Montreal Observations

Some thoughts, observations and a few questions after the Grand Prix of Montreal Champ Car race was postponed Sunday:

Of course, after three days of Chamber of Commerce weather in Montreal, the skies opened up on Sunday – race day. Champ Car officials did their best to get the race going, but they very quickly made the smart decision and stopped the race after just six laps.

Officials re-scheduled the race for Monday morning.

• The heavy rain plus the rooster-tail spray coming from tires made visibility nearly impossible for the drivers, who already sit just inches off of the ground in their race cars.

  Defending race winner Oriol Servia said that conditions became so bad that he couldn't even use the trees overhead for his braking marks. That was when he knew it was time to stop the race.

• For the folks from Champ Car, it had been a few years since they had a rainout. For me, it already had happened twice this year on the Nextel Cup circuit, at Atlanta and Talladega.

  So much for the common wisdom that open wheel racers still can race in the rain.

• NASCAR may have its on-track feuds, but nothing, absolutely nothing comes close to the current battles in Champ Car. Both of them involve veteran driver Paul Tracy, who is embroiled with fellow driver (and Quebec native) Alex Tagliani and Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais.

  Both feuds center on on-track incidents that afterward resulted in a shoving match (with Bourdais) and a wrestling match (with Tagliani).

  After his tangle with Bourdais, who refused to take off his helmet despite the taunts of Ontario-born Tracy, Tracy was quoted as saying, "French people like to keep their helmets on." It was taken as an insult by French Canadians.

  Bourdais and Tracy simply do not like each other. There is no feud in NASCAR that even comes close to this one.

• During the driver introductions, Tracy appeared before the crowd and during the pre-race lap around the race track wearing a Mexican wrestler's mask and cape a la "The Masked Avenger," much to the delight of his fans, who were sitting in the grandstands right in front of Tracy's pit box.

  It only infuriated the French-Canadian fans in the crowd. He eventually threw the outfit into the grandstands.

  When it comes to putting on a show, Tracy absolutely gets it!

• Although many of the names in the Champ Car field are virtually unknown (Dan Clarke, Nelson Phillipe) to American race fans (many drivers come from European backgrounds) and despite the fact that many of open wheel racing's biggest names are in the Indy Racing League, the level of competition in Champ Car is surprisingly good.

• Remember this name: A.J. Allmendinger. An extraordinary name for an extraordinary driver. Hope he crosses over to NASCAR in the future.

• A few more things about NASCAR coming to Montreal next season:

  There's literally no room for camping on the island where the racetrack is located. This won't be a race you'll want to bring your RV to, unless you want to camp at a distance from the track. The circuit is located on an island with very little extra room and smack dab in the middle of the city.

  Everyone speaks both French and English in Montreal, but French is preferred. May I suggest to my American friends that when you come to Montreal for the first time, please keep that in mind. It's a protocol similar to traveling in the southern United States for the first time and discovering that simple manners and patience pay off in a big way.

  By the way, that last part works in Montreal as well.

• I've yet to find a bad restaurant in Montreal.

• Most of the cars on the streets in Montreal are very small, and the drivers are, well … let's just say, they leave an impression. Ride the Metro (Montreal's subway system) instead of driving.

• One of the more unique characteristics of the island and the race circuit is that there are still many buildings and features still standing from the World's Fair in 1967 and the Olympics in 1976.

• The driver who currently leads the points in Champ Car's Atlantic Championship support series is a Frenchman named Simon Pagenaud, who looks and sounds uncannily like the French F1 driver in the Will Farrell NASCAR movie "Talladega Nights." Pagenaud, who is very charming, has an infectious smile, has seen the movie and is quite pleased with the reference.

• I can't wait to hear a conversation with someone with a heavy Southern accent and someone with a French one. Should be quite entertaining.

• Every person I talked to – fans, hoteliers, cab drivers and local media – is excited about NASCAR coming to Montreal. I predict that the first year's race will set records for attendance.

  Postscript

  The Champ Car (formerly CART) Series has been through some tough times. Just more than a decade ago, it was more popular in the United States than NASCAR.

  Despite the current lack of recognizable driver names and the absence of the kind of big-name, Fortune 500 sponsors it used to attract, this series is headed in the right direction.

  Champ Car's business plan – staging events in urban settings – is turning out to be a successful one.

  While the IRL can boast of comparatively large annual attendance figures, a good deal of it comes in May at the Indy 500. Champ Car, on the other hand, easily draws 70,000 or more people on a race weekend on a regular basis, something the IRL is unable to do.

  The attendance figures for both open wheel series are dwarfed by NASCAR's numbers, but it shows that open wheel racing is still alive in North America and between the two open wheel series, Champ Car is doing it right.

  I would be willing to wager that anyone attending a Champ Car event would agree that they are being entertained far more than at an IRL race. The IRL caters to race fans; Champ Car caters to sports fans, race fans, music fans and people who just want to enjoy themselves. Oh, and if a race just happens to be going on, then so be it.

  Champ Car knows something about racing that NASCAR knows and the IRL doesn't: It's all about the entertainment. Maybe that's why the management of NASCAR and Champ Car don't get along – they think too much alike.

  Champ Car's Achilles heel may be their misguided attempts to stage races in countries like China and in Europe, which is blatantly nothing more than an effort to attract sponsorship from those areas of the world.

  Before they continue with international expansion, even if it means having a shorter and more affordable schedule for two or more seasons, Champ Car needs to continue to shore up its North American fan base – with races in Mexico, the United States and Canada – before it ventures to foreign shores on a regular basis.

  With an all-new racecar making its debut in 2007 along with an all-road course race schedule, Champ Car is poised to make further gains on the path to being something close to its former glory. One can only hope it doesn't get too impatient.

  One only needs to attend a Champ Car event and talk to the players in the paddock to understand why this series isn't in a hurry to unify with the IRL.