, mandating a 5-litre engine limit and effectively driving away the Ford and Chaparral teams. Hall and his partner Hap Sharp were ready to go in 1968 but the new rules brought an abrupt end to the Chaparral team’s European foray.

Nor did Hill race again after his Brands Hatch win with Spence. The 1961 World Champion’s Formula 1 career effectively came to an end in 1964 after a year with Cooper. He didn’t run any F1 races in ‘65 and started three GPs, each for different teams, in ‘66. Phil’s primary effort that year went into driving the Chaparral 2D in long-distance sports car racing and the 2E in Can-Am. He and Jim Hall were Can-Am team-mates in ‘66 when Phil (below) scored the Chaparral team’s only victory at Laguna Seca, heading a one-two sweep.

“Phil was a great guy with a lot of talent and really fun to work with because he understood a lot of what was going on,” says Hall. “I think he was probably as good as anybody at making the car finish. He’d put many cars together himself and knew how everything was made and how to take care of it. He was a great endurance driver for other reasons, but for that reason too.

“When we got near the Can-Am season in 1966 we decided we’d offer Phil a drive. He was a great guy to have on your team – he pulled for you and worked for you. And in the endurance races he was our man. I think Phil enjoyed driving for us, we just had a good relationship.”

Hall also had great respect for Spence (above with Jim Clark and Colin Chapman), who was killed at Indianapolis in May 1968. “I really thought a lot of Mike,” he says. “He was an awfully talented driver, very quick and a smart guy who worked hard. He was a good fit for Chaparral too. It takes the right kind of person to be on your team who fits in with your people and how they work, and Mike fitted us well and was a joy to work with.”

As epic a period as the ’60s was technically and aesthetically it was also, as we all know, a deadly time.

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Back in 1979 Keke Rosberg was an eager young star, racing in both Formula 1 and the ‘new era’ Can-Am in America. Rosberg broke into F1 in 1978 driving various races for the Theodore, Wolf and ATS teams. In ‘79 he drove for Wolf through the second half of the year after James Hunt decided to quit mid-season. But at the start of ‘79 Keke had nothing in F1 and was committed to racing in the States in one of Paul Newman’s Lola-based Spyder Can-Am cars.

The Spyder was fast but fragile and burned up its front tyres. Rosberg won the season-opener at Road Atlanta and again at Watkins Glen in mid-summer. He also finished second to that year’s World Champion Alan Jones in Carl Haas’s Lola after a fierce battle at Mid-Ohio. But there were almost as many crashes.

“I had a bad year,” Keke recalls. “I was often very fast but I kept blowing front tyres. I pushed the fronts too hard, but they didn’t warn you. It just burst. It was the shoulder that went all the time. I had a huge shunt at Willow Springs in testing. I went about three miles across the desert in a cloud of dust.

“I had another big one at Laguna Seca. My first lap of qualifying was good, but not quite good enough. My brain said you should not do a second lap, but my heart said, ‘Go for it.’ And the right front tyre burst in turn one.

“In those days there was an earth bank and nothing else, and I hit the bank very, very hard in a Lola tub. The Lola limp was one of the best-known illnesses among racing drivers and I was lucky I didn’t break my legs. In fact, I didn’t break anything. But boy, was I messed up!

“It was a huge shunt. I had a girlfriend who used to fly for American Airlines and she nursed me that night because I was completely gone.

“When we did the warm-up on Sunday morning we taped my gloves to the steering wheel because I had no strength in my hands. I drove the warm-up in the spare car but I was so dizzy and felt so bad that I went straight back to the hotel and lay down for three hours. Then I came back and drove the race.

“I was running very strong. I think I was fourth, but of course I didn’t know where I was. I’d run out of brakes and was just not all there, and I didn’t have the strength to catch a slide out of the last turn. I spun and stalled the thing.”

Rosberg struggled home in sixth place a lap down and then recuperated in LA before the season-closer at Riverside. “My friend Mike Brockman took me to Los Angeles and I laid in his bed for nearly two weeks. I was so bad he came back from the office every day at lunchtime to feed me.”

At Riverside Keke put on quite a show, leading at one point but tearing off a bunch of bodywork after a collision with Geoff Lees. “I hit Geoff and took half the bodywork off, which wasn’t a problem. I was leading but Haas protested, so they black-flagged me. Otherwise I would have won that one, bodywork or no bodywork. That was the attitude in those days. As long as there were wheels on the car we would keep on driving.

