Tom Walters Riding High on Success, Inducted into Canadian Motorsports Hall of Fame
There are drivers that they can say they won championships.
There are even fewer drivers that can they say won more than five championships.
There are even fewer that can say they have won more than 10.
There is one driver in particular in Canada to can say he has won 31 championships.
In his career of racing the short tracks of Ontario, Tom Walters has scored a total of 31 championships.
This past season, he won three features and scored 12 top fives and 14 top 10s in the 14 features this year to finish second in points.
For his accomplishments across his career, the Ontario veteran was inducted into the Canadian Motorsports Hall of Fame.
Though even with the induction, that didn’t slow him down. He missed day one of Velocity 250 qualifying at Sunset Speedway due to the induction ceremony. He showed up on day two and won the b-main to transfer to the a-main. He started 17th in the main event and worked his way through the field to win the event.
Walters got involved in racing after speaking with somebody on his way home from buying milk.
“I was going out to buy some milk one night and was walking down the street and there was a guy working on his racecar in the garage and I stopped in on my way back, and I’d never been involved in racing or anything or was with anybody, and I stopped on my way back and got talking to him and he says, ‘Do you wanna come on Wednesday night? I could use some help.’ I said, ‘Where do you go?’ and he said, ‘Sunset.” I said, ‘Geez, where’s that?’ and he said, ‘Innisfil’. I said, ‘Geez, my parents have a cottage in Innisfil. I don’t know the race track.’
“So we came up the first Wednesday night, it rained out. Came up the second Wednesday night, it rained out. It rained out three weeks in a row. On the way home after the third rainout, he said ‘I’m selling it. I’m done.’ I said, ‘How much?’ He said, ‘$375’ and I’ve been racing all these years.”
After buying the car, Walters got behind the wheel and hasn’t looked back since as he had success right off the bat.
“I towed the car here on a tow bar and the second race was at Wasaga Beach,” he said. “I actually won my first heat race so that was fun and then my first feature that I won was at Sutton Speedway.”
Since then, Walters has been winning multiple races and championships, including a pair of Autumn Colours Classic wins.
His accomplishments though go beyond solely just the track. At the track, the veteran is seen with young mechanics, helping them learn how to set-up racecars and more. Walters has also helped out many drivers with getting their cars set-up and learning how to be a racecar driver.
So congratulations to Tom Walters on a well-deserving accomplishment.
Carlos Munoz joins Andretti Autosport as they shift to Honda Power
After running a couple IZOD IndyCar Series races for Andretti Autosport last year, Indy Lights standout Carlos Munoz will be tackling the full 2014 schedule.
“I’m excited for this new year,” Munoz said.
Munoz finished third in the Firestone Indy Lights championship standings this year with four victories and five pole positions.
“Carlos stepped up this season and showed outstanding potential on track in Indy and Fontana,” team owner Michael Andretti said. “We are looking forward to welcoming him as a full time IndyCar driver and seeing what 2014 has in store. We are confident that his success in Indy Lights will carry on into his IndyCar career.”
He also ran a total of three IndyCar races last year. His debut cam at the 97th Indianapolis 500, where he finished second. He also competed in the second race of the Toronto doubleheader as a fill-in for Ryan Briscoe (fractured wrist in Race 1) for Panther Racing in addition to competing in the Firestone Indy Lights race, and also did double duty at Auto Club Speedway as the substitute for E.J. Viso.
“I was in the car once during the Toronto weekend, and everything was sort of new for me today again,” Munoz said. “My main goal was to make sure the seat, the pedals, everything was OK. I’m really happy that Andretti Autosport has given me the opportunity. Not a lot of rookies get to go up with a top team.
“I have to work a lot, but I’m ready for it. My first goal is accomplished. To be a part of this team, they believe a lot in me, and to pay them back would be to bring them great results.”
Garrett Mothersead, who worked with Munoz for the Indy 500 program, will be his race engineer.
“We worked together at Indianapolis and connected,” Munoz said. “He told me when I needed to push and when to hold back. I learned a lot that month, and I also learned from my experienced teammates at Toronto and Fontana. They always tried to help me.
“I don’t have the words to express right now how I feel. After so many years of racing and all the sacrifices — leaving my family in Colombia and going to Europe to race, then coming here to the U.S. — but finally, I’m a professional race car driver in the maximum category in America.”
While Andretti Autosport adds a new driver to line-up, they will also be switching from Chevrolet to Honda power in 2014.
2012 series champion Ryan Hunter-Reay was involved in part of the early development of Chevrolet’s new 2.2-liter, twin turbocharged V-6 engine two years ago. Now he is helping Honda Performance Development with developing their twin turbocharged engine.
“I’m very impressed with the power and delivery,” Hunter-Reay said. “We’re all happy with how we started testing. The development side of it is a lot of fun. You have an opportunity to customize and personalize and have your impact on a program. What we do right now is important, to get every bit of data out of every day, is crucial to the 2014 championship.
“All the hard work going into it will make a big difference come the season opener at St. Pete. It’s great to get back to it.”
