PRUETT: 2019 loves and hates, part 1

Image by Levitt/LAT
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emailBy: Marshall Pruett | 10 hours ago

HATE: So You Say I Have a Contract?

We’ve documented the recent plight of Sebastien Bourdais and James Hinchcliffe to the point of not needing to crack those doors open again here, but let’s not forget the first contractual oddity of the year, which sent 2018 Indy Lights champion Patricio O’Ward on a bizarre journey to Austria, Japan, and back.

Signed by Harding Steinbrenner Racing in September of 2018 and presented to the world at Sonoma Raceway and again at Yankees Stadium with teammate Colton Herta, the new Harding Steinbrenner Racing driver was informed somewhere around the first of the year that there was no money to honor his contract. No racing, no salary, and no reimbursement for the aforementioned travel. Nada.

O’Ward, with the $1 million advancement prize to offer for winning the Lights title, represented approximately 1/6th of the budget puzzle. The other 5/6th were the responsibility of HSR, which wasn’t met, and by late December, it’s believed the funding to pay for a single engine lease – for Herta – became the team’s reality.
This was short-lived. Image by IndyCar

This situation has happened in the past, and if it had been handled properly, the ugliness that awaited O’Ward might have been avoided. All it would have taken was a simple release by the team, a ‘we can’t honor your contract, but we don’t want to get in the way of you searching for a new team, so let’s do this early and give you plenty of time to chase the other opportunities out there’.

Instead, as we’ve heard from a few people close to the situation, Harding’s outfit went the less awesome route of holding the kid hostage. Instead of doing the right thing, HSR allegedly told O’Ward that in order to be cut free, he would have to pay them to become a free agent!

The rumored sum was half of his Indy Lights prize – a half-million dollars – to be let out of a contract HSR was unwilling to fulfill. Talk about balls.

Like Bourdais many months later, suing a wealthy team owner was never going to be resolved in a timely or inexpensive manner, and in O’Ward’s case, the conflict raged until early February where the situation reached its peak at Spring Training. Once HSR embraced its inner angels, the Mexican was freed without paying the ransom note.

The business of racing can be a dirty thing when greedy practitioners get involved. O’Ward to, his credit, kept his head down, mouth shut, and has been rewarded with a prime opportunity as the tip of Arrow McLaren SP’s spear.

LOVE: The Flix

The final year of the decade brought a bevy of racing documentaries and a major motion picture or two to enjoy. Ford Vs Ferrari earned universal praise (no spoilers, please, I’ve yet to see it), Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain (I also hear they’ve made a book about the movie), Netflix’s Formula 1—Drive To Survive (featuring RACER’s sexy Brit Chris Medland, no less), ESPN’s 30 for 30 feature Qualified, about Indy 500 pioneer Janet Guthrie, Adam Carolla and Nate Adams’ Shelby American doc on Carroll Shelby and his racing team (also on Netflix), Hurley, on sports car icon Hurley Haywood’s fascinating life, Blink of An Eye, on the relationship between Dale Earnhardt Sr and Michael Waltrip, the IndyCar safety doc Rapid Response featuring Drs. Steve Olvey and Terry Trammel, Gentleman Driver, made by an old friend Toni Calderon, and I’m sure plenty more hit the big and little screens in 2019. And, finally, the Willy T. Ribbs doc Uppity, which debuted in May of 2018, is days away from its digital release.

At this rate, I need to take a week off and get caught up. I’m only a year overdue on watching Born To Race: The Scott Dixon Story…

HATE: Farewell No. 5

One of the most excellent sports car entries over the last decade succumbed to insufficient funding at the conclusion of the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season. Action Express Racing’s No. 5 prototype program was shuttered after multiple championships and Rolex 24 At Daytona wins when, in one of the strangest circumstances, NASCAR’s costly reacquisition of its International Speedway Corporation caused the fearsome No. 5 to go silent after Petit Le Mans.

As I’ve had the scenario explained to me, the AXR team, which has been funded for most of its existence by IMSA co-founder, Grand-Am founder, and current NASCAR president Jim France, was informed by the Floridian that he would be unable to continue supporting the No. 5 due to the huge debt taken on by the family after buying back the publicly-traded ISC and returning it to private ownership.

Minus the financial freedom to pour millions into the No. 5 AXR Cadillac DPi-V.R driven by Joao Barbosa and Filipe Albuquerque, the entry was scrapped. Associate sponsor Mustang Sampling, Barbosa, team advisor Christian Fittipaldi, former AXR driver Sebastien Bourdais, and the unused car number moved across to Minnesota’s JDC-Miller Motorsports where a new chapter will be written.
It’s lights out for AXR’s fearsome No.5 Cadillac DPi. Image by Galstad/LAT

AXR continues with the 2018 Prototype title-winning duo of Felipe Nasr and Pipo Derani in the No. 31 Cadillac DPi-V.R funded by the benevolent Sonny Whelen and his Whelen Engineering company. That’s the positive twist on the story. The worrying part comes with a more recent rumor that 2020 marks the final year of Whelen’s backing for the No. 31. That’s a ‘HATE’ topic I do not want to write 12 months from now.

LOVE: A Porsche And A Smile

Porsche North America’s Coca-Cola retro liveries at Petit Le Mans in George – not far from Coke’s global headquarters – was a gift of colors and creative thinking. Paying tribute to the Coke-branded Porsche IMSA GT and GTP entries from the 1980s, the white-and-red Porsche 911 RSRs clinched IMSA’s GT Le Mans championship wearing the stellar tribute designs. Also, to prove the value of this bold play to bring two iconic brands back together for a one-off celebration, all of the throwback merchandise that was created for Petit Le Mans – hats, t-shirts, posters, and stickers – sold out immediately.
A win for throwback aficionados and merchandise sellers alike. Image by Galstad/LAT

Months later, eager fans who missed out on the goodies, await the arrival of a new order to try and meet the demand.
HATE: The death of IndyCar’s LED panels.

For reasons that continue to defy explanation, every—and I do mean every—story we posted on RACER.com regarding the oft-broken, rarely functional LED panels installed on both sides of the roll hoop, generated ridiculous traffic. It became a running joke between IndyCar president Jay Frye and I with each interview.

He could reveal a massive scoop about rules or future technology, and dammit, a stupid 200-word story on the latest attempt to fix the effing LED panels double or triple the traffic seen with the bigger story. To my immense sorrow, the failure-prone information displays were yanked from the cars, for good, in August.

May they return, swiftly, and with frequent malfunctions, with the next IndyCar chassis to ensure new traffic records are set.

LOVE: The Trent Hindman Show

If you’re a fan of redemption stories, new IMSA GTD Drivers’ champion Trent Hindman ticks all the requisite boxes. The New Jersey native showed talent on Mazda’s Road To Indy, turned to mid-tier touring cars as a way to keep his career afloat after the open-wheel money ran dry, was picked up by BMW as one of its junior drivers, delivered what appeared to be strong performances for the brand, but was dropped and found himself scrambling to keep his career from running aground once again. All while kids his age were readying themselves to graduate from college. Sporadic (but impressive) WeatherTech Championship drives in 2017 and 2018 led to a full-time shot with Meyer Shank Racing, and in his first complete season in GTD, Hindman and Germany’s Mario Farnbacher were victorious. Those Jersey guys don’t know how to quit.