Racing Roundup: Three Canadian racing icons die

Welcome to the Monday Morning Racing Roundup on Tuesday. We’ll get to that Daytona 500 nonsense in a moment.

But first . . .

Last week was a rough one. Three superstars from the world of auto racing died: Dick Bradbeer, vice-president of marketing for Labatt back in the early 1970s when it held the rights to promote Formula One racing in Canada; Jeremy Hinchcliffe, father of IndyCar racing star James Hinchcliffe and a racer in his own right; and Frank Orr of the Toronto Star who wrote hockey in the winter and auto racing in the summer in the 1960s and ‘70s.

You could call Dick Bradbeer the “Godfather of Hospitality” at Formula One races. Prior to 1972, F1 races – most of which were in Europe – were devoid of hospitality units or garages, with the teams arriving in transporters and working on the cars on the grass outside the trucks or in tents. Only when the racers and the beautiful people who followed them got to Monte Carlo for the Grand Prix there did the tuxedos and fancy dresses come out for the annual party thrown by the Automobile Club de Monaco, which was the social highlight of the year.

So, that year (’72), Bradbeer parked a trailer – a plain, ordinary, sleeps four, travel trailer – on the inside of Corner One at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (then called Mosport), which did not have a liquor licence. There was no signage; no nothing. Over the course of the weekend, newspapermen, ad agency reps, team managers, sponsors and other A-listers (except for the drivers) would be quietly invited by Bradbeer to wander down to Corner One and enjoy a bottle of Labatt “Blue” lager or “50” ale on the sly inside that trailer.

That was the beginning. By the following year, “hospitality” of one kind or another was prominent at Grands Prix and other major races all over the world and I don’t think that Bradbeer, a brilliant marketer, ever got the credit he deserved for getting that particular (but very expensive) ball rolling.

RIP, Dick. Freeloaders the world over owe it all to you.

Jeremy Hinchcliffe was a businessman, recreational scuba diver and motorsport participant/fan who was vacationing with his wife in the Turks and Caicos Islands in mid-May, 2015, when a friend sent him a text asking how his son was doing. That was how he found out that James had hit the wall at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and was in hospital, near death.

A little more than two weeks later, I was with my friend and fellow motorsport reporter Jeff Pappone and we were in the lobby of the Westin Hotel in downtown Indianapolis. It ‘was Indy 500 weekend and the joint, as they say, was jumping. And who do we bump into but Jeremy Hinchcliffe (whose room there in the emergency had been arranged by Jeff, who had connections).

We went to the bar of the Don Shula Steakhouse on the Westin’s second floor where Jeremy knew just about everybody. Asked whether James would ever make a comeback, Jeremy answered in the affirmative. “Of course, he’ll be back,” he thundered. ”He’s a warrior!” And the very next year, for the 100^th anniversary of the running of the Indianapolis 500, James Hinchcliffe went out for four laps with his foot to the floor and put his car on the pole. A warrior, indeed.

I was talking about Jeremy with my friend Jeff Sunday and he reminded me that Jeremy raced several cars over the years and drove a variety of classics in the Vintage Automobile Racing Association of Canada. In 2005, he even teamed up with son James to race a 1969 Lotus 7 in an endurance event at CTMP, where the pair finished second.

Two years ago, James Hinchcliffe named that Lotus 7 when asked to choose a favourite among all the cars he’s raced. “This car was special because it was the car that my dad had built to race,” he told Inside Track Motorsport News in 2019.

“He’d always loved Lotus 7s back in England,” James told the magazine, “and had always wanted to race one. So when he finally found one that he was able to turn into a race car, it meant a lot to him, and so it meant a lot to me as well. Plus, it was a lot of fun to drive.”

Jeff reminded me that that seven years after hanging up his helmet, Jeremy received a 2012 VARAC Lifetime Membership Award for his contributions to vintage racing and for being a member, director and former driver.

Away from the track, businessman Jeremy founded and built NOCO Fuels Ltd. into a successful company and his love for racing was reflected in the company’s support of local motorsport events at speedways around the Toronto area. The NOCO name also appeared on his son’s cars during his climb up the motorsport ladder.

Jeremy also played a key role in preserving Canada’s racing history, buying and restoring the Van Diemen RF91 Formula Ford that was driven by Greg Moore in the 1991 Esso Protec Formula 1600 Championship. Jeff said that Jeremy donated the car to the Canadian Motorsports Heritage Museum in 2009 but, unfortunately, the museum never materialized and Moore’s Formula Ford, along with a Player’s/Forsythe Racing Reynard 98i-Mercedes he drove to victory in the 1998 Michigan 500 ended up in the hands of a private collector.