Mark Martin to step out of driving seat and help out with SHR
“For nearly 40 years I have measured myself against the best stock car drivers of the era. It’s ben #1HellOfaRide.”
Before the final race of the year at Homstead-Miami Speedway, Mark Martin tweeted those words.
For 2014, the veteran will be stepping out of the driver’s seat to become an advisor at Stewart-Haas Racing.
“I’m kind of tired. I might not make the best decisions right now,” he said. “I’ll still have an opportunity to satisfy my competitive fire and still be able to be involved in the sport at whatever level I want to be. And we’ll let that kind of materialize as we move forward past Homestead.”
Martin says that he can still drive a racecar fast, but he also knows that he’s getting up there in age.
“I can feel it in everything I do – every time I get up and walk across the room, I can tell I’m not 35,” he said. “And anybody that says they can’t, I’d like to be sippin’ off some of their juice, because I can tell.”
Martin is not using the word retirement, though is saying this is a chance to open a new chapter in his career.
“I worked really, really hard the last 10 years to continue to be a formidable opponent in the garage, and from time to time when stuff was right, I was able to do it,” Martin said. “And I’m proud of that. But it’s time for me to open a new chapter and do some other things.”
SHR team owner Tony Stewart sees it as a good move for the entire organization heading into next year.
“I think Mark is a great liaison between us as drivers and the crew chiefs and Zippy,” Stewart said. “Mark’s got so much practical knowledge and experience. Mark is good with people and I think that is a lot of value to me. I think it’s a little easier for Mark to help Danica.
“But I think Mark can make me better. You’re crazy if you’re a driver and think you can’t learn and that you can’t be better. Having someone like Mark do that, if he sees I’m not driving in the corner hard enough or I’m arcing my entry too much or not enough, whatever. Mark can see that and tell you to think about this.”
When Danica Patrick was just starting her NASCAR career at JR Motorsports, she spent time with Martin for advice. She knows the benefit of having someone with his experience to lean on and looks forward to him being at SHR.
“I don’t think that you can ever have too much input,” Patrick commented. “Maybe from person to person they have different preferences to what they like, but I sure like it. I sure like hearing advice about what to do. It doesn’t mean you go out and implement every single thing and try every single thing, but there is going to be a situation that comes up and you are going to remember what somebody said and you are going to try it. So, I like asking a lot of questions.
“No different than me walking down pit lane last night for qualifying and stopping by Mark’s car and talking to him and asking what he is going to do for qualifying. Then we were just talking about working on things for next year and how nice it is when there is natural speed in the car and then you can work on little things to fine tune.”
She added that he’d be great to have not just from a driver’s perspective, but from a team prespective.
“He has seen a lot of different teams,” she continued. “That is a great perspective. He is there to ask driving questions, but he is also there to just help overall from a team perspective.”
The Big Disconnect: Why racing will never be a fully accepted mainstream “sport” in America
As an American racing fan, be it NASCAR, IndyCar, F1, or just about anything else, you know racing really isn’t covered well at all by mainstream sports media.
Here in Southern Maryland, I may see a mention or two during Speedweeks or Indy month, but outside of that no mention on local TV. On ESPN I have to wade through NFL, MLB, NBA, and NCAA before maybe a mention of NASCAR or something with Danica Patrick. Fox Sports is basically the same. Now granted both sports groups have hour or half an hour long NASCAR shows (NASCAR Now and Race Hub) each day in season, but nobody watches them compared to SportsCenter or even Fox Sports Live (I think, but either way I doubt the FSL audience is 100% NASCAR fans).
The problem with this being, of course, that both sport groups air every single NASCAR race from its three National series with the lone exception of TNT’s six race summer series. I know what you may be thinking right now: “Well, that’s pretty dumb. Why not really promote something you’re going to air?”
Guess what? They aren’t being dumb, they’re being smart, because NASCAR simply isn’t accepted as a sport by the majority of the viewing public.
Even if you hate football and have never played it, I’m pretty certain that you can at least accept that there is athleticism and that it is a sport. Same with basketball, hockey, and baseball. Unless you’re a Yankees fan, I’m pretty sure you see it as throwing big money at cheaters but I digress. People generally go to college and throw all of their hopes into making it into the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, or XFL (In Vince McMahon’s mind).
Last time I checked, the NCAA doesn’t sanction a racing series. Sure, drivers have gone to college before but that’s primarily to have a back up plan if it doesn’t work out – only 43 drivers start in Cup races, so the chance to make it big is pretty darn low. Mechanics are a different story but they don’t receive a tenth of the credit the driver usually does.
If I wanted to go throw a football, I have a buddy who lives down the road who has an old football we can play with. I don’t have a buddy with two Sprint Cup cars along with a quarter mile we can play with. Herein lies one of the big problem with mainstream opinion on motorsports – they do not understand that there is a core difference between driving and racing, they simply believe it is one and the same. I drive every day to work in my Toyota, this is the only connection many have with motorsports, even though the only similarity between the two is controlling an automobile down a road for a distance.