“There were some good people in Can-Am in those days. Gilles [Villeneuve] came in and out, and Bobby Rahal was there and Price Cobb too, as well as guys like Jones and Jacky Ickx. It was a good time. But the tracks were so dangerous! The cars were very fast and the tracks were bad and it was a bad combination. At Watkins Glen you looked at the Armco and you didn’t want to think about it. It was a different time.”

Sometimes we forget how different.

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The guests of honour at this weekend’s Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion at Laguna Seca are Sir Stirling Moss and Dan Gurney. The irrepressible Moss will make his return to US competition driving his own Porsche RS-61 following last spring’s terrible elevator accident, while Gurney and a fleet of All-American Racer’s Eagles – from F1 to Indycars, Can-Am and IMSA GTP cars – will be celebrated in a private reception at the track on Saturday evening.

Without doubt Moss and Gurney number among the greatest drivers from the 1950s-60s. They were team-mates in Lucky Casner’s Camoradi ‘birdcage’ Maserati in 1960, scoring a classic victory in miserably wet conditions in the Nürburgring 1000Kms. But Stirling and Dan were also fierce competitors in F1, long-distance sports cars and American sports car racing. Moss introduced the Lotus 19 to North America by winning the inaugural professional race at Mosport in June ’61, and that autumn Dan gave Frank Arciero’s Lotus 19 its debut and battled with Stirling in the sports car races at Riverside and Laguna Seca.

Of course, Stirling’s career was cut short by his crash at Goodwood in 1962, but at that time Dan was beginning to expand his horizons to become a team owner and innovator of the first order. It began when Dan shoehorned a Ford V8 into his Lotus 19, marking of the start of the Anglo-American chassis/engine combination that blossomed into Group 7 in Europe and triggered the creation in 1966 of the legendary Can-Am series.

At the time Gurney was hatching the first of his remarkable line of Eagle F1 and Indycars. The 1967 Eagle-Weslake V12 is reckoned by many to be one of the most beautiful and effective F1 cars of all time, and the 1972 Eagle-turbo Offy dominated Indycar racing through the early ’70s. In Jerry Grant and Bobby Unser’s hands the Eagle became the first car to lap a closed circuit at over 200mph.

Two of Dan’s proudest creations were the 1981 Eagle-Chevy Indycar and the Eagle Toyota GTP car from 1992-93. The ‘81 Eagle was designed by Trevor Harris and was a ground-effect car of a different colour, creating its downforce in a manner unlike the Lotus 79 and its followers. Harris and Gurney called the system ‘Boundary Layer Adhesion Technology’, and the different-looking car proved very quick, with Mike Mosley scoring a famous victory from the back of the grid at Milwaukee in ‘81 and Geoff Brabham running away from the field at Riverside until the car suffered a transmission failure.

The other thing about the ‘81 Eagle is that it was powered by an all-aluminium Chevy V8 built and developed at AAR’s shop in California. It was a classic case of Gurney pursuing his own path against the dominant turbo Cosworths of the day and a true expression of his American hot-rodder’s heart. Fans loved the car and engine, but over the next few years CART’s team owners, in their wisdom, decided to restrict and effectively eliminate both car and engine from the rulebook. Silly boys…

In closing, I have to add that I rate Dan as America’s greatest racing man. Why? Because he won in everything he raced – F1, Indycars, Can-Am, long-distance sports cars and NASCAR – and also enjoyed a rare second act as one of the sport’s most accomplished and innovative team owners and car builders. On Saturday evening, wherever you may be, raise a glass to toast Moss and Gurney for their many achievements as both racers and gentlemen.

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Motor Sport Magazine - The original motor racing magazine

Practice starts this weekend for this year’s 94th Indianapolis 500. Qualifying takes place at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on May 22-23, with the race on May 30. But most of the talk in Indycar circles is about the future, as the IRL debates its new formula for 2012. In Tuesday’s Indianapolis Star, the IRL’s new CEO Randy Bernard declared the time has come to leave the IRL brand behind and find a new, more fan-friendly identity for Indycar racing. Mario Andretti says he hopes Bernard can achieve the many goals he’s set for himself.

“I’m excited with the prospects for Randy Bernard,” said Mario. “The jury is still out, but he’s beginning to show the elements of leadership that we’ve all been hoping for for so many years. He’s talking to a lot of people and I think he’s listening.

