Catching Up: Edmonton Grand Prix, Part 1 (including Mario Andretti)

We went up to the Edmonton Champ Car race last weekend. We stay with our good friends Mike and Hilda, their "kids" John and Elizabeth, and their fleet of cars. I'm not sure how a family of 4 ends up with 5 cars, but that's what they have. They also always have a menagerie of pets. These days, it includes (but appears to not be limited to):
• Yoko, the bird killing cat (two birds down while we were there);
• Celeste, the old and frail cat,
• John's gecko;
• Robbie, a wonderful 1 year old sheltie who appeared to love me because I played frisbee with him 3 times a day all weeeknd, and
• Indie, who seems to own the place (especially the room we were in)

• and Charlotte, a Jewel Spider who spins a wickedly thick web each night in front of their screen door.


Mike and I went to University together (far too many stories, with the best being the ones we won't share). Mike and John come with me to Montreal for the F1 race, and we spent the weekend in Edmonton comparing the two races. One is on a picturesque landscaped island, one is on the hot barren tarmac of an airfield.

Both attract race babe scenery.


Edmonton has non-race entertainment, primarily (duh) in the air. You get CF-18's roaring around, sometimes very low.


You get helicopters...


and you get the Snowbirds.


Both feature support races. In Montreal, it's the Ferrari Challenge, Formula 1600 and Formula BMW. In Edmonton, it was the Northern Alberta Sports Car Club (NASCC), a Nascar Canadian Tire series race, and Formula Atlantic (the latter being a series owned by Champ cars as a developmental series for new drivers).

First the NASCC. Essentially, you can race anything with sufficient safety gear. There was GTP1, GTP2, GT1, GT2, GT3, Gt4 and Vintage class cars all racing at once. Look at the variety of cars in the start corner.




Look carefully in the above, and you can make out Corvettes, RX-7s, various Porsche models, Chevys, BMWs, a Honda Civic, a Fiero, a Neon, an MG, a Triumph, a Charger, a Volvo P1800, a Lotus Europa (my mom's car dealership sold those in 1978), Fiats, Alfas - well, the list goes on. Karen said the race looked like "the Deerfoot on a good day". Probably correct. You had fast cars, old cars, people driving badly, people spinning out, a few bumps and the odd slowpoke.

NASCAR doesn't interest me. The only unique thing was seeing the car sponsored by the Conservative party.


Also, during the race, there were at least two cars spilling fuel on each lap. This is a lousy photo, but you can see the gas pouring out.


Formula Atlantic is a standard class car, with identical chassis, motors, gearboxes, brakes, et al, so it's a race of driver skill (sort of). It was at least an interesting race, and you get two for the price of one. FA has two races on the weekend, and races are always better than practice. FA cars are pretty serious, and they race for keeps. Note Mr. Red Bull smokin' the tires trying to pass the green & yellow car.




One nifty thing about Formula Atlantic? Frankie Munoz, the guy who played Malcolm in the Middle, is in the series.


I admire Frankie's dedication, and he's driving race cars and I'm not, but he should stick to acting. He was DFL (dead f*#%ing last) of the cars actually racing in both races. I think he managed to pass one or two cars, but he was only like 3 minutes behind the winner.

One other part of Champ Car that I will expand on in the next post is that there's this love/hate thing going on with Formula 1. Champ Car isn't at the F1 level, but likes to think it is. Paul Stoddart was the owner of the Minardi F1 team, who placed DFL for several seasons and lost a lot of money doing it. Paul moved Minardi to Champ Car. He took his old Minardi cars, cut them in half, added a second cockpit, and thus begat F1x2 cars that you can buy a ride in.



There's three of these cars. Zoldt Baumgartner, Minardi's F1 driver in 2004, was driving one. Mario Domingez, Champ Car driver for a few seasons was driving the second. And the third black car? None other than Mario Andretti himself.



Here's Mr. Andretti, talking to Mr. Stoddart.


There was a 50+ year old lady standing beside me while I was taking these shots, drooling over Mario. I told her to drool over muilti-billionaire Stoddart, because with him, you could buy Mario as often as you wanted...

My one disappointment, for the second year in a row, was not seeing my hero Paul Newman. Newman/Hass/Lannigan racing is always winning Champ Car, and Paul shows to most races. I last saw him in person in Edmonton in 1982 or so, when he owned a CanAm series car and was up for a race. Ask me sometime about that story.

Next post? The Champ Car race itself.