The SuperBowl had a little bit of racing influence on it this year - in the commercials.

Three-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson was the opening athlete for a Gatorade "G" commercial, and was featured with other sporting greats like Tiger Woods, Peyton Manning, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, John Maclaen and Usain Bolt. The commercial showed the athletes explaining what "G" means to them, but it isn't being considered one of the better ones of this year's superbowl.

Still it's gotta be a testament to racing, with Johnson being featured so prominently.

Another driver was also featured pretty prominently in superbowl ads - Danica Patrick. The IndyCar driver was in two GoDaddy.com commercials.

Both commercials attempted to be racy and sexy and teased viewers to try to get them to visit the GoDaddy.com site to view a "hotter" commercial.

If you're thinking it might be worthwhile to view the versions on GoDaddy.com, think again. I actually don't see why they couldn't have been played during the superbowl, save for the length of them.

I also no longer see how it's to GoDaddy's benefit to have Danica Patrick as their spokesperson any longer. After four mediocre seasons in the IRL, I would think the marketing draw of Patrick would've worn off by now. Especially for a company that banks on sex appeal to sell its product.

Needless to say, the commercials mentioned above weren't on many people's list of favorites.

Formula One teams sure toned down their car debuts this year.

In years prior, teams would show off their new cars, and their seemingly bottomless pocket books, with lavish parties and much fanfare.

But this year, with the economy nearly bottomed out and everyone examining where each dollar goes, the teams decided to either debut their cars on the internet or simply wait until the year's first official test session to introduce the latest models.

I wonder if the races this year will also take on such a modest approach. Typically, race weekends ooze pomp and excess. Lots of money is spent and lots of excitement surrounds the F1 circus.

What will the Grand Prix of Monaco be without all the fanfare? Will Formula One still be as popular if it seems more regular than mystical?

With the uncertainty in Thailand recently, 2008 champion Jimmie Johnson had to cancel his planned off-season vacation to the area.

"We just canceled our trip and [are] trying to think of what to do now," the three-time Sprint Cup Series champion said Tuesday. "We're on short notice, and I'm sure we can think something out. We really wanted to travel somewhere off the wall and far. I'm not sure where we'll end up now."

With so many exotic locales throughout the world, I'm sure he can find an off the wall place to travel to. It is too bad that he's not able to go to Thailand though. The country offers beautiful beaches, bustling cities, vast countryside and lots of history.

If I could give him a suggestion, I'd recommend he try neighboring Malaysia. What exotic place would you recommend Johnson enjoy a vacation at?

I had no idea what a big deal a Formula One grand prix is.

Montreal is fighting tooth and nail to do whatever it takes to bring a race back to Canada in 2009 - even as other countries are bailing on the sport due to today's economic climate.

Interested parties in Canada made another offer to F1's CEO Bernie Ecclestone this week to get a date reinstated in Montreal.

The country's government and the province of Quebec's government have pitched in money to secure the event and combined with revenue from the Montreal hotel association's agreement to a one percent room tax hike the offer is estimated to be worth $10 million for F1.

If the race gets added, the Canadian Grand Prix would be the only race on the schedule in North America and would be only one of two in the whole hemisphere.

I hope the gamble pays off for Canada because they're offering up tax dollars in the hopes of banking a profit from the weekend. I'm not sure how the global recession is hitting Canada, but it seems to me that they may be hard pressed to find many Americans who will spend the money to travel to the race in Montreal.

I would imagine the same could be said of individuals from other countries - can they get F1 fans from across "the pond" to travel to Canada to take in a race, when Europe and the surrounding areas are saturated with their own race dates?

Do you think you would make the trip to go to Canada for the race?

Wow.

I bet Justin Allgaier was just as surprised about winning the ARCA RE/MAX Series title, as Scott Speed was about losing it.

Allgaier came from third place, 110 points behind, to capture the championship in his third full year of ARCA competition. In the process, he became the first driver other than Frank Kimmel to win an ARCA championship in the last eight years. He also became the first Illinois native to win the title since Bill Venturini in 1991.

More importantly he became only the second driver to dethrone a points leader in the final event of the ARCA RE/MAX Series. Speed had a 90 point cushion but due to on track incidents failed to defend his lead and finished in third, 60 points out.

The only other time that a driver has beat a points leader in the final event of the season to take the championship was when Bobby Bowsher lost the title to Bob Keselowski in 1989. Bowsher only had a 15 point lead though.

To add a little more salt to Speed's wound is the fact that he led the points for eight straight weeks heading into the final and had as big a lead as 140 points after the 14th race of the season.

As quickly as luck is in Felipe Massa's favor, it's just as quickly against him.

