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On tap this week:

  • No gizmos for Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame-bound Mansell
  • Dumoulin takes NASCAR Canada title
  • Franchitti says no, no, and no
  • Engine penalties to decide F1 champ?
  • FIA radio backtrack a positive signal

Nigel Mansell remembers the call like it was yesterday.

After giving up the early lead of the 1986 Canadian Grand Prix to save fuel, the Briton got another radio message that he was again free to turn up the turbo boost and attack. The Williams driver moved to the front quickly and went on to score his only career triumph at Montreal's Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

Although F1's new ban on performance-enhancing radio messages, put in place for Sunday's Singapore Grand Prix, wouldn't make the team's call to Mansell a rule violation, the fuel advice he got from the pitlane in the 1980s and 1990s doesn't compare with what's available today.

"We didn't have all the gizmos, so they couldn't tell you how to set the car up, which is what they are doing now and taking it out of the hands of the driver — we used to drive the cars," said Mansell, the 1992 F1 world champion and 1993 Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) titlist.

"It's amazing what has happened in the last 20 years of evolution of a race car."

Mansell will be in Toronto on Saturday as this year's international inductee into the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame (CMHF). He scored 31 wins in 187 F1 starts, as well as five victories in 31 CART races with the famed Newman/Haas team.

Touring car driver Diana Carter, builder John Magill for his work in karting, veteran road racer Scott Maxwell, Toronto Star motorsport columnist Norris McDonald, and 2003 CART champion Paul Tracy will also enter the hall, something Mansell insisted is humbling.

"It makes me very proud to be inducted into a hall of fame in another country and I feel great honour being put forward."

Tickets for Saturday's induction gala at CBC's Glenn Gould Studio are still available. They can be bought on the CMHF website and picked up at the door.

By the numbers

After 11 races, 10 tracks and 2,161 laps, only three points decided the NASCAR Canadian Tire championship on Saturday as Louis-Philippe Dumoulin, 35, edged rival J.R. Fitzpatrick for the crown.

With a 16-point lead going into the season finale on Saturday at Kawartha Speedway near Peterborough, Ont., all Dumoulin of Trois-Rivieres, Que., needed was an 11th place finish to win the title. He did two spots better in the Pinty's 250, bringing his No. 47 Dodge home in ninth, although Fitzpatrick didn't go down without a fight.

The 26-year-old from Cambridge, Ont., started from pole on Saturday and led 171 of the 250 laps at Kawartha, but he fell agonizingly short and Dumoulin went into the books as the champ.

"We never stopped believing we could do it this season," said Dumoulin, an open wheel racer who switched to stock cars in 2009, and only ran his first full Canadian Tire Series season two years ago.

"This championship is the result of years of hard work, support and teamwork. Thank you to everyone who never stopped believing in me – this title belongs to you too."

Random thoughts

IndyCar's race director Beaux Barfield quietly left his job with the series earlier this month to go back to his old stomping ground after taking the top referee spot in the United Sports Car Series.

Barfield took over the IndyCar job in 2012, after four seasons as the chief steward for the old American Le Mans Series (ALMS), replacing Brian Barnhart, who had lost credibility with fans and competitors after several questionable decisions. ALMS merged with the Grand-American Series last year to form the United championship.

Several names have been bandied about as a replacement for Barfield, including Indy Lights race director Tony Cotman, former NASCAR racer Wally Dallenbach, Jr., two-time Indy 500 champ Arie Luyendyk, and even Barnhart.

One name you won't hear tossed around is Dario Franchitti, who is highly respected in the IndyCar paddock and an extremely knowledgeable student of the sport. Although he would likely be an unimpeachable choice as race director after being forced into retirement following a serious concussion sustained in a late 2013 accident, Franchitti could not be less interested in the job.

"God no, I didn't hit my head that hard," Franchitti said when asked about becoming IndyCar race director.

"[Expletive deleted], no. No, no, no. That's a thankless job. No way, never, no."

Technically speaking

The Formula One rules stipulate that any driver using more than five of any of the new power unit components – the control electronics, the energy store, the kinetic or heat motor generator, internal combustion engine, and the turbocharger – gets a 10-place grid penalty for the first replacement and a five-place penalty for any subsequent swaps after the sixth element is used.

