Best race event in 2008 back again at Mosport

Formula Ford Can-Am Cup will feature many returning protagonists, except money-less No. 2

Oct 03, 2009

Motorsport Writer

The best race of all that I saw in 2008 – Formula One, NASCAR, IndyCars, supermodifieds, sprint cars, Canadian Tire stock cars, you name it – was the Formula Fords at Mosport last September.

Shane Jantzi of Ayr managed to beat two-time Ontario Formula Ford champion Matt White of Toronto to the finish – but just.

The difference was 0.017 of a second – about the length of a nose cone.

It was Jantzi's third victory in the eFormulaCarNews.com Can-Am Cup, a one-off trophy race that was founded in 2006 and based on the tradition of Europe's Formula Ford Festival.

And every time he won the cup, the guy he beat was White.

The 2009 edition is taking place at Mosport on Sunday – part of the traditional end-of-season CASC Celebration of Motorsport weekend at the legendary circuit north of Bowmanville – and I'm getting all excited just telling you about it.

Let me borrow from my report on wheels.ca a year ago to remind you (and me) just how thrilling that take-no-prisoners race was:

"My notebook jottings said it all: Matt in front – again. Shane back in front. Matt! Shane! Last lap – Matt still ahead. Shane passes M. on the backstretch!

"Said White in his podium interview: `Shane is my favourite driver to go wheel-to-wheel with. I've got my championships, now I just have to win this cup!'"

Then he added, tongue-in-cheek: "Maybe Shane won't be here next year ..."

Well, I've got good news and bad news about that.

The good news is that Jantzi will, in fact, be back at Mosport on Sunday, looking to win his fourth straight Can-Am Cup.

The bad news is that White will be up in the commentary booth, helping track announcer Glenn Butt call the race.

How come?

"Two reasons," said White in a recent interview. "My car owner, (Ottawa-based) Nigel Mortimer, has decided not to run in Ontario any more and has taken his business to Quebec, so I don't have a car.

"The real reason, however, is that I'm out of money. It costs a lot to go car racing and I've had terrific help from my sponsors this year (ontrackdriver.com and stlonline.com) but, at the end of the day, I don't have the cash to do this race."

Which is a shame, because White is coming off yet another stellar season. He won his third consecutive Ontario Formula Ford Championship and then, at the end of August, he went to Montreal for the FF support race that was part of the NASCAR Nationwide Series weekend – and he won that too.

To make the trip – he didn't have any money for that race, either – he received one-off help from Toronto's GreenField Ethanol.

In his never-ending quest to service sponsors, White produced a three-minute video of the race that features his victory and ethanol's involvement in racing.

(In fact, if you want to watch it, go to youtube.com/mattwhiteracing as he posted it there this week.)

It's a shame when a guy with obvious talent, like White, is stopped in his tracks when his wallet turns up empty. But it was ever thus in his family.

His father, David White, won the Bulova Formula Ford Series national championship in 1975 (against all the up-and-coming hotshots of the day like Gary Magwood, Brian Stewart and some young guy from Quebec named Gilles Villeneuve) and his climb up the motorsport ladder was likewise stymied by a lack of finance.

"In fact," said David White the other evening, "Bruce O'Neil, the sports writer, wrote a story about me back then and the headline said: `All White needs is money.' So nothing's changed in the years between my championship and Matt's – except maybe there's more zeroes now.

"When I won my championship in '75, Carl Haas (of the legendary Newman-Haas IndyCar team) offered me a ride with his Formula Atlantic team. All I had to bring was my talent and a cheque for $100,000. Needless to say, it didn't happen."

Matt White got introduced to racing in the mid-1980s when David White tried his hand in the Player's-GM Challenge Series.

"I went with him to the races all the time," Matt White said during our chat, "and then, when I turned 12, he bought a kart for me and my brother Casey to share and we had fun racing it for a few years."

When Matt turned 17, he took F2000 school, finishing in the top four twice. Then he raced three years in Ontario Formula Ford and studied marketing at Sheridan College.

"Then I took some time off to see the world," he said. "I went travelling."

Back in the real world when he turned 26, White returned to Formula Ford with Hector Pickering's team and finished second in the Ontario championship. A year later, he switched to Mortimer's team and has been, literally, unbeatable ever since.

"I did the last three years with Nigel and I scored the hat trick," White said. "But I'm turning 30 soon (next Wednesday, Oct. 7, in fact) and I'm at a crossroads: I can call it a day – or keep going.

"If you want the truth, I'd really like to get into sports car racing, to run in the Castrol Canadian Touring Car Championship.

"IndyCars are unrealistic, unfortunately, because that's where I'd really like to be. But I'm working on a few deals to get into touring cars, so we'll see where we go with that."

Organizers of Sunday's Can-Am Cup race expect between 25 and 30 Formula Ford cars and drivers from Ontario, Quebec and the northeastern United States to take the green flag.

Practice, qualifying and a grid-completing heat race are scheduled for Saturday. A morning warmup will then set the stage for the Can-Am Cup showdown on Sunday, which will go to the post shortly after noon. So don't be late.

Check out Norris McDonald's auto racing blog on Wheels.ca nmcdonald@thestar.ca

Matt White's video of his Formula Ford victory at the Montreal NASCAR weekend

Toronto Star