Aug. 29, 2007 — Dancing With Helio

Welcome to Funkytown – population, one Helio Castroneves.

The Indians will call him, “Dances With Firesuit.”

Castroneves, the two-time Indy 500 winner who recently signed up for ABC’s “Dancing With The Stars,” is already bracing for the ribbing he’s going to take from the guys in the garage.

“I'm sure they're going to take advantage and play around with me,” Castroneves said of the grief he expects to get as the series heads to Belle Isle outside Detroit. “I'm sure some of them might need me to teach some moves. The only thing I'll say, my price is going to go up in the future.”

That’s typical Helio – finding the silver lining and tangoing over to the brighter side of relentless abuse.

He’s been rehearsing for three days now and said that the muscles he usually sits on to make a living are getting quite the workout, but he remains unfazed because, well, he’s Helio, and the glass is about 90 percent full on the bad days.

“I thought Samba would be something that I might get away with it. But after three days of rehearsing, I can see that I need a lot of practice,” the native of Brazil said. “But I have to say that it's extremely hard. You people that think you can dance, oh, boy, I mean, it is very difficult. Especially me, my sport is I'm sitting, and now you have to use a lot of balance. You have to use a lot of legs, especially like kind of a squat. We don't do that in racing.

“It is quite a big challenge for me. But, hey, I'm taking everything I can. I know I'm going try to listen as much as I can to try. The problem is sometimes I do understand, but the problem is getting my body to do what I understand.”

What Castroneves and the IndyCar Series understands about this chance is that it could expose the series to new fans. “Dancing With The Stars” isn’t the juggernaut “American Idol,” but it’s still a huge hit for ABC.

Castroneves’s effervescent personality could be a hit with non-traditional race fans and help bring American open wheels more toward the mainstream.

That’s the thought and the hope, anyway.

And that may be the toughest step of all.

Aug. 22, 2007 — For The Love Of Melanie

Melanie Troxel, I love you.

Don’t worry, I’m no crazed fan or dangerous stalker. Besides, you’re way too fast for me to catch up with.

But you showed this week amidst all the rain and on-again, off-again competition in soggy Reading, Pa. that you are a real, pedal-to-the-metal, green-means-go racer.

And I so dig that about you.

We are at a time in this sport – whether you’re running straight lines, ovals or road races – during which sponsors can pull a driver out of a car in mid-race, and team orders and internal politics can take precedence over seeing just who is the better driver in a better car on a given day.

But you, Melanie, would have none of that.

You could’ve asked struggling teammate Morgan Lucas to take one for the team. After all, you were on the bubble for the Top Fuel division’s “Countdown,” the NHRA’s version of Nextel Cup’s Chase.

Lucas probably would have acquiesced, too, because that’s what teammates do – sometimes they swallow their pride and cheer you on, especially when they have nothing nearly as dear to race for as a Countdown or a Chase.

But you wouldn’t ask.

You have been racing the strip paved by Shirley Muldowney for a while now, but you’re still a woman in a man’s world. It’s hard for me to say what that’s like, but I assume little quarter is given on your way to the top of the Top Fuel world. I imagine it can, at times, be a pretty tough go, having to prove you belong over and over again.

So, you were ready to prove it again when you lined up against Lucas Sunday before the rains washed just about everything but your loss away. All you had to do was win and you were in the Countdown, but Lucas scored the upset.

“If we didn’t win, we didn’t deserve to be in the Countdown,” you said afterward.

Heartbreaking? Yes. But you took it like a man, which is something not every guy in this sport can say these days.

Aug. 15, 2007 — ESPN Coverage Playing Catch-Up

In order to be fair, I’ve given ESPN a few weeks to get its NASCAR act together, and here’s what I’ve come up with:

Ehh.

If you were watching the laboriously long Brickyard pre-race show, I think it ended maybe 20 minutes ago.

As annoying as the guys at FOX can be, there is an undeniable chemistry there that makes watching most NASCAR races palatable, even if you feel like you’re in the living room with an annoying brother-in-law sometimes.

ESPN? Not so much.

As a play-by-play guy, Jerry Punch is in over his head. He’s much more suited to be a color analyst, which is Rusty Wallace’s job. Occasionally, Wallace gets to that job when he stops talking about himself and way back when. ESPN certainly has the budget to get a top-flight play-by-play announcer for Nextel Cup – or find one from the stable it has. Maybe pit reporter Mike Massaro or Alan Bestwick is that guy. They both know the sport and, I think, deserve a shot.

Beyond that, it just seems like there are too many people around with an opinion – sometimes informed, often not.

I gave former NBA all-star Brad Daugherty the benefit of the doubt until he called for the end of road racing on the Nextel Cup circuit just prior to Sunday’s race at Watkins Glen Int’l, which proved to be one of the better races of the year. Road racing also tests the skills of the drivers unlike anything found on any oval. Road races shouldn’t be eliminated, but at least one should be added during “The Chase.”

Suzy Kolber, who was previously part of the network’s NFL coverage team, did a fine job in that role but still appears uncomfortable in her new one. Having covered some NFL games alongside her, I can say she’s a pro and will learn, but it will take a while.