Massa came out of the Grand Prix of Belgium the awarded victor, after Lewis Hamilton received a post-race time penalty. And the following race at Monza saw his sixth-place finish good enough to hold off Hamilton in seventh.

As a result he entered the Grand Prix of Singapore weekend within one point of Hamilton for the points lead.

Massa seemed well on his way to a successful race at Singapore after earning the event's maiden pole position. All he needed to do was run a clean race and hold off Hamilton who started in second to overtake the lead with a victory.

But trouble struck for the Ferrari driver during his first pit stop. One of the team's mechanics, who team officials aren't going to name and subsequently throw under the bus, told the driver he could leave the pits although the fuel hose was still attached to the car.

On the hasty exit, Massa left one mechanic injured on the ground and had to stop at the end of pit lane for his mechanics to come remove the hose from his car. The video footage of the botched pit stop and attempt to remove the hose is a comedy of errors not usually seen from the top ranked team in the sport.

To add salt to the wound, Massa also earned a drive-through penalty for almost colliding with Adrian Sutil on his exit. He ended the race in 13th. That finish, coupled with Raikkonen's accident in the closing laps and 15th-place finish, left Ferrari scoreless in a grand prix for the first since Australia in 2006.

Now Massa will have to dig deep to try and win the last three races of the season and mount a run on the championship and hope that with Kimi Raikkonen's support that Lewis Hamilton will be held to third-place finishes at best.

Try to catch a glimpse of David Ragan this weekend at Kansas Speedway.

The young driver will be sporting a special helmet design to highlight and help the charity, Shriners Hospitals for Children. Ragan will autograph the helmet after he wears it in Sunday's Camping World RV 400 and again in the Oct. 12 ARCA RE/MAX Series race at Toledo Speedway and the charity will then auction off the helmet to benefit the hospital.

Ragan will also pilot a special paint scheme for the charity during the ARCA race.

You can place a bid for the helmet by visiting either David's website, at www.DavidRagan.com, or the Shriners' website at www.ShrinersHQ.org.

There are 22 Shriners' hospitals across the country that provide high-quality medical care to children at no charge. Children up to the age of 18 with orthopedic conditions, burns, spinal cord injuries and cleft lip and palate are eligible for admission and receive all care in a family-centered environment – at no charge – regardless of financial need.

Ragan finished 16th in his debut at Kansas Speedway last year and could use a strong finish this weekend as he tries to remain in the hunt for the 13th spot in the standings.

Frank Kimmel has won three of the last four ARCA RE/MAX Series races and has made a charge for the championship as a result.

He's sitting fourth in the championship with three races left in the season - 215 points behind the leader.

And he's done it with mostly volunteer help all season. Kimmel formed his own team at the beginning of this year.

Almost all of the work on getting the nine-time champion's cars ready come from the help of volunteers.

"We're all volunteer help. Nobody is getting paid to work on these race cars right now," Kimmel said of his team's effort. "That part has been really tough. It's hard on the guys and we have a lot of volunteer help that come in whenever they get a day off. If they get off early or something, they'll be showing up at the shop and just walk in and say, 'What can I do?'

"That part of it has been difficult and it's really tough to be consistent when you're doing things like that because we're not able to test and it seems like whenever we do go to test that we run pretty well at the following race. The recent streak of winning both races on dirt and then coming back and winning at Salem, that's been the highlight of the year for us. It's something that we needed as a team.

"Whether you have volunteer work or getting paid, a win does a lot. It gives a guy a shot in the arm and they want to come out and help. Now that no one's getting paid right now, it's very important for us."

Imagine what a 10th championship in a year when he ran fully independent would do for Kimmel and his team. It would show the rest of ARCA that, yes, with effort, success can be achieved in all conditions.

The 2008 Summer Olympics are underway in China and with all the sports featured at the event I wonder if automobile racing will ever be included in the games?

So many other sports are given the opportunity to be showcased at the event, like basketball, baseball, aquatics, gymnastics, tennis and many more. And as sporting has changed over the years, new sports have been added.

Although it's not yet a part of the games, motorcycle racing is a recognized sport by the olympic committee. So could automobile racing become a part of the Olympic summer games?

I think drag racing could easily be included in the games as far as event management is concerned. Road course racing could easily be executed as well, but oval racing may prove challenging.

I guess maybe cost and time committment could be the limiting factors to including racing in the Olympics. It would be hard for teams to develop an Olympic program simultaneously while running a racing schedule. The cost to develop a car and transport it to the event would be outrageous too. Unless the Olympic committee adopted a practice like IROC did in the States where uniform cars were developed for the racers.

If that were the case maybe the sport could be used to develop and showcase more of the amateur racing talent that is out there.

What do you think?