Toro Rosso's Daniil Kvyat became the first driver to take a penalty two weeks ago at the Italian Grand Prix when his car needed a sixth engine.

As of Singapore the list of drivers who will get a penalty for their next change includes both Ferrari drivers Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen, both Marussias of Jules Bianchi and Max Chilton, along with Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel, Lotus' Pastor Maldonado, and Adrian Sutil of Sauber.

Vettel will likely be the next to get a penalty after he blew his "Friday" engine during the first practice session for the Singapore Grand Prix. Although the team cobbled together a power unit from used parts for Sunday's race, Vettel's motor supplier Renault indicated it would have to use another internal combustion engine to get to the end of the season.

"Ideally, we would have used it (the engine that blew) on Friday in Japan too — obviously we can't now," Vettel told reporters in Singapore. "We already knew that eventually we would have to use another one this year, so I don't think this changes too much of our planning."

Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo, Lotus' Romain Grosjean, and Sauber's Esteban Gutiérrez are on the list of those using four, along with both Caterhams, Force Indias, Mercedes, and Williams cars.

With a double-points season finale looming and the front-running Mercedes pair of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg continuing to run into mechanical troubles, it's possible that an engine penalty could play a central role in deciding the 2014 world champion.

Quote of the week

"We have been fortunate to be in position to compete for the titles in all three series the last few years and we were able to win on the NASCAR side in both the Sprint Cup Series and the Nationwide Series. This season we got it done in the Verizon IndyCar Series with Will Power and the Verizon Chevy team. We are in a good position in the Chase with both Brad [Keselowski] and the Miller Lite Ford team and Joey [Logano] and the Shell-Pennzoil Ford team. We have also had a good season in the Nationwide Series with the No. 22 Ford. Our success is a credit to the hard work and dedication of the engineers, the drivers and the crews and we need to keep our foot to the floor in order to end the season as champions."

NASCAR and IndyCar team owner Roger Penske on the possibility that his NASCAR outfits could take championships in Sprint Cup and Nationwide to go with the IndyCar title he already put in the trophy case in late August.

The last word

The first F1 race under the radio message ban went off without much of a hitch, with the teams adapting fairly well to the new reality.

Unfortunately, the whole episode made the sport appear amateurish as it backpedalled from its original hard line after it was pointed out that the ban on this communication would put some teams behind the eight ball.

"When one looks into it in more detail it became quite clear that some teams would be at a serious disadvantage compared to others, not just in their know-how or in their ability to react in the short term, but also with hardware choices that were made a year ago," F1 race director Charlie Whiting said in a Friday press conference explaining the backtrack.

"I think you're familiar with the two types of dashboard that are available to the teams. One will simply show a great deal more than the other. In the interests of fairness, we felt that with hindsight it would be better to introduce it in two stages and that's what we've done now."

While the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile should be applauded for trying to end the constant radio chatter of drivers asking their engineers to bail them out when they can't find speed in the car, it also has a responsibility to ensure changes that don't swing the balance to one side or another before they announce them to the teams and fans.

Then again, it could have been much worse. Although this isn't the first time the FIA modified the rules mid-season, previous changes of this sort definitely favoured one camp over another and the sport's governing body didn't see any need to go back to the status quo and restore balance.

Fans might recall the 2003 season when the FIA changed the way tire tread width was measured two weeks before the Italian Grand Prix. That move not only hobbled all the Michelin teams and handed the advantage and title to the Bridgestone shod Ferrari of Michael Schumacher, it robbed fans of an exciting title battle in the final three races.

Three years later, it banned Renault's mass damper system before the German Grand Prix despite the fact that the FIA authorized its use and the team had it on the cars for 14 races without it being a problem. Ironically, the decision again favoured Schumacher, who trailed Renault driver Fernando Alonso by 17 points heading to Germany. Five races after the ban, Schumacher was even on points with Alonso but only a retirement in the penultimate race took the Ferrari driver out of contention.

This time things were different. Perhaps the sudden about face is actually good news and shouldn't be seen as an amateur move: It not only showed the once obstinate FIA now listens to the F1 teams, but also demonstrates that it's willing to admit it made a mistake and act to make things right. And that, as Martha Stewart always says, is a good thing.

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