“Look at what he said recently about it’s time to bury the reference to the IRL. I talk to a lot of people and so many of them can’t bear to hear the IRL name. Unfortunately, the IRL entity just keeps all the old wounds open. There are probably millions of open-wheel fans who have migrated away from the series and don’t even turn the TV on anymore because they have such bad feelings about the IRL name.

“I called and left a message with Randy when I read what he said in The Star. It takes cojones to do that, to recognise the fact that the IRL name destroyed what was good about Indycar racing. I’m so happy that Randy is addressing this issue because it’s one of many things that need to be put to bed before we move on.

“Randy (above) has got a lot of good ideas and I’ll do everything I can to support the guy. I’ve said to him don’t try to reinvent the wheel. This is a series that had its glory days. A lot of us know what the formula was and we’ve got to get back to that formula. It was a series that everyone took notice of, including NASCAR and Formula 1. But right now it’s reduced to almost a club series. The drivers are barely making a living and nobody cares or knows who they are. There’s no appeal or dimension to it. We’ve got to get back to the level we had 10 and 15 years ago.

“But you can’t do that by copying NASCAR or Formula 1. We’ve got to redevelop the formula that worked for us. We’ve got to get back to venues like Laguna Seca, Elkhart Lake and Milwaukee. These are the traditional venues that are very appealing to the fans and sponsors.

“And they’ve got to get away from all this talk about Scott Dixon being the most successful Indycar driver in history. Why do they take themselves away from their tradition so that everything before the IRL doesn’t count? Where are Foyt, myself and the Unsers? By only quoting the IRL winners you’re giving up the essence of what the sport is all about.

“Indycar racing goes back to the beginning of the 20th century and no other racing organisation anywhere in the world can make that claim,” Mario concluded. “Scott Dixon is a fine driver, but let him fall in line with the rest of the great drivers. Let him go up against Ralph De Palma, Pete de Paolo, Jimmy Murphy, Bill Vukovich, Rodger Ward and all those great drivers who were part of creating the aura of what Indycar racing was all about.”

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Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti scored a one-two sweep for Chip Ganassi’s team at the Kansas Speedway on Saturday. Until last weekend Ganassi’s IRL team had struggled through an indifferent start to the season, but his drivers were supreme on the 1.5-mile Kansas oval in the last race before the 94th Indianapolis 500 on May 30.

The Kansas race gave Dixon and Franchitti confidence going into the ‘month of May’ event – shortened these days to just two weekends. The pair were very quick at Indianapolis last year but both hit trouble in the pits and got stuck in traffic at the end of the 500, while Helio Castroneves motored to his third Indy win. Castroneves finished fourth in Kansas last weekend behind Tony Kanaan and ahead of Long Beach winner Ryan Hunter-Reay. Championship leader Will Power endured his least competitive race of the year so far, qualifying seventh and finishing 12th, two laps behind the winner. At this stage the Indy 500 looks like a repeat of recent years with Ganassi, Penske and Andretti as the clear team favourites.

The race in Kansas underlined two of the IRL’s big problems. First, restarts aside, the race was another dull display of follow-the-leader. The cars are not only clunky and outdated in appearance, but also way too constrained in power and overall performance so that they look and sound more like Indy Lights cars than proper, beast-like Indycars. As we all know, the current long-running Dallara-Honda spec car combination seriously lacks for spectacle and appeal.

The other concern at Kansas was the worrying absence of fans, with a crowd estimated at no more than 15,000 and swathes of empty seats. The IRL has struggled with crowd numbers at many races, and at ovals in particular, but has allowed itself to be pushed into an even weaker position at some oval tracks by running as a Saturday support show. In Kansas the Indycars were reduced to Busch league status as a second-line act to NASCAR’s featured Truck series on Sunday.

This is one of the many issues that the IRL’s new CEO Randy Bernard is tackling. Bernard is up to his ears trying to determine the correct new Indycar formula for 2012 (it may have to be pushed back to 2013) but he’s also trying to bring back some of the better races from CART’s heyday. Over the last 10 years in the midst of the CART/IRL civil war the combination of CART, Champ Car and the IRL contrived to destroy no fewer than 36 races – 18 oval tracks, nine temporary or street circuits and nine permanent road courses have vanished or been driven away from Indycar racing.