RIP, Jeremy. You were an original and a great family man.

Frank Orr was one of the great characters of our time. Mark Zwolinski of the Star wrote a fantastic obituary (you can read it by clicking here) but it was mostly about hockey, which is natural because Frank was in the Hockey Hall of Fame. I knew him primarily because of car racing.

I could tell a hundred stories about Frank but for the purposes of this tribute, I will tell you one, which will illustrate his kindness. It was 1972 (that year, again) and the start of the Grand Prix had been held up because a heavy fog had settled over CTMP (er, Mosport back then) and it was too dangerous to turn the F1 cars loose.

I was on the Globe and hanging around with Frank that day. We’d had a great time at Indianapolis earlier that year and the Grand Prix, being held that September, clashed with the first game in Moscow of the ’72 Canada-Russia Series. Frank had covered the first four games in Canada, then stayed home to write about the Grand Prix while Trent Frayne went to Russia for the Star. Frank and I watched the game on a 12-inch black-and-white TV in the office of Mosport owner Harvey Hudes. (Frank’s quick wit: Gilbert Perrault scored an incredible goal for Canada by deking a defenceman out of his socks and going around him to score. Said Frank: “He put that puck in his mouth and took it out his —.”) The fog lifted – organizers finally told the 25 drivers to take their cars out and blow it away – and the race got going about 90 minutes late, finishing just before 6 p.m. I was in a jam because I had to file to the Globe by 7 p.m.

A press conference was scheduled for the second floor of the old tower inside Corner 10. It was bedlam in there. Everybody who ever had anything to do with organizing anything at Mosport was in attendance. The working press had all lost their places up against the glass at the front of the room because women were picking up the typewriters and putting them on the floor to make room for their children to sit. It was crazy.

The organizers had put a table in the middle of the room and had placed three chairs on top of the table where the podium drivers would sit. Peter Revson, who’d finished second, was up there but Jackie Stewart, the winner and third-place finisher Denis Hulme hadn’t arrived.

So I found my typewriter and, after being told to get lost by the person who was occupying my work space, I sat down on the floor with my typewriter on my lap and started to write. Frank sees this and can’t handle it. “C’mon, kid,” he says. “I have an idea.” Somehow, he got hold of a chair and he put it on the floor in front of the table about two feet away from Peter Revson’s shoes. Then he took my typewriter and put it on the table right in front of those shoes. Then he sits me down in this chair and says, “This is better. Now you can work.”

I look up and Revson is looking at me with a bemused look on his face. I had interviewed him during his rookie year at Indianapolis in 1969 when the first week of qualifying was rained out and everybody had a lot of time to kill. I doubt if he remembered my name but he remembered my face.

“How’ve you been?” he asked.

“I’ve had better days,” I said.

“Want a quote?” he said.

“Sure,” I said.

“These people couldn’t organize a two-car parade.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but I can’t use it. I have to work here.”

“Okay, how’s this? He grinned. “Everybody here seems to be in a fog.”

I told him he was very funny. But I also said I couldn’t use that one either.

“Well, I tried,” he said.

“That you did,” I said, and then Jackie Stewart arrived and I went back to work.

None of that would have happened without Frank. He was such a lovely guy.

R.I.P., Frank. Great talent and a very funny (and helpful) guy.

They say that everything comes in threes. I hope this is it for awhile.

DAYTONA 500

Fourteen laps into Sunday’s Daytona 500, they had a Big One. Fifteen or 16 cars were involved. One of the cars and drivers eliminated was Ryan Newman, who was nearly killed at Daytona year ago. Maybe he should think of retirement. You can only dodge so many bullets.

Just in case you missed the first Big One, they had a second one on the last lap. Eight cars were involved this time, including the two leaders racing for Team Penske. Joey Logano was leading, with Brad Keselowski second. Keselowski appeared to back off ever so slightly to get a run and was hit by Michael McDowell, who was running third. Almost simultaneously, Logano moved to block Keselowski and they collided. BOOM! McDowell managed to avoid the two of them and emerged the winner of the Great American Race in his 358^th Cup start. Chase Elliott was second and Austin Dillon finished third.

