AutoShow to launch new F1 team, honour journalists
Drivers Lance Stroll, Sergio Pérez to unveil new Racing Point car; 10 influential journalists to enter Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame in newly created media category
Next Wednesday, at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, two items of significance to the world of motorsport will take place: the new, Canadian-owned Racing Point Formula One team will officially be launched, and 10 soon-tobe-new members of the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame will be honoured. First, Racing Point. A Formula One launch rarely happens outside the U.K. Occasionally — but certainly not all the time — Ferrari will hold its launch in Maranello, Italy, but usually, like all the other teams, they do it at their headquarters in England.
The launches are quite spectacular. There is music, dry ice creates fog, the newly designed (and liveried) car is on stage and under wraps and the drivers, the technical team and all the other important people in the organization are all present. At some point, the drivers pull the cover off the car and there are a gazillion flashes from cameras and phones and then the speeches begin and the whole thing is being streamed around the world.
When a consortium of Canadian investors, led by Lawrence Stroll of Montreal, purchased the assets of the bankrupt Force India F1 team last year, you knew they would focus on Toronto for sponsorship because this is where the money is.
Jason Campbell, who is general manager of the Canadian International AutoShow, which opens to the public at the convention centre next Friday, once worked in Formula One and suggested that, since the team principals were coming to Toronto to gauge the market, why not bring the whole team? And that’s how the launch came to be in Toronto.
Now, before moving on, I must say one thing about one of the drivers, Lance Stroll, who is Lawrence Stroll’s son and who will partner with Sergio Pérez of Mexico in the Racing Point cars this year.
You know the bit: the only reason he’s in F1 is because of daddy’s money.
Well, I met Lance when he was 10 and racing go-karts at Goodwood Kartways out near Uxbridge. He left all the other kids in his dust, he was that good. Some kids have loads of talent and Lance Stroll is one of those kids.
Lance Stroll could be world champion one day. He’s won in every other class of competition he’s raced in, so why not in F1?
Later Wednesday, at a black-tie gala held each year at the AutoShow’s Art and the Automobile exhibit — a very swishy affair, indeed, featuring special guest Mario Andretti and guest MC Townsend Bell — 10 of Canada’s finest journalists will be honoured and introduced as soon-to-be-inducted members of the Motorsport Hall of Fame.
I was inducted four years ago in the Builder category, because at the time there was no media category. Now there is, and it’s long overdue. That’s why the Hall, which will formally induct the 10 at a later date, opted to welcome a bunch, rather than just one or two.
Here are those 10, and I am so proud to say I am — or was — friends with them all. The “or was” is because two have passed. I miss them both, but one in particular: the first guy on the list.
The inductees, in alphabetical order, are: Len Coates, Gerald Donaldson, Dave Franks, Graham Jones, Pierre Lecours, Dean McNulty, Tim Miller, Jeff Pappone, Dan Proudfoot and Erik Tomas.
Len Coates’ journalism career started in the mid-1960s as a sports copy editor at the Toronto Telegram and he quickly morphed into Canada's first motorsport reporter after a few years as an amateur racer and editor of Canada Track & Traffic. Later, as the Toronto Star’s Wheels racing columnist — he was eventually self-syndicated — he doubled down as Motorsport Park media relations guru when F1 and Can-Am races were held there. Len’s PR and communications talents helped to promote the Molson Indy Toronto in the early years. He wrote Challenge, a book about the early days of Canadian road racing, was founding president of the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada and helped launch the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame. With the help of his great friend and mentor Rod Campbell, Len’s legacy is celebrated each year with the awarding of annual journalism bursaries at Toronto’s Ryerson University.
A globally recognized expert on Formula One, Gerald Donaldson has covered hundreds of grands prix for many international publications, including the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star, as well as commentating for the CBC, CTV and TSN networks. He has written many books on the sport. His acclaimed biographies of Juan Manuel Fangio, James Hunt and Gilles Villeneuve are considered the definitive studies of the three F1 heroes. Donaldson was recently inducted into the F1 Paddock Hall of Fame and he is one of a handful of Formula One journalists to be bestowed a lifetime Formula One Honorary Media pass from the sport’s governing body, the Fédération International de L’Automobile.
