My top auto racing stories of 2009

Dec 26, 2009

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Motorsport writer

1. My story of the year is the revelation this summer that Nelson Piquet Jr. had been asked to crash his Renault F1 car on purpose during the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix to help his teammate, Fernando Alonso, win the race.

There have always been team orders in Formula One but this one went beyond the pale.

Team principal Flavio Briatore was banned for life from all FIA-sanctioned motorsport. Chief engineer Pat Symonds was banned for five years. Renault was given a two-year suspended sentence.

Piquet Jr. was given immunity in return for his testimony. But his career is probably over – unless his father, Nelson Piquet Sr., buys a team, which is not beyond the realm of possibility.

There were several other F1 stories this year that deserve mention, although in and of themselves they are not Top Ten material:

Giancarlo Fisichella came out of nowhere to qualify a Force India car on pole for the Grand Prix of Belgium. This attracted all kinds of attention and earned him a ride in a Ferrari, which he used to qualify 19th and 20th in the last two GPs of the year.

(It took about a year for the Piquet crashed-on-purpose story to leak out; there are pools going on when Fisichella will spill the beans about what really happened at Spa.)

BMW and Toyota followed Honda's lead by withdrawing from F1. Renault likely wanted to bail but felt pressured to stay because of its involvement in the race-fixing scandal. It got around everything by selling most of the team to an investment company and announcing that it would operate it jointly with the new owners. So Renault is still in, but kinda out.

McLaren was given a suspended sentence (excluded from three races) after driver Lewis Hamilton and sporting director Dave Ryan lied to stewards about the circumstances surrounding a pass in the Australian Grand Prix.

John Force. Just so you don't think F1 is the only racing series boasting villains and cheaters (and no, this is not about NASCAR), there were suggestions this summer that NHRA drag racing legend John Force screwed up his run on purpose at the U.S. Nationals to help his teammate (and son-in-law) Robert Hight advance in Funny Car eliminations. Force denied everything.

2. Jimmy Johnson won his fourth consecutive NASCAR Winston/Nextel/Sprint Cup championship. If not for the F1 race-fixing story, Johnson would have been No. 1.

3. Tony George was ousted as CEO of Hulman & Co. (which produces most of the baking powder in North America), the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Indy Racing League because of a family feud. There continue to be suggestions that the long-term future of the IRL is in jeopardy as a result.

4. Helio Castroneves of the Penske racing team was acquitted of income-tax evasion charges. He celebrated by winning his third Indianapolis 500

5. Budweiser decided, after 30 seasons, to end its sponsorship of drag racer Kenny Bernstein.

Believed to be the longest sponsorship in motorsport, Bernstein won six NHRA championships, became the first driver to go faster than 300 miles an hour (486 km/h) in a quarter-mile run and was the first to chalk up 100 victories – all with the word Budweiser plastered over everything..

6. Ross Brawn bought an existing race team (with a lot of that existing race team's own money), renamed it after himself and won a double world championship for drivers and manufacturers.

Then he sold it lock, stock and barrel to the firm that supplied the engines, which has renamed it after itself and kept Brawn on to run the show.

That guy is good.

7. Andrew Ranger won his second NASCAR Canadian Tire Series championship in three years in 2009. A veteran of Formula Atlantic and the Champ Car World Series, Ranger has big-league stock car aspirations but he's in no hurry. He's still only 23.

8. The Castrol Canadian Touring Car Championship presented by Toyo Tires is one of the North American auto racing success stories. Look at these stats from the 2009 season: eight weekends, 16 races, six different tracks. An average of 37 cars per race per weekend. Several hundred thousand spectators. Memo to just about everybody else: these guys are doing something very right.

9. Travis Rutz of Langley, B.C., was critically injured in a crash on Sept. 27, during a sprint car race at the Terre Haute (Ind.) Action Track.

When you talk top stories in auto racing, there's good and bad and this is bad but every bit as important as the good.

Rutz is still in awful shape. He's out of hospital but needs help, whether it's a prayer or something a little more tangible. Find out what you can do by going to his website at www.travisrutz.com.

10. Michael Schumacher's long-awaited announcement that he will drive for Mercedes GP in 2010 is a great shot in the arm for Formula One.

What was shaping up as a blah year has now been given new life.

11. The Economy and its effects on auto racing is still affecting everyone.

In addition to the manufacturers leaving F1 in '09, we must remember that Audi didn't run a full American Le Mans Series schedule this year (and boy, did we miss seeing them at Mosport) because of cutbacks.

With a few exceptions, most top NASCAR teams had to keep changing signage every few races because they were unable to sell season-long sponsorships.

And despite optimism, the short-term future looks bleak for people of the calibre of Gil de Ferran, who decided to forego his ALMS effort and move into Indy cars in 2010. Unfortunately, that's not happening.

But I don't want to get too far into discussing what's on the horizon. That's for next week.

For the record: This fall, I reported that Matt White of Toronto won the Formula Ford race at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve in Montreal during the NASCAR Nationwide Series weekend.

Although he finished first, White's car owner, Nigel Mortimer of Ottawa, refused to allow a post-race tech inspection so White was disqualified and the victory given to Michel Bonnet.

Toronto Star