The fans and media in these markets have been badly abused by Indycar racing and Bernard is trying to find which of these venues might be ready to gamble on bringing back the IRL. He’s been talking to road courses like Laguna Seca and Elkhart Lake, and ovals like Milwaukee and New Hampshire. If the IRL is to rebuild its lost identity it’s essential to leave tracks like Kansas behind and return to venues such as these four. Here’s hoping Bernard can convince the tracks to take the gamble.

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Having dropped his Ducati for the third race in a row yesterday during the Grand Prix at Misano, Casey Stoner was running out of excuses. After the race he explained that they “took the decision to put one lap on the race tyre in warm-up this morning to get it scrubbed in.”

Apparently they had done this before and never had a problem, but Stoner complained of a major lack of grip early on in the race (that must be why he disappeared into the distance and built up a 3-4 second gap after only a couple of laps). However, he went on to say: “after a few laps it started to feel better and I was gaining confidence but it let go.” So what’s going on?

If you want my opinion Stoner panicked. Like he had done at Laguna Seca, and at Brno. It’s all very well saying that he is always on the limit and therefore more likely to stack it. But isn’t it a little more than a coincidence that the moment that he has lost it, in the last three races, was when Rossi started closing the gap?

The ever-humorous Italian did admit after the race at Misano that he may not have been able to catch the Australian, but crasher Casey wasn’t to know that was he?

So Rossi leaves his home Grand Prix with a 75-point advantage and is set, without any major mishaps, to take the 2008, and possibly his greatest Championship.

Stoner’s quick, as is Rossi. The Ducati is hard to ride right (you only have to look at poor Marco Melandri to see how difficult), but at the end of the day is blisteringly quick. The Yamaha is getting faster, especially with Rossi leading the development, which is only helped by the fact that he is now using Bridgestone rubber, which is so much better than Michelin that at times it’s almost embarassing for the French tyre manufacturer. But the main difference is that Vale has years of experience and in my eyes is just a better rider. And Stoner knows it.

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It was sad to talk last week with each of Derrick Walker (above), Paul Tracy (below) and Carl Haas. All three had tales of woe to tell about how the fallout from Champ Car’s demise has affected them. Walker’s team finds itself without the sponsorship to be able to race in this year’s unified IRL series, Tracy is out of a ride and has no idea what or even if he will race this year, and Haas admits to losing a pile of money on his investment in Panoz DP01 parts and equipment.

As everyone knows, Walker has lost his sponsor and driver Will Power to the renamed KV Racing Technology team and is going to court to attempt to get some restitution from Craig Gore. Walker has not laid-off any employees and will run three Atlantic cars this year but he’s looking at diversifying into the A1GP series or sports car racing or any other sensible form of motor sport that will pay the bills.

Meanwhile, Paul Tracy awaits word from Jerry Forsythe about how Tracy might buy his way out of his multi-year contract or find some other resolution to his dilemma. At the moment Tracy is a pedestrian, without a ride in the IRL. He’s assuming, but doesn’t know if he’ll race at Long Beach. “I feel like I’m standing on the platform and the train’s driving off,” Tracy remarked. “I feel like the guy who got a new suit for the big date and I’m primed and ready for the prom, and she didn’t show up.”

And then there’s Carl Haas (above), a proud man who, with his partner Paul Newman, built one of America’s most accomplished and respected race teams. Over half a century Haas has made his living entirely from racing, selling cars, parts and service to all kinds of formulas and categories. Haas admitted last week that he has lost more than two millions dollars on his investment in Champ Car’s failed Panoz spec-car project. Like Walker, Haas has remained loyal to his people and he has not laid-off any employees.

The good news is that Cristiano da Matta (above) enjoyed a very good first run in a race car last week since his near-fatal accident at Elkhart Lake in the summer of 2006. Da Matta tested one of Bob Stallings’ Gainsco Riley-Pontiac Grand-Am cars at the new 2.5-mile Eagles Canyon road circuit in Texas and after two days and around 140 laps Cristiano was bubbling with enthusiasm. Da Matta will make his return to racing at Laguna Seca in May, driving a second Stallings’ Grand-Am car beside series champions Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty. Da Matta will share his car with old friend and former team-mate Jimmy Vasser.

“It will be a good way to get back,” da Matta remarked. “I won’t be able to fight for the championship this year, but just to get back to it and next year be serious about the job of going for the championship, it’s very exciting. And to do it with Jimmy who is not only a very good driver but also a very good friend of mine – and he’s also very fired-up about it – it’s like a dream.”

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