Looking for meaning in racing deaths

Norris McDonald

MOTORSPORT WRITER

There are good and bad things about everything in life and the bad things won this weekend in the world of auto racing.

Yes, life goes on and the racing goes on, but people don’t usually get killed playing soccer or baseball and that’s why we have to take some time today to talk about the deaths while racing of vintage enthusiast Dino Crescentini at Mosport yesterday and champion drag racer Scott Kalitta at Englishtown, N.J., on Saturday.

The details of how they died don’t matter. You can look them up if you really have to know. But they were both courageous guys in a world where not that many people take risks and they were doing exactly what they wanted to do.

Nobody forced them into their racing cars. They strapped in willingly and with enthusiasm. They were fully aware of the dangers and were ready to take the risks. The question that has to be asked, though, is why?

In Kalitta’s case, it was how the family supported itself. His father was the legendary drag-racing champion Connie Kalitta and Scott – who was 46 when he died – grew up around the sport/business, taking his first professional pass at age 19.

When you eat, sleep and inhale auto racing just about your entire childhood, when your dad’s out there competing and every cell of your being is absorbing the sights, sounds, smells and adrenaline rushes of big-time drag racing, I guarantee you there’s nothing else a young guy is going to do. Which is why, when he got old enough, Scott Kalitta went racing.

And he was really good at it. He won two Top Fuel NHRA championships. That’s big stuff. He’d tried the Funny Car division when he was first starting out back in the ‘80s but spent most of his career up in the glamour class. He’d returned to the Funny Cars just last year and was in one on Saturday at Englishtown.

Racing, for some, is like an addiction. It’s really tough to kick the habit. A.J. Foyt once said he was "no different than an old rubbie – he needs his booze just like I need my auto racing." Scott Kalitta retired twice – but he kept coming back. NHRA said he was "driven" to return to the cockpit.

So once out there, it’s tough to stop.

Crescentini was different. Way different. He was an older guy – in his early 60s – who went racing primarily for fun. He could afford to own several vintage cars, but his pride and joy was the Wolf-Dallara that was once raced at Mosport by Gilles Villeneuve in the 1977 Can-Am Series.

Vintage racing is nostalgia. You have all these old cars out there, being raced primarily by people who grew up watching other people race them. Sure, there are some people who raced then and are racing now but the majority of participants are living a dream.

So they get together for a weekend like the one at Mosport and they show off the cars and they talk to people about the cars and their history and they tell stories and share a meal and a drink at the end of the day and generally have a wonderful time.

But some of them are also really serious about this hobby. Which means that even an enthusiast in his early 60s like Crescentini is going to have an awful lot in common with a mid-40s professional like Kalitta because, at the end of the day, they are birds of a feather.

The late Chuck Rathgeb, who started the Comstock Racing Team in the 1950s (Canada’s first truly professional racing team), once appeared on a CBC-TV program to discuss racing and racing drivers. He said all drivers shared four attributes:

They are artists. Each is like a painter, or a concert pianist, seeking perfection: the perfect lap, the perfect pass, the perfect race.

They are athletes. An automobile race at the limit, be it a Grand Prix or 500 miles at Indianapolis, is a mental, emotional and physical wringing-out.

They are performers. They are putting on a show for spectators. The show is drama. Sometimes it’s farce. But it’s always exciting.

They are gladiators. Racing drivers, unlike performers and artists in other athletic events, put themselves in physical danger. They can be seriously injured – or worse.

Rathgeb’s words put what happened this weekend to Scott Kalitta and Dino Crescentini into some kind of perspective. They help to explain who those men were.

And, yes, it’s trite to say that "they died doing what they loved." But it’s also true.

Given a cold, hard choice of dying old and alone and scared in a bed, or going out now in a blaze of glory, I bet I know which one they’d pick.

OTHER RACING:

Formula One:

The question just has to be asked – is Lewis Hamilton really all that good? For the – what? – umpteenth time, he made a mistake that cost him big-time and he didn’t score points for himself or his team.

As a result of the bone-headed rear-ending he gave Kimi Raikkonen at the Canadian Grand Prix two weeks ago, he was penalized 10 places on the grid at the start of the French Grand Prix yesterday and that had him starting back in 13th position.

He got going so fast in the opening laps that when he went to pass Sebastien Vettel, he couldn’t – and wound up going around him by cutting across a chicane.

I don’t remember Michael Schumacher ever doing that when he had to start at the back. It was more like a hot knife passng through butter with that guy.

Anyway, Hamilton’s starting to look overrated. He received a drive-through penalty for that little error and his race was over.

A guy who isn’t overrated is Felipe Massa, who won the race for Ferrari. Raikkonen was second and Jarno Trulli drove a superlative race to finish third in a Toyota. Heikki Kovalainen was fourth in a McLaren, Robert Kubica was fifth in the BMW-Sauber (he won the Canadian GP two weeks ago) and Mark Webber was sixth in a Red Bull.

It’s always a scream to listen to Massa talk afterward. Two gems from yesterday:

"It was hard to see how our competition was going because they were way behind."

"I want to thank Shell for bringing all the gasoline and the other lubricants. We need that."

NASCAR:

Ron Fellows of Mississauga was driving his usual wonderful race as a "road course ringer" for Dale Earnhardt Inc. in the NASCAR Sprint Cup event at Infineon Raceway in California. With six laps to go, he was in sixth place and threatening to crack the top five.

At that very moment, Kevin Harvick spun and managed to collect Jamie McMurray, Tony Stewart and – you guessed it – Ron Fellows.

When the dust had settled, Kyle Busch had won his first road-course race (he’s a wonderful driver who could very well be in Formula One in a year or two), David Gilliland was second, Jeff Gordon was third, Clint Bowyer was fourth, Casey Mears was fifth and Juan Pablo Montoya was sixth.

Fellows officially finished 29th, one place ahead of the guy who wrecked him, Harvick.

IRL:

The grandstands were packed at the Iowa Speedway yesterday for the Iowa Corn 250 and that was encouraging, considering about half the state is under water as the result of that terrible flooding.

They saw a great race that saw Dan Wheldon win, Hideki Mutoh finish second (he replaced Dario Franchitti at Andretti-Green Racing; Franchitti failed to qualify for that NASCAR race in California), and Marco Andretti end up third.

Indy 500 winner Scott Dixon was next in fourth, A.J. Foyt IV was fifth (his best IRL career finish) and Danica Patrick sixth (she was third at the last restart and stamping her feet afterward – again).

Tony Kanaan was among the leaders when he crashed. He just lost control – but there was a lot of wheel-banging in this race and somebody had better talk to those people before somebody gets hurt. That is not smart when you’re going nearly 200 miles an hour on an oval speedway that is not even a mile in length.

John Andretti, driving for Roth Racing of Toronto, finished 11th. Team boss Marty Roth crashed in qualifying and was unable to start.

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