Driving is to travel a distance to get to a location and something the general public does everyday. Racing is something most sane people will never get the opportunity to do outside of carney go kart tracks where half the karts don’t work and the green one is always the fastest (in my experience). Just because I drive everyday in a Toyota, which has AC in the summer, doesn’t mean I can hop into the #18 Camry, no AC in a fire suit in a 100 degree cockpit, and become the next Kyle Busch. It took Busch 20 years of racing to get where he is today. I haven’t had a minute of it.
When I watch football, when Aaron Rodgers is on an absolute roll I can see the fire in his eyes, just how perfect he is at throwing the football. On the flipside, when Jay Cutler is having a bad day, I can see the anger, the heartbreak in his face and in his body language, every bad throw. This is why Tim Tebow was such a big deal to the mainstream – he has emotion, charisma, and fire most athletes could only dream to have, just no talent. You do not see this in motorsport, especially NASCAR.
Unless you really watch at driver motions in the windshield, you can’t see through the car and watch Busch wheel a loose car from the back to the front. Thus, there I think might be the biggest disconnect of all, the perceived lack of emotion on display. Outside of the insane wreck or two, when do you hear about NASCAR in mainstream media? Post race, when the emotion and the fights, the heartbreak, and the joy are all on full display.
Finally, the short attention span of Americans today make it hard to watch things for extended periods of time on TV if you don’t know about those involved. If I were to watch Landon Cassill swap the lead back and forth with Aric Almirola, I’d be pretty happy and would be interested. To the average channel surfer, they don’t know or care about that and would leave in a few minutes if it is the same old same old. Compare that to football, within a few minutes different players are guaranteed to be on the field doing different things.
No matter how well the sport of racing is doing ratings or fan base wise compared to its contemporaries, there will always be a Donovan McNabb out there who obviously doesn’t understand it and demeans it. If baseball is relatively easy to follow and football hard to understand at first, racing might be the single most complicated of them all. And it might have the most raw emotion out of its fans- even during a bad race fans are never going to keep to themselves about it.
Roush-Fenway Racing looks for more success with Bayne in 2014
“It doesn’t make me who I am. It doesn’t control me. I want to go out there and win races. I want people to see that you can have tough things in your life and still go on. You can stay positive and keep pushing on and rely on God for strength. I’m not going to let this scare me or hold me on a choke hold. You can’t live life when you’re scared.”
In July, Trevor Bayne was diagnosed with MS disease, which affects the body’s nerves system. As the year came to a close, Bayne revealed the diagnosis to the world.
From a team perspective, Roush-Fenway Racing team president Steve Newmark stated that the biggest concern was that Bayne was healthy and they understood his situation.
“I think that it was refreshing that he actually got a diagnosis because there had been some uncertainty about what had unfolded previously, so I know it was comforting to him and that’s why he pursued it so strongly,” Newmark commented.
The diagnosis came about as a result of the events of 2011. In 2011, Bayne missed a couple of races due to issues pertaining with his elbow. He was bit by a bug and a rash developed on his elbow. It was thought to originally be Lyme’s Disease.
“There could have been local Lyme’s on my elbow and that’s why at the time we were like, ‘That’s what it is,’ and it was an easy thing because I did have the rash on my arm from a bug bite,” Bayne commented. “I don’t know if the two are connected.”
However they weren’t 100% sure that was the cause and Bayne wanted to know for sure the cause.
“I wasn’t satisfied with not knowing, so as a competitive person and as a racer you guys know how we work,” he said. “We want to know how everything works and causes and effects, so I just kept going back for checkups and this is what it has led to.”
With diagnosis and comfort in knowing Bayne hadn’t had to deal with symptoms, focus shifted back to on track business and making sure things were good there. Each of the sponsors were notified and Newmark stated that they have everybody’s support.
“First and foremost, everyone’s questions were concerns about Trevor personally, and then after that they’ve lined up and said, ‘Tell us what you need us to do to stand behind him’,” Newmark explained. “I think that’s a testament to the type of young man that Trevor is, but each one has said, ‘You let us know what we need to do and we’re 100 percent supportive of your effort and we want to see Trevor out there winning races.’”
Bayne brings forth a new partner for 2014 as he will have AdvoCare on the quarter panels on his mustang. Last season didn’t go as planned as Bayne failed only won one race, finishing just outside the top five in points. However, with that said, progress was made throughout the year to make the No. 6 Mustang stronger in hopes for a better 2014.
“What’s impacted our season the most is how competitive the Nationwide Series is this year and how tough some of the competitors are,” Bayne said. “I feel like we’ve got to step up our game a little bit and get our cars a little better. This was my first year back full-time, and now we’re hoping that next year we can get our cars better all the way around on the competitive side at Roush Fenway Racing. I don’t think it’s the season any of us would have hoped for, but we’ve had some bright lights also with a win at Iowa.”
In reflecting on the process, Newmark admires the 22-year-old for coming out and discussing the diagnosis with the world.
“Once Mayo and NASCAR have cleared him, he’s got authorization to drive and proceed,” Newmark commented. “This was something he decided on his own, that was the right thing to do, and that he wanted to be forthright about. I think it’s an admirable thing and I appreciate Trevor’s honesty on that front.”