This Big One was particularly violent, with a flash fire going into the cockpit of Austin Cindric, who had won the Xfinity Cup stock car race at Daytona on Saturday. He was okay but it was a close call – ironic, since his father, Tim Cindric, president of Penske Racing, had steered his son away from Indy cars, suggesting stock car racing was safer, That might have been a wakeup call.

It has been 20 years since Dale Earnhardt died at Daytona and through planning or just plain luck, there has not been a fatal accident in any of NASCAR’s three travelling divisions – Cup, Xfinity or trucks. But you can’t keep piling up cars at 200 miles an hour race after race, year after year, without the law of averages catching up with you at some point.

Racing is dangerous enough without the restrictor plates that see the cars performing in packs, three-wide and literally inches apart. Some people find this exciting. I find it scary because I worry about the drivers. One of these days, Alice . . .

Other than the massive wrecks, it was a pretty routine race – other than a long rain delay, which didn’t see the restart get the green flag till 9:30, and the checkers fly till nearly midnight.

Notes:

One of the things NASCAR could do (if it wanted) would be to eliminate “bump drafting.” That little manoeuvre is what starts most of the big wrecks in the first place.

After noting that it was 20 years since Earnhardt died, Mike Joy said, “NASCAR took the lead in driver safety,” and nobody’s been killed since. I don’t know why those guys do that. Actually, I do know: they work for NASCAR and they kiss —. NASCAR did a couple of thing – 1), they disallowed teams from installing safety equipment the way the drivers wanted rather than the way the manufacturers said it should be installed (Earnhardt had changed the angle of his seat, for instance). 2). They did put some money into research that led to the SAFER barrier but that was after Tony George entirely financed the first crack with a team at Wayne State University and, when it failed, approached the University of Nebraska at Lincoln to take what had been learned in Detroit and improve on it. It was then that George approached NASCAR to help out and they put in some money but, for all intents and purposes, the SAFER barrier was an Indianapolis Motor Speedway production. “Took the lead?” Hardly.

CANADIANS AT DAYTONA

Quebec driver Raphael Lessard won the first stages and finished second in the second staged of the Campers World truck series race Friday night and was in a position to win the whole thing when he was wrecked toward the end of the race. He was classified 23^rd. Jason White of Sun Peaks, B.C. was 19^th. Steward Friesen of Niagara-on-the-Lake was caught up in a huge wreck and was classified 32^nd. White, a regular runner in the NASCAR Canada Pinty’s stock car series, finished 14^th in an ARCA stock car race Saturday afternoon. Also Saturday afternoon, a NASCAR Xfinity Series stock race was held and Quebec’s Alex Labbe was 40^th after suffering engine problems early in the race.

OTHER RACING

Red Bull has made a deal to use Honda power unit technology from 2022, it was announced at the weekend. Translation: Red Bull will build its own engines (er, power units) after the 2021 season. A new company called Red Bull Powertrains Ltd. will use the Honda technology to produce the engines for Red Bull and its sister team Scuderia AlphaTauri.

Michael Andretti is now involved in eight racing series around the world – IndyCar, Indy Lights, IMSA, Formula E, Extreme E and Australian Supercars. (We just have to get him involved in the Pinty’s Series.) His latest venture (for those of you who are counting) is a partnership with Michel Jourdain in the Mexican Super Copa (Touring Car) series. Drivers and sponsors to come later.

Megan Gilkes, the talented Richmond Hill girl who raced in the W Series two years ago, will be racing in British Formula Ford this season and hopes to do the Formula 1600 race at the Grand Prix of Canada – if it happens, of course.

Fernando Alonso was hit by a car while out riding his bicycle in Switzerland. He suffered a broken jaw and was released from hospital. Fans breathed a sigh of relief as he will be ready to go when the F1 season opens in Dubai in late March. Oh, and Sir Lewis Hamilton signed a one-year contract with Mercedes to give him his eighth world championship (f he doesn’t screw up and the car is as good as it has been in other years). Toto Wolff said, with a straight face, that the one-year deal will give them time to determine the length of his next, and last, M-B contract. I have a friend who is willing to bet good money that Hamilton is already talking to Ferrari about 2022 and on. I agree with him.

Finally, Canada is the latest country to join the GT4 family as SRO Motorsports and RACE Events Inc. have signed an agreement that will bring the internationally recognized class to the Canadian Touring Car Championship for 2021 and beyond. The CTCC presented by Pirelli will add a separate GT4 class that will complement its existing Touring Car and GT Sport categories, the CTCC announced in a release.

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