ESPN chose the stick-and-ball route a long time ago and gave racing very cursory coverage to the all phases of the sport until it signed with NASCAR last year. In typical fashion, ESPN is now in overkill mode with “ultimate” lists, polls and several daily editions of “NASCAR Now,” whose host, Eric Casillas, I am fairly certain had never seen a race prior to taking the job.

The network and its talent are playing catch-up — and it really shows.

Aug. 8, 2007 - NASCAR Needs To Take Care With Officiating

With Robby Gordon fined $35,000 and placed on double-secret probation by NASCAR officials, it would appear that last weekend’s Busch Series Montreal meltdown will quietly fade into the “bizarro” chapter of the racing history book somewhere between Michael Waltrip’s alleged jet fuel and Ward Burton’s accent.

But NASCAR shouldn’t let it. The officials that run the sport should take a long, long look at what happened to Gordon on Saturday and use it as a catalyst for rule interpretation that goes well beyond the old days of “because Big Bill (or Little Bill) said so.”

It’s long been an accepted by drivers and fans alike that parts of the NASCAR rulebook were written with an Etch-a-Sketch and enforced accordingly. But it can’t really be that way anymore, not with higher stakes and higher-profile everything else shown on ESPN and Speed time after time.

NASCAR has to begin to govern itself with a larger sense of propriety, particularly with rules interpretations by track officials — officials who are not so much unlike those who are being scrutinized by the NBA, just regular guys thrown into a big-money, spotlighted world by their professions.

Too many NASCAR fans already assume there are different rules for different drivers, that superstars such as Jeff Gordon or Jimmie Johnson or Dale Earnhardt, Jr. might be given a little edge when circumstances allow.

Gordon was clearly leading the Busch Series race at Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve when the caution flag flew late Saturday. But for argument’s sake, let’s say he was in second. He would give you that one.

But he wasn’t in 13th place and he was clearly spun by Marcos Ambrose, who didn’t see the caution and begin to slow as quickly as Gordon did.

NASCAR officials missed it. Big time — and they know it (how else can you explain a $35,000 fine and no point penalty when Tony Stewart was fined $25,000 and points for saying “bull----” the week before?)

How important is the appearance of propriety? Conspiracy theorists among us would have no trouble answering the following question: What would NASCAR have to gain by such a miscarriage of justice where Gordon is concerned?

1. At its first Canadian event, Gordon’s relegation to mid-pack would put popular International driver Marcus Ambrose in a better position to win, thus pleasing the fervent Canadian crowd and sponsors.

2. It would put Montreal native son Patrick Carpentier in a better position to win, thus pleasing the fervent Canadian crowd and sponsors.

3. It would open up the possibility of a bigger NASCAR Nextel Cup star – say, a Kevin Harvick – of winning, thus pleasing the fervent Canadian crowd and sponsors.

Is any of that true? Or just fodder for the Oliver Stone-minded?

Personally, I don’t believe it is true, not to that extent. But in today’s instant-replay sports world, the appearance of truth is just as important as the truth. For years of questionable calls in the NBA, it appeared that somebody had to be on the take. In the end, somebody was.

In NASCAR these days, it too often appears that someone, somewhere is pulling strings in a very loud high-horsepower puppet show — and none of those instances have been more egregious than Saturday’s. For the sake of its own sport and to kill conspiracy theories that abound, NASCAR needs to get it right - red-flag the race if you have to - but get the call right.

Aug. 1, 2007 — More International Drivers Will Come To NASCAR

Several years ago, I was a sports columnist in Indianapolis and spent part of my summer covering the World Basketball Championships. If America was the home of hoops, then Indiana was the beating heart of it all, complete with the movie, “Hoosiers” to prove it.

It had been less than two decades since USA Basketball had sent “Dream Team I” and then “Dream Team II” to the Olympic Games to prove American superiority in what was increasingly becoming an International game.

The problem is, USA Basketball nor anyone else could keep the game from growing. They couldn’t stop the Dirk Nowitzkis of the world from maturing. An all-grown-up International game showed up in Indianapolis and embarrassed an American team that couldn’t shoot from 3-point range — or intermediate range for that matter — couldn’t solve a zone defense and wouldn’t share the ball.

Juan Pablo Montoya’s second-place finish at Indianapolis is an important harbinger for American racing. More International drivers are on the way to NASCAR, looking for the sport's big bucks and increasingly worldly status.

Like basketball before it, NASCAR is attempting to gain an International profile. Events are being run in Canada and Mexico. On a conference call just a couple of weeks ago, NASCAR CEO Brian France said he had just returned from a business trip to China.

Being America’s pre-eminent series will get the attention of International drivers — and sponsors — who want to race here.

The recent partnership announcement of Yates Racing with Champ Car’s Newman Haas Lanigan paves the way for Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais, a Champ Car World Series winner, to earn his NASCAR bones.

There are others in the wings, too, waiting for the chance they know may never come in Formula One. America’s much more democratic that way — the land of opportunity and such.

Montoya’s early successes are just proof that it can happen. NASCAR is going International — and if basketball is a legitimate guide, it will be sooner than later.

Get ready for it.