For more than half a century, Dave Franks has photographed racers and racing, particularly at the Canadian grassroots level. The best friend of the late “Daytona Don” Biederman, Franks’ work has been published in racing newspapers like Area Auto Racing News, Speedway Scene and National Speed Sport News, magazines like Inside Track Motorsport News and speedway programs throughout North America. Franks raced stock cars himself for two years, and was a 10-consecutive-years Ontario snowmobile racing champion before deciding to concentrate on photography. Without Dave Franks, many of the photographs of Canadian racing, particularly in the early days, would never have been taken.
The late Graham Jones was press officer for the Minardi F1, BAR and Tyrrell F1 teams. A graduate of the University of Victoria, he was a club-level competitor who moved to England to combine a passion for motorsport and writing. He was assistant editor of Cars and Car Conversions magazine before moving to Autocar in 1982, where he was road test editor and technical editor. Recruited by Wheels section editor Dennis Morgan, Graham became motorsport writer and columnist for the Toronto Star in 1988. For Graham, it was a personal crusade to raise the profile of motorsports in Canada and, particularly, in Ontario. Two years later, he returned to the U.K. and moved into automotive PR. But he returned to journalism and, when he passed in 2011, he was editor of Race car Engineering magazine.
Pierre Lecours covered motorsport for Le Journal de Montréal for more than 30 years and was one of the key players to see Gilles Villeneuve rise to fame. Lecours introduced Villeneuve to Gaston Parent, who fronted the money for Villeneuve’s entry into the 1976 Grand Prix de TroisRivières that launched his Formula One career. He also wrote Gilles and Jacques, the Villeneuves and Me, which follows the careers of both Formula One drivers. Legend has it that Lecours is the last journalist to be invited onto a Formula One podium by a race winner (Gilles Villeneuve).
For almost two decades, Dean McNulty covered motorsport at every level in Canada for the Sun Media chain and later Postmedia. Although known for his impressive coverage of the top tier NASCAR series, McNulty was comfortable reporting on everything from dirt speedways like Ohsweken to the Formula One Grand Prix at Montreal. When he retired, Postmedia dropped racing coverage, making Dean McNulty the last full-time, national Canadian newspaper reporter on the motorsport beat.
Tim Miller has been the motorsport reporter and columnist for the Hamilton Spectator, writing mostly about local drivers and racing, for the past 35 years. He left general newspaper reporting to focus on motorsport, starting with Wheelspin News in the late 1970s. Over his career, Miller has written on most aspects of the sport, from action at the local bullrings to major national and international series, including the American Le Mans Series, IndyCar and Formula One. He has become one of the most proficient writers in Canada on drag racing. He has also written several books on racing and has branched into racing and track PR on occasion, primarily in the area of drag racing. He was curator of the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame museum and he prepares and writes the biographies for its induction videos.
Jeff Pappone has written about motorsport in Canada for the past two decades, beginning with the Montreal Gazette and other CanWest newspapers. He was the motorsport reporter and columnist for the Globe and Mail for 16 years before becoming the Formula One correspondent for Inside Track Motorsport News. Pappone is also a columnist for IndyCar.com. While he covered mostly top tier series for the Globe and Mail, Pappone also made a point to write about young up-and-coming Canadian racers long before they made the big leagues. He is a member of the board of directors of the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame.
Dan Proudfoot holds the distinction of becoming the first motorsport beat reporter for the Globe and Mail in the early 1970s. He also wrote for the Hamilton Spectator, Toronto Telegram and UPI. A story in Toronto Life magazine on attending his first racing school earned him an early award. Proudfoot later joined the Toronto Sun as motorsport reporter and columnist but took early retirement following the death of his brother, Jim, a long-time Toronto Star sports editor and columnist. He continues to write on automotive subjects for the Globe and Mail. Dan is hugely respected in the racing community, so much so that when Paul Tracy was inducted into the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame, he asked that Dan do the honours.
The host and producer of the Raceline Radio Network, Canada’s national radio motorsport authority, Erik Tomas has been covering motorsport for more than a quarter of a century. Raceline Radio features the stars of the sport globally, with special emphasis on Canadian talent and achievement. Raceline Radio is heard coast-to-coast in Canada, year-round, on 15 major and medium market radio stations, and Erik remains the nation’s only radio reporter dedicated solely to motorsport. Tomas has been the voice of Merrittville and Ransomville Speedways in Niagara and Western N.Y. and has anchored TV coverage of regional dirt and asphalt track events on American and Canadian television, along with pit work for IndyCar races for ESPN and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network.
The first 10 in the media category are a worthy group. But there are many more fine writers and broadcasters out there who, I’m sure, will be welcomed in the years to come.
I hope they enjoy the day and the evening. I know that I did.